Chapter 7 - Why Abigail Marlow
The forged recommendation changed the direction of the inquiry.
Until then, I was a junior officer who noticed a discrepancy.
Now I might have been positioned.
By who?
Assignment email originated from Navy network.
Account:
FRRG ADMIN 3.
Shared administrative account.
Eight authorized users.
Commander Ward.
Captain Shaw.
Two civilians.
Four staff officers.
No useful individual log.
Then attachment metadata.
Created on a computer named:
BARRON 12.
Fleet Personnel Support Center.
User profile:
M.MARLOW.
My stomach tightened.
There was no M. Marlow in Fleet Personnel.
There was one in my family.
Michael Marlow.
My father.
Retired Navy master chief.
The man who taught me:
Don’t fight the room. Read it.
He had died five years earlier.
Cancer.
No connection to current systems.
The user profile was probably coincidence.
Then Personnel Support checked.
M.MARLOW belonged to civilian administrator:
Megan Marlowe.
With an E.
Completely unrelated.
Another dramatic clue dissolved immediately.
But her workstation created the file.
Megan Marlowe agreed to speak.
“I typed the recommendation.”
“Who gave it to you?”
“A captain.”
“Name?”
She searched old work ticket.
Requestor:
CAPT A. SHAW.
Admiral Bennett’s chief of staff.
Andrew Shaw.
The room went silent.
Shaw denied remembering.
Then work email.
Shaw:
Need Marlow assigned to manpower audit cell temporarily. Strong pattern recognition background.
Megan:
Source recommendation?
Shaw:
External technical adviser Ross.
He had invoked Ross.
Why?
Bennett ordered Shaw into interview separately.
Shaw looked angry at first.
Then tired.
“I did it.”
“Why forge Ross’s recommendation?” Bennett asked.
“Because I needed Abigail in the office without alerting Vance.”
I stared.
“You knew?”
“Not the full scheme.”
“What did you know?”
Shaw had received an anonymous packet four months earlier.
Meal roster anomalies.
Medical coding discrepancies.
Apex payments.
No proof.
Source warned:
Do not start formal review through training chain. Records will disappear.
Shaw wanted someone junior, analytical, outside special warfare culture.
He reviewed personnel arrivals.
Found me.
Prior enlisted intelligence specialist.
New ensign.
No ties to detachment.
Temporary clearance delay made me available.
He placed me in manpower.
“Why not tell me?”
“Because if you knew you were looking for fraud, you would behave differently.”
I felt anger rise.
“You used me as bait.”
“No.”
“You put me inside a records stream and waited.”
“Yes.”
“That is using me.”
He accepted that.
Admiral Bennett’s face hardened.
“Did I authorize?”
“No, sir.”
“Why not?”
“I thought you would formalize too early.”
Bennett leaned back.
His own chief of staff had bypassed him.
Again.
Then:
“Did you know Reed was watching Abigail?”
“No.”
“Did you know she might be assaulted?”
“Absolutely not.”
Could be true.
Then Shaw revealed anonymous packet source.
He did not know identity.
But one note inside:
Marlow will see what others ignore.
How would anonymous source know me before assignment?
Maybe source suggested me first.
Shaw had not.
The packet included my name.
That was deeper.
Who knew my background?
Someone with access to service record.
Then another line:
Her father taught at Dam Neck. Reed will recognize the name eventually.
My father had taught intelligence tradecraft at Dam Neck late in his career.
Did Reed know him?
Reed’s personnel history showed he attended a course there twelve years earlier.
Instructor:
Master Chief Michael Marlow.
My father.
I stared.
Reed never said.
When asked, he went still.
“You’re Mike Marlow’s daughter.”
“Yes.”
“I didn’t know until after you arrived.”
“What did he teach you?”
Reed laughed bitterly.
“How to fail people.”
Explain.
My father had removed Reed from a sensitive source handling course for judgment issues.
Reed appealed.
Passed later under another instructor.
He had carried resentment for years.
When he saw my name on audit requests, it became personal.
That helped explain cruelty beyond program protection.
Then:
“Did my father know about Apex?”
“He died before contract.”
True.
“So who wrote anonymous note?”
Reed denied.
Barrett denied.
Ross denied.
Then Commander Ward recovered original packet envelope.
Postmark:
Norfolk.
Fingerprint?
Not useful.
Paper ordinary.
But one document inside was internal Apex data that only five people had downloaded.
Grant Hollis.
Sophie Grant.
Product manager Kevin Dane.
Chief Walker Reed.
And Dr. Elena Ross.
Ross had left company two years earlier.
Her archive copy could exist.
She said she did not send packet.
Then she remembered something.
“When I left, I gave my validation files to someone in Navy medical.”
“Who?”
“Captain Sarah Keene.”
Keene looked surprised.
“I received a drive.”
“Did you send packet?”
“No.”
“Where is drive?”
She searched.
Missing.
Last seen during office move four months earlier.
Exactly when anonymous packet arrived.
Who handled move?
Base logistics team.
Supervisor:
Candidate Lucas Hale’s mother.
No, too coincidental and contrived. Better not.
Civilian contractor.
Could be many.
Then Shaw found one more note hidden inside packet fold.
Not printed.
Handwritten.
Two words:
ASK PRICE.
Jonah Price.
May you like
The corpsman who recognized Hale’s tag.
Continue to the next part: The anonymous packet that secretly placed Abigail near the corrupted records contains one handwritten instruction, “ASK PRICE,” pointing toward the corpsman who first spoke up after Reed hit her.
