Rourke did not reach for his phone again.

He simply stared at Lozen.

“What exactly did Ward say about me?”

Lozen’s eyes stayed on the colonel’s hands.

Not his face.

His hands.

“Your name was the last thing he gave me before the connection died.”

“That doesn’t answer my question.”

“It’s the only answer I have.”

Rourke walked toward the training hall doors, checked the narrow window, then turned the lock.

Lozen noticed.

“So now I’m locked in a room with the first name on my list.”

“If I wanted you trapped, Grey, you wouldn’t have watched me lock the door.”

“Maybe you wanted me to.”

Rourke almost smiled.

Almost.

Instead, he crossed to a storage cabinet and opened it.

Inside were training pads, medical kits, spare gloves, and a small steel lockbox.

He removed the box and placed it on a bench.

“What are you doing?”

“Showing you why I haven’t slept properly in six months.”

He entered a combination.

Inside were three folders.

Each had a photograph clipped to the front.

Captain Elias Ward.

Chief Warrant Officer Nathan Bell.

Sergeant First Class Peter Shaw.

The three missing soldiers.

Lozen picked up Ward’s folder.

Most of it contained information she already knew.

Age thirty-six.

Signals intelligence background.

Advanced communications clearance.

Transferred to Fort Halberd fourteen months earlier.

Then she saw the last page.

Ward had requested an emergency meeting with Rourke two days before disappearing.

Lozen looked up.

“You met him?”

“No.”

“Why?”

“He canceled.”

“When?”

“Twenty-three minutes before the meeting.”

“By phone?”

“Email.”

Lozen put the folder down.

“Show me.”

Rourke took out his phone and opened an archived message.

Lozen read it once.

Then again.

Colonel, situation resolved. No meeting required. Apologies for the concern.

She looked at the timestamp.

“Ward didn’t write this.”

Rourke’s expression hardened.

“You can determine that from twelve words?”

“Ward never used ‘apologies.’”

“That’s your evidence?”

“No. That’s my reason to keep looking.”

She handed the phone back.

Rourke studied her.

“How well did you know him?”

“Well enough.”

“That isn’t an answer either.”

“It’s the one you’re getting.”

For a moment they stood in silence.

Neither trusted the other.

Both knew they needed information the other possessed.

Rourke broke first.

“Bell disappeared three months before Ward. Shaw disappeared seven weeks after him.”

“Same unit?”

“No.”

“Same clearance?”

“No.”

“Same building?”

“No.”

“Then what connects them?”

Rourke opened the other folders.

“All three accessed deployment planning systems within forty-eight hours of disappearing.”

Lozen stopped.

“What kind of deployment planning?”

“That information is compartmented.”

She looked at him.

“You brought me into a locked room, showed me three missing-person files, and told me I’m here because classified information is being sold. We’re past compartmented.”

Rourke considered that.

“Special operations transit routes. Medical evacuation corridors. Forward staging locations.”

Lozen’s expression changed.

Those were not abstract documents.

Those routes carried people.

A compromised supply manifest could be replaced.

A compromised route could become an ambush.

“How many operations were affected?”

“Officially?”

“Yes.”

“None.”

“And unofficially?”

Rourke’s jaw tightened.

“Two teams were redirected after intelligence suggested their routes might be exposed.”

“That information never reached Ward?”

“It shouldn’t have.”

Lozen caught the word.

“Shouldn’t?”

Rourke said nothing.

She stepped closer.

“Who knew about the redirects?”

“Very few people.”

“Names.”

“No.”

“Then we’re finished.”

Lozen turned toward the door.

“Grey.”

She stopped.

“If Ward named me because he suspected me, walking away leaves you with nothing.”

Lozen glanced back.

“If Ward suspected you, staying alone in a locked room with you would be stupid.”

“Then why are you still here?”

She faced him again.

“Because Ward didn’t tell me to investigate you.”

Rourke’s eyes narrowed.

“He told me to find you.”

That distinction landed heavily.

Before Rourke could respond, someone struck the door twice.

A voice came through from the corridor.

“Sir?”

Rourke unlocked it.

Staff Sergeant Mercer stood outside.

The humiliation from the sparring match had disappeared from his face.

Now he looked worried.

“Colonel, you need to see this.”

Rourke stepped into the corridor.

Lozen followed.

Mercer noticed her and hesitated.

“It concerns Captain Ward.”

“Then she comes,” Rourke said.

Mercer clearly disliked that decision, but he led them down two corridors and into an administrative office.

A civilian systems technician sat in front of a computer.

On the monitor was Ward’s personnel record.

Except half the screen was blank.

Rourke moved closer.

“What happened?”

The technician swallowed.

“His archive is being deleted.”

“By whom?”

“I don’t know.”

Rourke’s voice sharpened.

“Stop it.”

“I tried.”

“Try again.”

“It isn’t a normal deletion, sir. Somebody is removing files through an authenticated maintenance process.”

Lozen leaned toward the screen.

“When did it start?”

The technician checked a log.

“About eight minutes ago.”

Lozen and Rourke looked at each other.

Eight minutes.

They had begun discussing Ward less than fifteen minutes earlier.

“Which terminal authorized it?” Lozen asked.

The technician typed.

A location appeared.

ADMINISTRATION BUILDING 2 — RECORDS CONTROL.

Mercer frowned.

“That building is closed today.”

Lozen was already moving.

Rourke followed.

“Mercer, stay here. Nobody touches that terminal. Nobody disconnects anything.”

Mercer nodded.

They crossed the base quickly.

Rourke tried calling Records Control.

No answer.

Lozen said nothing as they entered Building 2.

The lobby was empty.

No receptionist.

No clerks.

The overhead lights were on, but the hallway beyond reception was dark.

Rourke drew his phone.

“Security.”

Lozen caught his wrist.

“Not yet.”

His eyes dropped to her hand.

She released him.

“If somebody inside has access to base security communications, announcing where we are tells them exactly how much time they have.”

Rourke hated that she was right.

They moved down the hallway.

The Records Control office stood at the far end.

Its door was open.

Rourke stopped outside.

Lozen listened.

A faint mechanical hum came from inside.

She entered first.

Empty.

Six computer stations lined the room.

Five were dark.

One monitor glowed.

Ward’s photograph filled the screen.

Beneath it, a progress bar moved steadily toward completion.

PURGING ARCHIVED RECORDS.

Rourke rushed to the terminal.

“Can you stop it?”

Lozen looked behind the workstation.

The network cable had been physically disconnected.

She stared at it.

“That machine isn’t online.”

Rourke looked at the screen.

“Then how is it deleting anything?”

Lozen crouched beside the desk.

A small black device was attached directly to the terminal.

She did not touch it.

“Because someone came here.”

Rourke immediately looked toward the door.

The hallway remained empty.

“How recently?”

Lozen pointed toward a paper coffee cup beside the keyboard.

Steam was still rising from it.

Rourke’s face changed.

The person had been in the room minutes earlier.

Maybe seconds.

He reached for his phone.

Lozen’s attention shifted to a second object on the desk.

A photograph.

It had been placed facedown.

She turned it over by one corner.

It showed Captain Ward standing beside three soldiers.

One of them was Lozen.

The photograph was old.

Seven years old.

Darun Valley.

Rourke stared at it.

“You told me the report disappeared.”

“It did.”

“Then where did this come from?”

Lozen did not answer.

She was looking at the back of the photograph.

Someone had written a message there.

SHE WAS NEVER SUPPOSED TO COME BACK.

Rourke read it twice.

Then he looked at Lozen.

“This isn’t just about Ward.”

“No.”

“You knew that before you arrived.”

“No.”

For the first time since entering Fort Halberd, Lozen looked genuinely unsettled.

A door slammed somewhere downstairs.

She moved instantly.

Rourke followed her into the corridor.

Footsteps echoed from the stairwell.

Fast.

Descending.

Rourke called security as they ran.

By the time they reached the ground floor, the exterior door was swinging shut.

Lozen burst outside.

A gray utility vehicle was already moving across the service road.

No visible plate.

She caught only the driver’s shoulder before it turned behind another building.

Rourke gave the vehicle description into his phone.

Lozen scanned the surrounding roofs, windows, intersections.

Too many exits.

Too many people.

Whoever had been in Records Control knew the base.

And knew how to disappear inside it.

Security sealed the immediate area within minutes.

It made no difference.

The vehicle was found abandoned near a maintenance yard.

Wiped clean.

The Records Control cameras had stopped recording twelve minutes before Lozen and Rourke arrived.

Someone had not merely reacted to their investigation.

Someone had anticipated how they would respond.

Back in Rourke’s office, Lozen placed the Darun Valley photograph inside a clear evidence sleeve.

Rourke remained standing.

“You need to tell me what happened seven years ago.”

“No.”

“Someone on my base has a photograph from an operation whose report supposedly vanished.”

“That doesn’t mean they know what happened there.”

“They know you were there.”

Lozen said nothing.

Rourke stepped around his desk.

“Ward knew too.”

“Yes.”

“How?”

“He was one of the twelve.”

Rourke froze.

He looked again at the photograph.

Ward was younger in it, his face partly obscured by dust.

Rourke had remembered the extraction.

He had remembered Lozen.

He had not remembered every man she brought out.

“Ward was trapped at Darun Valley?”

“Yes.”

“Why isn’t that in his record?”

“For the same reason I’m listed as Operational Support.”

“Which is?”

Lozen looked at him.

“Because the mission was buried.”

Rourke lowered his voice.

“By whom?”

“That’s what I came here to learn.”

Now the pieces were beginning to connect.

Ward had known Lozen years before Fort Halberd.

Before he disappeared, he had contacted her.

He had sent Rourke a message naming her.

Then someone had tried to erase Ward’s archive within minutes of Lozen and Rourke comparing information.

Rourke looked at the three folders.

“What about Bell and Shaw?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“Were they at Darun Valley?”

“Not that I remember.”

“Then we find out.”

Lozen shook her head.

“No.”

Rourke frowned.

“No?”

“We don’t search military records from your office. Whoever deleted Ward’s files may be monitoring queries.”

“Then what do you suggest?”

“Paper.”

Rourke almost laughed.

“You want to investigate a classified data breach with paper?”

“I want to find out whether Bell and Shaw existed anywhere near Ward seven years ago without telling whoever controls your network what we’re looking for.”

That ended the argument.

Fort Halberd maintained an off-network archive for older operational records awaiting destruction or transfer.

Access required two senior authorizations.

Rourke had one.

The second belonged to Lieutenant Colonel Adrian Voss.

Lozen went still when she heard the surname.

“Related to General Voss?”

“His son.”

That complicated things.

General Marcus Voss had personally requested Lozen’s transfer to Fort Halberd.

Now his son controlled access to the records she needed.

Rourke noticed her expression.

“You know Adrian?”

“No.”

“You hesitated.”

“I know his father.”

“How well?”

“Well enough that I don’t believe in coincidences.”

Rourke made the call.

Adrian Voss arrived twenty minutes later.

He was forty-one, precise, controlled, and visibly irritated at being summoned without explanation.

His eyes moved to Lozen.

“You must be Grey.”

Lozen did not react.

“You know me?”

“Everybody knows you after what happened to Mercer.”

“That was fast.”

“This is a military base.”

Rourke placed the authorization form on his desk.

“I need access to the legacy archive.”

Adrian read the request.

“For what?”

“Historical personnel verification.”

“Which personnel?”

Rourke paused.

Lozen watched Adrian carefully.

“Captain Elias Ward.”

Nothing changed in Adrian’s face.

But his right thumb stopped moving across the edge of the paper.

Only for a moment.

Then it continued.

“Ward is missing.”

“I’m aware.”

“Military investigators already reviewed his records.”

“I’m reviewing them again.”

Adrian looked toward Lozen.

“With her?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

Rourke’s voice hardened.

“Sign the form.”

Adrian held his gaze.

Then he signed.

“There.”

He placed the pen down.

“I assume my father knows she’s here.”

Lozen answered before Rourke could.

“He arranged it.”

Adrian’s eyes settled on her.

“Did he?”

It was the smallest possible response.

But Lozen heard the question inside it.

“You didn’t know?”

Adrian smiled.

“My father and I don’t discuss every personnel transfer.”

He left.

Rourke waited until the door closed.

“You think he’s involved.”

“I think he just learned something he didn’t know.”

“That isn’t the same thing.”

“No.”

Lozen looked at the signed authorization.

“But sometimes surprise is more useful than guilt.”

The archive was beneath the old headquarters building.

No wireless signal.

No network terminals.

Just shelves, sealed containers, and decades of paperwork.

It took them almost two hours.

Ward’s older assignments appeared under three different administrative classifications.

Bell’s records were worse.

Shaw’s contained a six-month gap.

Then Lozen found it.

A logistics manifest from seven years earlier.

She laid it beside Ward’s file.

Rourke leaned over her shoulder.

Bell’s name appeared on a communications support roster attached to the Darun Valley operation.

Not inside the collapsed post.

But nearby.

Shaw’s name appeared on an aviation maintenance team responsible for the extraction aircraft.

Rourke stared at the documents.

“All three.”

Lozen nodded.

“All three were connected to Darun Valley.”

“And now all three are missing.”

“Which means Fort Halberd may not be where this started.”

Rourke slowly straightened.

“It may be where somebody is cleaning it up.”

Lozen turned another page.

A fourth name appeared repeatedly across the old support records.

She stopped.

Rourke noticed.

“What?”

Lozen slid the page toward him.

GENERAL MARCUS VOSS.

At the time, Voss had been a colonel.

Operational oversight authority.

Rourke read the line twice.

“He sent you here.”

“Yes.”

“Why would a man connected to the old mission send you to investigate people connected to the old mission?”

“That depends.”

“On what?”

“Whether he wants me to expose what happened.”

She looked at the name again.

“Or whether he wants every remaining witness in one place.”

The archive door opened behind them.

Both turned.

Adrian Voss stood in the doorway.

He was holding a folder.

His earlier irritation was gone.

“You need to leave,” he said.

Rourke stepped forward.

“How did you get down here?”

“I have access.”

“That isn’t what I asked.”

Adrian shut the door behind him.

Lozen remained beside the table.

“What’s in the folder?”

Adrian looked at her.

“Something my father told me never to open.”

Rourke’s hand moved toward his radio.

Adrian saw it.

“If I intended to stop you, Colonel, I wouldn’t have brought this.”

He placed the folder on the table.

The seal across it had already been broken.

Inside was a casualty report.

Darun Valley.

Twelve names.

Ward’s was among them.

So was another name Lozen recognized.

A man she had watched die before the extraction began.

Yet beside his name was a notation entered three days later.

TRANSFERRED — FORT HALBERD.

Lozen stared at it.

“That’s impossible.”

Adrian nodded.

“I know.”

Rourke looked between them.

“Who is he?”

Lozen’s voice dropped.

“Major Samuel Keene.”

Rourke searched his memory.

The name meant nothing to him.

But Adrian knew it.

“He became part of the classified targeting directorate six years ago.”

Lozen looked at him sharply.

“No.”

“Yes.”

“I saw his body.”

“Then either you were wrong—”

“I wasn’t.”

“—or someone used a dead officer’s identity.”

Silence filled the archive.

Rourke looked down at the transfer notation.

“If Keene’s identity survived Darun Valley, whoever assumed it could have spent years inside restricted systems.”

“Deployment routes,” Adrian said.

“Biometric files,” Rourke added.

“Targeting data,” Lozen finished.

The same material Ward had warned her about.

Adrian opened the folder farther.

“There’s more.”

A personnel photograph was clipped inside.

Lozen stared at the face.

It was not Samuel Keene.

But she had seen the man before.

That morning.

Standing at the edge of the training hall while Mercer laughed at her.

He had been wearing an instructor’s uniform.

He had watched both sparring rounds.

Then disappeared with the crowd.

Rourke saw recognition in her face.

“You know him.”

“I saw him today.”

“Where?”

“Your training hall.”

Rourke reached for his radio.

Lozen caught his arm.

“Wait.”

“Why?”

“Because if he has been living under a dead officer’s identity for six years, he has access.”

“To what?”

She looked at Rourke.

“Everything Ward was trying to expose.”

Rourke pulled his arm free.

“That’s exactly why we call security.”

“And tell them what name?”

“Keene.”

“No.”

Lozen pointed to the photograph.

“We don’t know what name he uses here.”

Adrian answered quietly.

“I do.”

They both turned toward him.

Adrian’s face had lost its color.

“That man isn’t listed as Keene.”

He reached into the folder and removed a second personnel sheet.

Rourke read the current identity.

Then read it again.

Staff Sergeant Cole Mercer.

Rourke looked up.

“That’s not Mercer.”

“No,” Adrian said.

Lozen understood first.

The photograph belonged to another instructor who had been standing near Mercer during the sparring session.

The file had been altered.

Names.

Photographs.

Assignments.

Someone was not merely stealing information.

Someone could change the records that defined who belonged on the base.

Rourke immediately called the training hall.

Mercer answered.

“Sir?”

“Where are you?”

“Admin office. You ordered me to stay with the terminal.”

Rourke looked at Lozen.

She remembered his reaction when the Ward files began disappearing.

Worried.

Immediate.

Convincing.

“Is anyone with you?”

Rourke asked.

“The systems technician.”

“Anyone else?”

A pause.

Then Mercer said, “Yes, sir.”

Lozen moved closer to the radio.

“Who?”

Another pause.

Mercer’s voice changed.

“Sir, I thought he was with you.”

The transmission cracked.

Then a crash came through the speaker.

“Mercer?”

No answer.

Rourke was already running.

Lozen followed.

They crossed the base at full speed with Adrian behind them.

Security teams were redirected toward the administrative office.

Rourke ordered the building sealed.

This time, nobody escaped through a service road.

They reached the office.

The systems technician was on the floor, conscious but dazed.

Mercer was beside the wall, one hand pressed against his forehead.

Blood ran between his fingers.

The other man was gone.

Lozen crouched.

“What happened?”

Mercer looked at her.

“He came in wearing an instructor badge.”

“The man from the training hall?”

Mercer nodded.

“He said Colonel Rourke sent him.”

Rourke cursed under his breath.

“What did he take?”

Mercer pointed toward the computer.

The screen was black.

Then Lozen saw the empty space beside it.

The black device from Records Control had been placed there after security recovered it.

It was gone.

The intruder had risked returning for it.

That meant it mattered.

Lozen looked toward the systems technician.

“Did you examine the device?”

He nodded weakly.

“Partially.”

“What was on it?”

“I couldn’t open most of the files.”

“Most?”

He swallowed.

“There was one directory.”

“What was it called?”

The technician looked at Rourke.

Then at Lozen.

“BLACKRIDGE.”

Nobody spoke.

Blackridge was the course Lozen supposedly had been sent to attend.

Her cover.

Or what she had assumed was her cover.

Rourke understood the implication.

“Your transfer and the stolen data are connected.”

Lozen looked toward the hallway where the intruder had disappeared.

“No.”

She thought of General Voss requesting her transfer.

Ward naming Rourke.

Three missing soldiers.

The buried Darun Valley operation.

The false identity.

The directory named after the course that had brought her to Fort Halberd.

“It’s bigger than that.”

Mercer pushed himself upright.

“What is?”

Lozen turned toward him.

“Blackridge may not be a course they used to hide why I came here.”

Her eyes shifted to Rourke.

“It may be why I was brought here at all.”

That evening, Rourke suspended normal Blackridge training under the explanation of a security review.

Lozen returned to her assigned quarters.

For the first time since arriving, she locked the door.

She placed a chair beneath the handle.

Then she opened the small inner compartment of her duffel bag.

Inside was an old photograph from Darun Valley.

Not the one from Records Control.

This one had never entered an official archive.

Ward had given it to her seven years earlier.

Twelve rescued soldiers stood beside an evacuation aircraft.

Dirty.

Exhausted.

Alive.

Lozen had avoided looking at it for years.

Now she studied every face.

Ward.

The men she remembered.

The men whose names had disappeared into classified files.

Then she saw something she had never noticed.

In the background, beyond the aircraft, stood another officer.

Only half his face was visible.

But it was enough.

Lozen brought the photograph closer.

General Marcus Voss.

And beside him stood the man whose current identity had just been exposed as false.

They had known each other seven years ago.

Her phone vibrated.

Unknown number.

One message.

YOU FOUND THE WRONG TRAITOR.

A second message arrived before she could respond.

Rourke’s name appeared beneath a photograph taken less than a minute earlier.

He was leaving the headquarters building alone.

Lozen was already reaching for the door when the third message appeared.

DON’T SAVE HIM THIS TIME.

She froze.

Not because of the threat.

Because of the wording.

Seven years earlier, in Darun Valley, only a handful of people knew she had disobeyed an extraction order to go back for the trapped men.

Ward knew.

Voss knew.

And whoever had just sent that message knew too.

Lozen slipped the photograph into her jacket and stepped into the corridor.

For three days, Fort Halberd had treated her like a woman who did not belong.

Now she understood the truth.

Someone on the base knew exactly who she was.

Someone had been waiting for her to arrive.

And Colonel Daniel Rourke might not have been the beginning of her investigation after all.

He might have been its next target.