Chapter 18 - The Steel Foundation
Two weeks later, the morning air at Whisper Creek was filled with the smell of motor oil, solder, and sea salt.
The master bedroom was gone.
Where Vanessa’s walk-in wardrobe once held rows of designer shoes, three industrial lathes spun at four thousand RPM.
Four young men—combat veterans with missing limbs and service-connected injuries—stood around a workbench, listening intently as Jack demonstrated a new hydraulic alignment valve for a lower-leg socket.
"The VA gives you twenty-four degrees of lateral flex," Jack explained, his fingers guiding a junior technician's hand over the alloy joint.
"That's fine if you're walking on flat tile."
"Out here on the rocks? You need thirty-two degrees, or the socket pin tears your stump raw within two miles."
The young technician, an ex-Marine corporal named Danny who had lost both legs in Fallujah, grinned.
"Where were you five years ago, Captain?"
"Surrounded by the wrong people," Jack said with a quiet smile.
Maya walked through the double doors from the terrace carrying two steel thermoses of black coffee.
She handed one to Jack, leaning against the heavy wooden bench.
"Court just adjourned Marcus's plea hearing in Los Angeles," she said.
Jack took a sip of the scalding liquid. "What's the verdict?"
"Twenty-eight years without parole. Wire fraud, conspiracy to commit treason, and unauthorized procurement of defense assets."
"And Vanessa?" Jack asked.
Maya paused, her expression hardening slightly.
"Seven years at Dublin Federal Correctional. Marcus didn't leave a single document out of his plea deal. He sold her out to shave three years off his sentence."
Jack nodded once, feeling no satisfaction, no sorrow, only the clean closure of a wound that had finally stopped bleeding.
"What about Eleanor?" Jack asked, keeping his voice low so the technicians couldn't hear.
Maya’s eyes darkened.
"She disappeared four days ago. Her private jet was spotted refueling in Dubai, then vanished from flight tracking somewhere over East Africa."
Jack looked out through the reinforced windows toward the Pacific.
"She won't stay in East Africa," he murmured.
"She left fifty million dollars' worth of encrypted military hardware beneath this house."
Maya touched the grip of the concealed pistol under her denim work shirt.
"Then we’ll be ready when she comes back."
Danny called out from the lathe, holding up a newly milled titanium ankle mount that gleamed under the overhead LEDs.
"Captain Miller! First prototype is off the press!"
Jack turned around, leaving the shadows behind him, and walked back to the center of the shop.
"Let's test the stress tolerance," Jack said, his eyes bright with purpose.
May you like
"We have twenty more to build before the weekend."
***
