His face remained expressionless as he scanned the lists of serial numbers and bank routing codes.

“This is active defense fraud,” he murmured, his finger tracing a line on the third page.

“It’s not just Gregory.”

“Who else is on there?” I asked.

Sterling looked up at me, his eyes grave behind his glasses.

“Two members of the Senate Armed Services Committee,” he said.

“And a sitting general at the Pentagon.”

My phone in my pocket began to vibrate again.

I pulled it out and looked at the screen.

It was a text message from an unregistered number, containing a single image.

I tapped the screen to open it.

The image was a live security camera feed of the driveway outside the cabin.

A pair of headlights was just turning off the main road, cutting through the thick fog toward us.

“We have to go,” Sterling said, his voice dropping to a whisper.

He reached down and closed the red folder with a sharp snap.

“The back door leads to the old logging trail,” he said.

He grabbed a heavy canvas jacket from a peg by the door.