Chapter 5 - The Senator’s Price
The bullet entered through the rear window and struck Jason beneath the collarbone.
Marcus accelerated while I pulled the boy below the seat.
Anna pressed both hands against the wound.
The second shot missed the car and shattered a storefront window.
The sniper had not aimed for me.
Jason was the target.
His father’s protection had vanished the moment he spoke.
We abandoned the car inside a parking structure and moved Jason into a service van belonging to one of Marcus’s companies.
He was losing blood.
Anna had enough medical training from her years undercover to keep him alive, but he needed surgery.
Taking him to a hospital would alert Senator Harrington.
Leaving him untreated would give Silas what he wanted.
Marcus called Dr. Hale at Mercy General.
The doctor agreed to meet us inside a closed veterinary clinic owned by his brother.
“What did you tell him?” I asked.
“That Lily needs him.”
It was enough.
While Hale operated, Jason drifted in and out of consciousness.
He whispered one word repeatedly.
Redwood.
Anna recognized it as the name of Senator Harrington’s private foundation.
The foundation funded Westbridge’s military chemistry program.
It also financed the security company that removed Lily from the hospital.
Every institution around us connected through clean paperwork and charitable language.
The Covenant did not hide in shadows.
It wore suits and issued tax receipts.
At 2:40 a.m., Jason stabilized.
His first question was whether his father had called.
“No,” I said.
He looked away.
Arrogance had protected him from understanding his family.
Now he knew exactly what his life was worth to them.
He gave us the courthouse meeting codes and his father’s private emergency channel.
Then he said something I did not expect.
“Elliot tried to stop Noah.”
“During the attack?”
“He told us Lily was not supposed to die.”
“Silas ordered otherwise.”
“Elliot is afraid of him.”
Anna asked where Elliot lived.
Jason gave us an address inside an exclusive residence tower near campus.
Marcus sent a team.
The apartment was empty.
On the wall, investigators found photographs of Lily taken over the last year.
Classrooms.
Libraries.
Coffee shops.
Some showed Elliot following her.
Others showed him protecting her from a distance.
One photograph captured Lily meeting Anna outside a train station.
My daughter had known her mother was alive before the attack.
I looked at Anna.
“How long?”
“Six months.”
“You met her.”
“She found me.”
“And you did not tell me.”
“She asked me not to.”
“She is nineteen.”
“She believed you would become The Ghost again.”
The truth silenced me.
Lily had found Anna and hidden it because she feared what I would do.
She had been right.
Marcus returned from the apartment carrying a locked metal box.
Inside were letters Lily wrote to Elliot.
Not romantic letters.
Investigative exchanges.
Elliot had been feeding her information about his father.
He was her source.
The three boys had not entered the laboratory together as allies.
Elliot led Lily there to collect proof.
Jason and Noah followed and discovered them.
The attack began when Noah accused Elliot of betraying the Covenant.
“Elliot put the paper in her pocket,” Anna said.
“He gave her Silas’s name.”
The silent boy in the hospital hallway had not panicked because we found evidence against him.
He panicked because his father would know he had helped Lily.
My phone received another video.
Lily was now inside a dark room at Black Hollow. Elliot sat beside her with his hands tied.
Silas stood behind them.
“Your daughter trusted my son more than she trusted you,” he said.
He lifted a knife.
“Perhaps children always understand their fathers before fathers understand them.”
The screen went black.
The courthouse meeting approached.
Senator Harrington waited for the ledger.
I brought Jason instead.
We entered through a basement garage where the senator’s security team searched us. They removed every visible weapon.
They did not find the ceramic blade in Anna’s sleeve or the transmitter Marcus placed inside Jason’s bandage.
Harrington waited in the old courtroom beneath a dead state seal.
He saw his wounded son and stepped forward.
Jason flinched away.
That reaction hurt the senator more than any accusation.
“You allowed Silas to shoot me,” Jason said.
“I did not.”
“You knew the sniper was coming.”
Harrington looked at me.
“Where is the ledger?”
“Where is the Black Hollow security code?”
He said the estate belonged to a corporation controlled by Richard Cole. Its tunnels used rotating biometric locks.
Only Noah Cole could enter without triggering alarms.
“Noah ran after the campus attack,” Anna said.
“He went to his father.”
The senator offered another route.
A sealed judicial transport tunnel connected Black Hollow to an abandoned juvenile facility two miles away. The Covenant used it to move witnesses without public records.
“Why tell us?” I asked.
“Because Silas has changed the shipment plan. The nerve agent is not leaving the country.”
“Where is it going?”
Harrington looked toward his son.
“Into the city water system.”
The laboratory theft was preparation for mass blackmail.
Silas intended to release a small amount, kill hundreds, and prove he could poison millions unless the government protected the Covenant.
Jason stared at his father.
“You helped him.”
“I believed it was leverage, not murder.”
“You always believe the thing that keeps you rich.”
Harrington gave me the tunnel map.
In exchange, he wanted Jason removed from the country.
Jason refused.
“I am testifying.”
The senator’s face collapsed.
Before he could answer, the courtroom lights activated.
Silas appeared on every screen.
“Daniel,” he said, “thank you for gathering the traitors in one room.”
Steel doors sealed around us.
A countdown began above the judge’s bench.
Ten minutes.
Harrington looked at the ventilation grates.
May you like
“The nerve agent.”
Continue to the next part: Silas traps Daniel, Anna, Jason, and Senator Harrington inside a courthouse prepared for a chemical execution.
