“Could Mercer have survived the crash?”
“No.”
“I’m asking because his body identification was never completed through DNA.”
I stared at him.
“What are you saying?”
“The remains were identified through personal effects and dental records supplied by the program.”
My mouth went dry.
“Supplied by whom?”
Keller didn’t answer immediately.
Then he said:
“Victor Shaw.”
The room seemed to shrink around me.
If Daniel Mercer had not died in 1992…
then someone else had been buried under his name.
And suddenly using “Daniel Mercer” on Flight 2891 didn’t look like Victor mocking the dead.
It looked like a clue.
That afternoon, federal agents traced one of the numbers stored inside Victor’s abandoned burner phone.
It belonged to a prepaid phone activated three months earlier in Tacoma.
The user had made only six calls.
Five to Victor.
One to Emily.
Emily’s face drained when Keller told us.
“I never spoke to anyone.”
“Think.”
She did.
Then suddenly her expression changed.
“Three months ago.”
“What happened?”
“A man called me after I requested Mom’s old Wraith records.”
I stared at her.
“You never told me that.”
“I thought he was a retired engineer.”
“What did he say?”
Emily swallowed.
“He said, ‘If you want to know why your mother was blamed, find the flight-test authorization dated October seventeenth.’”
Keller leaned forward.
“Did he give a name?”
She nodded slowly.
“Daniel.”
Nobody spoke.
I felt every hair on my arms rise.
Keller asked:
“Daniel what?”
Emily looked directly at me.
“Mercer.”
Thirty-two years after I attended his funeral, a man claiming to be Daniel Mercer had helped my daughter uncover the files that cleared my name.
And Victor Shaw had just boarded my sabotaged flight using that same dead man’s identity.
There was only one conclusion I could make.
Daniel Mercer had either survived Wraith…
or someone desperately wanted me to believe he had.
Then my phone rang.
Unknown number again.
Every agent in the room froze.
Keller motioned for me to answer on speaker.
I did.
“Hello?”
For three seconds, there was only static.
Then an old man’s voice.
“Phoenix.”
My hands turned cold.
“Who is this?”
“You still land hard.”
Nobody moved.
Only one person had ever said that to me.
After my first emergency landing at Edwards.
Daniel Mercer.
I gripped the phone.
“Daniel?”
A breath.
Then:
“I’m sorry it took thirty-two years.”
