Chương 7
The crew chief backed away.
Serrano approached with two Marines.
Kane stepped down from the aircraft.
His gaze found Claire.
“You have no idea what you’re protecting.”
Claire’s breathing stayed slow.
“Neither do you, apparently.”
“You think Daniel is reliable?”
Jonathan moved toward him.
Serrano put an arm out.
“Sir.”
Jonathan stopped.
Kane smiled faintly.
“You hit her because for one second you knew what she was.”
Jonathan’s face went hard.
Claire looked at him.
Kane continued.
“You knew she was compromised before she showed you the coin.”
Jonathan said nothing.
Claire turned.
“What does he mean?”
Kane’s eyes stayed on the admiral.
“He signed the original authorization.”
Jonathan’s expression told her enough.
The helicopter beat the air around them.
Claire looked at the four-star officer standing barefoot in wet socks on the flight deck.
“You knew about the program.”
Jonathan answered carefully.
“I authorized a resilience research initiative.”
“On me?”
“No.”
Kane laughed.
It was the first uncontrolled sound Claire had heard from him.
“You authorized operational testing on volunteers drawn from classified units. You approved security compartmentation. You approved memory-interference research.”
Jonathan stepped forward.
“I approved controlled therapeutic research under informed consent.”
“You approved the walls. You didn’t ask what happened inside them.”
“That is not the same thing.”
“No,” Kane said. “It’s much more useful.”
Serrano reached him.
“Kneel.”
Kane looked at Claire.
“Ask Daniel why Subject Two came back.”
Claire’s skin tightened.
“What?”
“Kneel,” Serrano repeated.
Kane obeyed.
Two Marines secured his hands behind him.
The silver ring caught the sunset.
Claire stared at it.
Kane noticed.
“It isn’t jewelry.”
“What is it?”
He smiled.
Serrano pulled him upright.
Kane said, “A key.”
Claire took one step toward him.
Jonathan blocked her.
“Let him go.”
Kane was led away.
Claire watched until the bulkhead swallowed him.
Then she turned on Jonathan.
“You authorized this.”
“I told you what I authorized.”
“You authorized enough that he could hide behind your name.”
Jonathan did not answer.
“That’s why he was near you.”
“No.”
“You said he worked for you.”
“He did.”
“He used your access. Your authority. Your son.”
Jonathan’s voice lowered.
“I know.”
Claire looked at the red mark still burning across her cheek.
“And you hit me.”
The admiral’s face changed.
He did not defend himself.
That helped less than she expected.
“I did.”
Serrano approached.
“Sir, we need statements separated.”
Jonathan nodded.
Claire said, “Good.”
She walked away from him.
By midnight, the warship had become a place full of people pretending it was still a warship.
Watch schedules continued. Engineering crews repaired electrical faults. Sailors ate reheated food. Someone complained loudly in a passage because a vending machine had gone offline during the power interruption and taken three dollars without dispensing pretzels.
Claire heard the complaint while sitting in the medical compartment with six stitches above her ankle.
For some reason, that nearly broke her.
She lowered her head and laughed.
Bell looked over.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“You’re laughing at the wall.”
“A sailor lost three dollars.”
“And?”
“I don’t know.”
Bell returned to documenting the cut.
“Shock is weird.”
“Is that a diagnosis?”
“No. That costs extra.”
Claire glanced toward Daniel.
He was asleep in the next bay.
Jonathan was not there.
Serrano had separated them all for statements and evidence preservation. The cracked recorder sat inside a clear bag on a counter. Daniel’s coin occupied another.
Claire kept looking at it.
Bell noticed.
“Want me to cover it?”
“No.”
“You keep staring at it.”
“I keep expecting it to turn into something else.”
“Coins rarely do.”
“You should put that on a recruiting poster.”
He finished taping gauze over her stitches.
“Captain, there’s something we need to talk about.”
She stiffened.
“No sedatives.”
“I was going to say food.”
“Oh.”
“You haven’t eaten.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“That has never prevented the human body from needing food.”
He handed her a packet of crackers and peanut butter.
Claire looked at it.
“Special operations.”
“What?”
“This is the reward?”
“For getting slapped by an admiral, escaping illegal confinement, and starting what is definitely going to become the worst administrative week of my life? Yes. Peanut butter.”
She opened the crackers.
Her hands shook badly enough that the first one broke.
Bell pretended not to see.
After a while Claire said, “Did you know?”
“About the cells?”
“Yes.”
“No.”
“You work medical.”
“I work medical on a ship with more locked doors than common sense.”
“But Daniel was brought here.”
“Tonight.”
“You didn’t ask why a dead admiral’s son was in restraints?”
Bell looked at her.
“I didn’t know who he was.”
That was fair.
She hated fair answers.
“They told us he was a classified detainee transferred from shore.”
“Did he tell you his name?”
“He didn’t talk much.”
“Why?”
Bell folded a piece of discarded packaging in half, then half again.
“He’d learned talking didn’t help.”
Claire stopped eating.
Bell put the paper down.
“Sorry.”
“No.”
She looked through the narrow window into Daniel’s bay.
“That sounds right.”
Jonathan appeared near one in the morning.
He had changed into a working uniform borrowed from an officer roughly his size. The sleeves were slightly short.
Claire noticed before anything else.
It was easier than looking at his face.
He stopped outside her bay.
“May I come in?”
She almost said no.
Instead she shrugged.
He entered.
Bell found something to do across the compartment.
Jonathan stood rather than sitting.
“Serrano recovered Kane’s storage case.”
Claire waited.
“It contains encrypted archives. Park believes copies may survive elsewhere. She’s preserving the hardware.”
“Good.”
“NCIS has been notified. A team will meet the ship when we reach port.”
“Good.”
“I have also notified my chief of staff that I am recusing myself from command decisions involving the investigation.”
Claire looked up.
“That was fast.”
“It was necessary.”
“Because of Daniel?”
“Because of me.”
She set the crackers aside.
Jonathan looked older without his dress uniform.
“I found the original authorization.”
May you like
Claire said nothing.
“I signed it six years ago.”
