Chapter 6 - THE SECOND REPORT
Rebecca played the remaining recordings one at a time.
Daniel’s voice became more dangerous with each one.
The second was recorded sixteen hours before Grey Current.
“Pike says the admiral wants the failure rate changed from red to amber.”
Daniel sounded irritated.
“He says replacement parts are delayed and Marcus does not want the inspection team grounding two platforms during the exercise window.”
A chair creaked in the background.
“I told him that is not our call.”
Then Daniel laughed softly.
“He told me I am too young to understand strategic readiness.”
The third recording was made four hours later.
“Rowan pushed back again.”
This time Daniel sounded worried.
“She submitted a written exception.”
My throat tightened.
I had forgotten the exact wording of the exception, but I remembered the feeling of signing it.
The lonely certainty that something was wrong while everyone senior to me insisted the numbers were acceptable.
Daniel continued.
“Marcus asked why she keeps forcing paper into issues that can be handled by professionals.”
A pause.
“I think that means he is angry because paper survives.”
Trent looked at me.
The same thought had occurred to him.
Paper survived.
Unless someone forged it.
Unless someone rerouted it.
Unless someone built a second record around it.
Rebecca pressed play on the final recording.
Daniel’s voice was quieter.
“Rebecca, if I’m wrong, you’ll never hear this.”
A long pause.
“If I’m right, ask for the raw maintenance logs.”
My breath stopped.
“Not the summary.”
“Not the inspection package.”
“The raw logs.”
Another pause.
“And if anyone tells you Rowan ordered me into a casualty space, they’re lying.”
I closed my eyes.
Rebecca did not look at me.
Daniel’s voice continued.
“She is the only one in this chain who tried to stop this from becoming dangerous.”
The recording ended.
For four years, Rebecca had possessed proof that her husband did not blame me.
Yet she had still believed Marcus.
I could not understand it.
Maybe she saw the question on my face.
“I did not find these until six months ago.”
I looked at her.
“Where were they?”
“In a box from storage.”
“Why didn’t you contact me?”
Her eyes filled, but she did not cry.
“Because I was ashamed.”
“Of what?”
“Believing him.”
I had no answer for that.
Shame made people hide from the very person who could release them from it.
My father understood that too.
“How did Marcus know about the recordings?” Price asked.
Rebecca shook her head.
“I don’t know that he did.”
“Then why was your house searched for a letter?”
“I told Claire about the letter.”
The room changed.
I stared at her.
“My stepmother?”
Rebecca nodded.
“She called me two months ago.”
“Why?”
“She said she was organizing old family and command correspondence for Marcus’s retirement archive.”
“My father is not retiring.”
“I know that now.”
“What did you tell her?”
“That Daniel had left a letter about the weeks before Grey Current.”
“Did you tell her about the recordings?”
“No.”
“Where is the letter?”
Rebecca looked toward the back hallway.
“Gone.”
“Was it taken today?”
“Yes.”
Price’s voice became hard.
“What was in it?”
Rebecca sat again.
“Names.”
“What names?”
“Marcus Vale.”
No surprise.
“Thomas Pike.”
Again, no surprise.
She swallowed.
“And Victor Sloane.”
That one landed.
The retired admiral in Portugal.
The Lantern name.
The destination connected to Tessa’s ticket.
Trent stepped away and called someone from the hall.
Price stared at Rebecca.
“Why was Sloane in Daniel’s letter?”
“He said Sloane was the person Marcus called when inspection data needed to disappear from the readiness review.”
My father had not merely changed numbers.
He had built a channel to protect those changes from higher review.
Grey Current was no longer a family story about favoritism.
It was a readiness fraud story.
Possibly an obstruction story.
Possibly worse.
I should have felt vindicated.
Instead, I felt sick.
Daniel had died in a compartment whose systems may have been known to be unreliable.
And the man responsible for hiding that risk had spent four years telling the widow that I was to blame.
I walked into the backyard because the kitchen suddenly felt too small.
Cold wind came off the water.
I gripped the porch railing.
Price joined me after a minute.
“You need to be careful what you do with this.”
I looked at her.
“You are still giving me caution?”
“Yes.”
“After hearing that?”
“Especially after hearing that.”
I turned toward her.
“Daniel died.”
“I know.”
“My father may have known those systems were unsafe.”
“I know.”
“He blamed me.”
“I know.”
“And your concern is that I might be impolite with the evidence?”
“My concern is that anger makes smart officers obvious.”
The sentence stopped me.
Price lowered her voice.
“Marcus has spent his entire career surviving by predicting how people will react to pressure.”
“He knows you will want to confront him.”
“He knows you will want to defend Harker.”
“He knows you will want to expose the lie immediately.”
She stepped closer.
“So ask yourself what he prepared for the moment you learned the truth.”
Phase Two.
The forged psych evaluation.
The leak.
The fake call in Price’s voice.
My father had always been at least one move ahead.
Until the ballroom.
That was why he looked afraid.
He had not expected the investigation to arrive publicly.
“What do we do?” I asked.
“We stop reacting.”
“And start?”
“Choosing what he sees.”
That was the first moment I realized Admiral Joanna Price was not simply investigating Marcus.
She had decided to hunt him.
Inside, Trent returned with news.
The Dulles booking had been canceled.
Not by Tessa.
Not by the travel contractor.
By someone using a Lantern authorization from a secure terminal inside Naval Station Norfolk.
Ten minutes after Tessa sent us the receipt.
“They know we saw it,” I said.
“Yes,” Trent replied.
“How?”
“We’re tracing the relay.”
“Meaning we don’t know.”
“Correct.”
The compromised investigation was not a theory anymore.
Someone was seeing our moves almost in real time.
Price made a decision.
“From this point forward, nothing about Harker goes into the main case system.”
Trent nodded.
“What about the recordings?”
“Air-gapped copy.”
“Chain of custody?”
“Manual.”
I watched them shift from normal procedure into containment.
That should have reassured me.
It did not.
Because it confirmed the scale of the problem.
Rebecca signed an evidence transfer for the recorder.
Before we left, she stopped me at the door.
“Rowan.”
I turned.
“I’m sorry.”
The words were simple.
They were also four years late.
I thought I would feel anger.
Instead, I felt tired.
“You lost your husband.”
“That doesn’t excuse what I believed.”
“No.”
She flinched slightly.
I continued.
“But Marcus knew what grief would make believable.”
Her eyes lowered.
“That is what he does.”
She looked at me again.
“There is one more thing.”
“What?”
“Daniel had a paper copy of the raw logs.”
Price stepped closer.
“Where?”
“I don’t know.”
“He said he kept them somewhere Marcus could not touch.”
“Did he mention a place?”
“Only once.”
She closed her eyes, trying to remember.
“He said, ‘If the fleet wants truth, tell them to look where sailors go when the ship is gone.’”
I frowned.
“That could mean anything.”
Rebecca shook her head.
“Daniel liked riddles.”
I did too, once.
Before command trained the patience out of me.
Sailors go somewhere when the ship is gone.
A memorial.
A veterans’ hall.
A cemetery.
A shore assignment.
I filed it away.
We left the house at 1700.
At 1722, Trent received an emergency call.
He listened without speaking.
Then his face changed.
“What?” Price asked.
He looked at me first.
That was never good.
“Captain Thomas Pike was scheduled to land at Reagan National thirty minutes ago.”
“Scheduled?”
“He never boarded his flight.”
“Where is he?”
“No one knows.”
Price cursed under her breath.
My phone was still in evidence, so I did not see the breaking alert until Trent showed me his screen.
A Washington defense reporter had posted a photograph of Captain Pike leaving a hotel at 0612 that morning.
Beside him was my father.
The caption read:
ADMIRAL VALE MEETS KEY GREY CURRENT OFFICER HOURS BEFORE INVESTIGATION EXPANDS.
It looked like exactly what it was.
Witness coordination.
Unless Marcus wanted it to look that way.
“Too obvious,” I said.
Price nodded.
“Yes.”
“Then why meet him in public?”
Trent answered.
“Because maybe Pike was never the witness he needed to hide.”
A message arrived on his secure device.
He read it once.
Then again.
“What?” I asked.
Trent turned the screen toward us.
A flight manifest had been flagged at Dulles.
One passenger had checked in for the Lisbon flight before Tessa’s ticket was canceled.
Rear Admiral Victor Sloane.
He was not waiting in Portugal.
He was in Virginia.
May you like
And he was leaving tonight.
