Chapter 12 - THE MAN AT THE SCHOOL
Gavin Holt was gone before Reese reached the school.
Police cars blocked the front entrance. Parents gathered along the sidewalk, frightened and angry. Inside, Lily sat in the robotics classroom with three teachers and a uniformed officer.
The moment Reese entered, Lily ran to her.
“I knew the note was fake.”
Reese crouched and held her.
“How?”
“He spelled your name wrong.”
Reese looked over Lily’s shoulder.
The note said Reece.
One letter had saved time.
Maybe more.
“Good catch, Bug.”
Lily pulled back.
“Who was he?”
“A man I used to work with.”
“Is he bad?”
Reese chose her words carefully.
“He may be dangerous.”
Lily’s face tightened, but she did not cry.
“Does he know where we live?”
“Yes.”
The truth hurt less than false reassurance would.
Detective Aaron Bell showed Reese the school footage. Gavin entered through the front office wearing an old contractor badge and carrying a forged authorization letter. He smiled, spoke calmly, and never touched anyone.
That was his style.
He could enter a guarded room by making everyone feel foolish for questioning him.
On camera, he glanced directly toward the security lens.
Then he raised two fingers briefly.
Lantern’s old signal for compromised ground.
Harlan watched the footage beside Reese.
“He wanted you to see that.”
“Yes.”
“Why approach Lily if he wasn’t going to take her?”
“To prove he could.”
Selah arrived with Paige and took Lily home through a rear exit. Lily resisted at first.
“I want to stay with Mom.”
Reese placed both hands on her shoulders.
“I need you to go with Aunt Paige.”
“I’m not a baby.”
“I know.”
“Then tell me everything.”
“I will tell you what keeps you safe. Right now, staying here does not.”
Lily studied her mother’s face, then nodded.
Before leaving, she whispered, “Don’t disappear.”
Reese felt the words like a hand around her throat.
“I won’t.”
The police searched for Gavin’s vehicle. The license plate belonged to a car destroyed six years earlier. His contractor badge traced to a dead company.
By sunset, no one had found him.
At Reese’s house, Harlan placed the memory card into an isolated laptop with no network connection.
A video opened automatically.
The image was grainy.
A concrete room.
A metal chair.
A man sat beneath a hanging light with his face partly turned away.
Reese recognized him before he looked up.
Commander Silas Vane.
He had been declared dead eight years earlier.
Silas leaned toward the camera.
“If Reese Vale is watching this, Lantern has already reopened.”
He coughed.
There was blood on his lower lip, old and dark.
“The mission at Kandar Ridge did not fail. It was sold.”
Reese’s hand tightened against the table.
Silas continued.
“One of us traded the extraction route for immunity. Twenty-three people died. The record was buried. Reese carried the blame because she survived outside the chain of command.”
Harlan glanced at her.
She did not move.
The recording jumped.
Silas appeared closer now.
“Gavin believes Reese has the ledger. Mara believes Gavin has it. Neither is correct.”
He looked directly into the lens.
“The ledger is inside the child’s story.”
The video ended.
Selah frowned.
“What child?”
Reese knew.
On the last mission, they rescued a nine-year-old boy from a locked room beneath a communications station.
He kept repeating a story about a lantern, a river, and seven wolves.
Everyone thought it was trauma.
Reese had listened.
Written the story down.
She still had the notebook.
But it was not in her house.
It was inside the only place she believed no one from Lantern would ever search.
A box of Lily’s baby things stored in Harlan’s attic.
Harlan understood from her expression.
“We need to move.”
Reese stopped him.
“No. That is what Gavin expects.”
“Then what?”
“We make him believe the notebook is somewhere else.”
Selah folded her arms.
“How do we do that?”
May you like
Reese looked at the footage of Gavin entering the school.
“We invite him to watch us look.”
