Chapter 11 - PROJECT WARDEN
The line went dead.
For one second, nobody in the observation room moved.
Elena still held the phone against her ear.
I stared at the dark screen.
Colonel Ward’s last five words kept repeating inside my head.
Ask Richard about Project Warden.
Emily came out of the interview room.
She saw my face.
“What happened?”
“Ward.”
“What about him?”
“Someone found him.”
“Vale?”
“I don’t know.”
Elena lowered the phone.
Her expression had changed.
She wasn’t shocked anymore.
She was angry.
That was worse.
“We need Richard.”
Marcus nodded.
“He’s still under medical supervision at St. Catherine.”
“Get him somewhere secure.”
“He’s technically a victim.”
“So was Emily.”
Elena looked toward Laura through the glass.
“That hasn’t stopped anyone tonight from knowing more than they admit.”
Laura smiled faintly from inside the interview room.
She couldn’t hear us.
But she knew.
People like her always seemed to know when the room outside had changed.
Emily touched my arm.
“What is Project Warden?”
I looked at Elena.
She answered.
“Officially?”
“Yes.”
“It never existed.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the only answer I was allowed to give for eight years.”
My jaw tightened.
“You were part of it.”
“Not knowingly.”
“You just said you were.”
“I said Warden was an operation name.”
She rubbed her forehead.
“The mission where you pulled me out of that building was attached to a classified intelligence package.”
“What kind?”
“I was told counterinsurgency.”
“And now?”
“Now I think we were lied to.”
Caleb entered carrying the unnamed baby.
The child had finally fallen asleep against his chest.
Caleb looked exhausted.
“What did I miss?”
I almost laughed.
“How much time do you have?”
His expression stayed serious.
“Daniel.”
“Ward was attacked.”
Caleb went still.
“The colonel?”
“Yes.”
“Alive?”
“We don’t know.”
“And he said something about Warden.”
“Yes.”
Caleb looked at Elena.
“What’s Warden?”
She shook her head.
“We need Richard.”
Emily looked at me.
“And Thomas?”
I glanced toward the adjoining room.
Thomas slept inside a hospital bassinet under the supervision of two nurses and an armed state investigator.
The red star-shaped birthmark was visible beneath the edge of his tiny shirt.
I had checked it four times.
Emily had checked it six.
Neither of us apologized.
“I’m not leaving him.”
“You don’t have to.”
Elena looked at Marcus.
“Bring Richard here.”
“Here?”
“Yes.”
“Laura is here.”
“Good.”
Marcus left.
I turned toward the interview room.
Laura had stopped smiling.
She knew Richard was coming.
Interesting.
Twenty-seven minutes later, Richard Hale entered in a wheelchair.
A doctor pushed him.
Two state officers followed.
He looked weaker under fluorescent light.
Older.
Less like the father I remembered.
More like a man who had spent seven years underground.
His eyes found me.
Then Elena.
Then Laura through the glass.
He stopped.
“She’s here?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“She surrendered.”
Richard laughed bitterly.
“Laura never surrenders.”
“She does when she wants something.”
His expression changed.
“What does she want?”
“We’ll get there.”
I stepped closer.
“Project Warden.”
Every bit of color left his face.
That was all I needed.
“You know it.”
He looked toward Elena.
“Who told you?”
“Colonel Ward.”
Richard closed his eyes.
“Is he alive?”
“Maybe.”
“What happened?”
“Someone attacked him.”
Richard whispered something under his breath.
“What?”
“Vale is cleaning up.”
My stomach tightened.
“Cleaning up what?”
“Everyone who knows enough to destroy him.”
I crouched so my face was level with Richard’s.
“Then start talking before he gets another chance.”
Richard looked at me.
“You don’t understand what Warden was.”
“That phrase has become very popular in this family.”
“Daniel.”
“No.”
I leaned closer.
“I came home to bury my wife.”
“She was alive beneath my mother’s house.”
“The dead woman in her coffin turned out to be Caleb’s biological mother.”
“My son was switched.”
“My father came back from the dead.”
“And now I’ve learned that someone may have been manipulating my military career before I even enlisted.”
I held his gaze.
“So stop telling me what I don’t understand.”
“Make me understand.”
Richard’s shoulders sagged.
Then he nodded.
“Warden began before you were born.”
Elena pulled out a chair.
Richard continued.
“Vale’s early research wasn’t originally about fertility.”
“What was it about?”
“Predictive behavior.”
Caleb frowned.
“You can’t predict a person.”
“No.”
Richard looked at him.
“But Vale believed you could increase probabilities.”
“What probabilities?”
“Risk tolerance.”
“Stress response.”
“Impulse control.”
“Attachment.”
“Obedience.”
“Aggression.”
“Leadership.”
The words sounded like traits from a military evaluation.
Elena heard it too.
“When did defense contractors become involved?”
“Late eighties.”
“Names.”
“I never knew all of them.”
“Give me one.”
Richard hesitated.
“Northstar Strategic Research.”
Elena froze.
“You know it?”
“Yes.”
“What?”
“It became part of Halcyon Defense.”
I knew that name.
Everyone in uniform did.
Equipment.
Logistics.
Private intelligence contracts.
Billions in federal work.
“You’re telling me Halcyon funded Vale?”
“An earlier version of the company.”
“Why?”
“To see whether certain behavioral characteristics could be tracked across generations.”
I stared.
“Children.”
“Yes.”
“Babies.”
“Yes.”
Emily stood in the doorway.
I hadn’t realized she was listening.
Her face was white.
“You experimented on babies.”
Richard looked ashamed.
“I didn’t understand the full program when I invested.”
“But you stayed.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because by the time I understood, Daniel existed.”
I stared.
“What does that have to do with anything?”
Richard looked at me.
“You weren’t supposed to exist.”
Silence.
I felt my pulse in my throat.
“What?”
“Vale had planned another pairing.”
“Whose?”
“Eva Vasquez.”
Elena stepped forward.
“My mother.”
Richard nodded.
“With who?”
He looked at her.
“Your father.”
Elena’s jaw tightened.
“That makes no sense.”
“Your parents were both part of the early cohort.”
“My father never went near a fertility clinic.”
“He didn’t need to.”
Richard’s voice became quieter.
“Samples were taken during military medical screenings.”
Elena went still.
Her father had served.
I remembered.
Army.
Twenty-two years.
“What happened?”
Richard continued.
“Vale wanted a second child from their genetic pairing.”
“Why?”
“To compare siblings raised under different conditions.”
Elena’s face twisted with disgust.
“And that child was Daniel?”
“That was the plan.”
I stared.
“But Marcus said Eva wasn’t my mother.”
“She wasn’t.”
“Then who was?”
Richard looked toward Laura.
“Ask her.”
I stood.
“No.”
Richard frowned.
“You know.”
“I know what I was told.”
“Then tell me.”
He hesitated.
My patience ended.
“WHO WAS MY MOTHER?”
Thomas began crying in the next room.
The sound stopped me.
Emily turned immediately.
“I’ll get him.”
She disappeared through the door.
Richard watched her go.
Then looked at me.
“Rebecca Shaw.”
I frowned.
The name.
The missing Army nurse Elena mentioned at the cabin.
“No.”
Elena whispered.
Richard nodded.
“Rebecca Shaw was my mother?”
“Yes.”
“She would have been…”
I calculated.
“Seventeen?”
“Eighteen.”
“What happened to her?”
“She was part of the program.”
“Did she consent?”
Richard didn’t answer.
Rage moved through me.
“Did she consent?”
“No.”
The word came from Laura.
We all turned.
She stood behind the interview-room glass.
One hand against it.
Of course she couldn’t hear us.
Unless the microphone had been activated.
Elena looked toward the console.
The interview-room channel was open.
Laura had heard everything.
She leaned toward the microphone.
“Rebecca never consented.”
My hands shook.
Richard looked away.
Laura continued.
“She was told she was undergoing treatment for an ovarian condition.”
“She was impregnated without informed consent.”
Elena looked sick.
“With Vale’s genetic material?”
“No.”
I stared through the glass.
“Then whose?”
Laura smiled sadly.
“That’s where Project Warden began to collapse.”
“Whose?”
“Richard Hale’s.”
I looked at the man in the wheelchair.
He closed his eyes.
Everything inside me stopped.
“You said you weren’t my biological father.”
“I believed that.”
“Believed?”
“Vale told me the procedure failed.”
Laura laughed through the speaker.
“Vale lied.”
Richard looked toward her.
“You don’t know that.”
“I ran the DNA panel myself.”
She stared at me through the glass.
“Richard Hale is your biological father.”
I couldn’t move.
The man who raised me.
The man I buried.
The man I had just found alive.
He was my father after all.
Just not in the way anyone had told me.
“And Rebecca Shaw?”
“Your biological mother.”
“Where is she?”
Laura’s smile disappeared.
“She tried to take you.”
My heart tightened.
“When?”
“You were six months old.”
“What happened?”
Nobody answered.
I looked at Richard.
“What happened to her?”
His eyes filled.
“Mercer stopped her.”
“Stopped her how?”
Silence.
Then Elena whispered.
“The missing nurse case.”
Richard nodded.
“She didn’t disappear six years ago.”
“What?”
Elena stared at him.
“The Rebecca Shaw I investigated was twenty-six.”
Richard looked confused.
“No.”
“She would have been in her fifties.”
Elena pulled out her phone.
Opened an old case photograph.
A young woman.
Dark hair.
Army uniform.
Richard stared.
“That isn’t Rebecca.”
Elena looked at me.
“Then somebody used her identity.”
The room went silent.
Laura suddenly stood.
Her chair scraped backward.
For the first time, she looked genuinely frightened.
“No.”
I looked through the glass.
“What?”
She shook her head.
“No.”
“What do you know?”
Laura approached the microphone.
“If that woman used Rebecca Shaw’s identity…”
She swallowed.
“Then Vale has been running a second cohort without any of us knowing.”
Even Richard looked shocked.
A phone rang.
Marcus entered.
His face told me before he spoke.
“Ward is alive.”
Relief hit.
“Where?”
“Hospital.”
“Condition?”
“Critical.”
“Did they catch whoever attacked him?”
“No.”
“But security cameras got a face.”
He held out his phone.
I looked.
A woman.
Late thirties.
Dark hair.
Black coat.
I had never seen her before.
Elena had.
Her face went white.
“That’s Rebecca Shaw.”
“The nurse from your old case?”
“Yes.”
Marcus nodded.
“She left something behind.”
“What?”
“A message.”
“For who?”
Marcus looked at me.
“For Daniel.”
He played the security recording.
The woman stared directly into the camera.
Then spoke.
“Your mother is alive.”
May you like
My heart stopped.
“And if Jonathan Vale finds her before you do, she won’t be for long.”
