Chapter 7 - Price Wasn’t Running
We found Dena Price in the chapel.
Not hiding.
Sitting alone in the back row.
The cabinet files were beside her in two banker’s boxes.
Vale stopped at the aisle.
“You couldn’t answer your phone?”
Price looked over.
“I turned it off.”
“Why take the files?”
“Because Sloan has keys.”
Sloan had been relieved.
Not arrested.
Still on base.
Price wasn't running from us.
She was trying to keep records away from the person she thought might alter them.
That did not make her innocent.
Vale sat two rows behind her.
I stayed standing.
Jonah wasn't allowed in the room.
Probably wise.
Price looked at me.
“You’re Rachel.”
“You knew that.”
“Yes.”
“How long?”
“Five weeks.”
“Did you write the other complaints?”
Her mouth tightened.
“Two of them.”
Vale leaned forward.
“Which?”
“Second and fourth.”
That left the complaint against Sloan.
“Why?”
Price looked toward the boxes.
“I've been trying to get the course reviewed for a year.”
“Using other people's names?”
“No.”
She shook her head.
“Until Jonah did.”
I almost laughed.
“So he gives you a terrible idea and you improve it by repeating it?”
“I saw what happened.”
“What happened?”
“The first complaint went outside our normal channel because it was flagged as pre-arrival.”
Vale frowned.
“Explain.”
Price did.
A complaint submitted under an incoming trainee’s name automatically triggered a personnel discrepancy.
That discrepancy copied the complaint to command-level review instead of leaving it inside course operations.
Jonah had stumbled into a route that bypassed Sloan.
Price saw it.
Then used it.
“You wrote complaint two.”
“Yes.”
“About medical pressure.”
“Yes.”
“True?”
“Yes.”
“Complaint four?”
“Yes.”
“Withdrawal coding?”
“Yes.”
“And the third?”
“No.”
Vale held up the page accusing Sloan of suppressing complaints.
Price looked at it.
“I assumed Jonah wrote that.”
He hadn't.
Now three people had used my identity.
Jonah.
Price.
Unknown.
I asked:
“Why didn't you use your own name?”
Price looked at me.
“Because I work for Sloan.”
“Pike used his.”
“And look what happened.”
“So you decided I was safer to sacrifice.”
She flinched.
“I thought you would never know.”
“That sentence keeps getting worse.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
She held my gaze.
“I knew you were coming. I thought the review would start before you arrived, the false identity would be corrected, and you’d never be involved.”
“Instead Sloan showed Briggs the complaint.”
“Yes.”
“Did you know she would?”
“No.”
“Did you know she had shown him Pike’s?”
Price looked down.
“Yes.”
That was her line.
She knew complainants were being exposed.
She still borrowed my name.
Vale asked:
“Who altered Pike’s withdrawal reason?”
Price stared at the boxes.
“I don’t know.”
“You maintain the records.”
“I process changes submitted by course operations.”
“Who submitted his?”
“Sloan.”
Vale stood.
Price continued quickly.
“But the wording wasn't hers.”
He stopped.
“What?”
Price opened the top box.
Pulled a copy.
The change request was typed.
No author.
Approved with Sloan’s digital signature.
Sloan had signed it.
But the justification contained a phrase Price recognized from Briggs’s instructor notes.
UNABLE TO ADAPT TO REQUIRED PRESSURE ENVIRONMENT.
I remembered the morning.
Three of them.
Don’t cry.
Briggs wasn't only benefiting from the paperwork.
His language was inside it.
Price said:
“Ask Sloan why she signs whatever Briggs puts in front of her.”
Before Vale could answer, his phone rang.
He listened.
Then looked at me.
May you like
Captain Sloan had returned to the training yard.
And Mason Briggs was with her.
