Chapter 5

The afternoon sun had tipped past its zenith, and the shadows had begun to lengthen across the parade ground by the time Captain Callahan stepped into the administrative building that sat at the edge of the base. She had walked there alone, declining the staff car that Rear Admiral Ashby had offered her. The walk was a message. She was still here. She had not run. She had not hidden.

The clerk at the front desk, a young petty officer with a name tape that said ANDERS, looked up as she entered. His eyes went to the red mark at the corner of her mouth, then to the rank on her collar, then back to the mark. He reached for the phone, but she shook her head.

"I'm here to file a formal complaint," she said. "Tracking number 138-7-2-14-0. My name is Captain Meredith Callahan. Commander Colin Rourke struck me on the parade ground at 11:52 this morning. I have documentation."

Anders's face went pale. He had heard the gossip, of course. The whole base had heard it within minutes. The commander who had slapped a captain, and the admiral who had used the words stand down like they were a prayer. But hearing the words formal complaint come out of the captain's mouth was different. That was a door closing.

"Yes, ma'am," he said, and reached for a form.

The form was filed in triplicate. One copy went into the local file. One copy went to the base inspector general's office. One copy, the one that mattered, was sealed in a plain white envelope with a tracking number and a return address that did not match anything on the base's official registry. Captain Callahan watched the clerk place it in the outbound basket, and she knew, with the certainty of a woman who had done this before, that the envelope would not stay in that basket for long.

She was right.

It vanished that night.