Chapter 11
The silence inside the cab of the stolen Ford truck was thicker than the storm raging outside. Ethan Vance—or the man wearing his face—froze. His hand, still gripping Jake’s arm, tightened fractionally, but his bruised features remained locked in a mask of exhausted terror.
"Jake, what are you saying?" Ethan rasped, his voice cracking perfectly, a masterclass in desperation. "It’s me. I survived the ambush. Aegis Vanguard snatched me from the rubble before the medevac arrived. They reconstructed my face after the burns. They pulled my teeth during the torture sessions. You know me, brother!"
"Do I?" Jake whispered, his hand sliding smoothly off the steering wheel and settling onto the textured grip of his sidearm. He didn't blink. The green glow of the dashboard illuminated the cold, calculating void in his eyes.
"If they pulled your teeth, how did they end up in a burned-out vehicle that I secured twenty minutes after the blast?" Jake asked, his voice dropping into a lethal, quiet register. "Aegis Vanguard didn't have boots on the ground in that sector. It was a sterile zone. The only people who knew our exact coordinates were Miller, you, and me."
The man wearing Ethan’s face stared at Jake. The facade of the broken, terrified comrade began to slip. The micro-expressions of panic faded, replaced by a cold, clinical emptiness.
"You're paranoid, Jake," the man said, his voice subtly losing its ragged edge, smoothing out into something infinitely more dangerous. "Miller is in that diner with a gun to your family's head. You are wasting time."
"I'm not wasting time," Jake said, raising the pistol with blinding speed, aiming it squarely at the space between the man's eyes. "I'm eliminating a variable. If you are Ethan Vance, what was the first thing you told me when I found you bleeding in the mud in Kandahar?"
The man didn't flinch at the sight of the gun. He let out a long, slow sigh. The wounded, broken posture evaporated entirely. He sat back against the passenger seat, his dark eyes turning flat and reptilian.
"He told you to save the radio," the man said, his voice dropping the emotional timber completely. "Because if the radio died, the air support died."
Jake’s finger tightened on the trigger. The answer was technically correct according to the official after-action report, which Miller had written. But it wasn't the truth.
"He told me to tell Ava he loved her," Jake stated coldly. "You aren't Ethan."
A chilling, humorless smile crept across the man's scarred face. "No. I'm not. But Ethan is dead, Jake. And the microdot you hold in your hand is the only thing keeping your little family alive."
"Who are you?" Jake demanded, his voice a low, vibrating threat.
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"I am the architect of your resurrection, Lieutenant," the imposter said smoothly. "Miller is a blunt instrument. He thinks he’s running the board, but he’s just a dog on a leash. The Vanguard didn't build an empire by trusting military bureaucrats. They built it using ghosts. Like you. Like me."
The imposter reached slowly toward the door handle. "You can pull that trigger, Jake. But if my heart rate monitor flatlines, the snipers hidden in the tree line behind the diner have orders to put a round through Ava's skull. Your move."
