Chương 7
Shah corrected herself. “We’ll help you obtain them.”
“I want a secure copy of every document using my name.”
Walsh said, “Some material remains compartmented.”
Emma looked at her.
“I was burned inside the compartment.”
Walsh held her gaze for several seconds.
“I’ll seek authorization.”
“No. You’ll seek a reason to deny it.”
A small muscle moved near Walsh’s jaw. “I’ll seek authorization.”
Emma stood again, this time because the meeting was over.
Hale rose with her. “Will you return tomorrow?”
“I haven’t agreed to help.”
“No.”
“Stop saluting me in public.”
His expression almost softened. “Understood.”
At the door, Cho said, “Commander Reed.”
She turned despite herself.
He held up the page marked SURVIVING PRIMARY WITNESS.
“You should keep this.”
“Why?”
“Because they kept turning you into a status. It may help to see how they did it.”
Emma took the page.
Outside, the late afternoon light made her squint. A petty officer had brought a plain Navy sweatshirt and athletic pants from the base exchange. The sweatshirt was two sizes too large. Emma changed in a restroom, folded Evelyn Park’s linen wrap, and placed the torn blue shirt into a paper evidence bag Ortiz had sent from the beach.
One snapped button remained in her pocket.
Her phone showed thirty-seven missed calls.
Most were unknown numbers. Three were from her father. One was from Vanessa before the agents had taken her phone. Two were from Evelyn Park.
There were also messages from people Emma had not heard from in years.
Saw what happened. Are you okay?
I’m so sorry. I had no idea.
Call me if you need anything.
A video thumbnail appeared in one message from an unfamiliar number.
Emma did not open it.
She turned the phone face down on the sink counter and washed sand from her feet with paper towels. The restroom had no bench, so she balanced against the wall while pulling on the athletic pants.
Someone knocked.
“Occupied.”
“It’s me,” Hale said from the hallway.
Emma stared at the door.
“Admirals usually wait outside women’s restrooms?”
“Only when they’ve misplaced commanders for five years.”
Against her will, a breath of amusement escaped her.
It hurt.
“I need transportation,” she said.
“Where?”
“Home.”
He paused. “Where is home?”
The question was practical.
It still took her several seconds to answer.
“Encinitas.”
Her apartment sat over a surf repair shop on a street that smelled of wax, coffee, and ocean-damp wood. Hale’s driver stopped at the curb while evening traffic crawled past. Emma declined an escort upstairs.
“Someone may be watching your residence,” Hale said.
“Someone has been watching it for years.”
“That is not reassuring.”
“It wasn’t meant to be.”
He handed her a secure phone. “This reaches my office and Special Agent Ortiz.”
Emma examined it. “Does Bell have the number?”
“No.”
“You said that last time about secure channels.”
Hale accepted the phone back, removed the battery in front of her, wrote a number on a blank card, and handed her the card instead.
“Call from any device you trust.”
“I don’t trust devices.”
“Then call from one you distrust equally.”
She looked at him.
The dry answer seemed to surprise them both.
Emma put the card in her pocket beside the button.
At the top of the narrow stairs, she found her landlord replacing a lightbulb in the exterior fixture. Mr. Alvarez was seventy and wore the same green mechanic’s shirt most days, though he had never repaired a car in the years Emma had known him.
He looked at the Navy sweatshirt, the government SUV, and the paper evidence bag.
“Bad picnic?”
“My sister tore my shirt.”
He considered this.
“My brother threw a chair at me at a baptism.”
“Did it help?”
“No. But the baby slept through it.”
Emma nodded.
Mr. Alvarez finished tightening the bulb. “There are reporters near the back alley.”
“Already?”
“One has hair like a helmet.”
“National news?”
“Maybe local. Very serious hair.”
Emma unlocked her apartment.
He touched her elbow lightly before she entered.
“I told them you moved.”
“Thank you.”
“You should move.”
“I can’t afford to.”
“I mean for tonight.”
Inside, the apartment looked exactly as she had left it that morning: one mug in the sink, shoes beneath the chair, a stack of library books overdue by three days. Normality felt staged.
She locked the door and stood in the small living room without turning on a light.
Her father had invited her to the beach through a two-line email.
I would like you to attend the foundation reception Saturday. There are people who should see that we are capable of being in the same place.
Not reconciliation. Optics.
Emma had replied yes because she was tired of organizing her life around avoiding him.
Now a video of Vanessa tearing open her shirt was spreading across phones.
She showered until the water cooled. Scar tissue along her back remained numb in some places and painfully sensitive in others. She dressed in soft black pants and an old gray T-shirt. When she opened the bathroom door, someone was knocking downstairs.
Mr. Alvarez’s voice rose.
“I said she moved.”
“Dad,” Emma called through the window.
Silence below.
Then Harrison Reed said, “I need five minutes.”
Mr. Alvarez muttered something in Spanish that Emma did not catch. The exterior stairs creaked.
She opened the door before her father knocked.
He had changed nothing except his expression. The navy polo remained tucked into beige trousers. Sand clung to the edges of his shoes. His foundation pin was gone.
“I came alone,” he said.
“I assumed Vanessa wasn’t available.”
He looked down.
That had been petty. Emma let it stand.
“Five minutes,” she said.
He entered and immediately seemed too large for the apartment. Harrison had always occupied rooms through posture. Here, beneath the low ceiling and beside a bookcase made from unfinished boards, the posture looked like something he had forgotten how to remove.
May you like
His gaze moved over the room.
“You’ve lived here long?”
