Chapter 5 - Allies and Enemies
She did not go to Creech.
On the second morning of her seventy-two hours, Erin Walsh parked her car in a public lot off base and walked into the office of a man named Thomas Avery, a retired Air Force JAG officer who now ran a small practice in Mount Holly and who had, once, been a mentor to her father.
He listened to her for an hour.
Then he said, "Erin, I need to tell you something."
"What?"
"Your brother came to me two months before he disappeared."
She felt the room tilt. "What?"
"He was worried about something. He wouldn't tell me what. He said he had information that he thought might be dangerous and that he wanted to make sure someone had it if something happened to him." Avery reached into a drawer and took out a sealed envelope. "He gave me this and told me not to open it unless I heard he was dead or unless I heard he was in trouble that didn't make sense."
"And you didn't open it when he was declared a deserter?"
"I did. Four years ago. I opened it the day after I got the letter." Avery looked at the envelope. "And I want you to understand something before I show you what's inside. I did not open it because I was afraid. Not of the Air Force. Of the fact that if I read it, I would be responsible for what came next, and I wasn't sure I could afford to be."
"What's in it?"
"Look."
He slid the envelope across the desk. Erin tore it open.
Inside was a single sheet of paper, in Michael's handwriting, and a printed photograph.
The photograph showed a man in a flight suit, laughing, standing next to a young girl in a hospital bed. The man was her brother. The girl was Sophie Kessler.
On the back of the photograph, in Michael's handwriting: "Sophie, 4/19. She thinks I'm a hero. I tried to tell her I just drive a truck."
The letter was short. It said: "If you're reading this, something happened. I don't know what yet, but I know someone in my chain thinks I know something I shouldn't. The thing about Sophie — the medical records, the wish trip, the fact that her father's file has been flagged for review three times — none of it should be a secret. It's all true. But it's not why I gave you this envelope. I gave you this envelope because I need someone to know that if I disappear, the first thing anyone should ask is who at Dover was on the sealed case fourteen months ago. — Michael."
Erin read it twice. Then she read it a third time.
"Fourteen months ago," she said slowly, "is the date on the case label inside my brother's flag."
"I know," Avery said. "I read the label too. I saw the flag."
"You saw the flag?"
"Someone brought it to me. A few days before you did."
May you like
"Who?"
Avery folded his hands. "A woman named Miriam Holt."
