Chapter 5 - A Widow's Choice
Nora wanted to take June home immediately. So did I.
But the courthouse's witness coordinator said the threat was serious enough to document, and Admiral Calder arranged a protected hotel room while investigators checked the message's origin. Nothing about the arrangement made Nora feel safer.
“Three years,” she told me in the hotel hallway. “Three years, Sarah. They gave me a folded flag, a neat report, and a pension form. Nobody gave me an answer.”
I stared at the carpet. “I tried.”
“You stopped calling.”
That landed harder than the water.
I had stopped because every call ended with Nora asking what Luke had said. I couldn't bear to repeat the last thing he'd asked me to do when I hadn't done it.
“I thought silence would hurt less,” I said.
“For you?”
I nodded. She wiped her eyes angrily.
June emerged from the room holding a crayon drawing. Three stick figures stood beneath a blue helicopter. One had a green cape. She handed it to me.
“Daddy said you were the person who never missed,” she said. “Maybe you can find the other man.”
Nora crouched beside her. “Honey, Sarah isn't a superhero.”
“I know.” June looked at me. “She's my dad's friend.”
For the first time since the hearing, I couldn't hold my face still.
A security investigator arrived with the preliminary trace. The threatening photograph had been forwarded through an anonymous account, but the first upload came from a restricted network used by personnel assigned to Thorne's old command.
“We don't know who sent it,” she cautioned. “We can secure the account records if they still exist.”
Nora closed the hotel door and faced me. “If I testify about Luke's last phone call, will they do this to June again?”
“I can't promise they won't try,” I said. “But we'll make a safety plan before you decide.”
She thought for a long moment, then opened the old voice message on her phone.
May you like
Luke's voice crackled through the speaker.
“Baby, if anything happens, ask Sarah about the red truck.”
