Chapter 8 - THE WOMAN IN THE BLUE BUICK
A neighbor's doorbell camera caught the intruder.
Not a man.
A woman in her seventies.
Gray hair.
Blue Buick.
She moved slowly enough that nobody would have noticed her.
Walter did.
"Margaret Shaw."
Daniel asked who she was.
Walter said:
"Our medic."
Margaret had been declared dead in the same report as Voss.
Michael laughed bitterly.
"Anybody actually die in your war?"
Walter did not answer.
Margaret lived forty minutes away under her married name.
They found her at a church pantry.
She saw Walter and dropped a box of canned soup.
"You took your time."
Walter stared.
"You stole the tape."
"Yes."
"Why?"
"Because Michael wasn't supposed to hear Voss say his own name."
Michael stepped forward.
"Stop deciding what I'm supposed to know."
Margaret looked at him.
For a second, she seemed to see a child.
"I'm sorry."
"No. Tell me."
Margaret revealed Thomas had survived the gunshot.
She treated him.
Voss survived too.
So did Margaret.
But Night Glass had exposed a network involving American intelligence contractors and foreign officials.
Someone ordered the surviving team separated.
Thomas refused.
He wanted to testify.
Voss made a deal.
He would help bury the operation in exchange for protection.
Then something changed.
Voss went to Indiana.
He took Thomas's identity.
Walter asked the question that mattered.
"Where was Tommy?"
Margaret looked away.
"Alive."
Michael grabbed the table.
"How long?"
Margaret's answer was barely audible.
"Twenty-seven years."
Walter's face emptied.
Thomas Bennett had not died in 1982.
He had been alive until 2009.
And Walter had spent all twenty-seven of those years believing him dead.
(To be continued)
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