Chapter 6 - The Officer I Trusted Most
Shaw looked older.
That was the first thought that entered my head.
Ridiculous.
Three vehicles surrounded us.
Armed men blocked the only road.
My supposedly dead father stood five feet away.
And I was noticing Edward Shaw's gray hair.
Maybe the mind protects itself by choosing small things.
“Natalie,” his amplified voice called again. “We need to talk.”
James moved toward the rear wall.
“There is another exit.”
“Where?”
“Under the floor.”
Of course there was.
He kicked aside an old mat.
A metal hatch.
Harper stared at him.
“You built an escape route?”
“I've had seventeen years to develop healthy paranoia.”
Daniel muttered, “I'm starting to like him.”
I gave my husband a look.
“Bad timing.”
“Very.”
Grandpa opened the hatch.
A narrow maintenance tunnel ran beneath the pier.
Harper contacted the security team through a short-range encrypted radio.
They had been intercepted half a mile away.
Not harmed.
Blocked.
Shaw wanted control, not a firefight.
That gave us an advantage.
He still cared about appearances.
I took the radio.
“Edward.”
Silence outside.
Then:
“There you are.”
“What do you want?”
“You know.”
“I don't have the compass.”
“I know.”
That surprised me.
“Then why ask for it?”
“To see if James had told you yet.”
My father cursed under his breath.
Shaw laughed over the speaker.
“You always were predictable, Jim.”
I looked at James.
“Can he hear us?”
“Possibly.”
“Good.”
I raised my voice.
“You framed Harper.”
“Yes.”
Harper's jaw tightened.
“You ordered Dyer to sabotage Northstar.”
“Yes.”
No hesitation.
That bothered me.
People confess easily when they think consequences can't reach them.
“You tried to kill Vale.”
“No.”
I paused.
“No?”
“I ordered him removed from command. Dyer exceeded instructions.”
James whispered, “Liar.”
Shaw continued.
“Northstar was never intended to produce casualties.”
“Six sailors nearly died behind a locked bulkhead.”
“And you saved them.”
His voice changed.
Almost proud.
The way he had sounded when I was twenty-four.
“You always exceeded expectations.”
My skin crawled.
“Don't.”
“Don't what?”
“Talk to me like you had anything to do with the officer I became.”
Silence.
Then:
“I had everything to do with it.”
That landed harder than I expected.
“You selected me for advanced operations training.”
“Yes.”
“You knew who my father was.”
“Of course.”
“You stayed close to me because of him.”
“At first.”
“And later?”
Another pause.
“I came to care about you.”
I almost laughed.
Men like Shaw used affection as a defense for possession.
“You sabotaged a ship I was aboard.”
“I didn't know Mercer had placed you on Northstar until forty-eight hours before departure.”
Grandpa looked at James.
James nodded grimly.
That part might be true.
“I tried to have you transferred,” Shaw continued. “Rourke refused.”
I looked at Grandpa.
He went pale.
“You knew?”
“No.”
Shaw answered for him.
“William knew someone wanted you off the mission. He didn't know it was me.”
Grandpa lowered his head.
More truth.
Always arriving late.
“What was Northstar really carrying?”
“The future.”
“That isn't an answer.”
“A communications architecture capable of making conventional interception nearly useless.”
“You sold it.”
“Pieces.”
“To whom?”
“People who paid more than governments appreciate admitting.”
“So this was money.”
“Initially.”
“And now?”
“Survival.”
There it was.
The first honest word.
My mother had built something capable of exposing him.
The compass contained it.
He needed the key.
“Why contact Carter?”
Shaw laughed softly.
“I didn't.”
I looked at Carter's laptop.
“Then who did?”
“Dyer.”
James swore.
I understood.
Dyer had sent the citation.
Dyer had pushed Carter to search me.
Dyer wanted me investigating.
“Why?”
Shaw answered.
“Because Marcus decided thirty years of partnership entitled him to negotiate.”
“He wants the compass too.”
“He wants leverage.”
“So the two of you are fighting.”
“Unfortunately.”
That changed everything.
We were not facing one coordinated enemy.
We were standing between two desperate men.
I looked at James.
“Where is Dyer?”
He shook his head.
“No idea.”
Shaw's voice returned.
“Natalie, listen carefully. Dyer is coming to Daniel's house.”
My breath stopped.
The compass.
“He knows where it is?”
“Yes.”
“Why tell me?”
“Because I would prefer you alive.”
“How generous.”
“I mean it.”
“That's the problem.”
Daniel moved toward the hatch.
“We need to get home.”
James stopped him.
“Not through the road.”
Grandpa gestured toward the maintenance tunnel.
We moved.
Harper stayed last.
The tunnel was narrow and damp, leading beneath three boat slips to an old service ladder.
Shaw continued speaking through the distant loudspeaker, but his words faded as we went.
When we emerged, one of Harper's security officers met us with a vehicle.
We drove without lights for the first quarter mile.
Then fast.
Very fast.
Daniel called local law enforcement.
I contacted a Navy security liaison.
This was no longer a family secret.
No more private investigations.
No more retired admirals deciding what everyone else was allowed to know.
I was done with that.
Forty minutes later, Daniel and I reached our house.
Police were already outside.
The front door was open.
My stomach dropped.
We went in behind officers.
Living room clear.
Kitchen clear.
Bedroom clear.
My jewelry box had been emptied onto the floor.
The wooden case containing the compass was gone.
Daniel cursed.
“Too late.”
I shook my head.
“No.”
“What?”
I walked to the bookshelf.
Pulled down an old hardcover dictionary.
Opened it.
The brass compass sat inside.
Daniel stared.
“You hid it in a dictionary?”
“Who reads dictionaries anymore?”
For the first time that night, he smiled.
It disappeared quickly.
I examined the compass.
Normal brass casing.
Scratched glass.
My father's initials.
J.R.
I remembered my mother's message.
One day Natalie will understand why I kept the compass.
I twisted the back.
Nothing.
James arrived ten minutes later with Grandpa and Harper.
He took one look and shook his head.
“I never figured it out.”
I examined the edge.
My mother loved puzzles.
Not complicated ones.
Elegant ones.
I pressed the north marker.
Click.
A tiny inner panel opened.
Inside was a micro-storage chip.
Harper whispered, “There it is.”
James looked like he might cry.
“Your mother.”
We connected it to an isolated laptop.
Encrypted directory.
One file opened automatically.
A video.
My mother appeared on screen.
Healthy.
Smiling.
Recorded months before her death.
“Natalie.”
I covered my mouth.
“If you're watching this, then your father was right. You found the part of the truth we tried too hard to keep from you.”
She explained the archive.
Transactions.
Names.
Dates.
Evidence against Shaw.
Against Dyer.
Against three civilian intermediaries.
Enough to prosecute.
Then she said something none of us expected.
“There is one person I chose not to name in the archive.”
Grandpa leaned toward the screen.
My mother continued.
“Because I believed he might still choose to do the right thing.”
A file appeared.
Locked.
The label read:
MERCER.
Everyone turned toward Grandpa.
His face went white.
The video ended.
Daniel stared at his grandfather.
“What did you do?”
Grandpa didn't answer.
Then the laptop chimed.
The locked file had opened.
Inside was a photograph of William Mercer shaking hands with Edward Shaw.
And beneath it—
May you like
a transfer authorization bearing Grandpa's signature.
The date was three days before Northstar.
