"We may have found the man from the station."
Arthur looked at him.
ARTHUR:
"Who is he?"
Miller slowly turned the phone around.
The screen showed a photograph taken from a nearby security camera.
The man wearing the dark coat was standing beside a black vehicle outside the station.
Miller zoomed in on the image.
AGENT MILLER:
"His name is Daniel Cross."
Arthur stared at the photograph.
For several seconds, he could not speak.
Then he whispered something that made Miller look up sharply.
ARTHUR:
"I know that man."
REBECCA:
"Dad?"
Arthur looked at his daughter.
ARTHUR:
"He worked on the same federal project."
Miller's expression hardened.
AGENT MILLER:
"Was he authorized to access those records?"
Arthur shook his head.
ARTHUR:
"Not anymore."
MILLER:
"What do you mean?"
Arthur looked at the photograph again.
ARTHUR:
"Daniel Cross was removed from the program after the original equipment discrepancy was discovered."
Miller remained silent.
ARTHUR:
"And he was the person who signed the destruction certificates."
The room seemed to become colder.
Miller looked toward Harris, who had just entered the hospital room.
AGENT MILLER:
"Get me the full personnel file on Daniel Cross."
Harris nodded.
AGENT HARRIS:
"Immediately."
Arthur slowly leaned back against his pillow.
The man who had picked up his missing credential was not a random passenger.
He was connected to the very investigation that had brought Arthur to the station.
And now the FBI had a name.
But there was still one question nobody could answer.
Why had Daniel Cross appeared at the station before Arthur arrived?
And what had he intended to do with the missing identification card?
Arthur looked at Miller.
ARTHUR:
"Agent, you need to understand something."
MILLER:
"What?"
ARTHUR:
"If Cross has that card, he may already know which records we were trying to protect."
Miller's phone vibrated again.
This time, the message came from the field office.
He opened it.
His expression became completely serious.
AGENT MILLER:
"Mr. Whitmore, I think we have another problem."
ARTHUR:
"What happened?"
Miller showed him the message.
The missing credential had just been used.
Not at the transportation office.
Not at a federal archive.
But at a restricted facility that had officially been closed for almost eight years.
Arthur stared at the screen.
Then he slowly turned toward Miller.
ARTHUR:
"That's where they stored the original equipment."
Miller stood immediately.
AGENT MILLER:
"How many people have access to that facility?"
Arthur swallowed.
ARTHUR:
"According to the last authorized roster?"
He paused.
ARTHUR:
"Only three."
Miller waited.
ARTHUR:
"One of them is me."
He looked at the photograph of Daniel Cross again.
ARTHUR:
"And one of the others is the man who just stole my identification."
PART 3/3
The room went silent.
Arthur Whitmore sat upright in the hospital bed, his injured shoulder supported by a sling. His face was pale, and a dark bruise had begun to spread along his cheekbone where he had struck the station floor.
Across from him, Special Agent Daniel Miller stood beside the window, holding a tablet displaying a security report.
Rebecca Whitmore looked from the screen to her father.
REBECCA: “You said there were three people with access to that facility. You, Daniel Cross, and who was the third?”
Arthur did not answer immediately.
He stared at the image on the tablet. It showed a concrete building surrounded by fencing, security cameras, and an overgrown access road. The facility looked abandoned, but the digital record indicated that someone had entered it less than twenty minutes earlier.
ARTHUR: “Colonel Nathaniel Brooks.”
MILLER: “Brooks is dead.”
ARTHUR: “That's what his official record says.”
Miller lowered the tablet.
MILLER: “You believe he might still be alive?”
ARTHUR: “I believe someone has been using his credentials. Whether Brooks is alive or not is a different question.”
Rebecca moved closer to the bed.
REBECCA: “Dad, what exactly was inside that facility?”
Arthur looked at his daughter.
For years, he had avoided discussing his former work. He had told his family that he had been a government investigator, that his assignments involved transportation systems and equipment audits, and that much of the work was classified.
He had never explained what he had discovered.
ARTHUR: “The facility was built to test and store a prototype identification system. It was designed to track sensitive government equipment through every stage of its life cycle. Every device had a unique serial number. Every transfer was recorded. Every destruction order required independent verification.”
MILLER: “And you were responsible for auditing those records.”
ARTHUR: “Yes. My job was to make sure equipment marked for destruction was actually destroyed.”
REBECCA: “But it wasn't.”
Arthur nodded slowly.
ARTHUR: “Some of it disappeared. At first, the discrepancies looked like accounting mistakes. A shipment would be listed as destroyed, but its serial number would appear in a transportation log months later. Then another device would appear under a different contractor's name. Eventually, I discovered that someone had been creating false destruction certificates.”
MILLER: “How many units?”
ARTHUR: “At least forty-three.”
Rebecca covered her mouth.
REBECCA: “Forty-three?”
ARTHUR: “That's what I could prove before the investigation was shut down.”
MILLER: “And the serial numbers on your identification card?”