Chapter 17 - THE WOMAN IN THE PHOTOGRAPHMorrison examined the photograph.
His reaction told Maya enough.
“You know her.”
He hesitated.
Maya sighed.
“We're really still doing this?”
“Her name is Rebecca Shaw.”
“Ghost?”
“No.”
“CIA?”
“Once.”
Morrison explained that Shaw had worked with Ward.
She had been responsible for the intelligence package Ghost 7 was ordered to retrieve.
Officially, she died two days before Nightfall.
Maya looked at the photograph again.
The timestamp said otherwise.
Rebecca Shaw had been alive.
With Ghost 7.
Someone had erased her from every report.
Maya contacted Ward.
He refused to discuss Shaw by phone.
They met at the training center.
Ward looked older.
More frightened than before.
“Rebecca discovered Vale's program before Daniel did.”
“Where is she?”
“I don't know.”
“Alive?”
Ward hesitated.
“I think so.”
Maya's jaw tightened.
“Why?”
“Because somebody has been sending me messages for eighteen months.”
He handed Maya a phone.
One unread message.
MAYA WAS NEVER THE ONLY SURVIVOR.
Maya stared.
Her pulse slowed.
“What does that mean?”
Ward shook his head.
Then another message arrived.
A photograph.
A woman standing outside the Ghost 7 memorial.
Taken that morning.
Maya turned toward the window.
The courtyard appeared empty.
But one rose had been placed beneath Cole's photograph.
Maya ran outside.
Nobody.
Only the flower.
Beneath it rested a metal dog tag.
SHAW, REBECCA A.
Maya looked toward the road.
May you like
A dark SUV disappeared around the corner.
For the first time since Nightfall, Maya wondered whether the fourteen ghosts she had mourned were the only people who had walked out of Kandahar.
