The next morning, I was halfway through my second cup of coffee when the knock came. It wasn’t Boyd’s usual two-tap knock or the lazy rap of a delivery driver. This one was steady. Official.
I opened the door to find Lieutenant Madison Clark standing there in civilian clothes, holding a manila envelope. Her eyes were sharp, but her tone stayed neutral.
“Mind if I come in, ma’am?”
I stepped aside.
She walked in, taking in the townhouse like she was cataloging every detail. When we sat at the kitchen table, she set the envelope down but didn’t slide it over right away.
“I owe you an apology,” she said. “The other day at the hospital, I shouldn’t have shown up with your sister. I didn’t know the full picture.”
“You figured it out, though,” I said.
Madison nodded once. “Natalie’s been talking to people. Not just business contacts—military ones. She’s been asking questions about your record, about contracts you’ve handled, even about projects that aren’t public.”
I kept my expression still.
“And people answered,” she said. “She’s been dangling investment offers using Clear Harbor Ventures as the hook. Most of it is hot air, but she’s persistent. She’s also been telling people she’s part of your circle. Some believe her.”
That was enough to make my jaw tighten. In my world, reputation is as valuable as any asset, and Natalie was trying to pickpocket mine.
Madison finally pushed the envelope across the table.
Inside were printed screenshots, social media posts, email excerpts, and notes from people who’d been approached. Some of it was sloppy, like she was rushing. But there were also signs of coordination. The same phrases used. The same half-truths repeated.
One line caught my eye.
Colleen trusts me with her contacts. She just prefers to stay in the background.
Madison tapped that sentence with her finger. “She’s framing herself as your gatekeeper. If she keeps this up, she’ll be in rooms you didn’t even know she had access to.”
I flipped through more pages. There was even a photo of Natalie at a charity dinner last month, standing next to a retired general I’d met once at a Pentagon event. In the photo, she had her hand on his arm like they were old friends.
I set the envelope aside. “Why bring this to me?”
Madison leaned back. “Because I’ve seen what happens when someone like her gets inside a network they don’t belong to. People get burned. Reputations get trashed. And I don’t like being used as an access point.”
She wasn’t wrong.
And now I had confirmation of what I’d suspected. Natalie wasn’t just circling my finances. She was trying to graft herself onto my professional life.
“Anything else I should know?” I asked.
Madison hesitated, then said, “She’s talking about the river house. Telling people she might host some strategic events there, like it’s hers to offer.”
That got a short, humorless laugh out of me. “She’s welcome to try.”
We talked for another ten minutes, mostly about who might already be compromised. When Madison left, I had more intel than I’d had in weeks. But I also knew the clock was ticking.
I called Mark, filled him in, and told him to prepare a cease-and-desist letter for Natalie’s little impersonation campaign. I also asked him to check the title on the river house, just in case she’d gotten creative.
By early afternoon, Boyd had come over and we went through the envelope together. He picked up on a few details I’d missed—patterns in the email timestamps, the order in which she was contacting people.
“She’s working off a list,” he said. “My guess? She started with your old service connections and is moving outward.”
That made sense. Natalie had never been subtle about climbing ladders, and she’d never cared whose rungs she stepped on.
We decided on a two-pronged approach. Boyd would quietly reach out to people in my old unit and warn them off any opportunities Natalie pitched. Meanwhile, I’d shore up the civilian side—former clients, consulting partners, anyone who might be swayed by a good sales pitch and a fake smile.
The rest of the day was a blur of calls and emails. Most people were quick to shut it down once they knew the truth, but a few were more cagey, clearly weighing whether they could still get something out of her. Those were the ones I’d have to watch.
By early evening, I’d worked through my list. My shoulder ached from too much time at the desk, so I stepped outside for air.
The street was quiet except for the hum of a passing car. Across the way, a neighbor was bringing in groceries. I stood there for a moment, the cool air cutting through the stale feeling of the day.
Natalie thought she was being clever, playing the long game. But now I knew exactly where she was aiming, and I wasn’t about to let her get there.
The next morning, I treated my townhouse like an ops center. Coffee in one hand, notebook in the other, I started mapping Natalie’s network on the big whiteboard in my office. Every name Madison had given me went up there, along with anyone Boyd and I had flagged from past calls. Circles for confirmed contacts. Squares for potential targets. Red Xs for people we’d already shut down.
In the military, you don’t just defend against threats. You predict their moves and get there first. This was no different.
The only twist was that the enemy wasn’t a foreign actor or a corporate competitor.
It was my own sister.
Boyd arrived midmorning carrying two bagels and a USB drive. He set both on my desk.
“Everything we could scrape without triggering alarms,” he said.
The drive was full of data—public filings, corporate registrations, and a few open-source intelligence pulls that most civilians wouldn’t know how to find.
We plugged it in and went through it together.
Clear Harbor Ventures wasn’t just Natalie’s vanity project. She’d linked it to two other shell companies, both tied to out-of-state addresses. One was in Delaware, standard for tax purposes. The other was in Nevada, which meant she wanted more than tax benefits. Nevada’s privacy laws make it hard to see who actually owns what.
She was covering her tracks, but not perfectly.
We spotted inconsistencies in signatures, mismatched mailing addresses, and one hilarious typo in a notarized document that could void it entirely.
“Sloppy,” Boyd muttered.
“Sloppy is good,” I said. “Sloppy leaves trails.”
From there, we divided the work. He’d cross-reference the investors’ names with any military contracts or federal programs they’d been near. I’d focus on the civilian side—local politics, real-estate boards, charity circuits. If Natalie was weaving herself into these circles, I wanted to know how far she’d gotten.
By noon, we had enough to draw the first real picture of her operation.
