Chapter 4 - The Man in the PhotographI left the beach.
Nobody stopped me.
I walked barefoot along the shoreline until voices disappeared behind the wind.
Captain Daniel Mercer.
My biological father.
I had seen his face hundreds of times.
At the Naval Academy.
In intelligence briefings.
On memorial walls.
Daniel Mercer was one of those names young officers learned before they learned what leadership really cost.
He commanded a maritime special operations support unit during a hostage rescue in the Mediterranean twenty-nine years earlier.
Officially, he died when his aircraft went down after extracting six civilians and three wounded service members.
There were stories about him.
Some true.
Some probably polished by time.
I had admired him because he supposedly refused to leave his people.
Now I knew why his photograph had always bothered me.
The eyes.
Mine.
I heard footsteps.
Walter stopped several feet behind me.
For once, I didn’t call him Dad.
“How long?”
He understood.
“Since before you could walk.”
I turned.
“You knew Daniel Mercer was my biological father for my entire life.”
“Yes.”
“Mom?”
“Yes.”
“Vanessa?”
“No.”
I laughed once.
It had no humor in it.
“You two really built this family on secrets.”
Walter accepted the blow.
“Your mother and I had separated.”
“What?”
“Briefly. Before you were born.”
He looked toward the ocean.
“We married young. I was building the company. I was never home. We fought constantly. Your mother left for several months.”
“And met Mercer.”
“Yes.”
“Did she love him?”
Walter took longer to answer.
“I think she did.”
The truth should have hurt.
Instead it relieved me.
At least he wasn’t going to lie now.
“He deployed before she knew she was pregnant,” Walter continued. “By the time he learned, your mother and I had reconciled.”
“Did he know about me?”
“Yes.”
That one hurt.
“He wanted to be part of your life.”
“Then why wasn’t he?”
Walter’s eyes reddened.
“Because I asked him not to be.”
I stared at him.
“You?”
“I was selfish.”
“Apparently.”
“He agreed because your mother asked too. We thought giving you one stable family was better than—”
“Than knowing who I was?”
“You were my daughter.”
“Was?”
His face crumpled.
“Are.”
I turned away.
He moved closer.
“Rebecca, I held you the night you were born.”
“That doesn’t erase this.”
“I know.”
“I joined the Navy.”
“Yes.”
“You tried to talk me out of it for years.”
“Yes.”
“Was that because of him?”
Walter’s shoulders sagged.
“Partly.”
I remembered every argument.
Business school.
Law school.
Reed Maritime.
Anything except Annapolis.
I thought Dad was disappointed because I rejected his company.
Maybe every Navy uniform reminded him of Daniel.
“I was afraid,” Walter said.
“Of what?”
“That you would become exactly like him.”
I faced him.
“You mean a decorated officer?”
“I mean someone who believed duty always came before coming home.”
His voice cracked.
“Daniel Mercer was brave. Maybe one of the bravest men I ever met. But bravery got him killed.”
Walter stared at the sand.
“And when you told me you were joining the Navy, all I could think was that somehow blood had called you back to him.”
I wanted to hate him.
It would have been easier.
But there was something painfully human about the confession.
“You still should have told me.”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“When you were eighteen.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“Your mother couldn’t.”
“So you protected her.”
“I protected myself too.”
At least he admitted it.
I folded my arms.
“And Vanessa?”
“She is biologically mine.”
The bitterness of that sentence shocked me.
Not because I wished otherwise.
Because suddenly Vanessa’s lifelong obsession with being Dad’s “real” heir had another dimension she hadn’t even known existed.
A shadow she had fought without knowing its name.
Mom approached slowly.
Her face was swollen from crying.
“I should be the one telling you.”
“You should have told me twenty years ago.”
“Yes.”
No excuses.
That was somehow worse.
She stood beside Walter.
“Daniel wrote you letters.”
My breath stopped.
“What?”
“Every month he was deployed.”
“How many?”
“Twenty-three.”
“Where are they?”
She looked at Walter.
He looked away.
I stepped closer.
“Where are the letters?”
“In a safe at the house.”
I stared at them.
“You kept twenty-three letters from my biological father?”
Mom whispered, “They were for when you were older.”
“I’m thirty-nine.”
“I know.”
“Apparently not old enough?”
She started crying again.
This time I didn’t soften.
Some truths had to be allowed to hurt.
Admiral Hale approached from behind them.
“Commander.”
I looked at him.
“I apologize, but there’s another connection you need to know.”
I almost said I was done with connections.
Instead I waited.
Hale glanced at Walter and Mom.
“Captain Mercer was my commanding officer.”
That surprised me.
“He saved my life.”
I looked toward him.
Hale’s voice softened.
“The last time I saw Daniel, he handed me an envelope.”
My heart thudded.
“He said that if anything happened to him, I was to deliver it when his daughter entered the Navy.”
“His daughter.”
“Yes.”
“You knew?”
“Not your name. Daniel never told me. The envelope was sealed.”
“Then how did you find out?”
“After Raven Six.”
The answer hit me.
“When my background was investigated.”
“Yes.”
“Did you deliver the envelope?”
Hale looked ashamed.
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because it disappeared.”
I stared at him.
“From where?”
“My secured office.”
Walter swore under his breath.
Hale continued.
“It happened five years ago. Forty-eight hours after Raven Six.”
The timing made my skin crawl.
“Who knew about it?”
“Very few people.”
“Trent?”
“No.”
“Vanessa?”
“No.”
“Then who?”
Hale hesitated.
“We believed someone inside the investigation had compromised my office.”
I looked back toward the beach.
NCIS agents were still questioning people.
“If someone stole Mercer’s letter after Raven Six, then these two secrets aren’t separate.”
“That is now our concern.”
Dad frowned.
“Why would anyone care who Rebecca’s father was?”
Hale answered slowly.
“Because Captain Mercer spent his final year investigating procurement corruption.”
Walter looked stunned.
“What kind?”
“Navigation systems.”
The beach suddenly felt colder.
My biological father had investigated navigation contracts.
Twenty-four years later, Raven Six crashed because someone manipulated navigation-maintenance data.
I looked at Hale.
“You think it’s connected?”
“I think coincidences deserve investigation.”
Mom whispered, “Daniel said something before his last deployment.”
We all turned.
She looked terrified.
“What?”
“He came to see me.”
Walter stared at her.
“You never told me that.”
“I was afraid.”
“What did he say?”
She looked at me.
“He said he had discovered something inside the Navy procurement chain. He said people were stealing money, but that wasn’t what scared him.”
“What scared him?”
“He said the people involved weren’t only stealing.”
She swallowed.
“They were deliberately approving defective equipment.”
Admiral Hale’s expression changed.
Mom continued.
“He told me if anything happened to him, I should never believe it was an accident.”
Nobody spoke.
Captain Daniel Mercer died in an aircraft crash.
Raven Six nearly killed me in another.
Twenty-nine years apart.
Both involving allegedly defective military systems.
Hale pulled out his phone.
“Agent Ruiz.”
He turned away and spoke rapidly.
Walter looked at Mom.
“You kept this from everyone?”
“I thought he was scared. Paranoid. Then Daniel died.”
“And you said nothing?”
“I had a baby.”
She pointed at me, tears running down her face.
“I had Rebecca. I was terrified.”
For the first time, I saw my mother not as the woman who had failed to tell me the truth.
I saw a twenty-something woman holding an infant while a military officer she loved died under suspicious circumstances.
Fear did not excuse twenty-nine years.
But it explained the first one.
Hale returned.
“We’re locating Mercer’s accident file.”
“After twenty-nine years?” Walter asked.
“It should be archived.”
“Should?”
Hale’s face hardened.
“The digital copy is missing.”
Of course it was.
“What about paper?” I asked.
“There should be one surviving investigative archive.”
“Where?”
“Naval Base Coronado.”
I looked toward the distant buildings.
“Then let’s go.”
Hale shook his head.
“You’re not currently active duty.”
“According to you, I was cleared eighteen months ago.”
“That does not automatically restore your status.”
I stepped closer.
“Admiral, if someone buried evidence connected to a crash that killed my father and nearly killed nineteen sailors five years ago, I’m not going home to wait for updates.”
He stared at me.
Then smiled faintly.
There it was.
Not approval.
Recognition.
Daniel Mercer’s daughter.
“Good,” he said.
He reached into the folder.
“That saves me from having to convince you.”
He handed me another document.
Orders.
Temporary return to active duty.
Effective immediately.
My throat tightened.
“You came here planning this?”
“I came here hoping.”
He extended his hand.
“Welcome back, Commander Reed.”
I took it.
Behind us, an NCIS agent shouted.
We turned.
Eric Dunne was running toward the parking lot.
Another agent raced after him.
Then a sharp crack split the air.
Eric collapsed.
People screamed.
I dropped instinctively.
Hale pulled me behind a vehicle.
Agents rushed toward the dunes.
Eric lay on the sand with blood spreading through his shirt.
This was no longer an old investigation.
May you like
Someone was still protecting the secret.
And they were willing to kill for it.
Related Stories
