Vessel

23

WHEN HER PHONE rang Catherine almost let the call go to voice mail, but after Julie’s visit, she’d promised to pick up the phone when people called. Besides, she was starting to feel a little lonely.

“Hi, Julie.”

“How are things going?”

“I’m doing better.” Catherine paced the length of her living room, before spinning in the other direction. She sounded normal. Then again, she was completely sober, for the moment.

Julie paused, and Catherine could hear office sounds in the background, before they muted with a thud. She must have closed her office door. “Cath, are you still drinking?”

“No,” Catherine lied.

“Just hang in there,” Julie said. “Do something fun during your time off.”

They hung up a short time later and Catherine dropped her phone on the table, scrubbing her face. She should find something to eat and spend the evening not drinking.

She got half of it right. She managed to eat dinner before opening a bottle of wine.

Catherine drew a sharp breath, so disoriented that she teetered off-balance. She caught herself against the edge of something—wait, it was a desk. She was sitting in front of it. Blinking, she looked around the dark room. Nighttime. She could see sodium lights through the half-closed blinds. Where the hell had she ended up this time? The diploma on the wall was from Cornell. Realization hit her hard.

She was in Aaron Llewellyn’s office.

The light from the computer monitor in front of her registered and she looked at the screen. The first words to greet her eyes were “TOP SECRET.”

Catherine shoved herself back from the desk with a gasp. What the hell? She turned off the monitor, not wanting to risk even a glimpse of the page’s contents.

Why was she in Aaron’s office in the middle of the night, accessing something way above her security clearance?

“I have to get out of here.” The sound of her own voice startled her. “Turn off the computer.” Had it been off when she came in? Maybe she hadn’t done anything. Maybe Aaron had left it on when he’d gone for the day.

Yeah, sure. He’d just walked out for the day with a top-secret document open on his computer. That made sense.

Catherine turned the monitor back on and closed out the document without reading it, shutting the computer down. Her heart was pounding so hard she felt sick. Somehow she made it to her feet and out of the office.

How—There was no way she should have been able to get in here like this. She leaned against the wall and covered her face. Last she knew, she’d been home on her couch, it was Sunday night, but she didn’t have to go to work the next day because Aaron had suspended her. Had she been drinking? To judge by the sour taste in her mouth, yes.

Was it still Sunday?

Oh God, she couldn’t keep going on like this. She had to talk to somebody, but whom? No one had believed her so far.

Someone might.

There was one other person at NASA who didn’t seem eager to buy into the hero narrative. One other person who was trying to poke holes in her story.

One other person she might be able to talk to.