Was **Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Bennett**.
Beside him walked **Chief Judge Eleanor Mercer**, eighty-two years old, Presiding Judge of the Second Circuit, tapping her gold-headed surveyor’s cane against the diamond plate.
The two senior officials stopped at the edge of the chestnut table.
They did not look like people who had just concluded an eighty-million-dollar counter-intelligence and sovereign title arrest in an Oceanside elementary school.
Their flint-gray eyes were shadowed by an ancient, terrifying, un-survivable realization that had just been unsealed eighty feet beneath the Capitol bedrock:
“Lauren,” Colonel Bennett said softly, setting a black calfskin portfolio bound with crimson wax onto the polished wood:
“Ben.”
“David.”
“Michael.”
“Eleanor.”
“Marcus.”
“What is it, Colonel?”
I asked, my fingers gently tracing the laser-cut serial number on the titanium key:
“Evelyn Harrow-Vance is in federal transport chains at the military brig at Miramar.
Del Mar Terrace Elementary has been placed under sovereign receivership.
