Chapter 8 - THE LAST ORDER MY FATHER GAVE MEMy father disappeared in eleven seconds.
That was what the surveillance footage showed later.
Eleven seconds between the main power failure and emergency lights activating.
Shaw’s team had rehearsed.
Two men dressed as museum security moved Dad through an access door beside the podium.
A third created a disturbance near the stern.
By the time real security realized what had happened, they were already below deck.
“Lock the ship!” I shouted.
Mercer’s team sealed exits.
Too late.
We found an open maintenance hatch leading to the pier.
A service boat was pulling away.
Dad was aboard.
So was Shaw.
I reached the edge.
“Dad!”
He turned.
For one second, our eyes met across widening black water.
Shaw shoved him down.
Elias appeared beside me.
“Boat team is moving.”
I wanted to jump.
Literally.
My body leaned toward the water.
Elias caught my arm.
“Don’t.”
“They have him.”
“And jumping thirty feet won’t fix that.”
I hated logic when it was correct.
The pursuit team launched.
But Shaw had prepared countermeasures.
Two identical boats separated beneath the bridge.
Another emerged from concealment.
Three targets.
By the time aircraft gained visibility, all three had reached different waterfront access points.
Dad vanished.
Again, Shaw called me.
“Captain.”
“Let him go.”
“You really need a new opening line.”
“You need him alive.”
“For now.”
That gave me hope.
“What do you want?”
“The pendant.”
“You already know we copied it.”
“I don’t care about the copy.”
He surprised me.
“Then what?”
“The physical storage capsule contains a hardware signature required to validate the original files.”
I looked toward Elias.
He shook his head.
We hadn’t known.
Shaw continued.
“Bring it to Black Vault Seven.”
“And my father?”
“You’ll see him there.”
“Where is the vault?”
Shaw laughed.
“Ask Admiral Mercer.”
The call ended.
I turned.
Mercer looked miserable.
“Where?”
“Beneath the old Portsmouth logistics complex.”
“Operational?”
“Barely. Legacy systems only.”
“Can he get in?”
“With Arthur and the capsule.”
Elias checked his weapon.
“Then we know where he’s going.”
“No,” Mercer said. “You don’t just walk into Black Vault Seven. It was designed during an era when physical data survivability mattered more than convenience.”
“So?”
“Reinforced underground structure. Limited access. No ordinary communications below level two.”
I looked at him.
“A bunker.”
“Essentially.”
Perfect place for Shaw.
Few exits.
No signals.
Old systems.
We moved within minutes.
Lauren grabbed my arm before I left.
“Bring him back.”
“I will.”
“Don’t say it because you think I need to hear it.”
I looked at her.
“I’m saying it because that’s the plan.”
She swallowed.
“And you?”
“What about me?”
“Come back too.”
That was harder to promise.
So I didn’t.
I hugged her instead.
Black Vault Seven sat beneath an unremarkable government complex scheduled for demolition.
Shaw had already entered using Dad’s emergency biometric clearance.
Security cameras showed three armed escorts.
No father after the first checkpoint.
The tactical commander recommended direct assault.
Mercer refused.
“Too many reinforced choke points.”
I studied old schematics.
A ventilation maintenance shaft crossed level three.
“Nobody uses that.”
The commander stared.
“It’s eighteen inches at the narrowest point.”
Elias looked at me.
“No.”
“I fit.”
“No.”
“You don’t.”
“Still no.”
I raised an eyebrow.
“You are not my commanding officer anymore.”
“I’m beginning to remember why that was stressful.”
The shaft was miserable.
Dust.
Heat.
Metal edges.
Every scar on my back seemed to remember fire.
Halfway through, panic hit.
Not ordinary fear.
Memory.
The shaft became the collapsed passage at Meridian.
I smelled smoke that wasn’t there.
Heard children crying.
My breathing accelerated.
I stopped moving.
The radio in my ear crackled.
Elias.
“Rebecca.”
“I’m fine.”
“You stopped.”
“Observation skills remain strong.”
“Name five things you see.”
I almost told him to go to hell.
Then I realized what he was doing.
Grounding.
“Bolts.”
“Good.”
“Dust.”
“Very exotic.”
“Shut up. Cable. Rust. A dead insect.”
“Four.”
“Your personality.”
He laughed.
“There she is.”
My breathing slowed.
I continued.
I emerged above level three.
Shaw’s guards were focused outward.
I opened the service door from inside.
Our team entered quietly.
We found Dad in the vault authentication chamber.
Alive.
Hands restrained.
Bruised face.
Shaw stood beside him.
Two guards remained.
A third body lay on the floor.
One of Shaw’s own men.
“What happened?” I whispered.
Dad saw me but didn’t react.
Good.
Then his fingers moved.
Three taps.
Pause.
Two.
Old Navy shorthand he had taught me as a child when we communicated across church pews.
Three-two.
Wait.
I waited.
Shaw inserted Leila’s storage capsule into a console.
“Authorization.”
Dad stared at him.
“No.”
Shaw hit him.
My muscles tightened.
Elias’s hand closed around my shoulder.
Wait.
Shaw grabbed Dad’s thumb and forced it toward the scanner.
Dad jerked away.
“You can break every bone in my hand.”
Shaw smiled.
“I only need one fingerprint.”
Dad looked strangely calm.
“I know.”
Then he drove his own hand into the steel edge of the console.
Hard.
A sickening crack.
I nearly moved.
Elias held me.
Dad had broken two of his own fingers.
Swelling made the biometric scan unreliable.
Shaw stared in disbelief.
Dad smiled through pain.
“Retired doesn’t mean cooperative.”
Even then, I almost laughed.
Shaw struck him again.
“Manual facial authentication works too.”
Dad’s smile disappeared.
Damn.
Shaw turned him toward the camera.
The console began scanning.
Elias whispered.
“Now.”
The door exploded inward.
Everything happened at once.
One guard fired.
Our team returned fire.
I reached Dad.
Shaw seized the storage capsule and ran through the rear archive door.
Elias pursued.
I cut Dad’s restraints.
“You okay?”
“I’m seventy, kidnapped, and I broke my own hand. How do I look?”
“Annoying.”
“Genetic.”
A guard covered him.
I followed Elias.
The archive chamber extended into darkness.
Rows of sealed cabinets.
Old servers hummed.
I heard movement ahead.
Then a shot.
“Elias!”
No answer.
I ran.
Found him behind a cabinet, blood on his side.
“Vest,” he gasped.
Shaw had escaped deeper.
“Stay.”
“I’ve been ignoring that order since before you made captain.”
“You’re shot.”
“Bruised.”
I shoved him back.
“For once in your life, do what you’re told.”
He smiled painfully.
“Yes, ma’am.”
I continued alone.
Shaw reached the lowest archive chamber.
No exit.
He stood beside a manual destruction console.
The capsule was inserted.
His hand hovered over a lever.
“You’re too late.”
I aimed my weapon.
“Step away.”
“You think this is about money?”
“I don’t care what you think it’s about.”
“You should.”
He laughed.
“I kept operations alive when politicians and lawyers would have strangled them. I moved equipment where it needed to go. I funded capabilities Congress would never understand.”
It was the classic speech of a man who had turned arrogance into morality.
“You also killed civilians.”
“Collateral consequences.”
“Children.”
“History isn’t written by children.”
I stepped closer.
“It won’t be written by you either.”
He grabbed the lever.
Before he could pull it, the system locked.
ACCESS DENIED flashed across the console.
Shaw stared.
“What?”
Dad’s voice came from the doorway.
“Legacy systems.”
He leaned against a guard, broken hand cradled against his chest.
“They require two clean biometric confirmations.”
Shaw looked at him.
Dad smiled.
“You broke my face.”
He had deliberately shifted facial recognition points by provoking repeated blows.
I stared at my father.
Insane.
Brilliant.
Very Arthur Vance.
Shaw drew a pistol.
I fired first.
The shot struck his shoulder.
He fell.
Agents swarmed him.
For a moment nobody spoke.
Then Shaw began laughing.
Even injured.
Even captured.
“You think this ends it?”
I lowered my weapon.
“No.”
I looked at the archive.
“This is where it starts.”
Because now we had him alive.
We had the files.
We had Leila’s capsule.
May you like
And we had the one thing Shaw had spent five years trying to destroy.
The truth.
