Chapter 3 - The Secret Behind Northstar
Daniel reached the garden door before anyone else.
I caught his arm.
“No.”
He looked at me.
“If someone's out there—”
“That's exactly why you don't open it.”
Old habits returned quickly.
I killed the lights near the rear windows.
Grandpa moved the family away from the glass.
Harper called base security through a private number.
Carter stood frozen.
I hated how natural it all felt.
Threat.
Assessment.
Movement.
Protection.
Northstar had trained me for emergencies.
Or maybe emergencies had trained me for Northstar.
Two security officers arrived seven minutes later.
Nobody was found.
A shoe impression near the hedges.
A damaged section of fence.
Nothing more.
The photograph had been sent through a disposable relay.
No useful metadata.
Whoever was doing this had experience.
By ten o'clock, everyone except Harper, Grandpa, Daniel, Carter, and me had been moved to Elaine's house.
Diane argued.
Hannah demanded answers.
Grandpa ended both conversations with one sentence.
“Tonight, ignorance is safer.”
They hated it.
So did I.
When the house finally quieted, we returned to the dining room.
The food was cold.
Half-empty glasses still surrounded the flowers.
Carter's chair remained pushed away from the table.
Grandpa sat in his old place.
I stayed standing.
“Start talking.”
He nodded.
“Northstar began as an intelligence support operation.”
“I know what it began as.”
“Not all of it.”
Harper sat across from him.
Daniel stayed beside me.
Grandpa folded his hands.
“The vessel you were aboard was carrying a communications package.”
“Experimental encryption hardware.”
“Yes.”
“Again. I know.”
“What you didn't know was that someone had already attempted to sell its architecture.”
That was new.
I felt my anger sharpen into focus.
“Inside threat?”
“Yes.”
“Identified?”
“No.”
“Suspects?”
“Three.”
Harper looked uncomfortable.
I caught it.
“You were one.”
“No.”
“Then who?”
Grandpa answered.
“Steven Vale.”
My former commanding officer.
I stared at him.
“Vale almost died that night.”
“Which complicated things.”
“Who else?”
“Chief Engineer Marcus Dyer.”
Dyer had retired six months after Northstar.
“And the third?”
Grandpa hesitated.
That hesitation mattered.
“Who?”
Harper answered.
“Me.”
Daniel looked at him.
“You?”
Harper nodded.
“My authorization codes were used to access the encryption package three days before the incident.”
“And now your credentials were used again,” I said.
“Yes.”
Carter finally spoke.
“So someone is framing him twice?”
“Possibly,” Harper said.
“Or he's guilty twice,” I replied.
Harper accepted that without protest.
Good.
I walked toward the window.
The garden was dark beyond my reflection.
“What exactly happened that night?”
Grandpa answered carefully.
“Someone altered the cooling controls in the compartment containing the communications equipment.”
“I saw the failure report.”
“It was falsified.”
“By whom?”
“We never proved it.”
“And the fire?”
“Triggered by overheating.”
“The flooding?”
“Secondary damage.”
“The sealed bulkhead?”
Grandpa went quiet.
That silence was different.
I turned.
“What about the bulkhead?”
Harper's face told me I had found the part they feared.
“Tell me.”
Grandpa looked at me.
“The bulkhead should have released.”
“It didn't.”
“We know.”
“I had six sailors trapped behind it.”
“Yes.”
“I spent eleven minutes trying to override that lock.”
“Yes.”
My heart began pounding.
“Was that sabotage too?”
Grandpa's eyes lowered.
“Yes.”
Daniel inhaled sharply.
I could hear Northstar again.
The pounding.
The screams.
Petty Officer Lewis telling me there was smoke filling Compartment Three.
Vale unconscious.
Harper miles away.
My own hand shaking as I entered the final override code.
Six sailors survived because I ordered a manual breach through a maintenance corridor nobody believed could be opened in time.
One sailor spent four months in rehabilitation.
Another never returned to sea duty.
I had blamed myself for years.
“If I had known—”
Grandpa cut in.
“You couldn't have done anything differently.”
“You don't know that.”
“You saved them.”
“I nearly lost them.”
“You saved them.”
My voice rose.
“Because somebody tried to kill them!”
Carter flinched.
Daniel stepped closer but didn't touch me.
He knew me well enough to wait.
I looked at Grandpa.
“Why was this buried?”
“National security.”
“That's not enough.”
He looked older.
“Because we believed the saboteur was still inside the Navy.”
“Still is?”
“We don't know.”
I laughed once.
“No. You chose not to know.”
Harper leaned forward.
“We kept investigating.”
“For how long?”
Neither answered.
“That long, huh?”
Grandpa rubbed his eyes.
“Eighteen months.”
“And then?”
“The trail disappeared.”
“Or someone told you to stop.”
Another silence.
“Who?”
Harper said, “Vice Admiral Calvin Rourke.”
I knew the name.
Everyone did.
Rourke had been one of the most respected officers of his generation.
He had served on advisory boards after retirement.
He appeared at ceremonies.
He had even attended my wedding.
I remembered him shaking my hand.
Outstanding officer, he'd said.
Grandpa's eyes stayed on mine.
“Rourke oversaw the investigation.”
“And shut it down.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“He said continuing would compromise broader intelligence operations.”
“Did you believe him?”
“At the time.”
“And now?”
Grandpa looked at the photograph on the table.
“No.”
I sat down.
Finally.
Daniel took the chair beside me.
“What does any of this have to do with Carter?”
I answered before anyone else could.
“He's bait.”
Carter looked sick.
“They picked someone close enough to me to get access, proud enough to investigate, and careless enough to leave footprints.”
His expression hardened.
“I was trying to—”
“You were trying to prove I was a fraud.”
He looked down.
“Yes.”
At least he finally admitted it.
“But why now?” Daniel asked.
Harper stared at the old Navy portrait above the flag.
“Because Rourke died three weeks ago.”
I looked at him.
I hadn't heard.
“Heart attack?”
“Officially.”
“Unofficially?”
“He sent me something forty-eight hours before his death.”
Of course he did.
“What?”
“A voicemail.”
Harper pulled out his phone.
He opened a secured audio file.
Rourke's voice filled the dining room.
Older.
Weak.
Urgent.
“Jonathan. I was wrong about Northstar. Mercer was right to keep looking. The person we protected wasn't an asset. He was the leak.”
Static.
Then:
“If anything happens to me, find Reed.”
My blood chilled.
The message continued.
“She was never supposed to know why she was selected for that mission.”
The recording ended.
I stared at Harper.
“Why I was selected?”
Grandpa's face had gone white.
Not Carter-pale.
Something deeper.
I stood.
“What did he mean?”
Harper looked at William.
“No.”
I pointed at him.
“Do not look at him. Look at me.”
Harper did.
“You weren't randomly assigned to Northstar.”
“I was the operations officer.”
“You were transferred into that billet six weeks before departure.”
“Yes.”
“That transfer was requested.”
“By Vale?”
“No.”
“By you?”
“No.”
“Then who?”
Grandpa stood.
“Natalie.”
I turned toward him.
There was pain in his face.
Real pain.
“I made the request.”
Daniel stared at his grandfather.
“You?”
I felt as though the floor had shifted beneath me.
“You didn't know me then.”
William swallowed.
“Yes, I did.”
“No. We met two years later.”
“That was when you remembered meeting me.”
My pulse hammered.
“What does that mean?”
He walked toward the old cabinet beside the fireplace.
He unlocked a drawer with a key from his pocket.
Inside was a thin navy-blue folder.
He placed it on the table.
My name was handwritten across the front.
NATALIE ANNE REED.
Below it was a date.
Seventeen years earlier.
I was fifteen.
I looked at him.
“What is this?”
Grandpa opened the folder.
The first page was a photograph.
A teenage girl standing beside a Navy officer at a hospital.
Me.
And beside me—
my father.
Commander James Reed.
He had died when I was sixteen.
At least that was what I had been told.
My hands shook.
Because William Mercer was in the photograph too.
On the back were four handwritten words.
THE GIRL MUST NEVER KNOW.
I looked up.
Grandpa's eyes filled with regret.
Then he said the one sentence that broke everything open.
“Your father didn't die in the accident you were told about.”
My phone rang.
Unknown number.
I answered.
A man's voice whispered my childhood nickname.
May you like
“Nattie.”
Only one person had ever called me that.
