Chapter 2 - The Man Who Used My Sister's Anger as a Key
The second my sister admitted that her husband wanted me away from the inspection trailer, the situation became more than a family outburst. Delphine had spent thirty-seven years accusing me of making everything about myself. Yet there she was, on an active Navy pier, admitting she'd been sent to distract me. I didn't know whether she understood what she had just revealed. I did know the agents would need to investigate without me steering the result. I wasn't going to use my rank to punish my sister. I wasn't going to use it to protect her either.
Cross moved Delphine to a private interview room with appropriate personnel. He reminded her that she could seek legal advice and that the investigation would follow the evidence. I returned to the operational side of the pier, where my team was preparing to resume portions of the inspection that could continue safely. Our work concerned structural repairs, utility service points, and equipment access. The area Bram supposedly wanted me to avoid contained the temporary maintenance trailer where contractor work packages, quality records, and access authorizations were being collected.
The timing was too specific to overlook. But I had learned not to fill gaps in knowledge with anger. That was what my father did when he decided someone had disrespected him. He called it instinct. More often, it was simply a way to reach a conclusion before hearing facts.
Rosalind took me aside near the gangway. "There's something I need to tell you before you hear it from the security office."
"Go ahead."
"Last week, the catering vendor requested unusual access privileges. Not for the retirement luncheon itself—for the service route behind the inspection trailer."
"Why?"
"They said they needed to deliver refrigeration units. The request was denied because the approved delivery route was on the other side of the building."
I frowned. "Was the request submitted by Delphine?"
"Her company account, but the contact named was Bram Avery."
"He doesn't work for the catering company."
"That's what we were told. The vendor listing shows him as a consultant."
Bram had a gift for inventing titles. At Christmas he was a business development adviser. In spring he was a strategic partnerships director. By summer he'd be talking about buying a company with investors whose names he couldn't disclose. He collected impressive-sounding descriptions the way other men collected baseball cards. I had never known him to hold one job long enough to learn all its employees' names.
"Give that information to Cross," I said. "Keep our inspection documents together. We don't want speculation contaminating the review."
Rosalind nodded and left. I leaned against the trailer's outside wall and called my deputy, Lieutenant Commander Priya Shah, to brief her. I told her an external incident had disrupted the inspection and that security was handling the recovery. She asked if I needed relief.
"No," I said automatically.
Then I paused. I could almost hear my grandmother asking whether being strong meant never admitting you were hurt.
"Actually," I said, "I need you to run the technical meeting this afternoon. I have to make several statements, and I don't want the team waiting on me."
"Understood," Priya answered. "We'll manage it. And Marlo? I'm sorry this happened."
I thanked her. Two simple words. Accepting help was still something I had to practice.
Around noon, I was called to a secure conference room to answer follow-up questions. Cross had been joined by a base security investigator and a civilian procurement specialist. They didn't tell me what Delphine had said during her interview. Instead they asked about my history with Bram, my knowledge of his business, and whether he could have obtained my schedule from social media or family contacts.
I told them about our mother's funeral, the sporadic messages, and the last time I'd seen him. Six months earlier he'd sent me a text asking whether I knew anyone involved in Navy facility contracting. I'd replied with a public procurement website and explained that all vendors had to follow proper channels. He'd sent back a thumbs-up emoji. A week later he asked whether I could introduce him to someone who approved service contracts. I hadn't responded.
"Do you still have those messages?" Cross asked.
"Yes. I'll preserve and provide them through the proper process."
"Thank you."
There was a knock. A security specialist stepped in and handed Cross a note. He read it, then asked the others to step out for a moment. The procurement specialist remained after confirming that the discussion was within her role.
"Commander," Cross said, "we've identified a mismatch in a vendor registration associated with the retirement event. We're examining whether a person used credentials to access areas outside the event route. This is not a conclusion about your sister, but we may need you to avoid direct contact with either her or Bram while we establish the facts."
"I understand."
"We also want you to know that an allegation has been made about your conduct."
I felt my shoulders stiffen. "What allegation?"
"Your sister says you threatened to destroy her business if she didn't leave the base."
For a moment, I couldn't speak. "I told her to leave a restricted work area. There were witnesses."
"We have statements. We're collecting video as well. I wanted you to hear it directly rather than through rumors."
I nodded. The accusation was familiar. Delphine would provoke me, then claim my attempt to protect myself was the original offense. She had done it when we were children. She'd done it when she took money from my savings jar and told Mom I was being cruel for asking for it back. She'd done it at our mother's funeral, accusing me of creating a scene after she confronted me. It was exhausting to be accused of cruelty for refusing to participate in my own humiliation.
After the meeting, I went outside and sat on a bench overlooking the harbor. The water was blue-gray under the afternoon light. A tugboat moved slowly past a ship tied alongside a distant pier. Sailors went about their work, unaware that my entire childhood seemed to be unfolding again in an office a hundred yards away.
I took out my personal phone. There were six missed calls from Dad.
The seventh came while I was looking at the screen.
"Marlo," he said without greeting, "what on earth have you done?"
I closed my eyes. "Hello, Dad."
"Delphine called me in tears. She says you've had her detained."
"There was an incident at my worksite. Security is investigating."
"She's your sister!"
"I'm aware."
"Then why can't you straighten this out? You're always telling us how much responsibility you have. Surely you can make one telephone call."
I watched the tugboat pass beneath the hazy sunlight. "Dad, she threw government property into the river after I told her what it was. I cannot erase that."
Silence. Then he said, "Well, you shouldn't have brought your important things where she could reach them."
I stared at the water. There it was. The oldest script in our family, performed without rehearsal. If Delphine ruined something, I should have protected it better. If she insulted me, I should have been more patient. If she lied, I should understand how overwhelmed she was. My father had been using those same excuses since we were girls.
"I have to go," I said.
"Don't hang up on me. Bram says you're doing this because you want to take a contract away from them."
I went still. "What contract?"
"Their company has been trying to expand. You know how hard it is for small businesses."
"Dad, listen carefully. Have you given Bram any information about my inspection schedule?"
He hesitated. "He asked what you were doing in Norfolk. I told him you were visiting the base this week."
"How did you know I was here?"
"You mentioned it when you called on my birthday."
I'd mentioned Norfolk, not a pier number or an inspection itinerary. Dad continued before I could reply. "He also said he was trying to set up something nice for Delphine at the Kellerman reception, and you might be there."
"Did he tell you why he thought that?"
"No. Marlo, you're overreacting."
I ended the call as politely as I could. My hands shook afterward. Not because he'd accused me. Because it confirmed Bram had been asking questions about my location before the confrontation, and my father had cooperated without thinking twice.
An hour later, Dad called again. This time I didn't answer. He left a message reminding me that family was more important than a job. I saved the voicemail. Then I called my aunt Helen, my late mother's younger sister and the only person in the family who had ever seemed interested in my actual work.
"Marlo, honey," she answered, "I saw a strange post from Delphine's company. Are you all right?"
"I'm safe. It's complicated."
"Take your time."
I told her what I could without discussing protected details. She listened, then sighed. "Your mother used to tell me that Delphine was fragile and you were strong. Do you know what I told her?"
"No."
"That she was confusing a child who needed support with a child she expected to survive without any."
My throat tightened. Aunt Helen rarely spoke about Mom that plainly.
"I loved your mother," she added. "But she wasn't always fair to you. I wish I'd pushed harder."
I stared across the harbor. "I don't know why I still expect Dad to take my side."
"Maybe because every little girl deserves to believe her father will defend her. Even when she's thirty-seven."
I had no answer. I ended the call with a promise to speak soon and sat there until the sky began turning pale gold.
The next morning, the incident took another turn. A formal preservation request brought together gate logs, event approvals, vendor submissions, and relevant camera footage. The approved catering contractor was a legitimate small business called Harbor Table Events, owned by a woman named Leona Marsh. Delphine was a senior event coordinator there, not the owner as she'd been telling our relatives. Bram had contacted Leona about expanding the company into federal facilities support. She'd declined because he wanted access to information he didn't need. Afterward, he'd apparently continued representing himself as a consultant without her approval.
Leona arrived at base security looking frightened and furious. Cross interviewed her separately. Later, she gave investigators an email from Bram requesting access credentials for two additional 'temporary delivery specialists.' Neither person was on the event roster. One name matched the inactive badge used at the pier gate. The other belonged to a man who worked for a subcontractor whose maintenance invoices had been flagged by Rosalind's team.
The connection did not prove a conspiracy. It did, however, justify deeper scrutiny. I couldn't make myself stop thinking about what Bram had said to Delphine. Keep Marlo away from the inspection trailer. It sounded less like a jealous husband indulging his wife's grudge and more like somebody trying to buy a few minutes of confusion.
That afternoon, Cross asked me whether Bram had ever mentioned a company called Eastbank Industrial Solutions. I shook my head. He showed me a public corporate registration bearing Bram's name as a former manager. Another listed officer was someone I recognized from a photograph Delphine had posted online: a man she'd called Bram's newest business partner.
"What does Eastbank do?" I asked.
"That's what we're establishing," Cross answered.
At 4:16 p.m., a message came through on my personal phone from an unknown number. It contained a photograph of me on the pier, taken from behind a maintenance fence at the moment Delphine seized my bag. Underneath were seven words: 'Your sister was never the real target.'
I handed the phone to Cross without replying.
He examined it and asked me to preserve the device. Then his own telephone rang. He listened for a long moment, his expression hardening. When the call ended, he looked at me.
"A camera captured an unauthorized person entering the contractor trailer during the disturbance."
"Did they take anything?" I asked.
"We're still checking. But we have a clearer image of the individual."
He turned the screen toward me. It showed a man in a reflective vest carrying a black document case, moving quickly past an open service door. I'd met him once at Delphine's house, where he'd introduced himself as a supply-chain consultant.
His name was Owen Rusk.
May you like
And he was Bram's business partner.
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