The instant I saw the message from Kim, my heart went into my throat. The millions of worst-case scenarios that had kept me up all last night went through my head. I quickly replied, and we exchanged Skype handles. As soon as my laptop had connected, I pinged her, and thank God, she was online.
As soon as Kim appeared on the screen, my gut twisted. She was pale, and eye makeup had left muddy streaks down both sides of her face.
“Hey,” I said, trying to keep the worry out of my voice and expression. “Where are you?”
“I’m in Hawaii.” She wiped her eyes. “To get . . . to get an abortion.”
My heart dropped. “How are you holding up?”
“I’m not. I’m kind of freaking out.”
“About the . . .” I hesitated. “About—”
“The abortion.” She shuddered. “And they told me today, I have to have someone with me.” She kept her gaze down. “To drive me to and from and to stay with me. While I . . .” Kim swallowed, and maybe it was just the webcam, but it looked like she lost some color. “While I recover.”
“When is it scheduled?”
She winced. “Friday morning. 0700. I’m scared to death, and I don’t know where the hell I’m going to find someone here who—”
“I’ll be there.”
Kim blinked. “You . . . really?”
“I’ll . . .” Shit. Logistics. “I’ll find a way. You shouldn’t be there alone.”
“But . . .”
“Do you need someone there with you?”
She bit her lip, then nodded slowly, and God, she looked like a scared little girl. I wanted so bad to go through the computer and hug her. No two ways about it: I was going to Hawaii if I had to threaten Alejandro over my leave chit.
“I’ll get Gutiérrez to sign off on a leave chit, and I’ll work out a flight. Can you hang in there until then?”
Kim nodded. She smiled, and though she was still obviously tense, it seemed genuine. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
Less than an hour after I chatted with Kim, I handed the emergency leave chit to Alejandro.
“What’s this?”
“MA3 Lockhoff is in Hawaii and . . .” I swallowed, not sure how much to divulge. “I don’t think she should be alone right now.”
He eyed the chit, then looked at me. “Does that qualify as an emergency?”
“Ask Stanton. I’m sure he’ll sign off on it.”
His eyebrows rose. “Is there something I should know about?”
“Please. Just sign the chit.”
He glanced down at the paper. “Wait here.”
“What?”
“Just wait here.” He gestured at one of the chairs in front of his desk. “I’ll be back in a minute.” He didn’t wait for a response before he headed out of the office.
I texted Weiss: Stuck in MA1’s office for a few.
Not ten minutes after Alejandro had gone, I heard him coming down the hall.
“Hey, Weiss,” he called out. “You’re in dispatch.”
I cringed. I owed Weiss a drink for that. Poor dude always got stuck in dispatch when I had to step away from patrol. Which meant . . .
Oh, please, Alejandro. Tell me it’s approved.
He stepped into the office and handed me the chit. “Go pack and get some sleep. Your leave starts now and there’s a Space-A flight tomorrow morning. Be at the terminal at 0200. I’ll make sure you’re a priority one.”
I nodded. “Thank you.”
He held my gaze. “I appreciate you doing this for her.”
I hesitated. “Well, someone has to help sweep things under the rug, right?”
“Better you than me.” Alejandro chuckled, and the sick feeling in my stomach intensified. He really was on Stanton’s side, wasn’t he? That would explain why he’d hand-routed the chit and gotten all the signatures in record time—he knew damn well Stanton didn’t want anything interfering with what Kim was doing.
No wonder Kim had caved in and gone to Hawaii.
She really didn’t have any allies.
Space Available flights were always a gamble, and it looked like I was up against a lot of people this morning. At least a hundred sleepy-eyed service members and dependents were crammed into the terminal area, nervously watching the screens and counting down the minutes until roll call. I had to get on this flight. Had to. If I didn’t, the next one wasn’t until Friday morning, which would be too late.
While I waited, I ran through some contingency plans in my head. There was no way in hell I could afford a commercial ticket, especially not on such short notice. If I couldn’t be there to help Kim, maybe I could get someone else to help out. It wouldn’t be ideal, having a complete stranger taking care of her during that kind of emotional havoc, but in the absence of other options . . .
On my phone, I scrolled through my Facebook friends to see if any of them were still stationed at Tripler or Pearl Harbor. I didn’t dare send a male. Though they were decent guys, the last thing Kim needed right now was to be drugged out of her mind, in terrible pain, and at the mercy of a man she didn’t know.
Fortunately, it turned out there was a Patriot Express flight leaving today—a passenger jet that went to Seattle via Iwo Kuni and Yokota—and most of the people crowded in here were getting on that flight, not the one to Hawaii. After roll call for Seattle, only five of us remained.
I exhaled. The plane to Hawaii had twenty-three seats available.
The flight was on time, thank God, and they didn’t even bother doing a formal roll call since there were so few of us. With every step of the process—check-in, security, transport to the plane—I was sure someone was going to come out and tell us the flight was canceled at the last second. It had happened to me before.
But then I was on the chilly cargo jet. The engines were started, and the crew was getting situated. We were really leaving.
Before they told us to stow our electronics, I sent a quick email to Kim:
Onboard. I’ll be there in a few hours. Hang in there.
Once I’d gotten off the plane and made it through customs, I hurried to baggage claim where she’d said she’d meet me.
I scanned the thin crowd. On the third glance, I realized she was right there, but I barely recognized her at all. Though I’d seen her in civvies before, she looked like another woman entirely, and I couldn’t put my finger on why. It wasn’t even the early signs of pregnancy—though the top of her T-shirt fit differently now, she wasn’t showing yet.
Her smile was weak but may as well have been a huge beaming grin for all it lit up the terminal.
I stepped out of the secure zone and was so damned relieved to see her, I gave her a hug.
She stiffened at first, and I thought for a second that I’d overstepped my bounds, but then she wrapped her arms around me and relaxed.
She barely whispered, “Thank you so much for coming, MA2.”
“You can still call me Reese.” I stroked her hair and added, “No ranks. We’re not at work.”
“Okay.”
“How are you holding up?”
As she let me go, she shrugged. “Holding up.”
Well, it was something.
We loaded my seabag into the trunk of her rental car and left the base. While she drove and we made small talk, I surreptitiously watched her, trying to figure out what had changed.
She normally wore makeup that just toed the lines of what the Navy would allow. In civvies, she went all out, even for casual functions like command barbecues and softball games. Today, she had on a little bit of mascara, and she might have had something on her lips, but it was so subtle, I couldn’t tell.
The plain T-shirt was loose and comfortable, the shorts short enough to keep her cool in this heat but still long enough to cover up the butterfly tattoo that was usually quite visible in civvies, despite being halfway up her inner thigh. Instead of strappy sandals, she had on a simple pair of flip-flops.
Though she looked exhausted, especially with no makeup to hide the dark circles under her eyes, she was . . . Wow. Even when I hadn’t had a high opinion of her, she’d caught my eye, but like this, she messed with my pulse. I was a sucker for the natural look, and even when stress and exhaustion had taken their toll, Kim was one of those women who didn’t need much, if any, makeup. She also didn’t need the push-up bras and stripper heels she was so fond of. It was a crime that someone like her thought she needed any enhancement when she looked this good in her own skin.
At a stoplight, she glanced at me. “You want to grab lunch?”
“I could go for some coffee if nothing else.”
“Yeah, me too.”
We found a fast-food dive a couple of blocks from the air base gates and grabbed a corner table below the air conditioner.
Kim wrapped both hands around a water bottle. “I feel a lot better now that you’re here.”
“Good.” I watched her for a moment. “How are you doing, though? With everything?”
“I’m . . .” She picked at the label on the bottle. Then her shoulders dropped, and though she kept herself together, it was like a dam had broken inside her. “I’m a mess, Reese.”
I took her hand and squeezed it. “I know you are. I wish there was more I could do.”
“There, um . . .” Kim closed her eyes and took a breath before meeting my gaze. “There is, actually.”
“There is? What?”
“Look, I know you’re a mandated reporter. But . . . I need to tell someone.” Her eyebrows pulled together. “I’m not going to file anything, but I need someone to know what happened. Especially before tomorrow.”
I fidgeted. This was dangerous ground. “I can’t keep it quiet, though. There are civilian advocates you can talk to.”
She reached across the table and put her hand on my arm. “Reese, you’re the only one from the island I can trust. Everyone else is in Stanton’s back pocket.”
“What about here? There has to be someone at Pearl or even Tripler who—”
“No.” Kim shook her head. “He’s been in way too long. Knows way too many people. I can’t trust anyone else except for you, and I . . .” Her eyes welled up, and she swiped at them. “I can’t keep carrying this by myself.”
My chest ached. I gnawed my lip. White Beach was a tiny, isolated base on a tiny, isolated island. Most of the commands tended to stick together—aviators hung out with aviators, cops hung out with cops. Which meant when bad things happened, the only person a cop could lean on was . . . another cop. Who would be required by the UCMJ to report something like this or risk being charged with dereliction of duty.
I took her hand and squeezed it gently. “Kim, you know what happened, not me. But whatever did happen, if you need help, you’ve got to talk to someone.”
“Who?” She met my eyes, and hers were wide with desperation. “Gutiérrez is buddy-buddy with Stanton. All the chiefs have their noses wedged between Stanton’s ass cheeks. He’s got friends all the way up to the captain.” She sniffed sharply. “There’s literally no one I can talk to who isn’t either Stanton’s golfing buddy or another cop. And anyone here?” Kim scowled and shook her head. “God knows who they know.”
“What about the SARC?” Even as I said it, my heart sank a little. That asshole came by the precinct quite often, ostensibly to be present and visible, as well as to discuss solutions with the higher-ups. That illusion might’ve stuck if we hadn’t all heard some of his and Stanton’s conversations through the office door. I was no expert, but I was pretty sure sexual assault prevention didn’t involve birdies and nine irons. And if our SARC was fucked up, there was no way to be sure the ones on this island wouldn’t be, too. Especially now that several people in sexual assault response departments throughout the military had been strung up recently for sexual assault themselves.
Fact was, there was no one I could suggest to her because I wouldn’t have trusted any of them with my own report.
“Or maybe not the SARC.” I shook my head. “God, I’m so sorry.”
“Damn it.” She rubbed her temples. “This is so messed up.”
“I know. I’m sorry.”
“It’s not your fault. You’re trying to be a good cop.”
“I want to be a good friend, too.”
She met my gaze, eyebrows climbing her forehead.
“I do,” I whispered. “I’m guilty of judging you before, and I can’t apologize enough for that. But . . . Look, I’m not just here to help a junior Sailor.”
A faint smile pulled at her lips. “Thank you.”
I returned the smile, but hers and mine both faded quickly. I folded my hands on the table. “I want to help you, Kim. I do.”
“I know.”
“And I’m happy to come with you tomorrow, but I need you to tell me: is that really what you want to do?”
“It’s . . .”
My heart clenched. “It’s okay. You can tell me.”
She shifted her gaze away. “I, um . . . Look, without going into any detail that you’d have to repeat, he’s got me in a bad spot.”
I blinked. “How so?”
“He said if I had the baby, he’d use his parental rights.” She played with the hem of her shirt. “Prevent me from putting it up for adoption, demand visitation, all of that.”
“Oh Jesus.” I ground my teeth. “Is that son of a bitch unaware that you could get a protective order against him?”
She met my eyes. “And what happens with that when he’s found not guilty by a jury of his peers?”
I winced. Damn it.
She stiffened. “Fuck . . .”
“It’s okay.” I put my hand on her forearm. “This is still between us.” Oh, but we were walking a dangerously thin line.
“Thanks.” She set her shoulders back and held my gaze. “Anyway, when I go back to Okinawa, he won’t have that card to play anymore.”
“That’s . . . I guess that’s true.” How morbid. An abortion as an ace up her sleeve? He really had backed her into a fucked-up corner, hadn’t he?
Kim studied me. “How about this? I’ll tell you everything. A week after we get back to Okinawa, if I haven’t reported it, then . . . do what you have to do.”
I wrung my hands under the table. It sounded reasonable on the surface but still left a lot of time for this to blow up in our faces. And yet, how willingly would I have severed an arm just to have someone listen to me back when I’d been in an all-too-similar position?
“Okay,” I said. “One week from the time we get back to Okinawa.”
She nodded. “Okay. One week.” She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “For starters, like I’ve mentioned, I know everyone in our command thinks I’m a slut.” She wiped her eyes. “But I’m not.”
I gnawed my lower lip. A short time with Kim and my attitude about her had certainly been adjusted. “I know you’re not.”
She went on. “The thing is, I was a completely different person at my last command.”
I rested my forearms on the edge of the table. “How so?”
“I was . . . I didn’t party with the guys, that’s for sure. I pretty much kept my head down. When a guy came on to me, I tried to be polite about not being interested, but somehow that got turned into me being a cold fish.”
I exhaled. “Yeah, I can relate.”
“Really?”
I nodded. “I get that at this command. All the time.”
“Fun, isn’t it?”
“Seriously.”
Kim plucked a napkin from the dispenser on the table and started tearing off little pieces. “They all talked about what an ice queen I was. How security at Fort Knox had nothing on my pussy.” Her cheeks reddened, and she stared at her hands as she continued shredding the napkin. “They nicknamed me Razor Wire.”
“Razor Wire?”
She nodded. “One of the guys spent half the Navy Ball hitting on me. When I turned him down for the hundredth time that night, he went and told the others he couldn’t get through the razor wire in Lockhoff’s pants.” She laughed bitterly. “And the name stuck.”
My heart dropped into the pit of my stomach. “Oh my God. That’s horrible.”
“It’s not the worst of it.” She set the tattered napkin down and hugged herself, still avoiding my eyes. “A few times, I overheard guys in my command saying I just needed a dick to pound some sense into me so I’d stop being such a bitch.”
My blood turned cold. Wasn’t that a familiar sentiment . . .
She ran an unsteady hand through her hair. “I was scared. I thought, you know, they might do something to ‘reform’ Razor Wire. So when I came to Okinawa, I did what all the popular girls at my last command did.” She sighed. “Aside from actually sleeping with any of them, anyway. But I drank with them, partied with them, acted like the slutty little thing they all wanted. And what a surprise, that backfired, too.”
“How so?”
She met my eyes.
I took a deep breath. “So what happened with Stanton?”
Lowering her gaze, Kim shivered. “We were at a retirement party. Senior Chief O’Leary, a few months ago.”
“Right.”
“I’d had a few beers, but I was still pretty steady on my feet.” She drummed her fingernails on the table. “And then Stanton comes up and starts talking to me. And, I mean, he’s a lieutenant. He’s the fucking security officer. I’m just a third class, and . . . I guess I was kind of blown away that he was even talking to me. Officers don’t usually give us the time of day, you know?” She reached up and rubbed the bridge of her nose. “I thought it was a nice switch to talk to someone who could string a sentence together without fuck being every other word.”
I nodded. Though I didn’t say it out loud—no sense adding insult to injury—the fact was, Stanton could be charming when he wanted to be. He was made of slime and bullshit, but once in a while . . .
I cleared my throat to mask a shudder. “What happened after that?”
“He offered me a lift home, and . . .” She covered her face with her hands for a second. “God, I feel so stupid. I just thought he was being nice.” Swearing under her breath, she dropped her hands. “One minute he was driving me home. Then he pulls into this parking lot over by Tengan Pier. You know, way out in the middle of nowhere.”
I nodded, a sick feeling coiling in my gut. The first time I’d had to guard the long, mostly empty pier, Alejandro had joked that, At Tengan Pier, no one can hear you scream. Suddenly that comment wasn’t so funny.
I sipped my coffee. “Yeah, I know the place.”
“I should’ve known something was up. I don’t even know what I was thinking at that point, and then he kissed me, and I was so . . .” Her eyes unfocused, and she slowly shook her head. “I was so caught off guard at first, I didn’t do anything. But then I tried to push him away. That was when he reached across and hit the lever for the seat back. It reclined. He pushed me onto my back and started pushing my skirt up.” Kim hugged herself tighter and shivered. “I told him to stop, but he ignored me. I tried to put my legs together, but he kept his knee between them.”
“Jesus,” I breathed. I hoped to God if she saw the sweat beading along my hairline, she’d write it off as the heat and humidity, and that she didn’t notice the way I was gripping the side of my chair with one hand.
“He was on top, and . . . when he unzipped his shorts, I panicked. I told him over and over that I didn’t want to do this, and I told him to stop, and he just . . .” She was silent for a moment, still staring at the table, unfocused. Her whole body trembled, and the fluorescent lights overhead picked out the way she was starting to sweat just like I was.
“We can take a break if you need to.” My cop voice sounded weird to my own ears, but shifting into that mode, being a cop instead of a woman who’d been there, meant I stood a chance of getting through this conversation. “Take your time.”
She went quiet again, but only for a minute or so. “I just felt like . . .” She swiped at her eyes with a trembling hand. “Look at me. I’m a foot shorter than him. I can hold my own at PT, but that guy . . . he’s built.”
“Yeah, he is.”
“And there was something about the way he was looking at me, and holding me down, that told me there was no point in fighting.” She gnawed her lower lip. “Like, this was happening whether I liked it or not, and the only say I had in the matter was whether I was bruised and bloody afterward. I could fight him or I could let him, but he was going to. So I . . .” She buried her face in her hands for a moment, then dropped them to her lap and lifted her gaze, her eyes wet. “I let him. I never said yes. I never told him I wanted it. I just stopped fighting, and I . . .” She sniffed sharply as a tear slid down her cheek. “I let him.”
“But you told him no, didn’t you?”
“Yes, but—”
“Then he didn’t—”
“I know.” She wiped her eyes. “But you try convincing all the guys who think I’m a whore and all of Stanton’s best buddies that I didn’t want it. When you’re a girl like me, anything short of clawing at his face and screaming, ‘No!’ is as good as ‘yes.’ You and I both know it’s not, but our opinion and a judge’s . . .”
The words hit me hard in the gut. I wanted so bad to tell her she was wrong. But I knew how fucked up our command was. I knew how badly the deck was stacked against her.
“I’m so sorry,” I said, and that had never sounded so damned useless.
“I tried to be what I thought they wanted girls in the Navy to be, and . . .” She wiped her eyes. “It’s like, now that they think I’m a slut, they’re offended as hell if I reject them. All the guys at my last command thought I was a bitch for shutting them all out. All the guys here think I’m a bitch because they think I’m sleeping with everyone but them.” She threw up her hands. “I don’t know what to do.”
“I know the feeling.”
“You do?”
I nodded. “It starts in boot camp, and I don’t think it ever fucking ends.”
She groaned and buried her face in her hands again. “God . . .”
“I know. Believe me, I know.”
“How do you deal with it?”
I shrugged. “I tried being whatever the guys were ‘satisfied’ with me being, but even that didn’t work. Being myself doesn’t work, either, so really, your guess is as good as mine.”
Kim shuddered. “To be honest, being myself scares me more than anything else.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because I don’t want—” Flinching, she cut herself off.
I leaned closer. “You don’t want . . .?”
“My friend’s sister is in the Army,” Lockhoff said, barely whispering. “And she told me about how when the guys in her command found out she was a lesbian, they saw her as a challenge.” She met my eyes. “I’ve already been threatened with corrective rape—more than once. I’m not painting a bull’s-eye on my forehead.”
I blinked. “Are you . . . are you telling me you’re a lesbian?”
She broke eye contact. After a moment, she nodded.
I reached across the table and touched her arm. “It’s okay. I won’t tell.”
With a humorless laugh, she said, “But you’ll ask?”
“In confidence, yeah, I guess I will.” I patted her arm before withdrawing my hand. “But you’re not the only one, just so you know.”
Her eyebrows jumped. “Are you . . .?”
I nodded, and something in my chest relaxed. I’d been dying to tell someone for a long time, and it was a relief even in this context. DADT was a distant memory, but coming out was still fucking terrifying.
Kim regarded me silently for a moment. “You’re serious? You’re a lesbian?”
“All the rumors didn’t give it away?”
She waved a hand. “I don’t take much seriously from the guys who also brag about getting me into bed.”
I grimaced. “You’ve heard those, then?”
“Oh yeah.”
“Ouch.”
She shrugged. “I set myself up for it. Funny thing was, I acted like a whore because I thought it might make the rest of the command accept me. I didn’t realize it would piss them all off.” She scrubbed a hand over her face and cursed softly. “Who knew I was setting myself up for—”
“You didn’t.” I squeezed her other hand. “Don’t you dare blame yourself.”
She held my gaze and then released a breath. “You think it wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t—”
“It doesn’t make it right, Kim. You were playing the game as best you could. The blame for what happened is on Stanton. Not you.”
Kim slouched in her chair. “I just hate the fact that no matter how much we both know that, it’s not going to change anything. I’m the one who can’t sleep at night and has to get an . . .” She swallowed hard. “And nothing is ever going to happen to him.” As she ran her hand through her hair, her shoulders sagged even more and her gaze dropped.
My heart ached. God, I could see so much of myself in her. I had no idea what to do or say, but damn if I didn’t know how it felt to hurt like that.
“Come here.” I stood, and when she did the same, I wrapped my arms around her. “I’m so sorry all this has happened to you.”
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” I hugged her tighter. “And I am so sorry for questioning you when—”
“Don’t.” She pulled back and looked up at me. “I promise, I’m not mad. I get it.”
“But I—”
“Please,” she whispered. “Don’t. It’s okay.”
I exhaled. “Okay. When we get back and you go to report this, if you need someone to go to the SARC with you, just say the word.”
“I will.”
I released her and met her eyes. “For now, we are in Hawaii.” I smiled cautiously. “Why don’t we go to the motel, let me grab a shower, and then go out and blow off some steam?”
I’ll be damned if she didn’t finally smile back. “That sounds like a great idea.”