Chapter 1: The Day He Decided I Would Disappear
Colonel Victor Kane drove his boot into my chest and sent me over the rail of the USNS Resolute in front of nearly five hundred sailors and Marines.
For one second, I was looking at his face.
The next, there was nothing beneath my boots.
Someone shouted my name.
The Pacific rushed up.
Then I hit the water.
Hard.
Cold slammed through me so violently that every muscle in my body locked.
By the time I broke the surface, the Resolute was already pulling away.
Hundreds of faces crowded the rail.
And above all of them stood Kane.
His hands rested casually on his hips.
"Problem taken care of."
He thought the ocean would make me disappear.
What he had forgotten was the sealed NCIS evidence packet beneath my bunk.
The one with two words stamped across the front.
DECK FOUR.
Three hours earlier, the flight deck had felt like an oven.
Heat shimmered across the steel.
Men and women stood in formation beneath a brutal Pacific sun while Colonel Kane sat under a shade canopy eating steak.
A bottle of cold water rested beside his hand.
Condensation rolled slowly down the plastic.
Everyone could see it.
That was the point.
Three heat-related casualties had already been entered into the medical log.
Kane still refused to unlock the emergency water stored below deck.
Officially, he called it ration control.
Nobody believed that anymore.
A signalman standing beside me began to sway.
He was maybe twenty.
Too young to have learned how dangerous it was to show weakness around men like Kane.
His lips were cracked.
His skin was dry.
His eyes had stopped focusing properly.
I leaned slightly toward him.
"Stay with me."
He tried.
Then Kane noticed.
He walked toward us slowly, sunglasses hiding his eyes.
The entire formation went quieter.
Kane stopped in front of the kid.
"Can't stand up?"
The signalman tried to straighten.
"Yes, sir."
His knees nearly folded.
Kane smiled.
"Dead weight doesn't deserve rations."
The kid collapsed.
I moved before I had time to think about how it would look.
One step.
Then another.
I put myself between Kane and the sailor on the deck.
"Sir, he needs water."
Five hundred people heard me.
Kane turned his head.
Slowly.
Then he removed his sunglasses.
His eyes settled on me.
"And who exactly do you think you are, Petty Officer?"
I kept both hands at my sides.
"The only person here still speaking to you as if you're human."
Nothing moved.
No cough.
No whisper.
Somewhere behind us, a plastic cup rolled across the steel deck.
It tapped softly against a bulkhead.
Kane smiled.
But something behind his eyes changed.
That was the moment he decided I would be humiliated before sunset.
What he did not know was that humiliation was exactly what NCIS had sent me aboard to survive.
Officially, I was Petty Officer First Class Hannah Mercer Cole.
Maritime interdiction specialist.
Temporarily assigned to logistics support aboard the Resolute.
May you like
That was the version everyone could read.
The real reason I had boarded the vessel existed inside a sealed investigative packet hidden beneath my bunk.
