Kayla blinked at him. “For what?” Walter’s jaw tightened. Then he looked at me and asked a question that made my stomach drop. “Were you aboard Truman during the Atlantic recovery exercise in 2016?” I nodded slowly. Walter closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them again, he said, “My son was Lieutenant Aaron Mercer.”
I remembered the name immediately. Mercer had been injured during a night-deck emergency when equipment shifted without warning. I had helped pull him clear and stayed with him until medical arrived. I had never considered it heroic. It had been my job. But Walter told the room his son had spent years talking about the sailor everyone called Riptide—the woman who moved toward danger while everyone else was still trying to understand what had happened.
...
