Chapter 7 - Ethan’s Warning From Captivity
The bottom half of the sign was hidden by digital damage.
Julia enlarged the image carefully. Blocks of corrupted pixels shifted across Ethan’s hands and chest.
I leaned so close to the screen that my breath fogged it.
Ethan looked exhausted. His beard was overgrown. A bruise darkened one cheek. But he was alive in the image—alive eleven days after the Navy declared him dead.
“Can you recover the rest?” I asked.
“Maybe,” Julia said. “But not on this machine.”
Ross stared at the photograph as if she had seen it before.
“You knew,” I said.
“I knew evidence suggested he survived the blast.”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
She looked at me. “I saw this image six years ago.”
The words struck harder than any shout.
“You saw him alive and let me bury an empty casket.”
“The image came through an unverified source.”
“He was holding the date.”
“Captors manipulate dates.”
“And dogs apparently return from the dead.”
Ross flinched.
Mason stepped closer to the laptop. “What did the original sign say?”
“I never saw the complete message.”
I didn’t believe her.
Ghost nudged my hand, then looked toward the rear hallway. His ears were alert, body angled toward the emergency exit.
Mason noticed.
“Someone outside?”
Ghost walked to the door and sniffed beneath it.
A small padded envelope slid through the gap.
Mason opened the door fast, but the alley behind the clinic was empty. Rainwater rushed along the curb.
The envelope had no postage or address.
Inside was a compact flash drive wrapped in plastic and a handwritten note.
Ask Madison what Ethan hid inside the lantern.
Mason read it twice.
Ross whispered, “There was no lantern listed among his recovered effects.”
“There were no recovered effects,” I said.
But the note pulled at a memory I had spent seven years trying not to touch.
Ethan had given me an old brass camping lantern two nights before deployment. He told me the power at his rental house kept failing and asked me to store it in my garage.
I had never opened it.
After his death, I couldn’t bring myself to throw it away.
“It’s at my house,” I said.
Ross immediately shook her head. “You cannot go there.”
“Someone already knows I have it.”
“That is precisely why.”
Mason checked the windows. “We can move through the rear lot.”
“You’re under orders,” Ross reminded him.
“My order was to protect Ghost.”
“Your order was to deliver him.”
“Then somebody lied to one of us.”
I looked at Julia. “Take Ghost’s blood sample and the device fragment. Put copies in separate storage.”
She nodded.
I took the metal tag from the counter and fastened it around my neck beneath my scrubs.
Ross saw me do it.
“What’s on the flash drive?” I asked.
Julia plugged it into a standalone reader.
Only one audio file appeared.
A man was breathing heavily near the microphone. Machinery rumbled in the background.
Then Ethan’s voice filled the room.
“Mads, if Ghost found you, don’t trust the officer carrying my file.”
Every eye turned toward Ross.
The recording continued.
“She may look like Evelyn Ross, but—”
A burst of static cut him off.
Then another voice entered the audio, speaking only one sentence.
“Lieutenant Cross, tell us where she keeps the lantern.”
May you like
The voice belonged to Mason Reed.
📖 Discover why Mason’s voice appeared in Ethan’s captivity recording—and what Ghost did when Mason tried to explain in CHAPTER 8. 👇
