Page 87 of Code Name: Atticus
“The intervals are interesting too,” Admiral noted, pulling up his own tablet. “Forty-seven hours, then seventy-one, then forty-three.”
“Someone’s trying to look random but using a mathematical sequence to do it. Luke would never be that obvious. Remember, this is the guy who created his own encryption protocol at the academy because he didn’t trust the standard ones.”
We were passing over Utah when Admiral called Alice and put her on speaker. “We’re three hours out, and we need you to dig into something.”
“One step ahead of you.” Alice’s voice filled the cabin. “Brenna called me before boarding and asked us to dive deep into the evidence against Luke. We’re already finding things that, upon closer inspection, don’t add up.”
“How so?” I asked.
“The timestamp manipulation uses NSA-level chronology modification protocols. We’ve seen these exact patterns in state-sponsored operations. But whoever did this was working on an impossible timeline and made several mistakes.”
“What kind of mistakes?” asked Admiral.
“The digital signatures show signs that they were created in a rush—likely late Friday night through early Saturday morning.Professional intelligence services take weeks to properly layer this kind of evidence. This was done in under forty-eight hours.”
I leaned toward the phone. “Alice, I need you to look specifically at Trevor Collins. Luke’s business partner.”
“Way ahead of you. Dragon found financial irregularities going back three months. Not to Trevor directly—to his wife, Mindy Collins.”
“Three months is before Brenna’s investigation even started,” Admiral said, frowning.
“Classic recruitment pattern. They were grooming him as a potential asset long before they needed him,” I said, recognizing the timeline immediately. “Morrison probably identified Trevor months ago as someone with financial pressure they could exploit if needed.”
“See you soon, sweetheart,” Admiral said to his wife.
“Hurry up,” she replied.
After Admiral disconnected, I stared out at the clouds below, trying to figure out how to exonerate Luke.
The restof the flight passed in fragments. Admiral coordinating with DOJ contacts, trying to delay Luke’s processing. Me digging through every piece of data, looking for the thread that would unravel this disaster. The mountains gave way to plains, then the Great Lakes appeared through the window, and finally the familiar landscape of upstate New York.
The helicopter ride from Albany to K19 headquarters took us from the setting of the sun into the darkness of the remote area. The Adirondacks were invisible below, just black spaces between scattered lights of small towns.
We touched down on the landing pad carved out of a meadow, then made our way to the command center that had been installed on the upper floors of the great camp’s boathouse.
Alice and Dragon were there, waiting with three active screens filled with cascading data streams. Tex’s face occupied the main display, his usually relaxed expression replaced with the intensity I’d only seen during major investigations.
“You were right about the timeline,” Alice said immediately, not bothering with greetings. “But it’s more sophisticated than basic backdating.”
She gestured to the code structures filling one screen. “The metadata compression signatures are inconsistent with gradual evidence accumulation. This was a rush job—professional tools, amateur timeline.”
“But?” I could hear the qualification in her voice.
Tex leaned closer to the screen. “The authentication tokens show sequential generation despite supposedly being created days apart. Real operations have randomized token generation. They were creating everything in one session, probably panicking after Friday night.”
Dragon pulled up another data stream. “The system access logs show Luke’s credentials accessing classified databases. But the hardware signatures are all wrong. Different MAC addresses, different chip architectures. Luke uses a MacBook Pro for everything—I pulled his purchase records. These accesses came from a Dell running Windows 11.”
“Someone cloned his credentials but forgot about the trail he’d leave behind.” I moved closer to the screens. “What about Trevor?”
Windows on Alice’s screen opened and closed faster than I could track. “Trevor Collins has been receiving payments for three months, but not directly.”
She pulled up financial records that made my stomach drop. “His wife, Mindy Collins. Deposits from seventeen different shell companies. All traced back through Cyprus, then the Caymans, then—” She paused. “This is interesting.”
“Define interesting,” Admiral said.
“The money originates from legitimate venture capital funds. Morrison’s funds. But it’s been laundered through so many cutouts that it took me two hours to find it.”
“So Morrison’s been paying Trevor for months,” I said. “For what?”
