The Shadow Protocol

PART 1: The Ghost at the Gate

The wind off the Severn River had teeth, the kind of damp, biting cold that settles into your marrow and reminds you that winter in Annapolis isn’t just a season; it’s a mood. I pulled the collar of my black wool coat tighter around my neck, but the chill I felt had nothing to do with the November weather.

It was the exposure.

For twenty years, my survival—and the survival of thousands of sailors who would never know my name—depended on being invisible. I was a ghost in the machine of the U.S. Navy. I was the silence between radio transmissions. I was the person who wasn’t there.

But today, standing on the gray cobblestones outside the Naval Academy Chapel, I was painfully, excruciatingly visible.

“Ma’am, I’m going to tell you for the fourth time,” the security guard said, his voice flat and bored. “You are not on the list.”

Derek Pollson. I read the name tag on his chest before I even looked at his face. He was a slab of a man, the kind who spent his off-hours doing heavy deadlifts and his working hours looking for a reason to exert control. He tapped his tablet screen with a thick finger, the plastic click-click-click echoing like a gavel sentencing me to obscurity.

“This is a private memorial service,” Pollson continued, looking over my shoulder at the line of mourners forming behind me. “Invitation only. No name, no entry.”

I took a slow breath, forcing my heart rate to stay at a resting sixty beats per minute. It was a reflex, a biological switch I’d learned to flip in safe houses in Beirut and back-alley cafes in Sevastopol. Control. Assess. De-escalate.

“I understand the protocol,” I said, keeping my voice level, the tone of a woman who is used to being listened to, even if she rarely spoke. “But Admiral Garrett sent me a personal invitation. I have it right here.”

I reached into my purse. My hand didn’t tremble. It wouldn’t dare. I pulled out the cream-colored envelope, the paper stock heavy and expensive. The handwriting on the front was shaky—the tremor of a man fighting a losing battle with his own failing nervous system—but the intent was deliberate. Commander Catherine Reeves.

“Inside is a handwritten card,” I said, offering it to him.

Pollson didn’t even blink. He didn’t look at the envelope. He looked at me, his eyes scanning my civilian clothes—a simple black dress, a coat that was five years old, sensible heels. He saw a middle-aged woman. He saw a nobody.

“Ma’am, Admiral Garrett passed away two weeks ago,” he said, a smug little smirk touching the corner of his mouth. “He couldn’t have invited you to anything.”

“He wrote this before he died,” I said. My patience was fraying, a thin wire under immense tension. “He knew the end was coming. He wanted specific people at his service.”

“Then those specific people would be on the official guest list compiled by the family,” Pollson countered, crossing his massive arms over his chest. He was enjoying this. He was the gatekeeper, and I was just another pest trying to crash a VIP event. “I’ve got three hundred names here. Senators. Flag officers. The Secretary of the Navy. Yours isn’t one of them. Step aside.”

I stood frozen. It wasn’t the rejection that stung; it was the irony.

I had spent two decades preventing wars. I had sat across from Russian admirals in dimly lit Orthodox churches, negotiating the movement of nuclear submarines while the rest of the world slept. I had stopped carrier groups from firing on each other. I had carried secrets that would have toppled governments.

And now, I was being defeated by a clipboard and a man named Derek.

“This is ridiculous,” a voice hissed beside me.

Maggie. My younger sister. She was shivering in her dress coat, her face flushed with the kind of indignant anger that only civilians could afford to feel. She stepped forward, interposing herself between me and the guard.

“Excuse me,” Maggie snapped, her voice sharp. “My sister isn’t trying to crash anything. She drove five hours to be here. She worked with the Admiral for fifteen years. The least you could do is check with someone who actually knew him.”

Pollson shifted his weight, his eyes sliding to Maggie with dismissive annoyance. “And you are?”

“Margaret Reeves. I’m with her. And before you ask, no, I’m not on your precious list either, because I’m her guest.”

“Then you’re both going to need to step aside,” Pollson said. He gestured to his partner, a younger woman standing by the metal detector. “Cho, call base security. We might have a situation here.”

Vanessa Cho looked different. She was young, maybe twenty-eight, with intelligent eyes that were currently darting between me and her supervisor. She hesitated. She saw something Pollson didn’t. Maybe it was the way I stood—feet shoulder-width apart, hands loose but ready. Maybe it was the stillness in my face.

“Sir,” Cho said softly. “Maybe we should call the event coordinator first? The woman isn’t… she’s not acting like a crasher.”

“We obey the list, Cho,” Pollson barked. “Call the MPs. Let the Academy sort it out.”

I felt the eyes of the crowd on my back. A Navy Captain in dress blues checked his watch loudly. An elderly couple whispered behind their hands. Phones were coming out. I could see the lenses rising, the black eyes of cameras capturing my humiliation.

Woman attempts to crash Admiral’s memorial. That would be the headline. The viral video.

This was exactly what Thomas Garrett had warned me about. “The cost of the shadows, Catherine, is that when you step into the light, you cast no reflection. To the world, you are a blank page.”

I couldn’t let the MPs drag me away. That would mean an incident report. That would mean questions I couldn’t answer. I had to play my trump card, even though I knew it was likely expired.

“That won’t be necessary,” I said, my voice cutting through the rising murmur of the crowd.

I reached into my wallet and extracted a card. It wasn’t a standard driver’s license. It was laminated, slightly yellowed with age, bearing a photo of me from fifteen years ago—hair darker, face unlined, eyes just as hard.

“This is my old DoD civilian identification,” I said, holding it up so Pollson had to look at it. “It expired in 2012, but it shows I worked for the Naval Intelligence Command. Look at the clearance level.”

Pollson squinted at it, leaning in with the skepticism of a man inspecting a counterfeit twenty-dollar bill.

“TS-SCI,” I read for him. “Top Secret / Sensitive Compartmented Information. With additional compartmented access codes.” I pointed to the string of alphanumeric gibberish at the bottom. “That signature at the bottom? That is Admiral Thomas Garrett as my authorizing official.”

Pollson snorted. “This is expired, lady. And even if it wasn’t, it doesn’t prove you’re invited to a funeral. Anyone could have worked for the Navy. That doesn’t give you a free pass.”

“Then call someone who can verify me,” I pressed, the desperation starting to bleed into my tone despite my best efforts. “Call the Office of Naval Intelligence. Call Captain Rita Sandoval. She’s the current Director of Mediterranean Operations. She knows who I am.”

“I’m not calling the Pentagon based on an expired ID and a sob story,” Pollson said, handing the card back to me with a sneer. “Step aside, or I remove you physically.”

The threat hung in the cold air.

I could see Maggie vibrating with rage, ready to scream. I could see the line behind us growing restless. I felt a profound sense of defeat. I had promised Thomas. In that last letter, he had begged me. “Come to the chapel, Cat. Make them see you. Just once.”

I was failing him.

I turned to go. I was going to retreat, find a side entrance, or perhaps just sit in the car and mourn the only man who had ever truly understood me.

“Catherine?”

The voice was sharp, authoritative, and laced with genuine shock.

I froze. I knew that voice. It was a voice I hadn’t heard in five years, since a debriefing in a windowless room in Brussels.

I turned back toward the checkpoint.

Walking toward us, cutting through the line of mourners like the prow of a destroyer, was a woman in a Navy Captain’s uniform. Her dress blues were immaculate, her medals stacked high on her chest. Her dark hair was pulled back in a severe bun, and her eyes were wide with disbelief.

Captain Rita Sandoval.

“Rita,” I breathed, the relief hitting me so hard my knees almost buckled.

Sandoval stopped three feet from the checkpoint. She ignored the crowd. She ignored the security guards. She looked at me, really looked at me, scanning my face as if searching for the ghost she remembered.

“What is going on here?” she demanded, her gaze snapping to Pollson.

Pollson straightened up, his demeanor instantly shifting from bully to subordinate. “Captain. This woman claims she was invited, but she’s not on the list. I was just—”

“You’re Catherine Reeves,” Sandoval interrupted him, her voice quiet but carrying like a gunshot in the silence of the plaza. “Station Nighthawk. Operation Constellation.”

The words were like a code sequence being keyed into a lock.

Behind Pollson, Vanessa Cho’s head snapped up. She had heard those terms. They were whispered in intelligence training, the kind of legendary, redacted operations that young officers speculated about over drinks. Station Nighthawk. The ghost station.

I didn’t confirm or deny. I just held Rita’s gaze.

“Oh my god,” Rita whispered. She stepped forward, disregarding the barrier. “I thought… we thought you had gone completely dark.”

“I did,” I said. “Thomas asked me to come.”

Rita turned on Pollson, her face hardening into stone. “Let her through.”

Pollson blinked, caught off guard. “Captain, with respect, I can’t do that without proper authorization. The family was very specific. The guest list is—”

“I am giving you authorization,” Rita snapped. “This woman has every right to be at this service. More right than half the people sitting in those pews.”

Pollson’s jaw set. He was a man who lived by rules, and his rulebook was currently in conflict with reality. “Ma’am, I appreciate you know her. But unless her name is on this tablet, or unless the family clears her, she stays out. Those are my orders.”

“You have to be kidding me,” Maggie groaned.

“I am not kidding,” Pollson said, digging his heels in. “I have liability protocols. If I let an unauthorized person in and something happens—”

“Do you know who she is?” Rita asked, her voice rising. “She isn’t a threat. She is a patriot.”

“She is a name not on a list!” Pollson shouted back, losing his composure.

The scene was escalating. People were staring openly now. A hush had fallen over the plaza. This was the nightmare. This was the spectacle.

“Rita, stop,” I said quietly. “It’s not worth it.”

“No,” Rita said, her eyes flashing. She reached into her pocket and pulled out her phone. “It is worth it. Thomas wouldn’t stand for this, and I won’t either.”

She tapped the screen furiously, holding the phone up to her ear.

“Who are you calling?” Pollson asked, looking nervous for the first time. “The family?”

Rita looked at him with a mix of pity and fury. “No. The family doesn’t know. They were protected from the truth. I’m calling the one person who knows exactly who Catherine Reeves is and has the rank to crush this entire checkpoint.”

She waited a beat, then spoke into the phone.

“Get me Admiral Holloway. Yes, now. Interrupt him. Tell him… tell him the Ghost of Sevastopol is standing outside the chapel and they won’t let her in.”

Pollson went pale.

“Admiral Holloway?” Maggie whispered to me. “Who is that?”

“Chief of Naval Operations,” I murmured, watching Rita pace. “Four-star Admiral. Member of the Joint Chiefs.”

“He knows you?”

“I briefed him when he was just a Captain,” I said. “Before he had stars on his shoulder, he had me in his ear, translating Russian intercepts.”

Rita was speaking rapidly now. “Yes, Sir. I’m at the Garrett Memorial. It’s Reeves. Yes, that Reeves. Security is blocking her. No, Sir, she’s not on the list because she doesn’t exist on paper. Yes, Sir. I told them.”

She paused, listening. Her eyes locked on mine.

“Understood, Admiral. I’ll hold them here.”

Rita lowered the phone slowly. She looked at Pollson, then at the event coordinator, James Whitmore, who had just scurried out of the chapel to investigate the commotion.

“What’s happening?” Whitmore asked, clutching his tablet like a shield. “We have Senators waiting. The service starts in twenty minutes.”

“It’s going to be delayed,” Rita said, a dark satisfaction in her voice.

“Delayed?” Whitmore squeaked. “Why?”

“Because Admiral Holloway is en route,” Rita announced, loud enough for the entire crowd to hear. “He is leaving the Pentagon via helicopter right now. He will be here in forty-five minutes.”

Pollson looked like he was going to be sick. “The CNO is coming… here? For her?”

“Yes,” Rita said, stepping up to stand beside me, forming a united front. “And when he arrives, God help anyone standing in his way.”

I stood there, the wind whipping my hair across my face, watching the color drain from the security guard’s face. For twenty years, I had hidden. I had dodged cameras, used fake names, and lived in the shadows.

But the shadows were lifting. And the sound of approaching rotors was about to change everything.

PART 2: The Admiral’s Descent

The sound started as a rhythmic thrumming in the distance, a vibration you felt in your chest before you heard it with your ears. Then came the visual—a dark speck against the slate-gray Maryland sky, growing rapidly larger, banking hard over the Severn River.

A Navy SH-60 Seahawk.

The crowd in the plaza had stopped murmuring. They were craning their necks, phones raised, recording the spectacle. Beside me, Derek Pollson looked like a man watching his own execution in slow motion. He checked his radio, his hands trembling slightly.

“CNO inbound,” he muttered to Vanessa Cho. “Stand by.”

The helicopter didn’t just land; it announced its presence with a hurricane of rotor wash that flattened the grass on the parade deck and sent hats tumbling. The noise was deafening, a physical weight that pressed down on us.

I watched the wheels touch down. The side door slid open before the rotors even began to spin down.

Two figures emerged.

The first was a Master Chief, a man carved from granite, moving with the deceptive speed of a veteran operator. Master Chief Leonard Cruz. I recognized him immediately. We’d shared a terrifying three days in a safe house in Dubai back in ’09.

Behind him came the Admiral.

Admiral Marcus Holloway, Chief of Naval Operations, looked exactly as he did on CNN, but terrifyingly more real. He wore his service dress blues, the four stars on his shoulder boards gleaming like warning beacons. He didn’t run, but he moved with a stride that devoured the distance between the landing zone and the chapel.

The crowd parted. It wasn’t a polite shuffling aside; it was the instinctive biological reaction to alpha authority. Officers snapped to attention. Civilians froze.

Holloway walked straight to the checkpoint. He didn’t look at the crowd. He didn’t look at the chapel. He looked at me.

“Commander Reeves,” he said, his voice cutting through the dying whine of the turbine engines. “I apologize for the delay. The airspace over D.C. was a mess.”

I felt the heat rise in my cheeks. “Admiral, you didn’t need to come personally.”

“Yes, Catherine. I did.”

He turned slowly to face Pollson.

Pollson was standing at a rigid position of attention, but his eyes were darting around like a trapped animal.

“You’re the security contractor who denied this officer entry?” Holloway asked. His tone wasn’t angry. It was disappointed, which was infinitely worse coming from a man who commanded the world’s most powerful navy.

“Sir, I… Yes, Sir,” Pollson managed, his voice strangled. “I was following the authorized guest list provided by the family. Her name wasn’t on it. I have strict orders—”

“I know what you were following,” Holloway interrupted, stepping closer. “And under normal circumstances, enforcing that list is your job. But these are not normal circumstances. Did Captain Sandoval not inform you of who this woman is?”

“She did, Sir. But without verification—”

“The verification was standing right in front of you,” Holloway said softly. “You saw a woman in civilian clothes and you stopped thinking. You assumed she was nobody. That was your mistake.”

James Whitmore, the event coordinator, came bustling forward, looking breathless. “Admiral Holloway! We had no idea—we were just following protocol—the family—”

“Where is Bethany Garrett?” Holloway demanded, ignoring Whitmore’s excuses.

“Inside, Sir. With her mother. The service is about to—”

“Get them,” Holloway ordered. “Now.”

It wasn’t a request. Whitmore turned on his heel and sprinted back toward the heavy oak doors of the chapel.

While we waited, the silence in the plaza was heavy. Commander Rick Brennan, an old colleague I hadn’t seen in a decade, pushed through the crowd. He looked older, grayer, but his grin was the same.

“I’ll be damned,” Rick said, stopping beside me. “Cat Reeves. I heard the commotion and thought, ‘There’s only one person who causes this much trouble without saying a word.'”

“Good to see you, Rick,” I said, managing a weak smile.

“I told them to let you in,” Rick said to the Admiral. “But clipboard-man here wouldn’t budge.”

The chapel doors opened again.

Bethany Garrett stepped out, looking composed but confused, her eyes flashing with irritation. She was supported by her mother, Elena, who looked frail and pale in her mourning blacks.

“Admiral Holloway,” Bethany said, her voice tight. “We are honored you could make it, but we are delaying the service. Is there an emergency?”

“Yes,” Holloway said simply. “There is.”

He gestured to me.

“Mrs. Garrett, Miss Garrett, I need to introduce you to someone. This is Commander Catherine Reeves. She served with your husband and father for fifteen years in Naval Intelligence. She was his primary operative for over a decade.”

Bethany looked at me. Her gaze was cold, searching. “I compiled the guest list myself, Admiral. From my father’s personal files, his rolodex, his phone. I was meticulous. Her name appears nowhere.”

“It wouldn’t,” Holloway said. “Her service was classified at a level above your father’s personal files. Her career exists in compartmented archives that require special access programs just to view. To the world, to official records… Commander Reeves barely exists.”

Bethany shook her head, a scoff escaping her lips. “That’s absurd. You’re telling me my father had a secret life? That there were people—whole years of his career—that he hid from us?”

“Yes,” I said.

I stepped forward. It was the hardest thing I’d done in years. Facing a hostile foreign agent was easy; facing a grieving daughter who felt betrayed was impossible.

“He didn’t hide it to hurt you, Bethany,” I said softly. “He hid it to protect you.”

“Protect us from what?” she snapped.

“From the weight of it,” I said. “From the things we had to do.”

Elena Garrett, who had been staring at me with watery, clouded eyes, suddenly made a small sound. She reached out a trembling hand and pointed to my lapel.

I was wearing a small silver pin. It was understated, easily missed—a stylized compass rose with a dagger through the center.

“That pin,” Elena whispered. “Thomas had one like that. He kept it in his study, in a locked drawer beneath his grandfather’s watch. He told me… he told me it was from a group that didn’t exist.”

“It’s the insignia for Operation Constellation,” Holloway explained gently. “A joint intelligence program your husband ran in the nineties. Commander Reeves was his ‘Constellation.’ She was the ghost who walked through walls so the rest of us didn’t have to.”

The revelation hung in the air.

Bethany looked from the Admiral to her mother, and finally back to me. The anger in her eyes was cracking, replaced by a dawning, painful realization. She was realizing that she didn’t know her father as well as she thought she did.

“He requested she be here?” Bethany asked, her voice trembling.

“He wrote the invitation himself,” I said, offering the envelope again. “Three weeks ago. His handwriting was bad, but his mind was clear.”

Bethany took the envelope. She stared at the shaky scrawl on the front. Tears welled in her eyes, spilling over onto her cheeks.

“Why didn’t he tell us?” she whispered.

“Because that was the price,” Holloway said. “Secrecy isn’t just a rule, Bethany. It’s a shield. He carried the burden of silence so you could live a normal life. But now, at the end, he wanted his two worlds to meet. He wanted you to know.”

Master Chief Cruz stepped forward then. “Ma’am, I served in the Persian Gulf in ’02. We heard rumors about an officer who talked two carrier groups down from a collision course without a shot fired. They called her the ‘Ghost.’ That was Commander Reeves. Your father directed that operation. He saved thousands of lives that day. And he never took credit for it.”

Elena Garrett straightened her spine. She looked at the security guard, then at the event coordinator.

“If my husband invited her,” Elena said, her voice surprisingly strong, “then she is family.”

She reached out her hand to me.

I took it. Her skin was like parchment, but her grip was firm.

“I’m sorry,” Elena said. “We didn’t know.”

“You weren’t supposed to,” I answered.

Holloway turned to Pollson, who looked like he wanted to dissolve into the pavement.

“Step aside,” Holloway ordered.

“Yes, Sir,” Pollson whispered. He stepped back, snapping a salute that was equal parts apology and fear.

“Let’s go inside,” Holloway said, offering his arm to Elena. “We have an Admiral to honor.”

I walked into the chapel flanked by the Chief of Naval Operations and the Admiral’s widow. The heavy doors swung open, and the smell of beeswax candles and old incense hit me. The organ music swelled.

Three hundred heads turned.

The whispers started immediately, a ripple of sound that moved from the back pews to the front. They weren’t whispering about the Admiral anymore. They were whispering about the woman in the black dress who had just walked in with the CNO.

Who is she? Is that the one from the checkpoint? I heard she was CIA. No, Naval Intelligence… the deep cover stuff.

I kept my eyes forward, focusing on the flag-draped casket at the altar.

I made it, Thomas, I thought. I’m here.

But as I took my seat in the front row, placed there by a tearful Bethany, I realized the hardest part wasn’t getting in. The hardest part was going to be listening to them eulogize a man they only half-knew, while I sat there holding the memories of the other half—the dangerous, secret, glorious half.

PART 3: The Ghost in the Pews

The service was beautiful, in that structured, polished way the military handles death. There were hymns about eternal fathers and strong arms. There were readings from scripture. But my mind was drifting, pulled backward by the scent of the incense to a different church, a different time.

Sevastopol, Ukraine. 1997.

The Orthodox church was freezing. I was huddled in the back pew, a scarf over my head, my hands jammed into my coat pockets to hide the fact that I was gripping a 9mm pistol.

The man who slid into the pew in front of me didn’t look like a monster. He looked like a grandfather. Captain Volkov, Russian Navy.

“You are the American,” he said in Russian, not turning around.

“I am the person who wants to make sure your submarine doesn’t sink in the Bosphorus tomorrow,” I replied, my Russian fluent, accented with the St. Petersburg lilt my grandmother had taught me.

“It is a training exercise,” Volkov grunted.

“It’s a suicide run,” I corrected him. “Your reactor shielding is cracked. We know. If you push that boat through the straits at speed, you’ll irradiate half of Istanbul. And my government will treat it as an act of radiological war.”

Volkov went still. “Who are you?”

“Call me Constellation,” I said. “I’m not here to threaten you, Captain. I’m here to offer you an out. You turn back, claim a mechanical fault. We won’t gloat. We won’t leak it to the press. We let you save face. But you do not enter that strait.”

He turned then, looking at me with eyes like chips of ice. “And if I refuse?”

“Then Admiral Garrett has authorized the Sixth Fleet to enforce a quarantine zone. It will get loud.”

Volkov stared at me for a long minute. Then, he nodded once. “Mechanical fault. Yes. That is… plausible.”

He left. The next day, the Russian sub turned around. No war. No radiation. Just silence.

Naval Academy Chapel. Present Day.

“My father was a man of transparency,” Bethany was saying from the pulpit, pulling me back to the present. She was gripping the podium, her knuckles white. “Or so I thought. He taught us that honesty was the highest virtue.”

She paused, looking down at me in the front row. The script she had written weeks ago was trembling in her hands. She put it down.

“But today,” Bethany continued, her voice gaining a raw, unscripted power, “I learned that there is a difference between honesty and protection. My father carried secrets. He carried them so we wouldn’t have to. He worked in the dark so we could live in the light.”

She pointed to the casket.

“There are people here today who knew a version of Thomas Garrett that I never met. To them, I say: Thank you. Thank you for helping him carry that weight.”

The tears finally spilled over. I bowed my head, letting the grief wash over me. It was a lonely grief. I couldn’t share the specific memories, the near-misses, the phone calls at 3 AM where Thomas sounded so tired I thought he might break.

When the service ended, we moved to the cemetery. The wind had died down, leaving a crisp, silent cold.

The burial was precise. The folding of the flag—thirteen folds, crisp and sharp. The 21-gun salute that cracked the air like a whip.

Admiral Holloway stepped forward to present the flag to Elena. But before the final dismissal, Master Chief Cruz stepped out of formation. It was a breach of protocol, but nobody stopped him.

“Attention on deck,” Cruz barked.

Every military member in the crowd snapped to attention.

“Admiral Garrett believed that the best service is the kind nobody sees,” Cruz said, his voice carrying over the rows of white headstones. “He led from the front, but he protected from the shadows. Today, we stand with one of his own.”

Cruz looked at me. He saluted. Not the casket. Me.

“For the watch you kept,” he said.

Slowly, rippling outward, others joined in. Rick Brennan. Rita Sandoval. Admiral Holloway. One by one, hands snapped to brows. A silent ring of salutes directed at the woman in the black dress.

It broke me. For thirty years, I had convinced myself I didn’t need this. That the mission was enough. I was wrong. I needed to be seen.

As the crowd dispersed, drifting toward the black limousines, I lingered by the grave. The fresh earth smelled sharp.

“Commander Reeves?”

I turned. It was Derek Pollson. The security guard had taken off his hat. He looked younger now, stripped of his bluster.

“I need to apologize,” he said. “Properly.”

“You were doing your job, Derek,” I said tiredly.

“No, ma’am. I was being an asshole.” He met my eyes. “I saw a woman in a dress and decided you didn’t matter. My father was a Drill Sergeant. He taught me to respect the uniform. I forgot that the uniform is just cloth. The service is what matters.”

He extended a hand.

“I’m going to request a review of our VIP protocols,” he said. “Next time someone shows up with a story like yours… I’m going to listen.”

I took his hand. “That’s all anyone can ask. Learn from it.”

“I will. Thank you, Captain.”

He walked away, and I watched him go. A small victory, but a victory nonetheless.

“Catherine?”

Bethany Garrett was standing by the path, shivering slightly in the cold. She held a small, velvet box in her hands.

“Can we talk?” she asked.

We walked to a bench overlooking the river. The sun was setting, painting the water in strokes of violet and gold.

“I asked Admiral Holloway to explain Operation Constellation to me,” Bethany said quietly. “He told me about the sub in Sevastopol. He told me about the crisis in the Adriatic.”

“He shouldn’t have,” I said. “That’s classified.”

“He declassified the summary for me,” she smiled faintly. “Rank has its privileges.”

She looked down at the box in her hands.

“My father left this in his desk. There was a note attached: ‘For Catherine. Give it to her when the time is right.’ I think today is the time.”

She handed me the box.

My hands trembled as I opened it. Inside, nestled in blue velvet, wasn’t a standard military decoration. It was a custom-made coin, heavy and silver. On one side was the Navy crest. On the other was a constellation of stars—the Big Dipper—and a single inscription.

For the things only we know.

Underneath the box was a folded letter. I unfolded it, recognizing Thomas’s jagged handwriting immediately.

Cat,

If you’re reading this, I’m gone. And if Bethany gave this to you, it means you finally stopped hiding. Good.

You were the best operator I ever had. Not because you were fearless—you were terrified half the time. But because you understood that peace isn’t natural. It has to be built, brick by brick, lie by lie, secret by secret. You built a cathedral of peace, Catherine. And nobody saw it but me.

Don’t go back into the dark. The world needs to know that shadows can be good. Wear this. Be seen.

Fair winds and following seas. – T

A sob escaped my throat, raw and jagged. Bethany reached out and put a hand on my shoulder.

“He loved you, you know,” she said. “Not like a daughter, and not like a wife. He loved you like a soldier loves the person who watches their back.”

“I loved him too,” I whispered.

“I’m going to start a foundation,” Bethany said suddenly. “For families of intelligence officers. To help them understand. To help them cope with the silence.”

She looked at me, her eyes fierce.

“I want you to help me run it. I want you to tell your stories. The ones you can tell.”

I looked at the river. I looked at the silver coin in my hand. I thought about the twenty years of silence, the weight of the secrets, the loneliness of the long flights and the empty hotel rooms.

“I can’t tell everything,” I said.

“Start with something,” Bethany said.

I closed my fingers around the coin. The cold metal warmed against my skin.

“Okay,” I said. “I’ll start.”

I stood up. The wind was still cold, but it didn’t bite anymore. I wasn’t the Ghost of Sevastopol today. I wasn’t just a name on a rejected list.

I was Captain Catherine Reeves. And for the first time in a long time, I was ready to be seen.