Chapter 10 - The Empty Glass
By midnight, the grand ballroom was empty.
The chandeliers had been dimmed, casting long, pale shadows across the polished parquet floor. Waitstaff quietly cleared away the remaining champagne glasses, the half-eaten dinners, and the folded commemorative programs that had Daniel Carter’s name printed in gold leaf on the cover. A janitor swept up a pile of torn programs near the third row—the programs Eleanor had shredded in her rage before fleeing into the night.
I stood on the balcony of the commanding officer's suite on the third floor of the headquarters building, looking out over the silent motor pool.
Down in the holding yard, a lone military police sedan sat with its blue lights spinning silently against the chain-link fence. Behind that fence, in the concrete block holding cells of the provost marshal's office, Daniel was sitting on a steel bench, wearing a prisoner's orange smock, waiting for the dawn transport that would take him to Fort Leavenworth for pretrial confinement.
A knock sounded on the heavy mahogany door behind me.
"Enter," I said, without turning around.
Captain Sarah Miller, my new brigade adjutant, stepped into the room, carrying a fresh leather-bound binder. Her uniform was crisp, her expression serious.
"Ma'am," Captain Miller said, standing at parade rest near the desk. "The preliminary audit on Major Carter's depot files has uncovered something the regional inspectors missed."
I turned around, leaning back against the balcony railing, the night wind catching the edges of my lapels where the Silver Star rested. "What did they miss, Captain?"
"The missing night-vision systems and drone components weren't just sold on the black market for cash, Colonel," Miller said, her voice dropping to a low, guarded whisper. "The shipment manifests show that thirty advanced guidance modules weren't shipped overseas at all."
I frowned, straightening my posture. "Where did they go?"
"They were delivered two days ago to an unmarked private airfield thirty miles north of this base," Miller replied, handing me a printout of an encrypted flight manifest. "Signed for by a contractor registered under a shell corporation. And that contractor..."
She hesitated.
May you like
"Speak freely, Captain," I ordered.
"The contractor is registered to your late father's former chief of staff. The flights are still active, ma'am. One of the aircraft took off forty-five minutes ago."
