Chapter 6 - THE COLONEL WHO TAUGHT ME TO TRUST
The call from the rural clinic should have given us hope.
Instead, it revealed just how carefully someone had planned to keep Noah Turner silent.
The clinic was a small medical facility surrounded by farmland and aging houses.
A nurse named Rebecca Mills had answered the emergency call.
She remembered hearing a young man's frightened voice.
“He said he was injured,” she explained when Agent Velez and I arrived. “He wanted to know whether we could send someone to get him.”
“Did he tell you where he was?” I asked.
Rebecca shook her head.
“He started to. Then I heard another man speaking in the background.”
“What did the man say?”
She looked uncomfortable.
“Something about keeping his mouth shut.”
Rebecca hesitated.
“Then the caller whispered that we should contact a woman named Brooke Ellison.”
I felt my throat tighten.
Noah knew about me.
Somehow, despite being missing for nearly three weeks, he'd learned that I was investigating the case.
Or someone had told him.
“Did he sound like he was alone?”
“No.”
Rebecca looked toward the window.
“There was another voice. Maybe someone was trying to help him.”
Agent Velez wrote down every detail.
The clinic's telephone system retained limited call information, and investigators began working to identify its source.
Meanwhile, I received news that made my day considerably worse.
Military authorities had temporarily restricted my access to certain internal logistics systems while they reviewed the forged authorization bearing my signature.
It wasn't a disciplinary finding.
It wasn't proof of wrongdoing.
But it felt like someone had slammed a door in my face.
For eleven years, my identity had been tied to the work I performed.
Now I was being told to stand outside part of the investigation while other people examined whether my name had been used in a crime.
Agent Reid found me sitting alone beside the clinic's vending machines.
“You look like you're considering throwing something.”
“I'm deciding between the coffee machine and the wall.”
He sat beside me.
“Your credentials were used in a fraudulent transaction. The review is standard.”
“I understand that.”
“Then why are you angry?”
“Because whoever did this is still free.”
Marcus remained silent.
I stared at my hands.
“And because I trusted someone who may have helped them.”
He didn't need to ask whom I meant.
Colonel Adrian Shaw.
Later that afternoon, Shaw agreed to an interview with military investigators.
I was not permitted to question him directly.
But I watched a recorded portion afterward with Agent Reid.
Shaw sat in a conference room wearing his service uniform.
He looked composed.
Almost disappointed that anyone would question his integrity.
An investigator placed a photograph on the table.
It showed Shaw standing beside Victor Harlan outside a warehouse.
“Colonel, can you explain this meeting?”
Shaw nodded.
“It was a contractor compliance inspection.”
“Did you inspect the contents of the shipment?”
“Only the documentation.”
“Were you aware that equipment assigned to Convoy RAVEN-17 had been removed from its authorized destination?”
“Absolutely not.”
The investigator presented the forged surplus authorization.
“Your office had access to the system used to create this document.”
“So did several other administrators.”
“Did you authorize its creation?”
“No.”
Shaw paused.
“Major Ellison's name is on that document. Perhaps you should be asking her.”
I felt something inside me break.
Not because he had accused me directly.
Because he had done it so easily.
Marcus stopped the recording.
“Brooke?”
I stared at the blank screen.
“He knows I was overseas.”
“That's why we're verifying everything independently.”
“He knows.”
My voice cracked despite my efforts to control it.
“I worked beside that man for eight years. He knows exactly where I was.”
Marcus waited.
I took a slow breath.
“Keep investigating.”
That evening, Edna Price called me.
Maya had given her my contact information after asking permission.
“Brooke, sweetheart, I heard somebody's trying to blame you for what happened.”
I closed my eyes.
“People are examining some documents, Edna. That's all.”
“Well, don't let them convince you that you're alone.”
Her simple words nearly undid me.
I sat on the edge of my hotel bed.
“Thank you.”
“You know something?” she continued. “When my husband was alive, he used to say that telling the truth doesn't always make people love you.”
I smiled faintly.
“What did he say it does?”
“Makes it harder for them to keep lying.”
I laughed quietly.
“That sounds like a wise man.”
“He was. Terrible at fixing the washing machine, though.”
For the first time all day, my shoulders relaxed.
Before hanging up, Edna said something I'll never forget.
“Brooke, I didn't know you were a major when you sat beside me in that cell. You were just someone who listened.”
I swallowed.
“I'm glad I did.”
“So am I.”
After the call, I opened the photograph of Noah and Eli that Maya had shared with the investigation team.
Two brothers smiling beside an old pickup.
I remembered Eli asking whether we'd find Noah alive.
The answer still mattered more than anything happening to my career.
Around midnight, Agent Velez called.
“Brooke, we've identified an irregularity in Noah Turner's records.”
I sat upright.
“What kind?”
“Someone submitted paperwork declaring him deceased.”
For a moment, I couldn't speak.
“Are you saying they found his body?”
“No. That's the problem.”
She explained that an internal law enforcement record had been created using Noah's identifying information.
It referenced unidentified remains recovered from a rural roadside.
But the identification had never been independently confirmed.
The paperwork had been entered under an authorization associated with Sheriff Voss's office.
“Could it be a mistake?” I asked.
“Possibly. But there's something else.”
“What?”
“The date.”
I looked toward the clock.
It was 12:17 a.m.
Velez continued.
“The record declaring Noah dead was entered yesterday afternoon.”
I felt cold.
“And the call to the clinic?”
“Came nearly six hours later.”
We were silent.
Then Velez spoke again.
“Brooke, someone may be trying to make a living witness disappear on paper.”
I thought of the frightened voice pleading for help.
The missing truck driver.
The fabricated death record.
May you like
And the sheriff who had promised to investigate his disappearance.
Someone had already prepared Noah Turner's official death record—even though he might still be alive and begging for rescue.
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