“I expected to hear from you by now. Has anything happened with Mr. Bradshaw?”
I look over at her, my lips curving up slightly as I shake my head.
Are there cameras in his office? Did she see us?My heart rate increases.
She simply nods, leaning even closer in.
“Well, I have something to share withyou.” She can barely contain her excitement as she whisper-yells, “He’s under investigation.”
My heart beats even faster as I turn to face her fully. “Who is?”
She glances behind her, but it’s only us in the tiny room. She mouths his name,Mr. Bradshaw.
My hand claps over my chest. “You...are you serious? For what?”
She reaches under the stack of papers she’s holding to pull out several paper-clipped together, handing them over to me.
I start to flip through as she explains, “I’ve been on Facebook, LinkedIn, Yahoo News, all of it. You know he was in the Navy, right?”
I nod as a blurry photo of Luke looking incredibly sexy in a black military uniform comes to the surface. He’s standing with three other men dressed in the same thing. I think back to the tattoo of the trident, anchor, and shotgun held by an eagle that I saw on his shoulder the night we met. It’s depicted on a banner behind the group.
“Well, he wasn’t only in the Navy. He went on to become a Navy SEAL. They all did. This is him standing with the others on his team.”
“Where did you get this?” I ask her, turning to the next page, which is a newspaper article.
She smiles, pointing at the date stamped at the top of it. “Almost two years ago, this photo appeared in a newspaper article in a tiny town in central Texas called Pilot. The paper was shut down only weeks later, and the residents of the town were instructed to burn all copies of the paper. Most of them did, except for the local librarian who thought it would be a shame to lose every remaining copy of the paper’s last big news story. Her grandfather had started the establishment when she was a little girl.”
I’m scanning the article as Becky goes on, “It’s a story about the guy on the far-right side, Reid Lewis. Reid was born and raised in Pilot, Texas, by a single mom. When he became a SEAL, the entire town was thrilled...until he died on a mission. They ran a story on it, which, as you can imagine, is completely not allowed. The government shut them down for it.”
“Becky”—I look right into her eyes—“where didyouget this?”
She looks around sheepishly. “I told you about my abundance of Facebook friends, right? Well, I realized that I kept seeing one date mentioned with quotes about bravery, justice, sacrifice—things like that—on the Facebook profiles of a few people in the Bradshaw family. As I began to add more of their friends, I found that a lot of them were doing it, and then they would comment on each other’s posts with symbols, like an anchor, or an American flag, or praying hands.”
I’m enraptured by the story and Becky’s uncanny ability to uncover information.
“Finally, I landed on the Facebook page of Brenda Lewis. She was Reid’s mother.” Becky’s purple acrylic nail points at the handsome face of Reid. “She posts military quotes and Bible verses all the time, but on that special date? She posted this.”
Becky flips through to the last page in the stack, revealing a photo of a white cross in a green field, next to a stone plaque with an engraved name—a grave marker.
“Reid Lewis died in combat two years ago next week. He was killed in action, and based on the timeline of when Mr. Bradshaw’s mother celebrated his homecoming, it was the last mission they went on. From there, I found their hometown and was able to track down the article.”
I’m staring at her, mouth gaped in astonishment. Several beats pass as she smiles at me, allowing me a few minutes to absorb the information.
“I, uh...I still don’t see what this has to do with Lu—Mr. Bradshaw being under investigation?” I whisper, handing the classified information back over to her like it could burn my hands.
“Well, that’s justmytheory. All three of the other team members have been stateside ever since that mission, and no one ever announced his death or even had a funeral. Usually, that kind of heroic, military death would at least make local news, but when this paper came out with it, they wereshut down. Something happened, and they’re covering it up...orthey’re investigating it. And my bet is, his death was shady.”
She claps her hands together, elated to be sharing this information with me.
That had to have been devastating for Luke. His friend died in combat, and the entire thing is some kind of military cover-up? What part did Luke have in it?
The door opens just then, and Becky and I both jump.
Georginne’s face peers inside at us with a fierce expression, her lips forming a hard line. “Becky, could I have a word with you in your office?”
Becky rolls her eyes and nods, winking at me as she walks out after Georginne.
My heart is still pounding as I take the copies to Cheryl and return to my desk.
