Chapter 27
CAMILLE
W e came off the helo hot with proof I could feel in my bones.
Not a whale. Not a ray. A shadow that moved like a decision and then was gone.
“The Navy’s been holding out,” I told Jacob over the rotor wash, already reaching for my phone. “Or they’re about to pretend they didn’t see what we just saw.”
On the walk to the Jeep I fired off a text to the crew thread.
Me: Big break. Eyes on something mechanical in the corridor. Details soon. Kogia calf steady? Bottlenose breath rate?
Becca, instantly: Calf stable. Bottlenose breathing like she read the manual. We’re good. Go be dangerous.
I believed her because faith in your people is part of the job.
“Bungalow first,” I said, climbing in. “If they’re going to pull me into a room with epaulets, I want to look like a woman they’ll remember when I start handing out assignments.”
“Yes, Dr. Allard,” Jacob said, amused. Then softer. “You were born to light rooms like that on fire.”
“Flatterer.”
“Truth.”
He rode quiet after that. A ready quiet. The kind that says point me and I’ll go .
When we arrived at the bungalow, the porch looked a little like it had been waiting. My heart did the small soft jump it does when a place remembers you.
“Give me a few minutes,” I said. “Make yourself at home.”
He lifted his duffel like it weighed nothing and followed me to the bedroom. He hesitated in the doorway as if asking permission to cross some line I hadn’t drawn.
“Right-hand dresser,” I said, surprising myself. “Middle drawer. Leave a shirt. Toothbrush. Whatever you want here.”
He didn’t say anything showy. He just opened the drawer, set a folded black tee inside, and laid a toothbrush in the corner like a promise. Then he tucked a spare phone charger behind my nightstand and looked up at me like he’d put a brick into a foundation no one else could see.
It felt like a key turned in a lock.
I yanked my braid loose and raked my fingers through my hair. The closet yawned, unhelpful. Dresses in blues and whites. Linen pants that had behaved for donors. A navy wrap dress with a neckline that could forgive anything and sleeves that said I’m not here to be decorative. I held it up.
“Too much?”
“You’ll look like a verdict in that,” he said, leaning a shoulder on the doorframe. “Wear it.”
“Boots or heels?”
“Heels that make noise,” he said. “So they hear you coming.”
The stubborn knot in my chest eased. Fury loves a costume.
“Talk to me,” I said, dropping the dress on the bed to hunt for my good bra. “About the Navy. About your people. Help me draw the line between righteous and reckless.”
He took a breath and came in, not touching yet. “The Marine in me doesn’t like watching you load a cannon for a broadside on our mother service. Sailors are like us grunts, they do the unglamorous work that keeps civilians safe.”
“I know,” I said. “I’m angry at systems, not deckhands.”
“Good. Because I won’t let you smear kids in uniform to make a point at the top.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “But if the Navy is cutting corners or using something they shouldn’t or hiding a test under a benign label, I want that ripped into daylight. You know why?”
“Because truth saves lives.”
“Because I don’t owe anyone blind loyalty,” he said, voice flat.
“I owe loyalty to the mission, to my team, to the country. If the Navy’s clean, I’ll help you say so loud enough to shake the internet.
If they’re not, I’ll help you fix what’s broken.
Either way, we aim at the right target.” He tipped his chin.
“Your lieutenant—McGuire—feels like the right kind of officer. Let her be a bridge, not your burn pile.”
I exhaled. Some of the heat in me sat down and turned into focus. “That’s the line. I can live there.”
“Good.” His mouth curved. “Now, go put on your battle dress.”
I turned to the mirror. Navy wrap. Pressed it to my hips and shoulder to shoulder. Holy hell, he wasn’t wrong. It looked like an argument they could not win.
He came up behind me. Close enough that I felt heat without being trapped. His hands hovered at my waist like he was checking both of us for sparks.
“You’re vibrating,” he said into my hair.
“I’m furious.”
“You’re beautiful.”
“Those are not mutually exclusive.”
“I know,” he said. “It’s why I’m having trouble not touching you.”
I met his eyes in the mirror. The look there was the opposite of confusion. “We have a meeting in less than an hour,” I said. “I need to be a woman who can say narrow-band like it’s a knife.”
“You can be both,” he said, easing the wrap dress out of my hands so it puddled back onto the bed. His fingers skimmed the strap of my tank, heat ghosting my shoulder, and he kissed the nape of my neck—a soft brand. “You’ll be even sharper once I take the edge off.”
I should have told him to wait. I should have stepped away. Instead, I leaned back the smallest amount. The smallest amount was enough.
His mouth found my shoulder. Teeth. Tongue. A kiss that didn’t ask. It took. My knees went a little wrong.
“I’m supposed to be getting dressed,” I said, already gone hoarse.
“You are,” he murmured. “I’m helping.”
“By taking things off.”
“Efficient,” he said, and smiled against my skin. “Turn around.”
I did. My tank came off, shorts hit the floor. I stood there in bra and panties.
He looked at me like a man who’d followed a compass through three kinds of hell and found the thing it had been pointing at. His hand lifted. The back of his knuckles skated under my breast, slow. His other hand found my hip, thumb drawing lazy circles that made my head want to tip back.
“Touch me,” I said. Because I am a woman who gives clear orders when she wants something.
He did. Mouth to the center of my chest, heat and reverence and hunger in one bite.
He worked the clasp of my bra with the kind of competence that should come with a warning label, slid the straps down, and bracketed my ribs to lift me into his mouth.
My vision went white at the edges. He sucked slow and then mean, drawing a primal sound out of me.
He dropped to his knees. Hooked his thumbs into the sides of my panties and watched my face while he dragged them down. I stepped out and he spread my thighs with his hands and set his shoulders under them like a man taking a weight he wanted.
“Bed,” I said, breath jagged.
“Mirror first,” he said. “Look.”
I looked. My hair down. My mouth already wrecked. Him on his knees, eyes dark, hands sure.
He went down on me like a man who’d memorized every twitch from last night and wanted the refresher.
Tongue on my clit, patient, then pressure that made my hips forget themselves and chase his mouth.
I caught his hair and he let me, sliding two fingers inside and curling just right.
He watched my face like he was reading it.
The wave gathered. He held me on the edge until I made a breathless sound, then pressed, and I broke.
I shook. He didn’t stop. Gentle circles until the aftershocks went soft. Then he kissed the inside of my thigh like a thank-you and stood in one clean line.
“Come here,” he said, and I did. He turned me, then bent me over the dresser as he freed his cock.
The mirror was a frame around a decision I had already made.
He pulled me back into him. One hand high on my chest to lift me, one hand low to line himself up.
The first push was a long, thick slide that made me forget my own name for a heartbeat.
The second found depth. The third found home.
“Like that,” I said, useless and honest.
“Like that,” he echoed, already moving. Short strokes that made me see stars. Then longer, slower, meaner. He sank in and held there until I squirmed, then did it again. His fingers slid to my jaw and angled my face so I could see us. My mouth. His eyes. The place we met.
“Look,” he said. “Don’t go anywhere.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” I said, and meant it.
He grabbed my hair and wrapped it around his fist to pull my head back a little, not pain.
A claiming. He dragged his teeth along my shoulder and bit down enough to leave a mark that would make me blush when I dressed.
His hand slipped down and found my clit and circled with that cruel kindness he has.
I came hard, clenching around him, and he swore with real gratitude and drove in deeper to ride it out.
He pulled me upright, his chest to my back, and walked us the two steps to the bed without letting me go.
I fell forward on my hands and knees. He held my hips and pushed back inside.
The angle turned criminal. I dropped my head and begged into the sheets.
He laughed, dark, happy, and slapped my ass once, not hard.
Possessive. I pushed back into his hand because I am not innocent and he knew it.
“God, Camille,” he said, voice rough. “You make me stupid.”
“Good,” I said. “Don’t stop.”
He didn’t. He set a rhythm that made thought a luxury again.
The bed creaked its opinion. The room filled with water-slick heat that had nothing to do with the ocean.
He reached around to rub me just where I needed and I broke again, hand fisting in the sheet, throat open.
He followed with a sound like a man being forgiven.
He stayed deep, pressed his mouth to my shoulder, breath hot, body shaking against mine.
We collapsed sideways, half-laughing, lungs empty. He kissed me like a thank-you. I bit his lip because I could. He made a pleased sound that I was going to hear in my head at the worst possible time later.
“Meeting,” I said at last, panting. “We have a meeting.”
He rolled onto his back and dragged a hand over his face. “You’re going to walk into a room full of officers with that mark on your shoulder.”
“I’m going to tame my hair and put on a dress and speak in complete sentences,” I said. “They won’t see anything I don’t want them to.”
“Sure,” he murmured, admiring. “But they’re going to feel you like weather.”
“Good,” I said. “Let them bring umbrellas.”
We rinsed fast in the shower, no detours, just soap and a kiss under the spray that almost cost us another ten minutes.
I towel-dried my hair and twisted it into a low knot that said I didn’t plan to fidget.
I swiped on mascara because a woman deserves a weapon or two.
The navy wrap went on and skimmed my hips.
Nude heels that clicked. A thin gold chain at my throat. Professional. Female. Not sorry.
He dressed while I did. Clean white shirt open at the neck, sleeves rolled, dark jeans that didn’t apologize for his thighs, boots that had seen more than I wanted to know.
He buckled on the watch he’d left beside my sink and slipped his dog tags under his shirt so only the chain showed.
A man who could be introduced to a general and not embarrass me.
He watched me slide lipstick on. Red. The color of a mouth that means it.
His pupils dilated. Good.
“You’re dangerous,” he said.
“Practice,” I said, tucking my phone and a clean notebook into my bag. “Ready?”
He picked up his duffel, then set it down again. He opened the drawer where he’d left a shirt and a toothbrush and added a second tee, a pair of socks, another charger. He caught me watching and gave a crooked grin.
“Provisions,” he said. “For after.”
“After what?”
“After you light the Navy on fire.”
I smiled.
“That’s my girl,” he said before he could stop himself.
I touched his jaw once with the back of my knuckles and felt the scrape of his shave as if it meant something. Maybe it did.
On our way out I paused by the little table where I keep my keys and the basket of things I pretend I’m not sentimental about.
I dropped in the Coast Guard crew’s card the chief had handed me at the park, scrawled with a number and a crude smiley face.
Next to it was my mother’s St. Brendan medallion that I never wear because superstition lives in my bones, even when I am pretending to be above it.
I slipped the chain over my head and hid it under the wrap dress.
“You good?” he asked.
“I’m good,” I said. Then I kissed him once more because you don’t walk into a fight you might win without carrying some luck.
Outside, the day had brightened like it had decided to see what we’d do with it. I texted the crew again as we walked to the Jeep.
Me: On my way back. 1400 with Navy still on. Last call for any numbers you want in the room.
Tamika: Bring the hard stare. We’ll send the good charts.
Becca: And a photo of the calf. For your pocket.
Miguel: I need Ryker’s headcount on that idiot line. Ask nicely. Or don’t.
I smiled. Jacob read over my shoulder and shook his head. “You run a tight little insurgency,” he said.
“They follow me because I’m right,” I said.
“They follow you because you never ask them to do a thing you won’t do first,” he said. “And because you make it feel like winning even when it’s not.”
I didn’t answer that. Compliments sit funny in my chest when they land too close to the truth.
We drove with the windows down. River air and heat and the faint sting of salt on my skin where his teeth had left a mark the dress hid. Every minute toward 1400 was another tick where I sharpened what I wanted to say until it could cut.
“You really think they know?” I asked, eyes on the road. “That there’s some ugly under the water they haven’t told me about?”
“I think institutions move slow and cover their asses by habit,” he said. “I think good people get lost inside bad habits.”
“That’s tidy,” I said.
“It’s honest,” he said back. “Go in ready to listen. Come out ready to fight. We’ll do both.”
“We,” I repeated, because I liked how it sat.
He smiled. “We.”
The facility rose out of the marsh like the plain, stubborn thing it is. Pumps humming. Shade breathing. My people already in motion. The place looked like a person bracing to take a punch and grin, anyway.
“Almost time,” I said, eye on the clock.
“Yes, ma’am,” he said, mouth tipping.
Inside, I grabbed the binder, the recorder, a thumb drive in a labeled bag, and a small cooler with samples. He took the cooler without comment and held the door.
“Ground rules?” he asked as we walked.
“You back my asks. If they try to run me in circles, you pull them straight.”
“Yes, Dr. Allard.”
“Let’s go meet your Navy,” I said.
“Let’s,” he answered.
I stood a beat longer and watched him. That stupid daydream opened one eye. Coffee. A porch. A man leaving a toothbrush in your drawer because he meant it.
“Time to make friends,” he said.
“Time to make the right kind of enemies.”