Chapter 6 - The Weight of Pier Four
The rhythmic beep of the hospital monitor faded into a dull drone as my thumb hovered over the end-call button. The line was already dead. The metallic voice had vanished into the hum of the digital ether, leaving behind a phrase that cut deeper than any physical blow: what really happened to your grandmother the night before she died.
For forty-eight hours, I had accepted the official narrative. Grandma Grace had passed away quietly in her sleep at eighty-two, her heart simply giving out after a lifetime of quiet dignity. But the caller’s words weren't a generic threat; they were a deliberate, calculated detonator designed to shatter the fragile peace I was trying to build out of the wreckage of my family.
I didn't reach for my jacket. I reached for the secure encrypted comms terminal Bennett had set up in the corner of the room.
"Bennett," I said the instant the secure line connected to the hallway post.
"Captain? You're up early. Everything okay?" His voice was sharp, professional, immediately alert.
"Trace that last incoming call to the mobile unit," I ordered, pacing the length of the linoleum floor, mindful of my fractured ribs. "And get a detail moving toward pier four at the old naval yards. Someone just tried to pull me out into a ghost hunt."
"Negative, Captain. You're on medical restriction," Bennett countered instantly. "If there's an active threat or secondary evidence out there, NCIS handles it. That's why the federal agents are already sweeping the district."
"NCIS doesn't know my grandmother's medical history," I snapped, the authority of twenty years in uniform bleeding into my tone. "They don't know why she kept a spare set of navigation logs under her floorboards or why her death certificate was signed by a local doctor who owed my father favors. If there is a second half to that thumb drive, and if someone is using my grandmother's name to draw me out, I am not sitting here waiting for a report."
There was a tense silence on the line. I could hear Bennett weighing his duty to my medical recovery against the ingrained reflex of following a senior officer's direct order.
"I'm not letting you walk into an ambush alone, Captain," Bennett said finally, his voice dropping an octave. "I'm coming in. And I'm bringing two armed shore patrol personnel with me. We secure pier four first. Then you talk."
Ten minutes later, a federal-issue unmarked sedan was cutting through the grey pre-dawn mist of the Norfolk waterfront. The sky hung low and heavy, bleeding a bruised shade of violet over the cranes and rusted hulks of decommissioned supply ships. Pier four was an industrial relic—a concrete finger jutting out into the dark, churning water of the harbor, flanked by skeletal warehouses that smelled of creosote and salt.
As the car's headlights swept across the cracked pavement, I saw a solitary figure standing near the edge of the pier, hands buried deep in a heavy woolen coat.
It wasn't a shadowy assassin. It wasn't an enforcer sent by my father.
May you like
As we pulled closer, the cabin light flickered across her face, and my breath caught in my throat.
It was Mom.
