Still. It was a statement.
We kept walking. Through hallways. Past rooms I couldn't see into. The place was bigger on the inside than it had any right to be.
"You hungry? Thirsty?" Silas asked.
"No."
We kept walking.
Finally, we stopped in front of a set of double doors. Silas pushed them open, and I stepped inside.
The room was ... something else.
Spartan. Viking hall meets Tom Clancy. A long table dominated the center, heavy wood, scarred like it had seen use. Screens lined the walls—satellite feeds, maps, data streams I recognized from a thousand ops briefings. High-tech gear sat next to old-school paper files. Everything you'd need to run an operation. Or a war.
"Welcome to the War Room," Silas said.
There was a folder at one end of the table. He pointed to it.
I walked over. Opened it.
And froze.
Benson stared back at me from a photograph. Not the corpse I'd avenged. Not the man who'd died in Baku.
His official Marine boot camp photo. Young. Proud. Alive.
I looked up at Silas. "What is this?"
"Keep flipping."
I did.
Page after page. Benson's career. Marine infantryman. Recon. Recruited for Delta after he picked up sergeant. Mission logs. Dates. Locations. All of it classified. All of it accurate.
And one mission in red.
The last one.
Baku.
Where Draconi had gotten him killed.
"What the fuck is this?" I asked again, my voice flat.
"Keep reading."
I turned the page.
Another photo. Benson with his wife. Three kids. Smiling. Happy.
The folder froze in my hand.
This was a setup. Had to be. Some kind of psychological play, using a dead man's family to get leverage on me. Blackmail. Manipulation.
I turned the page again, ready to walk out, ready to burn this whole place down if I had to.
But what I saw stopped me cold.
