Finally, she says, “If Linda is the Archivist, can we trust that she’ll protect him?”
He takes his time answering. “I think we can trust that she’ll try.”
“Then maybe we leave Caleb be. For now, at least.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Linda sits in her apartment, her manuscript open on her laptop. False Flags: The Aftermath of the End of the Cold War. Years of work in an attempt to preserve the truth even if she couldn’t publish it while Ruth was alive.
Her phone buzzes. Ruth’s name flashes.
She lets it go to voicemail.
The news is on in the background. Colonial Pipeline. Four injured. No dead. Yet.
Ruth’s playbook. Ruth’s operation. Ruth using the archives Linda saved to recreate attacks that should have stayed buried.
She closes the laptop, stands up, and absentmindedly strokes the leaves of the fiddle-leaf fig while she thinks back to all the years with Ruth. The partnership. The intimate conversations about protecting the truth. Their emotional connection. Their physical intimacy.
All of it built on a lie. Linda’s trust that they both believed preserving institutional memory mattered more than political convenience. Meanwhile, Ruth never believed any of it.
She’s been so naive.
But she finally understands, with perfect clarity, that Ruth has been playing her for thirty years.
She opens her laptop again and pulls up the file she’s been building. Her insurance policy that will go to Leo Connelly if she dies.
It’s time to finish it. She’ll write down everything she knows, detail every operation Ruth has access to, and highlight every attack that might be coming in the future.
Then she’ll set the dead man’s switch.
If Ruth comes for her—and Linda knows now that she will—the truth will survive.
Even if she doesn’t.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
The sun won’t rise for another hour, but Caleb is awake. He sits on the edge of the bed, watching Henry sleeping in the bassinet within arm’s reach. Beside him, Emmaline’s breath is deep and slow as she dreams.
His phone buzzes with a news alert.
Breaking: Colonial Pipeline attacked at three locations. Injuries reported.
His chest tightens. He opens the article and reads it as his heart thumps.
Valve pressure increased, alarms disabled, relief valve locked. The details are uncomfortably familiar, although the method is not. Some sort of computer hack.
He sets down the phone, picks it up again, opens his cloud drive and navigates to his manuscript folders. He pulls up the outline for The Takedown and scrolls to the section on the Colonial Pipeline.
Silence the alarm, pin the relief valves, and pack the line with gas.
His hands start shaking. He sets down the phone before he drops it.
Two attacks. Two books.
Turkey happened right after The Payback released. But The Takedown is still in production, delayed as part of Biz and Archives Press’s marketing campaign.
So this can’t be because of his book. No one’s read it except Biz and the publisher. So how?—
