Chapter 7 - The Desperate Move
By ten o'clock the following morning, the procurement offices at the Washington Navy Yard were locked down under tight security.
I was seated in an executive briefing room on the third floor of Building 197. Beside me sat Nathan Reddick, dressed in his crisp service dress blues, and Special Agent Marcus Cole of NCIS. On the large display screens lining the wall were the digital logs of Halston Marine’s internal servers.
Derek hadn't gone to federal prosecutors.
Instead, in a blind panic of self-preservation, he had done something far more reckless. He had sent an encrypted email package to three major defense trade publications and two congressional oversight committees. The email accused me of using my military connections to sabotage Halston Marine’s bid in order to clear the way for a rival firm, claiming I had illegally stolen proprietary trade secrets to fabricate safety violations.
Attached to the email were altered fragments of my technical reports, stripped of their context, making it appear as though I had forged test data.
“He really is an idiot,” Agent Cole remarked, scrolling through the raw metadata on his tablet. “He used an unsecured public Wi-Fi network at a coffee shop three blocks from the hotel to upload files marked with Department of Defense classification headers. We tracked his IP address within four minutes of transmission.”
“Where is he now?” Nathan asked.
“He’s at Halston Marine’s corporate headquarters in Bethesda,” Cole said. “Arthur Vance banned him from the executive suites, but Derek still has access to the public lobby and the media relations office. He called an emergency press briefing for eleven hundred hours.”
Nathan looked at me. “He’s going to double down. He knows his career is finished, so he’s trying to drag your reputation down with him to force a settlement.”
“He thinks I’m still the quiet girl who hid her leg behind long skirts,” I said, standing up from the conference table. My uniform—the formal service dress blues of a retired Lieutenant Commander, brought out of storage that morning with every ribbon polished—fit as perfectly as it had a decade ago.
On my left breast hung the ribbons: the Navy and Marine Corps Medal for heroism, the Purple Heart with gold star, and the Defense Meritorious Service Medal.
“Are you ready for this, Mara?” Nathan asked, his eyes filled with quiet admiration.
May you like
“I spent three years letting that man speak for me,” I said, adjusting the cuffs of my jacket. “It’s time he hears what I actually sound like.”
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