Page 8 of Operation: Defiance

Chapter Three

It’s been a day of noise I can’t tune out. Conversations that demand more than I have to give. Too many moments where I have to stop myself from saying the obvious thing out loud.

Something inside me slips. Not in the office. Not while I’m closing files or listening to the building ease into its evening quiet. It happens in the parking garage, where the concrete throws every sound back at me.

I’m halfway down the first ramp before I realize my radio is still off.

I always turn it on.

Not for music. Not for news. For the steady, predictable buffer between me and my own thoughts. A low hum that keeps my brain from racing ahead of itself.

I stop at the bottom of the ramp, foot on the brake.

My routines matter. They keep me grounded. Let me function in a world that so often feels too loud and too intense. I don’t deviate from them. Ever. I once drove myself to the hospital during a brutal bout of food poisoning and still turned on the radio first.

I stare through the windshield, counting the painted lines on the asphalt until the pressure in my chest sharpens into something I can’t ignore.

Too much input. Not enough resolution.

I’ve been carrying questions all day with nowhere to set them down. My focus is slipping because nothing has settled yet.

It will.

Eventually.

The low, familiar voices of NPR fill the silence, and I pull out of the garage, driving without thinking, following familiar streets until I pass my exit. Not by accident. I keep going north until Seattle thins. Until the buildings give way to wider roads and fewer cars.

At a grocery store I’ve never visited before, I park in the far corner of the lot. No foot traffic. I’m not sure why I came all the way out here, except if I have this conversation at home, I’ll carry it with me all night.

I leave the engine running—it’s the only noise besides the radio I can tolerate right now—and pick up my phone.

Ellen answers on the second ring.

“Raine.” She sounds tired. “It’s late.”

“I know.” I wince as I check the clock on my dashboard. “I’m sorry. Do you have a minute?”

A pause. Then the soft sound of movement, and a chair scraping over tile. I picture her kitchen without meaning to. The chipped counter. The vase of sea glass by the sink. The light that hums faintly when it’s been on too long.

“I have ten,” she says. “Talk.”

I don’t start with conclusions, names, or codes. I give her the structure first.

“I noticed a single contractor ID linked to multiple overlapping ops. Different teams, different locations, different operational mandates.”

“That’s not unusual,” Ellen says. Her voice is measured. Soft.

“No. But what I found at the end of those ops is. The after-action reports didn’t line up properly.”

“In what way?”

I tighten my grip on the phone until the edges bite into my palm. “Some of the agents from those ops aren’t on the duty roster anymore. No retirement paperwork, no transfer orders, no notes from medical. They’re just…gone. And most of them are women.”

This pause lasts longer.

“Raine, be careful. If you don’t have context, you could be missing something obvious. Or seeing a pattern where there isn’t one.” Ellen’s voice takes on a slightly rougher tone. I shouldn’t have called this late.

“I know. That’s why I reached out. This has been going on for years. I wanted to talk to you before I escalated anything.”