Chapter 3 - The Interrogation of Blood
The red clay roads of Wayne County hadn't changed in fifteen years. Potholes filled with muddy rainwater threatened the truck's suspension as we turned onto the long, overgrown lane leading to my childhood home.
The trailer sat in a clearing surrounded by rusted tractor parts and pine trees draped in Spanish moss. The silver Mercedes was parked crookedly by the porch, its engine still ticking as it cooled.
Spencer killed our engine fifty yards out, coasting to a stop beneath the canopy of an oak tree.
"She's inside," Spencer observed, pointing to the silhouette moving behind the floral curtains of the kitchen window. "No signs of third-party security. Sterling wouldn't send his own men out here; it’s too conspicuous. He’s letting Freya handle the dirty work."
"Wait here," I said, reaching for the door handle.
Spencer’s hand dropped onto my wrist. Not hard, but immovable. "We go together. Sullivan, she’s backed into a corner. Desperate people don't fight with logic. They fight with poison."
"I’m immune to her poison," I said.
"Nobody's immune to their own blood," he answered softly. "I’m your six. Let’s move."
We stepped onto the porch. The wooden boards groaned under our weight. Before I could even raise my hand to knock, the screen door swung open.
My mother stood there.
Evelyn Sullivan looked ten years older than her sixty-two years. Her gray hair was unbrushed, falling over a faded housecoat that smelled faintly of menthol cigarettes and cheap gin. Her eyes widened when she saw me, darting instantly behind me to Spencer’s towering frame, then down to the sidearm printing beneath his jacket.
"Marilyn?" she stammered, using my full first name, the name I hadn't answered to since basic training. "What... what are you doing here? You’re supposed to be in the islands. Freya said you were on a plane."
"Freya lied, Mom," I said, pushing past her into the stale, suffocating heat of the trailer.
The living room was exactly as I had left it: stained linoleum, a low-slung sofa covered in dog hair, and a coffee table crowded with empty pill bottles and unpaid utility bills.
Freya was sitting at the laminate dining table. She had an open laptop in front of her and a cup of black coffee between her hands. When I stepped into the room, she didn't jump. She didn't flinch. She simply closed the laptop lid with an infuriating, slow grace.
"Well," Freya purred, leaning back in her chair. "The dutiful bride returns. Couldn't even manage twenty-four hours of marital bliss before you came crawling back to the swamp?"
"Where are the encryption keys, Freya?" I demanded, stopping three feet from the table.
Freya let out a soft, mocking laugh. "Encryption keys? Listen to you. The big Navy lieutenant playing soldier in her little steel boots. You always were so dramatic, Marilyn."
"Don't play with me," I said, my voice dropping an octave, carrying the flat, lethal cadence I used when sailors under my command breached safety protocols on the flight line. "You forged my digital signature on four Class-VII manifests. You used my military ID to clear high-grade aerospace components through Savannah. You walked into my wedding reception, placed an extortion kit on my gift table, and thought I would roll over."
Evelyn gasped, clutching her housecoat to her throat. "Freya... what is she talking about? You said Marilyn agreed to help us! You said she signed off on an investment fund!"
"Shut up, Mom," Freya snapped without looking at her. Her gaze stayed locked on mine, venomous and sharp. "She didn't agree to anything because Marilyn only cares about Marilyn. Look at her! Look at that ring! Look at her husband with his clean record and his spotless family! While we’re rotting out here, she’s drinking champagne with colonels!"
"I earned every single thing I have," I snapped, slamming my palm down onto the table. The coffee cup jumped, spilling black liquid across the laminate. "I worked eighteen-hour shifts in cargo holds while you pawned Dad’s tools! I paid off this trailer’s mortgage twice! And you try to send me to federal prison for Richard Sterling?"
Freya’s face twisted into an ugly sneer. "Sterling offered five hundred thousand dollars. Five hundred thousand, Marilyn! Do you know what that means for us? That clears the debt. That buys Mom into an assisted living facility. It gets me out of this godforsaken state!"
"And what happens to me when the Department of Defense audits the Savannah manifests?" I countered, leaning in until my face was inches from hers. "What happens to Spencer’s career? What happens to my freedom?"
"You're an officer!" Freya hissed, her eyes wild with entitlement. "You know how the system works! You can claim it was an administrative error! You can blame it on a subordinate! You have a spotless record, Marilyn—they wouldn't give you more than a reprimand! But you wouldn't do that, would you? You’d rather see your own sister in a jumpsuit than get a mark on your precious evaluation reports!"
The sheer, staggering narcissism of her logic sucked the air out of the room.
She genuinely believed it. She truly thought that her financial failures were a debt that I was morally obligated to pay with my life, my honor, and my liberty.
Spencer stepped forward, his boots heavy on the linoleum. "The manifests are frozen, Freya."
Freya looked at Spencer, a momentary flash of fear flickering behind her arrogance. "You can't freeze them. Sterling’s people already have the secondary gate codes."
"They don't," Spencer said calmly. "Because your sister isn't an administrative error. She’s the Officer in Charge of Coastal Supply Logistics. And two minutes ago, Hayes initiated a total security lockdown on Berth 14 at Savannah. No truck moves. No container loads."
Freya’s face drained of color. The laptop beneath her fingers suddenly seemed like a bomb.
"You didn't..." she stammered, her voice losing its edge, replaced by a shrill, rising panic. "If that shipment doesn't load by 0600, Sterling won't just walk away. He told me... he said if the deal goes sideways, he’ll make sure everyone involved gets erased."
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"Then you’d better start talking," I said, pulling a set of flex-cuffs from Spencer’s tactical belt and dropping them onto the table. "Because right now, little sister, the only thing standing between you and Sterling's cleanup crew is me."
***