A DECORATED SEAL BROKE MY RIBS IN A FULL MESS HALL — THEN MY DEAD MOTHER’S VOICE CAME THROUGH THE PHONE

Chapter 7

The gunshot came from somewhere above us.

One sharp crack. Then silence — not the ordinary silence of an empty hallway, but the kind that makes every trained person in a building stop breathing at the same instant.

Red emergency lights pulsed over the mess hall below. Once. Twice. Again.

Admiral Reeve turned toward the ceiling. “Lock the building down.”

His command cut through the confusion like a blade through wet paper. Military police moved immediately. Doors were secured. Somewhere below, recruits were being ordered against the far wall.

I looked at my phone again.

YOU WERE NEVER THE ONE HUNTING.

Six words. Six words that told me whoever sent them knew exactly where I was standing. Exactly when Reeve had walked in. Exactly what we had just discovered.

And possibly exactly what had just happened upstairs.

I went back to the photograph of Caleb Sutton. It had been taken from above the main entrance — not from a security camera angle. Someone had been standing at the upper window of the administration wing when it was shot. Someone who had watched Reeve cross the courtyard. Someone who had my personal phone number.

Reeve stepped beside me. “What is it?”

I showed him.

For half a second his expression didn’t change. Then his eyes narrowed.

“Can you trace it?”

“Not from here.”

Another alarm began, deeper in the building. Not the base-wide emergency tone. A local sensor — close, inside the structure.

Reeve recognized it before I did. “Archive wing.”

I looked toward the north corridor.

Thorne spoke behind us. “What’s in the archive wing?”

Reeve didn’t answer.

Which told me enough.

I started walking.

He caught my arm. “Elena.”

I stopped.

The use of my first name mattered. Douglas Reeve only did that when we were alone — or when he was genuinely frightened.

“You were just struck,” he said quietly. “Let Pike look at you.”

“My ribs still work.”

“That isn’t what I asked.”

“And somebody just fired a weapon next to restricted files.”

His jaw tightened. For a moment neither of us moved.

Then he released my arm. “Two officers go with you.”

“No.”

His stare hardened. “Commander.”

“If whoever sent that message is watching, a visible escort tells them exactly where I’m going.”

“You think they don’t already know?”

I glanced at the security camera above the mess hall doors. The tiny green indicator light was dead.

“They knew before we did.”

That ended the argument.

Reeve gestured to Lieutenant Dana Whitlock, one of the MPs who had come in with him. “Stay close enough to hear her shout.”

Whitlock nodded.

I turned toward Thorne before I left. He was watching me, and he was no longer smiling.

Still — something in his face hadn’t settled. I stopped in front of him.

“What’s on your mind, Chief?”

He tilted his head, studying me the way I had studied him on the mess hall floor.

“You always do that.”

“Do what?”

“Walk toward the thing everyone else has the sense to run from.”

I crouched so our eyes were level.

“And yet this morning you told somebody I was here.”

His expression flickered. “I didn’t warn anyone about you.”

I watched his face very closely. “Then who?”

He looked past me. At Reeve.

For the first time, I saw genuine unease in Marcus Thorne’s eyes.

Then he lowered his voice so only I could hear.

“You should ask the admiral why your orders were changed.”

I looked back at Reeve. His face revealed nothing at all.

“Changed how?”

Thorne laughed once, softly. “You really don’t know.”

Movement behind us — a body shifting. Whitlock stepped between them.

“Chief,” she said. “Sit down.”

Thorne didn’t even look at her. His attention stayed pinned on me.

“They told us you were coming tomorrow.”

My pulse slowed. The corridor seemed to narrow.

Reeve had said the same thing in the mess hall. We weren’t expecting you until tomorrow.

I stood up.

“When were my orders changed?”

Reeve folded his arms. “Four hours ago.”

“By whom?”

And Douglas Reeve — a man who had survived congressional hearings, command crises, and operational disasters, a man for whom hesitation had become almost foreign — hesitated.

Then he said, “Your father.”

I forgot about the pain in my ribs.