Fighting For Olivia by Zoë Normandie

Author:Zoë Normandie [Normandie, Zoë]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781999154318
Published: 2019-11-11T06:00:00+00:00

23

Looking at the calendar above her desk, Olivia tried not to count the days that had passed since she’d last felt Ryder’s lips on hers. And she absolutely tried not to count how long it had been since she’d seen him.

The cryptologist had told her that Ryder was away on an operation in the far north. Her stomach twisted with worry when she wondered if he would be back at all, and she empathized with military spouses all over who had to wait on news of their loved ones.

The public argument she’d had with Blackshot wasn’t pretty, and she’d felt her own deep anger and resentment growing as the days passed. God only knew what Ryder was going to do if he found out what Blackshot had said to her. What he’d accused her of doing. Her deepest fear percolated to the surface: that Ryder was going to find out and do something fucking crazy, like beat the shit out of Blackshot, or worse.

God. All she was doing was creating problems for a man who needed her to solve them.

The thought of what Fuller and Blackshot had done to Ryder drove her to nausea, and she knew it was time bury them. Destroy them. For Ryder.

Flipping open her laptop and typing her way past the security logins, she found herself on her last open document: the draft of the report. Her main heading spoke of the internal cultural inquiry. But below that, things had gone a little rogue. She had made several subheadings, including criminal allegations, leadership failures, and lack of accountability. All things that absolutely were not supposed to be subheadings in her report.

In fact, her report title should have been What the NCIS Investigation Should Have Found or What the Last Honorable Leader Here Confided in Me.

Double-checking her work, an anxious habit, she fanned open the allegations section, including the disturbing claims that had made headlines before the Navy commissioned her firm. Then she typed in Illegal Behavior, which included unlawful killings, the use of drop weapons to justify such, abuse of drugs, and execution of detainees and unarmed combatants.

Olivia wrote that there appeared to have been a systemic values shift among troops and their commanders. She realized that was the crux of the problem: the commander didn’t share the same values as his master chief.

Certain questions drew her in further. Was Fuller adapting details after the fact to justify the circumstances leading up to the violent engagement? Where was the failure to adhere to the rules of war?

Her head began to spin. She had so many questions and very little information. All she had were the words of Ryder, and even those were few. They would have had shared more words if they hadn’t been so busy sucking each other’s faces. The thought made her feel empty and lonely. Guilt climbed so high, it sat as a ball in her throat.

Olivia exhaled, knowing it was time to see what the firm had to say. What Jacqueline Hart had to say.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.