Chapter 17 - The Adjuster from Baltimore
I pulled off my latex gloves, tossing them into the biohazard bin with a sharp snap, and walked out of the prep room ahead of Ethan. Ghost didn't wait for a command. He rose from his rubber mat like a coiled steel spring, silent, his hackles slightly raised as he shadowed my left heel.
In the waiting room, the morning clients had miraculously cleared out—Paula must have ushered the Army medic and his spaniel through the side exit. Standing in the center of the linoleum floor was a man who looked entirely out of place in a coastal veterinary clinic. He was in his late forties, wearing a charcoal-gray Savile Row suit that cost more than my entire surgical inventory, his hair cropped military-short and salted with gray at the temples. He held a leather briefcase in one hand, his posture rigid, his eyes scanning the room with the clinical detachment of a man evaluating a crime scene.
"Dr. Madison Cole?" the man asked. His voice was smooth, cultured, carrying the distinct mid-Atlantic cadence of someone who spent his life briefing congressional committees or cutting corporate buyout checks in windowless boardrooms.
"Depends on who's asking," I said, stopping ten feet away, keeping Ghost firmly positioned at my side.
The man offered a thin, practiced smile that didn't reach his eyes. "My name is Harrison Vance. No relation to the unfortunate tactical lead who made such a mess of your front window last month, I assure you."
The name hit the room like a physical blow. Ethan froze in the doorway behind me, his hand tightening around the hidden grip of his firearm.
"You're late for the congressional inquiry, Mr. Vance," I replied, my voice dropping into that cold, steady register I used when I needed the ground to stay solid beneath my boots. "Or did your bosses decide that private maritime trusts are safer than federal oversight?"
Harrison Vance—senior managing partner of Aegis Maritime Holdings, though intelligence circles knew them as the primary financial backer of the black-budget Oberon initiative—took a slow, measured step forward.
"Congress is a theater for the public, Dr. Cole. A noisy, expensive distraction designed to make taxpayers feel like accountability still exists," Vance said smoothly, setting his leather briefcase down on the edge of the oak reception desk. "Men like you and Lieutenant Cross understand how the real world works. Assets don't simply vanish because a website publishes a few unverified data dumps. They are recovered. Or they are written off."
"Project Oberon is dead," Ethan said, stepping out from the doorway, his broad shoulders filling the space behind me. His eyes were locked on Vance with lethal intensity. "The facility is a crater. The data is public. You lost."
Vance turned his gaze toward Ethan, his smile widening just a fraction. "Did we, Lieutenant? You assume the master archive was stored entirely on servers in a sub-level bunker in Norfolk. But you of all people should know that redundancy is the first rule of survival."
Vance reached out, slowly opening the brass latches of his leather briefcase.
"We don't want to blow up your clinic this time, Dr. Cole," Vance continued, his voice dropping into a low, conversational tone. "We don't want a firefight in downtown Norfolk. We simply want our intellectual property back. And in exchange, Aegis is prepared to offer both of you clean identities, fully funded offshore accounts, and a permanent guarantee that the Department of Justice will never look at either of your names again."
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Inside the briefcase sat a thick stack of bearer bonds, a pair of pristine, unissued U.S. passports bearing new names and photographs, and a sleek, cylindrical titanium device fitted with a biometric scanner.
Ghost let out a low, vibrating growl from deep within his chest—a warning sound that made the glass in the front windows hum in their frames.
