My eyes filled.
“Where are you?”
“You’re asking the wrong question.”
“What question should I ask?”
His voice dropped.
“Ask why Victor Shaw was trying to kill me too.”
Then we heard a sound on his end.
A door.
Footsteps.
Daniel whispered one final sentence.
“Sarah, don’t let Emily go to that wedding.”
The line went dead.
I looked at my daughter.
Her face had gone white.
Keller immediately started shouting orders.
And then Emily’s phone vibrated.
A photograph arrived from an unknown number.
Her wedding venue.
Taken that morning.
Under the photograph was a single line:
ONE PHOENIX SURVIVED. LET’S SEE ABOUT HER DAUGHTER.
I didn’t feel fear anymore.
I felt something I hadn’t felt since Edwards.
Mission focus.
I looked at Keller.
“Cancel the wedding.”
Emily opened her mouth.
“No argument.”
Then I looked at the old Wraith files spread across the table.
Victor Shaw thought he was still running a test.
He thought I was still the disgraced pilot he had broken thirty-two years ago.
He had forgotten something.
Phoenix was never my call sign because I survived fire.
They called me Phoenix because every time an aircraft failed—
I brought the truth back with me.
TO BE CONTINUED
IN PART 4: Sarah follows Daniel Mercer’s call to an abandoned hangar outside Tacoma, where she finally learns who died in his place during the Wraith crash. But Victor Shaw’s real target was never Flight 2891—and the attack planned for Emily’s wedding reveals why Sarah was framed in 1992 in the first place.
