Harlan waved her away. "Make all the calls you want. But understand this—if you want to prove you're ready for the Sahel, you'll drop this witch hunt and focus on preparing for real leadership."
Riley gathered the manifests with shaking hands, her father's words echoing in her head. As she reached the door, she turned back.
"How long have you known? About what happened on the boat?"
Harlan's expression softened for just a moment, and Riley thought she caught a glimpse of something that might have been genuine concern. But sheblinked and mentally shook her head. No, he didn’t care. He was acting. It was obvious and regretful, but it was the truth.
"That isn’t the question that needs to be answered," he said quietly. "The question is—when are you going to step up and be the daughter I need you to be?” Harlan turned back to his computer and ignored her.
Twenty minutes later,Riley sat in her car in the parking garage, her hands still shaking as she dialed Dr. Barnette's number. The phone rang twice before the familiar, warm voice answered.
"Riley? This is unexpected. Is everything alright?"
"Dr. Barnette, I need to ask you something, and I need you to tell me the truth." Riley's voice was steadier than she felt. "Has anyone contacted you about my case? Has anyone tried to access my records or get information about our sessions?"
The silence stretched long enough that Riley wondered if the call had dropped.
"Riley, you know I would never?—"
"That's not what I'm asking." Riley closed her eyes, forcing herself to stay calm. "I'm asking ifanyone has tried. My father knows things, specific things we've discussed."
"No one has contacted me," Dr. Barnette said firmly. "And no one has access to your records except you and me. Patient confidentiality isn't just a guideline, Riley, it's the law. I could lose my license if I disclosed anything from our sessions."
"Then how?"
"I don't know. There was a breach of our system, but my IT people told me nothing was accessed." Dr. Barnette's voice was gentle but troubled. "But I think you need to come in. We should talk about this face-to-face."
Riley ended the call and sat in the concrete silence of the parking garage, surrounded by the ghosts of her father's words. The manifests lay on the passenger seat beside her, the numbers that had seemed so clear that morning now swimming in a sea of self-doubt.
Her phone buzzed with another text.
Talon:Wishing you a good morning. Hope your meeting with your dad goes well. Can't wait to see you in a couple of weeks.
She stared at the message,her heart clenching. In two weeks, she could be in Burundu. She could see Talon again, could finally close the distance that had defined their relationship for a year. She could prove to herself and her father that she was strong enough to face her past.
Or she could stay here, under her father’s thumb. She glanced at the manifests. The numbers were real and correct. Not that her father cared. Acceptable losses. They weren’t. Any loss of rare earth materials was supposed to be reported, tracked, and the host government notified immediately. But to see Talon, she had to let go of the numbers that didn't add up, the patterns her father insisted existed only in her traumatized mind. All she had to do was trust that her father knew best, that her judgment couldn't be trusted.
Riley looked at the manifests again, then at Talon's message. The choice felt impossible, suspended between her desperate need for her father's approval and the growing certainty that something was very, very wrong. Finally, she responded.
Riley:Meeting went as expected. Can't wait to see you, too.
But as shestarted the car and pulled out of the garage, Riley couldn't shake the feeling that she was driving away from more than just her father's building. She was driving away from the truth, from her own instincts, from the person she'd fought so hard to become.
And somewhere in the back of her mind, a small voice whispered that her father's knowledge of her trauma wasn't the only secret he was keeping. Her suspicions grew darker. What if it wasn’t just the small amounts of minerals involved in the Bolivia and Indonesia contracts? She gripped the steering wheel tighter. Her father thought she was looking for conspiracies. Well, maybe that should be her focus. She would talk to Dr. Barnette, then she would head back to her father’s house and plan a course of action that would either vindicate her or estrange her from her father for the rest of her life.
CHAPTER 9
The pre-dawn heat of Burundu pressed against Talon’s skin at 0500 hours. It was the kind of dense, suffocating heat that stole every breath. Sweat trickled beneath the collar of his lightweight combat shirt and trailed down his back. Every movement plastered the fabric to his spine. The bitter, dry taste of dust clung to his tongue. With every inhale, he could almost taste the scorched earth. Through all of it, the smell of the old diesel vehicles hung low as he watched Burundu’s Strategic Response Force stumble through what should have been a basic convoy protection drill.
Boots scuffed against gritty sand, the cadence uneven. Shouted commands in French and the local dialect echoed off the concrete blast walls. Yeah, theguy knew how to fucking yell but not what to yell. Talon glanced toward the hard-packed sand where aging trucks moving even older equipment vibrated faintly through the ground beneath his boots.
It was a disaster.
“Jesus Christ,” Jug muttered over comms, his voice a low growl from the center of the mock convoy. “These guys are moving like they’re on a Sunday stroll through the park.”
Talon adjusted his tactical scope and sighted on where Jug should be. He tracked the SRF soldiers as they drifted too close together, then sighed and shook his head as their loose formation collapsed until they moved as one tight cluster.
“A perfect target for any militia with half a brain and an RPG.” Dude’s voice reminded him that the satellite was overhead.
