Chapter 8 - The Voice That Sounded Like Mason
Mason backed away from the table.
“That isn’t me.”
His denial came too quickly, but his shock looked real.
Ross watched him with the cold focus of an interrogator.
“The recording predates your assignment to Ghost,” she said.
“It predates my commission as a SEAL officer.”
“Were you in theater seven years ago?”
“Yes. With a different unit.”
My throat tightened. “Did you know Ethan?”
“No.”
Ghost stepped between us.
Mason reached toward him.
Ghost showed no aggression, but he shifted closer to my leg and refused the touch.
That hurt Mason more than he wanted anyone to see.
“I was twenty-six,” he said. “I served in the region, but I never met Cross. I never questioned prisoners. I wasn’t anywhere near his operation.”
“Your service record could confirm that,” I said.
Ross’s expression told me it might not.
Mason looked at her. “Can it?”
“Parts of your deployment remain sealed.”
“Convenient.”
The clinic’s front windows flashed blue as military police vehicles arrived outside. More personnel gathered beyond the locked entrance.
We were running out of time.
Julia isolated the voice track and displayed its waveform. “This file may have been assembled from multiple recordings.”
“Could the voice be generated?” I asked.
“Possibly. Or edited from his radio traffic.”
Mason stared at the speaker.
The recorded voice had his cadence, his clipped consonants, even the slight roughness caused by an old throat injury.
Whoever created it possessed intimate access to his voice.
Ross moved toward the dark folder.
“We leave now. Not through the front.”
“Where?” I asked.
“A secure facility.”
“No.”
“Dr. Cole, the people surrounding this building may not be operating under legitimate authority.”
“You brought them.”
“I brought two officers. There are twelve outside.”
Mason looked through the blinds.
Several men wore Navy security uniforms, but one carried a rifle setup not used by base police. Another had no unit patch.
“They’re not here to escort us,” he said.
The loudspeaker outside activated.
“Rear Admiral Ross, release Commander Reed, Dr. Madison Cole, and military working dog K-nine Ghost. You have sixty seconds to comply.”
Julia whispered, “They know everyone by name.”
Ghost suddenly turned toward Mason and sniffed his tactical vest.
He pushed his nose against a small stitched pocket near the side seam.
Mason frowned and cut the thread with surgical scissors.
A thin electronic chip fell onto the floor.
It matched the material of the device removed from Ghost.
Mason stared down at it.
“They tracked me.”
Ross gave a grim nod. “And likely harvested your voice through it.”
The loudspeaker began counting down.
We moved Ghost through the rear treatment hall. One of the veterans from the lobby, a former Navy corpsman named Walter Briggs, offered to delay anyone entering from the front.
I refused to let him risk himself.
He smiled without humor. “Doctor, I’ve been waiting twenty years to be useful before breakfast.”
Julia handed me a hard case containing Ghost’s blood sample, the damaged device, and a copy of the surviving image.
Mason opened the rear door.
A black van waited in the alley with its engine running.
No one had heard it arrive.
The side door slid open.
Inside sat a woman in civilian clothes with dark hair pulled into a bun.
She had Admiral Ross’s face.
The Ross standing beside me stopped breathing.
The woman in the van smiled.
“Madison,” she said, “Ethan told me you’d choose the dog.”
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The armed men at the front began breaking through the clinic door.
📖 Find out which Evelyn Ross was real—and why the woman in the van possessed Ethan’s wedding ring in CHAPTER 9. 👇
