Chapter 5 - The Shadow Ledger
Inside the SCIF, the ambient hum of servers was the only sound breaking the concentrated silence. I was reviewing satellite feeds of a port in the South China Sea when my encrypted comms line blinked. It was Agent Vance.
"Captain," Vance's gravelly voice came through. "Your mother-in-law just called in the airstrike on herself. We have her on a recorded line corroborating the exact fraudulent narrative your attorney warned us about."
"Excellent work, Agent," I replied, my voice steady. "But insurance fraud isn't why I asked NCIS to dig into David's background. Have you found the shadow ledger?"
"We did," Vance confirmed, his tone shifting from professional to gravely serious. "You were right to trust your instincts, Captain. David hasn’t just been freeloading. We traced the IP addresses he used on your home network. While you were deployed, he was accessing your personal laptop. He couldn't get into the classified drives, but he scraped your personal calendar, your deployment schedules, and your travel itineraries."
A cold fury ignited in my chest. "Who was he selling it to?"
"A shell corporation based in Cyprus, known to be a front for foreign intelligence brokers. He was selling your movements, Captain. Establishing a pattern of life on a high-ranking naval intelligence officer. The payouts were small, deposited into offshore crypto wallets, but they were consistent. The life insurance policy wasn't just greed. It was an exit strategy. His handlers were likely done with him, and he needed a massive payday before he ran."
My husband wasn't just a parasite. He was a traitor. The head-shaving, the psychological warfare—it was all a frantic attempt to break my credibility so that if I ever discovered his treason, I would be dismissed as a hysterical, unstable woman.
"I want him burned to the ground, Vance," I said quietly.
May you like
"We have enough to arrest him for the fraud," Vance replied. "But to nail him for espionage, we need to catch him transmitting data one last time. We need bait."
"I know exactly what to give him," I said.
