Chapter 7 - Chloe Sterling, Reluctant Operative
The next forty-eight hours were a blur of blood, adrenaline, and pure chaos. Thorne’s team swept the Sterling house top to bottom. They found three bugs—one in the master bedroom, one in Chloe’s room, one in the living room. VIPER had been listening to everything for at least two weeks. Which meant he’d known about the gala. Known I’d be there. Known that when Chloe ripped my shirt open, the secret would be out. He’d let it happen. Let me expose myself. Then sent Fournier to clean up the mess.
Smart. Cold. Calculated. Just like the man who’d sold us out five years ago.
Forensics went through Fournier’s phone like it was the Holy Grail. And gold, it was. Encrypted emails between Fournier and VIPER. Text messages. Photos. Bank transfer records. The exact date the warhead was arriving at the Port of LA: September 27th. Seven days from now. The name of the ship: the MSC Geneva. The container number. The trucking company that was gonna move it.
Everything. Almost everything.
VIPER was careful. Very careful. He never used his real name. Never sent a photo. Always routed his messages through twelve different servers in seven different countries. But he’d made one mistake. In one of the earliest emails, he’d attached a photo of his office window. A view of the Pentagon. The courtyard. The exact angle meant his office was on the E Ring, fourth floor, looking north.
That narrowed it down. A lot. There were only twelve two-star admirals with offices in that exact wing. Twelve men. One of them was a traitor. One of them was VIPER.
Chloe moved into the safe house that night.
Thorne fought me on it. “Harper, she’s an ensign. She’s got no training. No experience. She’s a liability. If something goes wrong—”
“She killed Fournier with her hands tied to a chair,” I cut him off. “She’s got more guts in her little finger than half the officers in this building have in their entire bodies. And she knows VIPER. She’s been to every Pentagon reception, every cocktail party, every retirement dinner for the last three years. She’s met every single one of those twelve admirals. She knows their voices. Their mannerisms. Their tells. If anyone can pick VIPER out of a lineup, it’s her.”
Thorne looked at Chloe. She was standing in the middle of the command center, wearing one of my old SEAL hoodies and a pair of sweatpants, her hair in a messy bun, a cup of coffee in her hand. She looked like she hadn’t slept in a week. But when Thorne looked at her, she stood up straight, lifted her chin, and looked him right in the eye.
“I’m not gonna be a liability, sir,” she said. “I’ve spent my whole life pretending to be something I’m not. I’m good at it. And Harper’s right—I know those men. I know which ones cheat on their wives. Which ones drink too much. Which ones take bribes. Let me help. Please. I owe my sister my life. I owe all of you.”
Thorne stared at her for a long minute. Then he sighed. “Fine. But she’s your responsibility, Harper. One mistake. One slip-up. And she’s out. Understood?”
“Understood,” I said.
Chloe was a natural.
Who knew? The girl who’d spent her whole life worrying about nail polish and designer dresses and what people thought of her had a brain like a steel trap. We gave her all the files on the twelve admirals—their financials, their travel records, their emails, their phone logs. She went through them in twelve hours flat. Cross-referenced everything. Made connections even our intel analysts had missed.
“Admiral Holloway?” she said, tapping a photo of a silver-haired man with a kind face on the monitor. “He’s clean. His wife’s a cancer survivor. They do charity work. No unexplained income. No trips to Dubai. He’s not VIPER.”
She swiped to the next photo. A younger man, sharp suit, cold smile. “Admiral Voss. There. Look. He took three ‘personal trips’ to Dubai in the last two years. Stayed at the same hotel Karim owns. His bank account shows deposits of exactly two hundred and fifty thousand dollars the day after each trip. And look—his wife bought a penthouse in Aspen last year. Cash. On a two-star’s salary? Impossible.”
She looked up at us, her eyes bright. “That’s him. That’s VIPER. Admiral Marcus Voss. Director of Special Operations Plans and Policy. I’ve met him a dozen times. He always made my skin crawl. He’d stare at me like I was a piece of meat. Dad always said he was ‘on the fast track.’”
Jake leaned forward, his eyes scanning the records. “She’s right. The timelines line up. Voss was the one who signed off on Operation Black Horizon five years ago. He was the one who changed the extraction frequency at the last minute—said there was ‘interference.’ He jammed us. That son of a bitch.”
Thorne’s face was like thunder. “Voss. I’ve known him for twenty years. Gave him his first star. Son of a bitch.” He slammed his fist on the table. “Okay. New plan. We flip Voss. We get him to confirm the shipment details, get him to roll on Karim. Then we take them both down. Together.”
Chloe raised her hand like she was back in class at Annapolis. “Uh… I can do that.”
We all stared at her.
“Voss loves young ensigns,” she said, her mouth twisting in disgust. “Especially ones with the Sterling last name. He’s been hitting on me for two years. If I text him… tell him I ‘know about Harper’ and I’m ‘scared’ and I want to ‘talk somewhere private’… he’ll come running. He’ll think he can manipulate me. That I’m just a dumb little girl who’ll do whatever he says.”
She looked at me. Her jaw was set.
“Let me be the bait, Harper. Please. It’s the only way we’ll get him to admit it. He’ll never talk to any of you. But he’ll talk to me. I know he will.”
I wanted to say no. God, I wanted to say no. The thought of my sister alone in a room with that monster made my blood boil. But I knew she was right. Voss would never fall for a wiretap, never fall for a fake meeting with another officer. But a scared, vulnerable little Sterling girl? That he’d eat up.
“Okay,” I said, my voice tight. “But you wear a wire. And we’re gonna be in the next room. If he so much as looks at you wrong… we’re coming in. Guns blazing. No questions. Understood?”
Chloe nodded. “Understood.”
The meeting was set for the next night. A private suite at the Grand Hyatt in downtown San Diego. Voss texted Chloe back ten minutes after she sent the message. Be there at 8. Wear something pretty. And don’t tell anyone.
We spent the next twenty-four hours prepping her.
Jake taught her how to wear the wire—tiny, hidden in the clasp of her necklace. I taught her how to read a room, how to tell if someone’s lying, how to fight if she had to. How to break a man’s nose with the palm of her hand. How to knee him in the balls so hard he threw up. Chloe soaked it all up like a sponge. For the first time in her life, she wasn’t trying to be pretty or perfect or liked. She was trying to be tough. And she was good at it.
At 1945 the next night, we sat in an unmarked van in the parking garage of the Grand Hyatt, watching the lobby camera feed. Chloe was wearing a simple black dress, her hair down, the necklace with the wire glinting at her throat. She looked nervous. But she also looked ready.
“Remember,” I said over the comms. “Keep him talking. Get him to say his name. Get him to admit to Mogadishu. To the warhead. To everything. And if he touches you… say the safe word. Bluebird. And we’re in. Instantly.”
“Got it,” Chloe said. She took a deep breath. Opened the van door. “Wish me luck.”
“Luck,” Jake said. “You’re gonna need it.”
May you like
We watched her walk into the lobby. Get on the elevator. Head up to the fourteenth floor. The camera in the suite—we’d bugged it an hour earlier—flickered to life. Voss was already there. Sitting on the couch, pouring two glasses of champagne. He smiled when Chloe walked in. A cold, predatory smile that made my skin crawl.
“Chloe, my dear,” he said, standing up. “So glad you could come. Now… tell me all about your sister. And exactly what you know about Operation Ghost Return.”
