Chương 10
Daniel said nothing.
“He made me say it until I believed it.”
“I don’t know if that’s exactly—”
“I remember.”
“Fragments are not the same as context.”
“Stop protecting me.”
“I’m protecting the truth.”
She stared at him.
His voice remained quiet.
“If you testify later, people will ask what you know and how you know it. If you turn every image in your head into certainty tonight, Kane’s lawyers won’t need to destroy you. You’ll do it yourself.”
Claire hated him for being right.
She sat.
After a minute she said, “You’re still controlling.”
Daniel nodded.
“Probably.”
It made her laugh.
The next morning, the ship entered port under a cloudless sky.
Claire stood near a window while investigators boarded.
She had slept forty-three minutes.
Bell had counted.
Daniel had slept three hours.
Jonathan apparently had not slept at all.
NCIS agents separated them again.
Claire spent four hours giving a statement to Special Agent Lena Ortiz, a compact woman with silver at her temples and the patient expression of somebody who considered silence a tool.
Ortiz did not call Claire brave.
She did not call Kane evil.
She did not promise justice.
Claire liked her immediately.
“Start with what you personally observed,” Ortiz said.
Claire did.
When she reached the memories, Ortiz stopped her.
“Observed or remembered?”
“Remembered.”
“Certain?”
“No.”
“Good.”
Claire frowned.
“Good?”
“Good that you know the difference.”
Ortiz wrote something.
Claire stared at the pen.
“Everybody keeps saying that.”
“Because cases get destroyed when frightened people become too certain.”
“Daniel said almost the same thing.”
“Daniel sounds annoying.”
“He is.”
Ortiz looked up.
“You remember him being annoying?”
Claire paused.
“No.”
“Then he currently seems annoying.”
Claire almost smiled.
“See why words matter?”
“Yes.”
Ortiz continued.
The challenge coin was photographed, sealed, and transferred into evidence.
The recorder was examined.
The short message remained recoverable.
Audio specialists would need time to evaluate whether it had been altered. Claire was warned not to assume the recording alone proved anything.
The identification bands were stronger.
So were the hidden detention spaces.
So were the medical personnel.
So was Daniel Mercer sitting alive in a secured hospital room while federal agents compared his fingerprints and dental records to old files.
Kane said nothing after requesting counsel.
Jonathan Mercer gave investigators unrestricted access to his personal office and classified correspondence related to the original program.
That decision caused immediate problems.
Some material exceeded the investigative team’s initial clearance.
People began making phone calls to people who made other phone calls.
By afternoon, senior officials were involved.
By evening, Jonathan had been temporarily removed from operational duties pending review of his role in authorizing the program.
He did not contest it.
Claire heard that from Ortiz.
She felt satisfaction.
Then guilt for feeling satisfaction.
Then irritation at the guilt.
Human emotions, she decided, were badly organized.
Three days later, she was at a military hospital on shore when Daniel walked into her room carrying two coffees.
He had shaved.
Claire disliked it.
“Put the beard back.”
He touched his jaw.
“Good morning to you too.”
“You look twelve.”
“I’m forty.”
“Debatable.”
He handed her a cup.
She smelled it.
“Decaf?”
“Regular.”
“Maybe I did love you.”
Daniel sat.
The joke landed wrong.
Claire stared at the coffee.
“Sorry.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
He rubbed his thumb along the cup seam.
“There isn’t a manual for this.”
“There should be.”
“What would the first page say?”
“Don’t tell a woman with memory loss that you used to sleep together while she’s trapped on a ship.”
“That seems overly specific.”
“It’s a growing field.”
He laughed.
This time she did too.
Then silence settled between them.
Claire had undergone imaging, blood tests, neurological examinations, psychiatric evaluations, and enough interviews to make her dislike chairs.
No doctor had offered a clean explanation.
Her existing blast history complicated everything.
Medication records from the ship were incomplete.
Some substances found in her blood could explain confusion and impaired recall, but not every gap. Some missing memories predated the recent detention by years.
The physicians kept saying longitudinal evaluation.
Claire hated the phrase almost as much as protective medical observation.
“Ortiz came by,” Daniel said.
“She comes by every day.”
“She told me they found archived video.”
Claire looked up.
“Of what?”
“Old sessions.”
Her stomach tightened.
“You watched it?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re in it.”
“So?”
“So you decide first.”
Claire stared at him.
“That’s unexpectedly mature.”
“I’m having a difficult week.”
She took a drink of coffee.
Too hot.
She burned her tongue.
“Damn it.”
Daniel waited.
“What does the video show?”
“They wouldn’t tell me much. Enough to confirm we were both in the program.”
“And Kane?”
“Yes.”
“Jonathan?”
“Not in the sessions.”
She looked at him.
“You call him Jonathan now?”
“Sometimes.”
“Why?”
Daniel stared out the window.
In the parking lot below, a man struggled to fold a stroller while a toddler stood beside him eating something orange from a bag.
“My father and I had a bad relationship before this.”
“That’s obvious.”
“He wanted me in command.”
“You went intelligence.”
“He considered that a personal insult for approximately eight years.”
“Efficient family.”
“My mother translated us.”
Claire looked at him.
“When she died?”
“We got worse.”
Daniel watched the man finally force the stroller into a car trunk.
“I found the irregularities in the program partly because of him.”
“Meaning?”
“I wanted to prove something he had approved was flawed.”
Claire frowned.
“That’s petty.”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
He looked at her.
“What?”
“Everyone keeps trying to make this clean. Kane is a monster, Jonathan is negligent, you’re the heroic dead son, I’m the victim.”
“You don’t like being the victim.”
“I hate it.”
“Being one doesn’t mean it’s your identity.”
She gave him a look.
“That sounded like therapy language.”
“I’ve been in a hospital for three days. It’s contagious.”
Claire drank her coffee.
“Did you find the program because you hated your father?”
“No.”
“Did it help?”
May you like
Daniel considered.
“It made me look harder.”
