Chapter 2 - THE SECOND PHONEBy sunrise, my apartment was no longer my home.
It was a crime scene.
Yellow evidence markers stood beside pieces of the broken door. Military investigators photographed the hallway, the living room, the damaged lock, and the black phone Chief Craig had recovered beneath my couch.
I sat inside an ambulance with a blanket around my shoulders while a corpsman examined my injuries.
Nothing appeared broken.
That felt like luck until I realized how low my standards had become.
Across the parking lot, Daniel sat handcuffed in the back of a security vehicle.
His mother occupied another.
Neither looked at me.
At 4:17 a.m., two NCIS agents arrived.
Special Agent Evan Grant was in his early forties, with gray beginning at his temples and the patient expression of someone who understood that frightened people remembered details slowly.
His partner, Agent Lena Morales, carried a notebook but barely looked at it.
Grant sat opposite me inside the small base clinic consultation room.
“Lieutenant Bennett, I know you've already spoken with security. I need you to walk me through one detail.”
“The phone?”
“The name Daniel mentioned.”
“Rachel.”
“Did he use a last name?”
“No.”
“You assumed Rachel Kim.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
I thought about it.
Rachel had worked two floors below me at Naval Support Activity.
Smart.
Quiet.
Twenty-nine.
She had been responsible for procurement records and vendor compliance.
Then six months earlier, she disappeared almost overnight.
Her desk was cleared before most of us knew she'd submitted transfer paperwork.
“We worked in the same building,” I said. “Not closely.”
“When did you last speak to her?”
“About a week before she left.”
“What did you discuss?”
I hesitated.
Because until that morning, it had seemed insignificant.
“She asked whether Daniel worked for Atlantic Meridian Systems.”
Grant and Morales exchanged a glance.
My stomach tightened.
Daniel had been a senior account executive at Atlantic Meridian, a defense subcontractor supplying communication equipment and software services to several installations around Hampton Roads.
“Yes,” I continued. “He'd worked there five years.”
“What exactly did Rachel ask?”
“She asked whether Daniel ever brought work devices home.”
“Did he?”
“Sometimes.”
“Did she explain why she was asking?”
“No. I asked if something was wrong. She told me to forget she'd mentioned it.”
Agent Morales finally spoke.
“Did you?”
“Mostly.”
“Mostly?”
“A few days later, I saw Daniel outside our office building.”
Grant leaned forward.
“Was that unusual?”
“Very. Daniel had no reason to be there.”
“Did you ask him about it?”
“He said he was meeting a procurement officer.”
“And you believed him?”
“At the time.”
The agents exchanged another glance.
I hated those glances.
Every one seemed to contain a conversation nobody wanted me to hear yet.
“What did you find on that phone?” I asked.
Grant didn't answer immediately.
“The device is being processed.”
“You saw something.”
“Lieutenant—”
“My name was on it.”
That stopped him.
“I saw the screen when Chief Craig recovered it.”
Grant exhaled.
“Yes.”
“And three other women.”
His silence confirmed it.
“Rachel Kim was one.”
“Yes.”
“Who are Monica Reyes and Sarah Coleman?”
Morales closed her notebook.
“Monica Reyes is a Navy civilian cybersecurity analyst.”
“Is?”
Grant answered carefully.
“She resigned eleven months ago.”
“And Sarah?”
“Lieutenant Sarah Coleman. Supply Corps.”
I recognized the name.
“She died.”
Morales looked at me.
I remembered the email.
Nearly two years earlier, Sarah Coleman had died in what had been described as a late-night single-car accident on a rural Virginia road.
Her vehicle left the highway during heavy rain.
Everyone in our community had called it tragic.
Now Sarah's name was inside my husband's hidden phone.
“What does this have to do with Daniel?”
“We're finding out.”
The clinic door opened.
Chief Craig stepped inside.
“Agents.”
Grant joined him near the hall.
They spoke quietly.
I caught only fragments.
“Device…”
“…encrypted folder…”
“…photographs.”
Grant looked back at me.
The expression on his face made my skin crawl.
“What?”
He closed the door.
“Lieutenant Bennett, we found photographs on the device.”
“Of what?”
“You.”
My stomach dropped.
“How many?”
“At least forty-seven.”
I couldn't speak.
“Some appear to have been taken outside your workplace.”
My fingertips went numb.
“Some outside the grocery store.”
I stared at him.
“And several appear to have been taken through the windows of this apartment.”
The room seemed to tilt.
“That's impossible.”
Grant said nothing.
“My apartment is inside controlled housing.”
“We know.”
“Daniel's access was revoked.”
“We know that too.”
Suddenly I remembered Diane standing behind him as he broke through my door.
“How did his mother get him through security?”
“That's being investigated.”
“She's sixty-three years old. She isn't military.”
“No.”
“Then how?”
Grant hesitated.
“She didn't drive him in.”
“Who did?”
“Someone with authorized credentials.”
That was worse.
At 9:30 that morning, I was relocated to temporary quarters.
I refused to sleep.
Every time I closed my eyes, I heard Daniel's voice.
Where did Rachel hide it?
By noon, Grant returned.
This time he carried a sealed plastic evidence photograph.
“We recovered something else from the phone.”
He placed the photograph on the table.
It showed a message thread.
No contact names.
Only numbers.
One message had been sent three days earlier.
BENNETT IS ASKING QUESTIONS. HANDLE BEFORE FRIDAY.
Below it:
DANIEL CAN CONTROL HER. IF NOT, USE OPTION C.
I stared at the words.
“What is Option C?”
“We don't know.”
“You do.”
“We have theories.”
“Tell me.”
Grant shook his head.
“Not yet.”
I pushed the photograph away.
“Then why show me this?”
“Because we need you to understand that last night's attack may not have been solely domestic violence.”
That sentence changed everything.
Daniel's cruelty had always felt private.
Ugly.
Humiliating.
But private.
Now NCIS was telling me somebody else might have been involved.
Somebody who knew where I lived.
Somebody who knew about Rachel.
Somebody who expected Daniel to control me.
“Why would anyone care about me?”
Grant slid another photograph across the table.
This one showed a spreadsheet extracted from the second phone.
Four names.
Four dates.
And another column.
STATUS.
Rachel Kim — TRANSFERRED
Monica Reyes — RESIGNED
Sarah Coleman — CLOSED
Olivia Bennett — PENDING
My throat tightened.
“Transferred where?”
“We're checking.”
“And ‘closed’?”
Grant didn't answer.
He didn't need to.
“Was Sarah's accident actually an accident?”
“We're reopening questions surrounding it.”
I stood and walked toward the window.
Outside, sailors crossed the parking lot carrying coffee and folders, beginning another ordinary workday.
Mine had ceased to be ordinary before sunrise.
“Rachel may be alive,” Grant said.
I turned.
“May?”
“She never arrived at the command she supposedly transferred to.”
I stared at him.
“What?”
“Her transfer orders were authentic in the personnel system.”
“But?”
“The gaining command has no record of her reporting.”
“Then where did she go?”
“That,” Grant said, “is what we're trying to determine.”
My phone buzzed.
A number I didn't recognize.
One text message.
YOU SHOULD HAVE LET HIM TAKE THE PHONE.
I showed Grant.
May you like
Before either of us could speak, another message appeared.
RACHEL DIDN'T LISTEN EITHER.
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