Chapter 7 - THE SIBLINGZ
The safehouse was a dilapidated lobster-processing shack tucked into the salt marshes of Portland Harbor. It smelled of rotting bait, brine, and old fuel.
Peter sat on a overturned plastic crate under the dim yellow light of a hanging bulb, using an exacto knife he had found on a workbench to carefully slice open the seam along the back of the green plastic dinosaur.
Lily stood by the window, peering through a crack in the wooden blinds, a heavy hunting rifle she had retrieved from the shack's hidden floorboard resting against her hip.
"Is it inside?" she asked, her voice tense.
Peter pulled the plastic halves apart. Embedded inside the hollow body of the toy, encased in a thick block of hardened grey resin, was a micro-SD card and a tiny, silver flash drive stamped with the official seal of the United States Department of Defense.
"It’s here," Peter whispered. "Forty years of blood, lies, and broken lives... sitting on a plastic tray."
"It’s not just data, Peter," Lily said, turning around. "It’s leverage. That drive contains forty years of financial transfers between Senator Vance, foreign intelligence contractors, and the judges he bought to keep my mother quiet. It’s enough to pull down half the Senate."
"We can't just hand this to the FBI," Peter said, standing up. "Vance sits on the Senate Judiciary Committee. He owns half the senior directors in the Bureau. The moment we walk into a field office, we get processed into an evidence bag."
"I know," Lily said. "That’s why we need Thomas."
Peter stared at her. "You said Thomas was in a federal prison."
"He is," Lily said dark. "Federal Correctional Institution, Otisville. Medium security. He’s been serving a twelve-year sentence for white-collar computer espionage since 2021. But Thomas didn't go to prison because he got caught, Peter. He went to prison because Otisville is where Vance keeps his private data servers under federal protection. Thomas went inside to breach Vance’s main firewall from the inside."
Peter rubbed his temples, feeling a pounding headache building behind his eyes. "Your whole family is completely insane. Andrew lived in a grave for forty years, Clara lived as a hostage, you live as an operative, and your brother broke into a federal prison on purpose?"
"We’re not insane, Peter," Lily said softly, stepping closer to him. Her green eyes—the exact same color as Andrew’s in the old photographs—looked down at him with immense, devastating clarity. "We are Whitaker's. Vance tore our family apart, murdered our childhoods, and turned our father into a ghost. We aren't running anymore. We’re going to finish what Clara started."
"Otisville is two hundred miles south," Peter said, looking at his watch. It was 3:00 AM. "How do you expect to get a message to a federal inmate without Vance’s surveillance picking it up?"
"We don't send a message," Lily said, picking up her gear bag. "We break him out."
Peter let out a hollow laugh. "Break a man out of a federal prison? I am an estate attorney, Lily! I draft wills!"
"You killed a Vanguard operative three days ago with a .45 colt and jumped out a second-story window," Lily said, a faint, cold smile touching her lips. "You’re not an lawyer anymore, cousin. You’re evidence."
Before Peter could respond, the wooden floorboards of the shack creaked softly behind them.
Peter swung his Colt up, but a dark shadow stepped out of the fog hanging in the doorway of the marsh door.
It was a man in his late fifties, wearing a high-collared trench coat, his hair silvered at the temples, his face etched with deep, exhaustion lines. He held a high-end encrypted radio in one hand and a silenced pistol pointed toward the floor in the other.
"Put the gun down, Peter," the man said. His voice was shockingly familiar—smooth, polished, and deep.
Peter stared at him, his mind reeling. He recognized the voice from forty years of family stories and the annual memorial services Andrew had held.
"Uncle Richard?" Peter whispered.
It was Richard Vance—Senator Vance’s younger brother, and Clara’s former brother-in-law. The man who had officially delivered the news of Clara’s "drowning" to Andrew in 1986.
"Hello, Peter," Richard said softly, stepping into the dim light. "You’ve made a terrible mess in New York. Robert is furious. He’s sent four hit teams north. You have about twenty minutes before this marsh is surrounded."
"You were in on it," Peter said, his knuckles turning white as he gripped the pistol. "You were the one who helped staged the car on the bridge! You were Vance’s cleanup guy!"
"I was Clara’s asset," Richard corrected coldly, his gaze sliding to Lily. "I’m the reason your mother survived 1986, Lily. I’m the one who ensured Robert didn't execute you and Thomas when you were children. I’ve been playing both sides for forty years."
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"Why are you here now, Richard?" Lily demanded, her rifle locked on his chest.
"Because Robert knows about the dinosaur," Richard said, pulling a black satellite phone from his coat and tossing it to Peter. "And he just signed an executive order transferring your brother Thomas to a black site facility in Diego Garcia. Thomas leaves Otisville in six hours. If you want to save him, and if you want to put Robert in a steel cage for the rest of his life, you need to listen to me very carefully."
