Chapter 3 - Blood and Steel
The pain in my back had settled into a dull, throbbing ache by the time the Navy physician at Portsmouth finished applying the silver sulfadiazine cream and fresh sterile dressings. Because the grafts lacked normal nerve endings, the sensation wasn't the sharp bite of torn skin, but rather a sickening, deep-tissue burn that radiated up into my neck and down through my spine.
Nathan had waited outside the examination room for two hours. When I walked out wearing Navy-issue blue coveralls—the only clothing they had on hand that fit me—he was leaning against the cinderblock wall, drinking vending-machine coffee that smelled like scorched asphalt.
He pushed off the wall and fell into step beside me as we walked down the sterile, fluorescent-lit corridor.
“The Admiral went home to get three hours of sleep,” Nathan said. “She gave orders that you’re not to return to your apartment tonight.”
I stopped in the middle of the hallway. “Why? My apartment is in Ghent. It’s quiet.”
“Your sister is currently bonded out,” Nathan said grimly. “Trent’s lawyers had a magistrate on retainer. They posted his preliminary bond thirty minutes after the cuffs went on. By now, Marin knows she’s looking at misdemeanor assault charges, and Trent knows he’s facing federal wire fraud, procurement fraud, and potentially negligent manslaughter charges.”
“They won't come near me,” I said, though my stomach churned at the thought of facing Marin’s venomous shrieking again.
“Trent Vance is backed into a corner, Maya,” Nathan said, his voice dropping an octave. “He didn't just sell those valves to the *Ignatius*. His company currently holds fifty-two active contracts with Naval Sea Systems Command. We’re talking about safety escape hatches on nuclear submarines, fire-suppression manifolds on amphibious assault ships, and hydraulic couplings on catapult systems. If Trent goes down, he takes down thirty other suppliers and at least three active flag officers who signed off on the waivers.”
I leaned back against the cool wall, closing my eyes. The smell of the hospital was too close to the burn unit where I had spent nine months after the accident.
*Norway. January 2019.*
The memory hit me with the force of a hydraulic hammer.
The deck of the *Paul Ignatius* shuddering beneath my steel-toed boots. The deafening, ear-splitting scream of four-inch high-pressure steam line shearing off at the manifold. Within three seconds, the auxiliary machinery room had vanished into an opaque, white wall of vapor at four hundred and fifty degrees.
I remembered screaming into the sound-powered telephone, ordering the bilge pumps to maximum, ordering my fire party to clear the compartment. But the valve wouldn't seat. The wheel was jammed. If the steam kept escaping, it would siphon into the ventilation ducting and roast twenty men sleeping in Berthing Three directly above us.
I had dropped the phone, grabbed the steel pipe from the tool rack, and dove down the ladder into the fog.
The heat had hit me through my coveralls like boiling grease. I couldn't see my hands. I couldn't breathe. My lungs burned with every short gasp. When I reached the wheel, the metal was glowing dull orange through the steam. The moment my gloved hands gripped the spoke, the leather melted. I threw my entire weight against the cheater bar, hearing the scream of metal deforming—and then the valve stem sheared halfway through, slicing through the meat of my shoulder before the seal finally dropped into place.
I hadn't cried out. There wasn't enough air in my lungs to scream.
“Maya.”
Nathan’s hand touched my shoulder—not the scarred right side, but the solid, uninjured left. His touch was warm, steady, grounding.
I opened my eyes. Nathan was looking at me with an intensity that made my heart hitch in my chest. We had been ensigns together at Newport, back before he went to NCIS and I went to the Fleet. He had been the one who carried me off the medevac chopper in Rota, Spain. I still remembered the feel of his tears dripping onto my forehead while the medics cut away my charred clothing.
“You’re safe,” Nathan said. “You’re staying at my place in Virginia Beach. It’s secured. Gated community, dead-end street, and my service weapon is in the nightstand. Nobody touches you.”
“Nathan, I can’t drag you into the middle of this—”
“You didn't drag me anywhere,” he interrupted, his gray eyes unyielding. “I volunteered fourteen months ago when Judith Carrow walked into my office with your personnel file. I’ve been waiting five years to tear Trent Vance’s world apart with my bare hands. Now come on.”
We walked out into the cold Virginia night.
As we pulled onto the Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel, my phone buzzed in my pocket. I pulled it out.
The screen lit up with three missed calls from an unknown number, followed by a voice memo from my father.
My thumb hovered over the screen. Nathan glanced over from the driver’s seat. “You don't have to listen to it.”
“Yes, I do,” I said. “I need to hear what a ghost sounds like.”
I tapped play and held the speaker to my ear.
My father’s voice was thick, slurred slightly with the bourbon he always drank after eight in the evening. But beneath the alcohol was a desperate, burning rage.
*“Maya. You think you’ve won something tonight? You think that woman with her four stars can protect you from what happens to this family? You have disgraced our name. You have brought the federal government down on your sister’s husband over an engineering malfunction that was signed off by three separate review boards. You call Carrow tomorrow morning and tell her you won't testify. You tell her the statement you gave in the ambulance was coerced. If you don't... you are dead to me, Maya. You will not have a penny, you will not have an inheritance, and you will never set foot in the Alden house again.”*
The line clicked dead.
I looked at the phone for a long second, then rolled down the passenger window. The cold, wet wind off the Chesapeake Bay flooded the cabin.
May you like
With a quick flick of my wrist, I hurled the phone out into the black water below.
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