Chapter 1
Colonel Victor Kane drove his boot into my chest and kicked me over the rail of the USNS Resolute in front of nearly five hundred sailors and Marines.
For one second, I saw his face.
Calm.
Satisfied.
Almost bored.
The next second, there was no steel beneath my boots.
Someone screamed my name.
The Pacific opened under me.
Then I hit.
Cold smashed through my body so hard my lungs forgot what they were made for.
Water swallowed my ears.
My uniform dragged me down.
My ribs screamed where his boot had landed.
For one terrifying moment, I saw only blue darkness and white bubbles.
Then training took over.
Kick.
Pull.
Surface.
Breathe.
I broke through the waves choking on salt water.
The Resolute was already pulling away.
The gray side of the ship rose above me like a moving wall.
Hundreds of faces crowded the rail.
Sailors.
Marines.
Officers.
All staring.
And above them stood Kane.
His hands rested on his hips.
His voice carried over the water.
“Problem taken care of.”
He thought the ocean would make me vanish.
He thought fear would make everyone else forget what they had seen.
What he had forgotten was the sealed NCIS evidence packet hidden beneath my bunk.
The one with two words stamped across the front.
DECK FOUR.
Three hours earlier, the flight deck had been an oven.
Heat shimmered over the steel so fiercely the air itself looked bent.
Men and women stood in formation under the Pacific sun while Colonel Kane sat beneath a shade canopy eating steak from a metal tray.
A bottle of cold water sat beside his hand.
Condensation rolled down the plastic.
Everyone could see it.
That was the point.
Three heat casualties had already gone into the medical log.
Kane still refused to release emergency water stored below deck.
Officially, he called it ration discipline.
Nobody believed that anymore.
A signalman beside me began to sway.
He was maybe twenty.
Still young enough to think obedience could protect him from a cruel man.
His lips were split.
His skin looked dry and wrong.
His eyes stopped focusing.
I leaned slightly toward him.
“Stay with me.”
He tried.
His knees buckled.
Kane noticed.
He walked toward us slowly, sunglasses hiding his eyes.
The whole formation tightened.
Kane stopped in front of the sailor.
“Can’t stand up?”
The kid forced his shoulders back.
“Yes, sir.”
His legs almost folded.
Kane smiled.
“Dead weight doesn’t deserve rations.”
The sailor collapsed.
I moved before fear could stop me.
One step.
Then another.
I put myself between Kane and the boy on the deck.
“Sir, he needs water.”
Five hundred people heard me.
Kane turned his head.
Slowly.
He removed his sunglasses.
His eyes landed on me like cold metal.
“And who exactly do you think you are, Petty Officer?”
I kept my hands at my sides.
“The only person here still speaking to you like you’re human.”
Nothing moved.
No cough.
No whisper.
Somewhere behind us, a plastic cup rolled across the deck.
It tapped softly against a bulkhead.
Kane smiled.
But something behind his eyes changed.
That was the moment he decided I would be broken before sunset.
What he did not know was that NCIS had sent me aboard to be broken.
Or at least to survive the attempt.
Officially, I was Petty Officer First Class Hannah Mercer Cole.
Maritime interdiction specialist.
Temporarily assigned to logistics support aboard the Resolute.
That was the version on paper.
The real reason I boarded the ship was hidden under my bunk inside a sealed investigative packet.
Photos.
Testimony.
Supply records.
A dead Marine’s final message.
And one place name.
Deck Four.
The deck Kane had ordered sealed after midnight.
The deck where sailors whispered about screams behind locked hatches.
The deck where emergency water disappeared.
The deck where my younger brother, Corporal Eli Mercer, had been found dead six months earlier.
Officially, heatstroke.
Unofficially, murder.
May you like
I had come aboard to prove it.
And now Kane had kicked me into the Pacific because I had finally gotten too close.
