Page 65 of The Captain
“I think institutions move slow and cover their asses by habit,” he said. “I think good people get lost inside bad habits.”
“That’s tidy,” I said.
“It’s honest,” he said back. “Go in ready to listen. Come out ready to fight. We’ll do both.”
“We,” I repeated, because I liked how it sat.
He smiled. “We.”
The facility rose out of the marsh like the plain, stubborn thing it is. Pumps humming. Shade breathing. My people already in motion. The place looked like a person bracing to take a punch and grin, anyway.
“Almost time,” I said, eye on the clock.
“Yes, ma’am,” he said, mouth tipping.
Inside, I grabbed the binder, the recorder, a thumb drive in a labeled bag, and a small cooler with samples. He took the cooler without comment and held the door.
“Ground rules?” he asked as we walked.
“You back my asks. If they try to run me in circles, you pull them straight.”
“Yes, Dr. Allard.”
“Let’s go meet your Navy,” I said.
“Let’s,” he answered.
I stood a beat longer and watched him. That stupid daydream opened one eye. Coffee. A porch. A man leaving a toothbrush in your drawer because he meant it.
“Time to make friends,” he said.
“Time to make the right kind of enemies.”
28
JACOB
The meeting was set for Dominion Hall, a neutral ground that felt anything but neutral to me. I drove Camille’s SUV through Charleston’s humid streets, the marsh air thick with ocean air and the low hum of cicadas.
My confidence was back, a steady fire in my chest, fueled by the morning’s helo flight and the shadow we’d seen in the Charleston Harbor Approach Channel. Whatever that thing was, it wasn’t a whale, and I was ready to crack it open.
But the Dane revelation still gnawed at me, a jagged edge I couldn’t rip from my gut. Caleb hadn’t shown up since the bombshell, and I kept wondering where he was, what he was doing, why he’d left me to stew in this mess.
Camille sat beside me, her eyes fixed on the road, her phone clutched like a weapon. She was ready for war, and I was ready to back her.
We pulled into Dominion Hall’s gates, the stone walls looming under ivy that seemed to whisper secrets. Marcus, Ryker, and Atlas were waiting in the same study I’d stormedout of, their postures professional, their black polos and jeans a uniform I was starting to resent.
I nodded to them, cautious, my eyes scanning their faces for traces of my father—Byron Dane, the ghost who’d left me with nothing but a rusted truck and now, apparently, billions and half-brothers. Was it there? The slope of a jaw, the glint in their eyes? Or was I just seeing what I wanted, my imagination stitching together a man I barely remembered?
They nodded back, their expressions unreadable, and I felt that familiar prickle—operators, same as me, but hiding something I couldn’t pin down.
Caleb wasn’t there. I kept expecting him to walk through the door, that wry grin on his face, ready to explain why he’d kept me in the dark. But the room stayed empty of him, and the absence was a weight I couldn’t shake.
What was he doing? Was he with the other Charleston Danes, plotting something I wasn’t in on?
My paranoia was creeping back, but I pushed it down, focusing on the job. I was here for Camille, for the truth about that shadow, and I wasn’t leaving without answers.
The polite banter started—Marcus cracking a joke about the coffee being better than Navy sludge, Ryker offering Camille a chair like she was royalty, Atlas leaning against the wall, watching us all.
