Chapter 17 - Bloodlines and Badges
Two hours later, the *Caspian Sovereign* was locked down under naval blockade. Two guided-missile destroyers flanked the harbor entrance, their searchlights illuminating the black water like daylight.
I stood on the damp asphalt of the pier, watching federal agents in hazmat and tactical gear march thirty-two arrested crew members into secure transport vans.
A black sedan pulled up to the perimeter tape. Two military police officers stepped out, opening the rear door to reveal my husband, Richard.
He was shackled at the wrists and ankles, wearing an orange detention jumpsuit that looked absurd on his flabby, pampered frame. His hair was disheveled, his eyes bloodshot, his face pale with raw, undiluted terror.
When he saw me standing there—flanked by armed operators, my uniform speckled with rain and grease, my sidearm holstered on my hip—his knees gave out. The MPs had to drag him forward by his armpits until he stood three feet from me.
"Amanda..." he choked out, his voice shaking so violently his teeth clicked. "Amanda, please! Tell them there’s been a mistake! They brought me here from the holding facility... they said you ordered it! Please, I’m your husband!"
I looked at him the way an apex predator looks at a piece of rotting carrion.
"Husband?" I said, the word dripping with venomous amusement. "A husband protects his home. A husband cherishes his wife. A husband doesn't beat his ten-year-old daughter until she hides her bruises under oversized sweaters."
Richard flinched as if struck. "I... I was angry! Lily was being stubborn! You were always gone, Amanda! You never paid attention to me! You left me with your sick, senile mother—"
I closed the distance in a fraction of a second, my gloved hand clamping onto his throat like a steel vise. I shoved him back against the hood of the MP cruiser with enough force to dent the metal.
"Say one more word about my mother," I whispered, my eyes burning into his soul, "and I will personally sign the order reclassifying you as an unlawful enemy combatant. Do you know what that means, Richard?"
He could only squeak, clutching at my wrists with his manicured, useless hands.
"It means you lose every constitutional right you ever took for granted," I hissed. "No lawyers. No phone calls. No bail. You will sit in a five-by-eight concrete cell at Guantanamo Bay until your hair falls out and your mind rots away."
I released him. He collapsed onto the wet pavement, coughing and gasping for air, sobbing openly.
"You signed the offshore transfers using my name," I continued, towering over him. "You let Sterling’s wolves breach the safehouse where your own daughter was hiding. They had orders to execute her, Richard. To silence her."
Richard looked up, his eyes widening with genuine horror. "N-no... Sterling told me they were just going to relocate you all... he said he’d give me five million dollars to start over in Dubai..."
"You sold your daughter’s life for five million dollars," I said, my voice dropping into a register of cold, absolute disgust. "Take him away. Put him in isolation. If he breathes too loud, gag him."
May you like
The MPs dragged him backward across the asphalt, his pathetic wails swallowed by the roar of the harbor wind.
***
