Chapter 1 - The Woman in White
"Take off those wings before I have to explain to everyone why you don't deserve them."
Commander Graham Pierce said it loudly enough to stop the conversations nearest the terrace. Lieutenant Commander Leah Calder could still hear the jazz trio behind the French doors, but nobody within twenty feet seemed interested in the music anymore.
Sailors, veterans, and donors crowded the courtyard in dress uniforms and dark suits. Leah had come to accept a small award for mentoring junior naval aviators. Now her former commanding officer stood so close she could count the tiny gold stitches on his white shoulder boards.
"I'm not removing anything," Leah said.
Graham glanced at the aviation insignia above her ribbons. "Then you're going to make this ugly."
"You brought ugly to me."
His smile was thin. "Seven years ago, you walked away from an aircraft and let better people finish the job. Tonight you're being praised for courage. Does nobody here check a record?"
Leah's fingers closed around the gold evening clutch at her side. Inside it was a folded letter from a man named Caleb Price, who had been twenty-two when a helicopter went down off San Clemente Island. "You know what happened on that flight," she said.
"I know what the official report says."
"You helped write it."
An Air Force colonel by the doorway stopped mid-sentence. Leah felt the old embarrassment before she could stop it: being twenty-eight again, standing in a hangar while Graham called her unreliable and told her not to ruin the careers of men with families.
She touched the nameplate on her uniform. "You used my name in the Blue Lantern brochure. You didn't ask me."
Graham's eyes shifted toward the donors. "Not here."
"You chose here."
He lowered his voice. "You're going to accuse a veterans charity of fraud in front of its sponsors?"
Before Leah could answer, Captain Naomi Kwan stepped out from beside the patio doors. Her hair was pinned neatly beneath the lines of her dress-white collar, and her face looked as controlled as it had when she inspected Leah's first squadron ten years earlier.
"Commander Pierce," Naomi said. "I saw the brochure."
Graham straightened. "Captain. This is a misunderstanding."
"Then I have a question you can answer without a speech." Naomi faced Leah. "Did you authorize Blue Lantern to list you as the rescue pilot who brought three sailors home?"
"No, ma'am. There were two survivors. And I wasn't the one who carried them out."
Naomi looked at Graham. "The third man died that night. His name was Aaron Bell. I've been speaking to his mother."
Leah felt something tilt. Aaron's mother had refused every interview for seven years. She had stopped answering most Navy letters. If she was speaking now, the silence around the accident had finally broken.
"And, Leah," Naomi added, "Mrs. Bell says someone collected donations in her son's name last month. She wants to know who signed the permission form."
May you like
Graham stared at Leah's clutch as though he knew exactly what she had brought.
"Because," Naomi continued, "the signature on that form is yours."
