11
Shock bolted through Ava at the sight of Kaden’s name. She raised a hand, a gesture to excuse herself from the company of the others. Three steps toward the door, telling herself the timing of this call was coincidence—though she didn’t believe that.
And so? What are you going to do? Turn against Kaden on the word of strangers?
No. Not yet.
She double-tapped her mic, shifting it to tactile mode as she answered the call. “Where are you?” Breathing out the words on a remnant of warm hope.
Kaden ignored her question. Brusquely, “I need to see you. Now. This storm is looking even worse than we thought.”
Is it? All too easy to read a dark, unspoken meaning into those words.
She said aloud, “I’m working now.”
His next words alarmed her: “I know where you are.”
She had to remind herself: At his level of command, he had access to HADAFA too—a higher level of access than hers.
“I’ll be there in two minutes,” he continued.
She heard herself ask, “Are you alone?”
Only after the words were out was she conscious of the reason for the question. Lyric had asked her, Do you know who your assailants were?
Lyric wanted her to believe those goons had been sent by Kaden.
“Meet me outside,” Kaden said, without answering her question. “I’m in a white government sedan.”
He ended the call.
A timid inner voice whispered to Ava that she did not have to go downstairs, she did not have to meet him—but that was a lie. She needed to know the truth.
She pulled open the door, tossing an explanation over her shoulder as she walked out: “I have to talk to someone. Do not go anywhere until I get back.”
Akasha bounded after her, catching the door before it swung closed. “Ava, what the fuck?” she demanded under her breath as a young man in scrubs pushed a cart past. “Where are you going?”
“Just downstairs. Stay here. Keep watch. I’ll fill you in when I get back.”
Ava opted for the stairs instead of the elevator. More time to think, less chance of running into someone, and she wouldn’t be visible to everyone in the lobby when she nudged open the fire door downstairs.
The third-floor fire door chunked shut behind her. Concrete walls amplified the sound of her footsteps as she descended: a swift anxiety-inducing drumbeat—the austere soundtrack of an art-film thriller. She flashed on a scene: a chorus of soulless gunmen waiting for her in the lobby.
Stop it!
She grabbed the stair rail, pulled up sharply, overwhelmed by a sudden certainty that she’d wandered into Crazy Town.
“This is ridiculous,” she whispered aloud. “All of it.”
Stubborn refusal rose in her. She did not want to believe what Lyric had told her. She did not want to be seduced into cooperation. Played like a puppet to some end she could not see.
But what if, by refusing to cooperate, all hell broke loose?
She spoke in a nearly inaudible whisper, trusting her tactile mic to capture her meaning: “HADAFA, I need a psychological evaluation. Subject is me, Ava Arnette. What is my expected perpetrator rating in my current circumstances?”
That sweet male voice: “The system is designed to judge the behavior of individuals within a range of circumstances normalized for them. Your current circumstances exceed the calculable range. There is no rating.”
No shit?
She really had wandered beyond the border of familiar reality. No illusion of certainty was going to ease the grip fear held on her heart.
“You’re on your own, kid,” she whispered aloud, resuming her descent, emerging into the lobby.
Outside, visible past the glass doors, a white sedan.
◇
Lights from the portico did nothing to illuminate the interior of the sedan parked along the curb, in the shadows just beyond the sheltered drop-off zone. Ava approached cautiously, a hand resting on her firearm. But when the sedan’s right-hand front door popped open, she froze.
A light came on inside. Kaden leaned out. He looked back at her. “It’s just me.” His voice terse, his face stony and unreadable—at least to her.
HADAFA, she subvocalized, This is a personal conversation. Do not record.
“Affirmed.”
The easy agreement surprised her. She took it as a good sign. HADAFA could have rejected the request, if the system had suspicions about either one of them.
After a moment of hesitation, she added, But monitor the conversation, and flag any suspected lies.
The AI’s gentle voice spoke in her earbud. “Warning: Subject is a protected entity under the General National Security Directive. Your security rating is insufficient to receive assessments involving classified information.”
Understood. Flag what you can.
Willing her body to relax, she went to meet Kaden. He slid over in the front bench seat to make room for her and she slipped in beside him. He glanced at the abrasions on her knees. “Trouble tonight?”
She found herself reluctant to meet his gaze, so instead she looked out the front windshield, at a little strip of garden planted with dwarf palms, their fronds bobbing in the wind, rain water dripping from them to the bed of laua‘e ferns below. “It’s been a strange one, Kaden.”
“It gets worse from here.”
She flinched as he took her hand, grateful her sidearm was on her opposite side, out of his reach, and then ashamed of the thought.
He said, “Huko’s gaining strength. It’s going to be as bad as Nolo.”
“We’re better prepared this time.” She hoped it was true.
“Ava, I want you to evacuate.”
At last she turned to meet his gaze. “I can’t do that, Kaden. I told you before. My life is here.”
“It doesn’t have to be. You can leave. Go to the mainland tonight. Be with your kids. Your real kids. Not those ghosts that keep haunting your dreams. Ava, you don’t want to go through that hell again.”
“You think it’s that easy? You think I can just walk out on my duty, my responsibilities? Tonight of all nights?”
“And be a cop somewhere else? Yes.”
“I’m a cop here, Kaden. I was born here, in this city, and I work for the people who live here, who stuck it out here, who want to make a future here.”
“That’s guilt talking, and you know it. You hate it here. The heat, the hopelessness, the isolation. You won’t even let your kids visit you here! Why stay? Why stay and risk your life, just to be working for the Chinese?”
“I’m not working for the Chinese.”
“You’re going to be, if you survive Huko.”
He had never talked to her like this before. “It’s just too bad the president sold us off,” she shot back.
“Yeah.” He squeezed her hand, assuring her they were together, in this at least. But his gaze remained hard, determined. Mixed signals hinting at subterranean levels of meaning.
So she dug deeper, needing to uncover the truth, praying it was a truth she could live with. “What do you know about Sigrún?”
He drew back, lip curled.
“You’re familiar with it, then.” She watched him, waiting for HADAFA to flag a lie.
He said, “Of course. I didn’t think you’d know about it. It’s supposed to be a faction of ultra-nationalists, active within the military. All branches.”
“Led by Daniel Conrad?”
“I’ve heard that.”
“If Conrad’s in, then Cornerstone’s got to be behind it. What’s their goal?”
“Why are you asking?”
Ava studied him, striving to see the monster in his eyes. But she could not. This was the Kaden Robicheaux she’d known these past two months. She said, “I’ve got evidence of an imminent terrorist operation, with Sigrún’s name attached.”
A frown of concern. “What kind of operation?”
She said it casually: “A nuclear strike.”
“What? Where?”
Pointing straight up: “The plan is to blame China. Trigger a confrontation.”
Kaden leaned back. Now it was his turn to stare straight ahead. “Has HADAFA confirmed it?”
“Not directly,” she admitted.
He nodded. “I don’t know what you’ve heard, Ava, but the only weapon of mass destruction aimed at this island is that hurricane.” He hesitated, before adding with grim sincerity, “I don’t want you to be here when it hits.”
HADAFA did not flag a lie, and still, she found herself reading a double meaning into his words. What would it be like? To be in the midst of violent hurricane winds only to have them shattered by the airburst of a nuclear bomb. Ava had visited Nagasaki. She’d stood beside the monument at ground zero, looking up, the memory of the bomb haunting the blue sky above her.
She pretended to stretch her shoulders, drawing her right hand back so that it brushed the butt of her pistol. Pull the weapon. Keep it low. A gut shot first to disable him, to prevent him grabbing for the gun. Then a shot to the chest, one to the head, and it would be over. His part in it, at least. Maybe the whole scheme.
If there was a scheme.
Her hand slid away from the weapon. No way. No way could Kaden be involved in anything like that.
“It’s too late,” she said softly. “Even if I wanted to leave, the flights are full and the airport is going to close.”
“Check your email,” he said. “You’re taken care of. I got you that seat on a military flight. It leaves in two and a half hours. Time enough to get to your apartment and pack. I’d drive you, but I have to get to Pearl.”
He really wanted her to go. Because of the storm? Or because Matt’s allegations were real?
A faint buzz in her ears, a momentary dizziness, consciousness flowing into alternate or impending realities.
What would it be like at ground zero? Hammered by the wind and torrents of rain, a crack of lightning, a glance up at the roiling clouds, glimpsing a dark shape arcing out of them, too fast to follow—and then light.
Ava swallowed past a hard lump in her throat, belief and disbelief circling one another. “It’s all right. You don’t need to drive me. I’ll call a taxi.”
“I’ll do it.” He tapped his phone. “Okay, one’s on the way.”
He leaned over to kiss her, pushing her smart glasses up into her hair as he did, his lips warm, soft against hers, and then feather kisses across her cheek. He pulled back, gazing at her for a few seconds more.
She returned his gaze and still she could not see the monster in his eyes.
Another kiss, as the taxi pulled alongside. “Oh,” she said. “I should go.”
He got out, walked around the car, hugged her. “I’ll see you again, when it’s over.”
Last chance, she told herself. Heart pounding, she leaned in and whispered in his ear, “You’re not part of it, are you, Kaden? You’re not part of Sigrún?”
He jerked back, glared at her. “That’s what you’re thinking? You think that’s possible?”
“It’s been suggested.”
“By who?”
“Just tell me it’s not true.”
“Of course it’s not true. How could you even—”
She laid her fingers against his lips. “Stop. I have a duty to consider the evidence presented to me. You know that.”
“It’s not true, Ava. Someone’s trying to get between us, to use you, against me.”
She wanted to believe him.
“Go to your apartment,” he urged. “Then go to Hickam.”
She nodded. He kissed her forehead. She got into the taxi and he closed the door. As the taxi drove her away, she looked back. He stood watching. Then the taxi turned onto the street, and she couldn’t see him anymore.
Ava faced forward, drew a deep cleansing breath, then reached to adjust her smart glasses only to discover she was not wearing them. Kaden had pushed them up into her hair, an inactive position, and there they were still, their external sensors asleep.
HADAFA had been denied the chance to evaluate the truth of his last answers. Belief and disbelief still endured together in her mind, both equally real.
The taxi advanced another block before she updated the route, instructing it to circle back to the hospital. Kaden might be tracking her. He might be tracking the taxi. If so, he would call again. He wanted her to leave the state.
She needed to make calls of her own. First, her new friend in hospital security.
“Eh, sistah,” Hoapili said when he linked in.
“The white sedan that was out front, is it gone?”
“Yeah, left right after you. No visitors since. When you takin’ your boy out?”
“I’ll be back there in a few minutes. We should be leaving right after that.”
“Gotcha.”
Next, she called Ivan. It took him almost a minute to link, and when he did, his first words were, “Are you done over there?”
“No. I’m still working to confirm. I don’t like it, Ivan. I want to call it bullshit. But I can’t.” Ava sketched the plot as she understood it.
A snort of horrified laughter from Ivan. “No way. Our own guys are not going to nuke Pearl Harbor. Wipe out their own shipmates? It won’t happen.”
She hadn’t mentioned Kaden’s name. She didn’t intend to. Unless Ivan had seen it in her profile, he wouldn’t know who Kaden was, any more than Akasha would, because Ava had not shared that part of her life.
“Their shipmates aren’t in port,” Ava reminded him. “The surface ships have already sailed ahead of the hurricane. The subs leave in the morning. The fleet won’t be directly impacted . . . and they were going to lose the harbor in the handover anyway.”
“Fuck,” he whispered and she could tell he’d been hit by the surreal possibility that it was all real.
A flashing text on the periphery of her vision indicated another call. Her gaze shifted, taking in the name. Francis Hoapili.
Hold, she subvoked, and then returned her focus to Ivan.
“Talk to someone,” she begged him. “I know you have connections with navy brass. Tell them what I’ve told you. Name names. And forward a picture of the woman, Lyric. See if you can confirm she’s legit.”
“Yeah,” he said. “I’ll call you back.”
Ava shifted her gaze again to pick up Hoapili’s call, but he hadn’t stayed on hold.
The taxi turned into the hospital driveway. Ahead, there was now a tan-colored van parked under the portico. “Identify and log,” Ava whispered, as the taxi pulled in behind it.
HADAFA sent a coded request to the van’s transponder, then reported, “The vehicle self-identifies as owned by Bryan’s Truck & Van, a vehicle rental company. VIN and visible license numbers are correct for vehicle make, model, and color.”
If Ava had a case number, she could submit a request for the identity of the responsible party. But she didn’t have a case number. She didn’t even have any real evidence of a crime.
A voice mail came in while she was still in the taxi. Hoapili, sounding rumbly and tense: “Got a crew here, sistah. Five sailors, looking for their friend.”
Matt had too damn many friends.
She called Akasha, who picked up instantly. “You left!” she accused, speaking under her breath. “I saw you on the security camera.”
“No choice,” Ava said. “But I’m back now, and we’ve got more trouble downstairs. Five, this time.”
“Yeah, I saw ’em. Boy-gang. Military. You want me down there?”
“No. Stay quiet. Stay hidden. But be ready to move. And keep double-oh-seven in sight. I don’t want that duo disappearing on us.”
“You got it. And I talked to a nurse. I know a back way out.”
“Thumbs up. Stay tuned.”
As Ava entered the lobby she saw Hoapili standing on the side, hands on his hips and eyes narrowed, emanating irritation as he glared at a posse of young men hovering around the desk. Presumably they’d been talking with the receptionist, but if so, that conversation broke off when Ava came in. All of them turned to look in her direction.
To a man, they were lean and fit with neat military haircuts, but no uniforms. Three Caucasian and one Asian, the fifth a mix of both races. Ah, shit. She recognized that last one as Tyrone Ohta, one of Kaden’s officers. His lower lip was cut and swollen as if—maybe—the back of her skull had cracked against it earlier that evening.
Ava felt sick, as the last of the scaffolding supporting her doubt began to give way. Just minutes ago, Kaden had denied any involvement with a how-could-you-believe-that intensity. But Ohta’s presence transformed his denial into a lie.
What do you really believe, Kaden?
The voices on the video had spoken of restored honor, a necessary sacrifice . . . and the world will never be the same again.
Not long ago, Ava had watched a World War II documentary about the British assault on the city of Caen, in Normandy. For four years the German army had held the city. After D-Day, the British had been assigned to take it, but they could not, despite days of effort and extensive casualties. So they shifted strategy, deciding to bomb the city into ruins, to make a sacrifice of both it and the French civilians who still lived there—because sacrifice is called for, sometimes, on the path to a greater good.
Did Tyrone see it that way?
Did Kaden?
For decades, the death cult of right-wing politics had poisoned society, sowing discord and fighting every effort to mitigate climate change. Their leaders—the powerful few—had banked wealth, while pollution and pandemics indiscriminately cut short the lives of ordinary people. Hypocrisy, corruption, willful denial, cowardly decision-making, treason, and lies, lies, lies, had locked the country in a straitjacket of poverty and degradation.
Did the members of Sigrún really believe they could burn all that away with a glorious war? Did they imagine the Chinese would back down? That the sacrifice would be limited and the conflict controlled?
War never worked that way.
She drew herself up, spine straight. If there’d been a choice, she would have ducked back outside into the dark—but Ohta had locked eyes with her, recognized her—and by his expression she knew he had not expected to see her still there.
Conscious of the weight of her sidearm, she greeted him with a friendly but puzzled smile. “Why are you here, Tyrone?”
She watched him make a decision. His face went smooth, unreadable. He approached her. Met her halfway.
“Are you the cop in charge, Ava? The staff says Matt is under police guard and we can’t see him. What’s he supposed to have done?”
Play acting, just like her, pretending nothing was off.
“How do you know him?” she asked. “You’re a submariner. I was told he fell off a surface ship.”
“It’s all one navy.”
Ava allowed a tone of accusation into her voice: “Is it?”
“We got a call from Makani. They asked us to do them a favor. They want to keep Matt’s case out of official channels. You know. The embarrassment.”
“Embarrassment?” she echoed, incredulous—but also outnumbered, as Ohta’s friends circled around. She glanced right, left, taking them in. None familiar to her . . . but surely they were Kaden’s crew, too?
She said, “In case you haven’t heard, there’s a hurricane on the way and all of you should be at your duty stations, not here. This matter does not concern you.”
Ohta’s eyes flashed, frustration visible in the curl of his injured lip, in the vertical lines between his brows. He didn’t know how to handle this turn of events, with a tough-looking security guard watching, and surveillance cameras recording every word.
Doubtless he’d been warned not to make a scene, not to draw the attention of civilian law enforcement.
Ava decided to help him out. “Go, Tyrone,” she said, hoping he couldn’t hear the hammer beat of her heart, that he wouldn’t notice the sweat sheen on her cheeks. “You and all your friends. Get out of here, before you’re found AWOL.”
To her surprise, they did as ordered. Ohta signaled them to go, and they left without another word. Ava watched them get into the tan-colored van, with Ohta on his phone even before the door closed.
The van pulled away, but how long before they came back?