Chapter 8 - The Confrontation
Two hours later, the storm had finally broken.
The interrogation room at the Chatham County Sheriff's Annex smelled of industrial floor stripper and cold coffee. The fluorescent tubes overhead hummed at a frequency that vibrated right behind my eyes.
Freya sat on the metal chair, handcuffed to an eyelet bolted directly into the center of the steel table. Her mascara was smeared down her cheeks like war paint from a battle she had lost before the first shot was fired.
The door clicked open. I walked in alone.
Spencer stayed on the other side of the two-way mirror, his presence an invisible anchor behind the glass.
I pulled out the chair opposite Freya and sat down. I didn't speak. I just placed my hands flat on the cool metal table and looked at her.
"Are you happy now?" Freya choked out, her voice raspy, trembling with a mixture of rage and terror. "You ruined my life, Marilyn. You put your own sister in handcuffs! Do you have any idea what they’re going to do to me? The prosecutor said five to seven years! Minimum!"
"You put the handcuffs on yourself, Freya," I said quietly. "You did it the moment you walked into Fort Havenfield with that box."
"I did it for us!" she shrieked, lunging forward until the chain of the cuffs pulled taut with a sharp *clink*. "Mom is going to lose the house! I have debts! Real debts! Not like your little military loans that get forgiven! You were always the cold, selfish one! You left! You walked out on us the day you turned eighteen and never looked back!"
"I walked out because you were drowning, Freya, and you kept trying to pull my head under water so you could take a breath."
She stared at me, her chest heaving, her eyes wild.
"I spent ten years fixing your mistakes," I continued, each word measured, deliberate, cold as deep ocean water. "I paid your bail when you were nineteen. I paid your credit cards when you forged Dad’s signature. I paid the taxes on the land so Mom wouldn't be on the street. I gave you everything I had until I had to join the service just to get three meals a day and a bed that didn't smell like decay."
"You think you’re better than me," she whispered, her voice dropping into a hateful hiss. "You think because you wear that little costume and marry that stoic bastard that you’re clean? You’re a Sullivan, Marilyn. You came from the same dirt I did. And you’ll always be dirty."
I leaned in, resting my forearms on the table.
"The difference between you and me, Freya, is that I knew the dirt was there. I scrubbed it off my skin with discipline, with labor, and with honor. You rolled in it and called it luxury."
I reached into my pocket and pulled out a single sheet of paper: a formal affidavit renouncing all familial claims, powers of attorney, and shared estate interests regarding the property in Wayne County. Attached to it was an order of protection barring Freya and Evelyn Sullivan from contacting me, my spouse, or my duty station permanently.
I slid it across the table.
"Sign it," I said.
Freya looked down at the document. "What is this?"
"This is the end of the line," I said. "NCIS is offering a plea deal based on your cooperation against Sterling. You won't do seven years; you’ll do two at a minimum-security facility in Alabama. But only if you sign this. You sign away every legal connection to me. You don't call. You don't write. You don't send packages to my wedding."
"And if I don't?" she asked, her chin trembling.
"Then I take the stand," I said softly. "As the government’s lead technical witness. And I will present three years of external hard drive archives, banking transfers, and digital communications that prove you were an active, knowing co-conspirator from day one. And you will serve every single second of the maximum sentence."
Freya looked up at me.
She searched my eyes for the sister she used to manipulate—the frightened, duty-bound girl who could be guilted into surrender with tears and family platitudes.
She found nothing. The vault was closed. The combination had been changed.
With shaking, clumsy fingers, Freya picked up the pen the guard had left on the table. She scribbled her signature at the bottom of the line, the ink digging through the cheap paper.
She dropped the pen. It rolled off the table and clicked against the floor.
"You're dead to me," Freya whispered, not looking up.
May you like
"No, Freya," I said, standing up and smoothing down the front of my shirt. "I’m finally alive. You’re just the ghost I forgot to bury."
***