Chapter 15 - The Leak Inside the Glass Tower
The file with Victoria’s name on it did something threats rarely accomplished.
It made Marcus Hayes angry.
Not loud.
Not reckless.
Angry in the quiet way that made experienced agents leave the room when he began asking questions.
He stood inside a secure conference room at the Chicago field office while Victoria spread the photographs across the table.
“This one was taken outside my apartment,” she said.
“This one outside mine,” Rachel added.
Bennett tapped the photograph of himself walking his dog.
“Three months ago.”
Hayes looked at the airplane image.
“How?”
“Passenger manifest,” Victoria said. “Someone knew my seat assignment.”
“That information is protected.”
“Exactly.”
Hayes turned toward the one-way glass.
“We have a federal leak.”
“Maybe more than one.”
Nobody argued.
Owen Price, the duty authorization officer who had known about the Bell County deployment, had not reported for work that morning.
His apartment was empty.
His car remained in the garage.
His passport was missing.
That looked terrible.
It also looked too easy.
Victoria hated easy answers.
Rachel brought up Price’s financial records.
“No unexplained deposits.”
“Debt?”
“Mortgage, student loans, nothing unusual.”
“Family pressure?”
“Wife died four years ago. One daughter in graduate school.”
Bennett crossed his arms.
“Could still be the leak.”
“Yes,” Victoria said. “But if Blue Lantern has survived seven years, I doubt their federal source panics and disappears the day we identify the network.”
Hayes nodded.
“Price may be running from them.”
At noon, Internal Inspection arrived.
Deputy Inspector General Caleb Rusk led the team personally.
Rusk was sixty, immaculate, and built like a man who still measured his meals by protein grams. He shook Hayes’s hand, then Victoria’s.
“Agent Cross.”
“Inspector.”
“I wish we were meeting under different circumstances.”
“I’m sure.”
His smile tightened.
The investigation into Victoria’s task force began immediately.
Computers were copied.
Weapons logs reviewed.
Expense reports examined.
Rusk questioned every team member separately.
Victoria sat across from him for nearly two hours.
“Why did you allow yourself to be handcuffed during the original Route 9 incident?” Rusk asked.
“To document misconduct.”
“Risky.”
“Yes.”
“Some would call it provocative.”
Victoria stared at him.
“Some people would call assaulting a compliant motorist provocative.”
Rusk leaned back.
“I’m not defending Caldwell.”
“Good.”
“I’m investigating whether your operational style creates unnecessary escalation.”
Victoria almost smiled.
“Sheriff Caldwell received twenty-eight years after a unanimous jury verdict.”
“That doesn’t make every decision you made correct.”
“No.”
She leaned forward slightly.
“Evidence makes decisions correct.”
Rusk closed his notebook.
“You have a reputation for certainty.”
“I have a reputation for documentation.”
His expression cooled.
The interview ended.
As Victoria walked into the hallway, Rachel approached with a folder.
“We found Owen Price.”
“Where?”
“Hospital in Milwaukee.”
Victoria stopped.
“What happened?”
“Car accident.”
“Accident?”
Rachel’s face said otherwise.
“His vehicle went off an overpass at three in the morning.”
“Is he alive?”
“Barely.”
Rusk emerged from the interview room behind them.
“Agent Cross, you are not authorized to conduct further activity while the administrative review is active.”
Victoria turned.
“A federal employee connected to my case is critically injured.”
“Another unit can handle it.”
“Which unit?”
“Mine.”
That answer came too quickly.
Victoria studied him.
“Interesting.”
Rusk’s face hardened.
“Choose your next words carefully.”
“I always do.”
Victoria walked away.
She could not officially investigate Price.
But Hayes could visit a hospitalized employee.
And Rachel could analyze public traffic-camera records.
Within two hours, they had a photograph.
Price’s car had not been alone before it crashed.
A black SUV followed him onto the overpass.
It left three minutes later.
Rachel enhanced the license plate.
The vehicle belonged to Patriot Evidence Solutions.
The same company connected to Sorrell.
“He wasn’t running,” Victoria said.
Bennett nodded.
“He was being hunted.”
Hayes visited Milwaukee.
Price regained consciousness for forty seconds.
Hayes called Victoria from the hospital corridor afterward.
“He said one sentence.”
“What?”
“He said, ‘Glass tower, floor nineteen.’”
Victoria looked through the windows of the Chicago field office.
Their building had twenty-three floors.
“What’s on nineteen?”
“Federal liaison offices. Inspector General support staff. Interagency legal counsel.”
Victoria’s eyes narrowed.
“And Rusk?”
“Floor nineteen.”
That still was not proof.
But then Rachel found something else.
The original anonymous complaint against Victoria’s task force had been submitted through a protected internal system.
Only three administrators could access the metadata.
Owen Price was one.
Caleb Rusk was another.
The third had retired months ago.
Rachel leaned toward the monitor.
“The complaint says it was received at 11:52.”
Victoria remembered the timeline.
At 11:52, she had still been driving toward the abandoned garage.
The anonymous complaint described evidence discovered inside a room Victoria had not entered until after noon.
“Someone wrote the complaint before we found the evidence,” Rachel said.
Victoria felt the entire scheme become clear.
“They knew what was in the garage.”
“And they knew we were going there.”
Hayes called again.
This time his voice sounded different.
“Victoria, security just pulled access logs from your office.”
“And?”
“The morning the envelope appeared, one badge opened your corridor at 5:14 a.m.”
“Whose?”
Hayes paused.
“Caleb Rusk.”
Victoria looked toward the far end of the hallway.
Rusk stood there.
Watching her.
May you like
When their eyes met, he slowly reached into his pocket.
Then every light on the nineteenth floor went out.
