Chapter 3 - The Groom’s Ledger
I stared at the text message until the letters blurred into grey smears against the white paper.
Just make sure she can't log in before 3 PM. Everything else is set.
“Greg?” I whispered, the name tasting like ash in my mouth. “Greg doesn't even know how to set up a home Wi-Fi router. He sells commercial real estate in Wilmington. He wears pastel loafers and worries about seating charts.”
“That’s what he wants people to think,” Donovan said, sliding a second document across the table. This one was a financial summary compiled by the Air Force Office of Special Investigations. “Six months ago, Gregory Vance—no relation to the colonel—was facing a massive liquidity crisis. Commercial office spaces in North Wilmington tanked. He was three hundred thousand dollars underwater on a commercial development loan.”
“He’s marrying into money,” I said automatically. “Mom is paying for half the wedding, and Britney’s trust fund—”
“Britney’s trust fund was tapped out two years ago to pay off her boutique venture in Rehoboth Beach,” Donovan interrupted. “Your mother’s house is mortgaged to the hilt. There was no money, Morgan. Only debt.”
Vance picked up the narrative. “Two weeks ago, a shell corporation registered in the Cayman Islands transferred four hundred thousand dollars into a newly opened corporate account bearing Greg’s signature. The initiating node for that transfer routed through a commercial server farm in Frankfurt—the exact same region your flight was scheduled to land in tomorrow morning.”
The room seemed to shrink. The hum of the fluorescent lights overhead turned into a high-pitched whine.
All this time, I had assumed Britney’s behavior was just typical sibling malice—a spoiled brat throwing a tantrum because her older sister dared to wear a uniform instead of a matching pastel bridesmaid dress. But it wasn't about the wedding at all.
The wedding was the cover.
Britney hadn't just impulsively torn my credential in a fit of jealousy. She had been managed. She had been given a script, a target, and a precise window of time, manipulated by the man she was supposed to marry in less than a week.
“You think he used her to ground me,” I said, the pieces clicking together with terrifying clarity. “If I’m on that C-17 tomorrow morning, I audit the secure cargo manifest before takeoff as part of my pre-flight checklist. I would have caught whatever discrepancy they smuggled onto my bird.”
“Or,” Donovan said grimly, “you were intended to be the delivery mechanism for something that never should have cleared flight-line security, but your presence on the crew made the inspection too tight. So they needed you off the plane, and they needed a reason plausible enough to keep you occupied while the cargo moved without your eyes on it.”
I stood up so fast my metal chair scraped loudly against the linoleum. The two airmen by the door shifted instantly, their hands dropping toward their duty belts.
“Morgan, sit down,” Donovan commanded.
“No,” I said, my voice dropping into that cold, level register I used when the cockpit alarms started flashing. “My flight left two hours ago. Who’s flying my bird right now?”
Vance didn't flinch. “Lieutenant Colonel Miller took your seat on the flight deck. The aircraft departed Dover at 1600 hours.”
The blood rushed out of my head. Miller was a company man, a desk-pilot who hadn't flown an active tactical route in three years, put in place because he never asked difficult questions.
“They put Miller on my plane with that cargo,” I breathed. “And Greg is sitting in a country club in Delaware right now, acting like he’s worried about napkin colors.”
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“Which is why,” Keller’s voice drawled from the doorway as he stepped back into the interrogation room, “we aren’t putting you in a cell, Lieutenant. We’re putting you back in play.”
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