At my father's funeral, the gravedigger grabbed my arm and whispered words that shattered everything I believed: ""Your father paid me to bury an empty coffin."" Before I could even ask what he meant, he pressed a brass key into my hand and warned me never to go home. Seconds later, my mother's strange text message appeared on my phone, and I realized my father's funeral might have been the beginning of a carefully planned operation.

We burst onto the upper deck, the freezing rain violently whipping across my face.

Behind us, a Vanguard squad was closing in. I raised the detonator high into the air, praying for a signal.

The green light on the remote flickered, then held solid.

I looked at Vance. He nodded.

I pressed the button.

Deep within the bowels of Site Echo, my father’s charges detonated. The explosion was catastrophic. A massive pillar of fire erupted from the center of the rig, blowing the steel infrastructure apart. The shockwave knocked us off our feet, sliding us across the slick deck toward the edge of the platform.

The rig began to groan, listing heavily to the port side as the ocean rushed in to claim it.

"The chopper!" Vance yelled, pointing to our extraction bird hovering just off the edge of the collapsing pad.

We sprinted, leaping over the widening chasm of tearing metal, and dove into the open side door of the helicopter.

"Get us out of here!" Vance ordered the pilot.

We banked hard, pulling away just as Site Echo imploded, collapsing in on itself and sinking beneath the violent waves of the North Sea. Vanguard’s nerve center, their data, and their leaders were gone.

And so was my father.

I slumped against the cold wall of the chopper, staring out at the burning debris floating on the black water. Tears mixed with the rain on my face. He was truly gone this time. No decoys. No tricks.

But he had won.

Three months later.

I sat in a small café in Florence, Italy, sipping espresso. My dark hair was dyed blonde, my Naval Intelligence credentials burned and buried. The world believed Commander Sarah Donovan had died in a tragic car accident the night of her father's funeral.

Vance sat across from me, sliding a newspaper across the table.

The headline read: Massive Corruption Scandal Rocks Global Markets; Shadow Syndicate Exposed.

The data drives had done their job. Vanguard was dismantled.

"We did it," Vance said quietly.

I looked out at the bustling Italian street, feeling the warmth of the sun for the first time in months. I touched the silver key, number 42, which I now wore on a chain around my neck.