Chapter 8 - The Commander’s Gambit
Gwen wept openly now, her shoulders shaking as the reality of what she had done—and how easily she had been manipulated—shattered her world completely.
“Are they... are they going to send me away?” she sobbed, looking at me not as an annoying younger sister pleading with an authority figure, but as a terrified civilian realizing she had stepped off a cliff.
I sat back in my chair, folding my hands neatly over my belt.
“The federal magistrate is ready to hand down a five-to-ten-year indictment for accessory to industrial sabotage and destruction of federal property,” I said, letting the weight of the sentence hang in the air for a long, agonizing moment.
Gwen closed her eyes, accepting her fate.
“Unless,” I continued smoothly.
Her eyes snapped open, blazing with desperate light. “Unless what? Corinne, please! I’ll do anything!”
“David Miller and his associates think they successfully breached our security grid and covered their tracks,” I said, my voice dropping into a sharp, tactical register. “They don't know that NCIS intercepted their communications. They think you are sitting in a federal cell right now, too terrified to speak.”
I tapped my finger against the dossier on the table.
“You are going to walk back out of this facility, return to your catering job tomorrow morning under our strict surveillance, and set a trap for Miller.”
Gwen stared at me, dumbfounded. “A... a trap?”
“You want to prove you’re not just a pawn?” I asked, standing up from the table and smoothing down my service jacket. “You want to earn back every ounce of respect you think I took away from you? Help us take down the people who used you.”
For the first time in her life, Gwen looked at me and didn't see the little sister she had patronized in Ohio. She saw a military commander giving an operational order.
And for the first time, she stood up straight, wiped the tears from her face, and nodded.
May you like
“Tell me what to do, Commander.”
---
