Chapter 3 - The Shadow Partner
The eviction notice was just the beginning. By Thursday morning, I began to notice a black sedan idling at the end of the motel parking lot. I didn't need a mission briefing to know we were being hunted. I moved the kids to a friend’s basement, a man I’d served with who lived off-grid, and set a trap.
I didn't go to the police. The debt wasn't legal, and the people behind Vantage Point were likely protected by the same corruption I’d spent two years trying to eradicate. I drove back to the house, but I didn't go through the front door. I entered through the basement, slipping through the shadows like the man I was before the war.
I found Rachel’s laptop in the attic, hidden inside a hollowed-out guitar case. She had been careless. She thought I was still in the desert, still the man who sent his paycheck home and never asked questions. She had left a digital trail of messages between her and a man named Julian, the regional director of Vantage Point.
The messages were chilling. "He's coming home," Rachel had written. "If he sees the bank statements, he’ll go to the Feds. I need that car gone, and I need the liability cleared."
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Julian’s response was a simple, terrifying instruction: "The house is the collateral, Rachel. Once he walks through the door, the debt is transferred to his estate. If he fights, he’s an obstruction. Obstructions are removed."
She wasn't just hiding from me. She was setting me up to be erased by the very debt she had created.
