Chapter 7 - The Safe Beneath My Bed|
I didn't watch Nina's recording immediately.
Instead, I handed the storage drive to Lieutenant Colonel Bennett and explained exactly how Nina had obtained it.
The investigator asked us not to make additional copies or circulate the footage.
Nina agreed.
Then Bennett arranged for the drive to be collected as potential evidence.
I could see that Nina wanted to tell me everything she had heard.
But she understood why the recording needed to be handled carefully.
For the first time since the landing, somebody was treating the truth as something more important than a headline.
That afternoon, Bennett told me to get some rest.
I told her I wasn't tired.
She pointed out that I had been awake for nearly thirty hours.
Then she said something that made me stop arguing.
"Jessica, you don't have to earn the right to sleep."
I went home.
My apartment was above an old hardware store on the edge of Silverwood.
The building was drafty.
The windows rattled during winter storms.
And the kitchen sink made an alarming noise whenever the water heater switched on.
I loved it.
Nobody there cared how much money I made.
Nobody cared which military awards I had received.
And nobody expected anything from me beyond paying the rent and keeping the stairwell clear of snow.
I closed the door and locked it.
Then I checked the lock a second time.
Another old habit.
My dog, Scout, lifted his gray muzzle from the rug.
He was a retired military working dog I'd adopted three years earlier.
His hearing wasn't what it used to be, but he could still recognize when I was falling apart.
He stood slowly and pressed his head against my leg.
"Hey, old man."
I knelt beside him.
"Rough night."
He leaned against my chest.
For a while, we stayed like that.
Then I went into my bedroom.
Beneath the bed, hidden behind two storage boxes, sat a black fireproof safe.
I hadn't opened it in almost a year.
The combination came to my fingers automatically.
The lock clicked.
Inside were the pieces of a life I'd tried to bury.
A folded American flag.
My flight wings.
My Distinguished Flying Cross.
My Purple Heart.
A photograph of my squadron standing in front of an F-15E during a deployment.
And a small, worn notebook filled with names.
I lifted the photograph.
There I was, younger and smiling.
My flight suit looked enormous on my narrow shoulders.
Beside me stood Aaron Mercer, grinning like a man who had never lost anything important.
And on my other side was Captain Noah Bell.
Noah had been my weapons systems officer.
My closest friend.
And the person who had suffered most during the mission that ended my career.
I traced his face with one finger.
He was laughing in the photograph.
I remembered the joke.
He had told me that my coffee was so terrible it should be prohibited under international law.
I had threatened to make him drink an entire thermos.
He'd promised to report me to the Geneva Convention.
I laughed.
Then I started crying.
The tears came without warning.
Seven years of carefully constructed silence collapsed around me.
I remembered the missile warning.
The violent explosion.
The sickening feeling of losing control.
I remembered Noah shouting that his legs were trapped.
I remembered the canopy separating.
The ejection sequence.
The terrible impact of landing.
And afterward, the desperate struggle to keep him breathing until the rescue team reached us.
The missile had damaged more than the aircraft.
Shrapnel had torn through Noah's lower body.
His spine had been injured during the impact.
The doctors saved his life, but they couldn't give him the future he'd planned.
He had eventually left active service and begun working in aviation safety.
I knew that much.
Aaron had sent updates during the first year.
I had stopped reading them.
Not because I didn't care.
Because every message reminded me that Noah had been sitting behind me when the missile hit.
And I had convinced myself that loving someone meant staying away from the pain I had caused them.
I opened the notebook.
On the first page, Noah had written a message in blue ink.
If you ever forget why we fly, remember the people waiting at home.
I sat on the floor for a long time.
Then I picked up my phone.
I searched through an old contact list until I found his number.
My thumb hovered over the screen.
I almost put it down.
But then I remembered Aaron's voice over the emergency frequency.
Beacon.
That name had reached through seven years of darkness.
Maybe I could reach back.
I pressed the call button.
It rang four times.
Then a familiar voice answered.
"Hello?"
I couldn't speak.
"Hello?" he repeated.
I closed my eyes.
"Noah?"
Silence.
Then I heard a chair scrape against the floor.
"Jess?"
I swallowed.
"Yeah."
Another silence followed.
Then he laughed.
It was a broken, disbelieving sound.
"Well, I'll be damned."
I pressed my hand over my mouth.
"Hi, Switch."
That had been Noah's call sign.
He'd earned it after accidentally switching our squadron commander's coffee with a cup of cold engine-room sludge.
Hearing the nickname made him laugh again.
"Jessica Ward."
"Of all the stubborn, impossible women in the world."
"You're one of the only ones who can still make me feel like a rookie."
I wiped my cheeks.
"I'm sorry."
"For what?"
"For disappearing."
His voice softened.
"I figured you'd call when you were ready."
"Seven years is a long time."
"Yeah."
"It is."
I stared at the photograph.
"Noah, I never stopped thinking about what happened."
"I know."
"I should have gotten you out faster."
The words I'd carried for years finally escaped.
"I should have seen the missile sooner."
"I should have—"
"Jessica."
His voice became firm.
"Stop."
I froze.
"You did everything you could."
I shook my head, even though he couldn't see me.
"You don't understand."
"No, Jess."
"You're the one who doesn't understand."
He took a breath.
"I was there."
"I remember the warning tones."
"I remember the missile."
"And I remember waking up on the ground with you using your own burned hands to stop me from bleeding to death."
My vision blurred.
"You didn't ruin my life."
"You saved it."
I couldn't answer.
Then Noah said something else.
"And if you've called because of what happened at Silverwood, we need to talk about more than an airplane landing."
My fingers tightened around the phone.
"What do you mean?"
"I saw the footage."
"I heard Victor Kessler's company is involved."
"Yes."
Noah became very quiet.
"Jess, there's something I've been trying to tell you for years."
I felt the room tilt.
"What?"
"The route we flew in Syria wasn't the route our squadron originally approved."
I stared at the old photograph.
"How do you know?"
"Because I kept asking why we had been sent through an area with known missile activity."
He paused.
"And last month, an investigator finally showed me the original mission change authorization."
"Who signed it?"
Noah answered with three words.
"Colonel Victor Kessler."
I sat motionless.
Then he delivered the sentence that changed everything.
May you like
"Jess, I don't think the missile strike was simply bad luck."
"I think somebody knowingly sent us into danger."
