The Fear Within

by J. S. Law

  Defiance might be stopping in Rio before Christmas, and he was going to save up and fly out then.

  Natasha had seen some of the sailors with their other halves and children. It’d made her tummy flip to think about how fun it would be if Jason had flown out after all, even just to surprise her.

  Her phone had a signal and a few hours left on her international roaming package. She found a low concrete wall at the harbor’s edge and sat in the fresh air with her back to the water and dialed home.

  Jason answered immediately.

  “Hey, babe,” she said. “You okay?”

  “Hey,” he said, his voice low and dull.

  Natasha remembered how he’d acted the last time she was in port and about to enjoy a night out. She assumed this was more of the same. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and decided the only thing to do was to push on through, there was no way he was going to ruin tonight, she needed a release.

  “I’m really missing you. Did you get my e-mail about my boss? He’s really starting to bother me; what do you think I should do?”

  He was silent, and at first Natasha thought the line had been lost, then she heard a rustling at the end of the phone and another noise.

  “Jason?”

  There was more rustling and then he was back.

  “You got some signal on the phone?” he asked. “Decent signal, enough to pick up an e-mail?”

  She frowned.

  “Not really, babe. If I turn on my e-mails, they’ll all download. I was going to do that at a café or something later, when I have Wi-Fi.”

  More silence.

  “What about a picture message? Could you get one of those?”

  “Jason, what difference does it make? I just want to talk to you. I can get whatever it is later, or just tell me about it.”

  “Look. Just turn on your data, I want to send you something; it’s important. When you get it, call me straight back.”

  Natasha shook her head and looked at the clock on her phone. She was okay, had some time until she was due to meet Mark for a workout before they headed into town with the others.

  “Okay,” she said, resigned. “Send it by picture message now, then. I’ll wait. Love you.”

  “’Bye,” he said, and the line went dead.

  Natasha sat and waited, flicking on her data and ensuring that only her messages were able to use it. She waited for what seemed like an age, her gaze drifting over the water and the large American aircraft carrier that was berthed at the other side of the dockyard. She was about to dial again when the first message arrived. She opened it and felt as though she’d been punched in the stomach. Another text message accompanied the image.

  Call me if you want. Don’t bother if you don’t.

  Leaning forward and retching as her breathing accelerated and her heart thumped, Natasha flicked back to the picture. She was in it, central, smiling, in a small white tank top with thin straps, and behind her, his hands resting on her tanned shoulders and his lips planted firmly against her neck, was Mark.

  He was shirtless, standing really close, and the rest of the ship’s company partying and drinking around them had been cropped out, so that they looked like a young couple having fun in the sun.

  “No!” said Natasha.

  She didn’t even remember him kissing her like that. It’d been a flight deck barbecue, everyone was having fun, playing deck hockey, drinking beer, enjoying burgers. He’d jumped on her back, she remembered that, but did he really kiss her? She certainly wouldn’t have reciprocated. Even in the picture she wasn’t kissing him back.

  Her hands were shaking and she dropped the phone on the broken edge of the dark tarmac as she tried to dial Jason’s number. Eventually she managed to hold it steady, waiting while the phone rang again and again, finally switching her through to voice mail. She dialed back immediately and waited while the same thing happened again. Then she typed in a text.

  Answer the phone!!! Please!!!

  She sent it immediately, gave it a few seconds, then dialed him again.

  “What?” he said as he answered the phone, and though she hated herself for doing it, her breathing barely under control, Natasha started to cry.

  “It’s not what you think,” she said, and realized how much of a cliché that was, how ridiculous she must sound. “I didn’t kiss him. He’s just a friend. I wouldn’t have kissed him. If I’d known he’d kissed me—even on the cheek, let alone the neck—I’d have told him to get off.”

  The words were tumbling out, short sentences, between clipped breaths.

  “I love you. I haven’t done the dirty on you and I never would,” she said.

  “Really,” he said, and the silence drew out between them.

  “After all we’ve been through, you don’t believe me?” Natasha said. “I love you, I really do.”

  “I believe one thing,” he said, and his voice was so cold that it chilled Natasha even as the sun disappeared and the wind began to do the same. “I believe you’re just like your slut mum. A cheat. Making me wait, but putting out to anyone else who’s nice to you. I’ve always backed you. Everyone said I was too old, you were too young, I wasn’t good enough for you, not handsome enough, too much of a loser, but we said ‘fuck them,’ because we were happy and you knew you’d be able to do all the things you wanted to do while I was behind you. Now this…”

  The silence on the line was unbearable, and Natasha realized she was holding her breath.

  “Don’t call again,” he said. “I’ll be gone when you get back.”

  “No!” Natasha shouted so loud that she surprised herself. “No, don’t go! Please don’t. It really isn’t what you think. I promise. Fly out today. Take the money from my savings and fly out on the first flight you can get.”

  He snorted at her.

  “What? Fancy a threesome?”

  “What?” she said. “What does that even mean?”

  “It means that your new boyfriend e-mailed me the picture and laid it out for me. Asked me not to tell you what he’d sent, but told me that apparently you quite like the jolly old thing, eh? We’re saving it until we get married, but for him you’ll take it any way you can?”

  “I don’t know what you mean. I haven’t slept with anyone.”

  “Yeah, well, you tell Mark he can keep you. You’re a proper Moore now, a chip off the old block, a dirty, slutty little whore—your mum’d be really proud of you. Don’t call back.”

  “Wait!” Natasha cried again, sensing he was going to hang up the phone, but she didn’t know what to say.

  “Tell the little slag to do one,” said a girl’s voice from Jason’s end of the line.

  Natasha heard Jason say something, try to shush the other voice, and then she heard the line go dead. She retched again. Only bile came up, there was nothing else in her belly, and she spat it out onto the ground and wiped her mouth, her head spinning.

  She heard footsteps but couldn’t look up as someone approached.

  “Hey, T-t-t-t-tashaaaaaaaaa.”

  She heard the words, the greeting that only Mark used, clicking out the start of her name as though he was stuttering and then singing the long aaaah for as long as his breath could keep it going.

  “You ready to run? And then we need to get ready to P-A-R-T-Y?” He spelled the word out, prolonging the last letter as though it were a question. “Because we have to.”

  She saw his feet. He was dancing a little jig to imaginary music while he waited for her to answer. She looked at her phone; now that the call was gone, the screen had switched back to the picture of them together, Mark planting a kiss on her neck. She heard Jason’s words again: “Your new boyfriend laid it out for me,” he’d said. “Apparently you quite like the jolly old thing.”

  “You okay, Tash?” asked Mark. “Is something wrong?”

  She turned to him, tears streaming down her face.

  He recoiled at first, then his mouth opened and he rushed toward her, his arms outstretched.


  “Tash,” he said. “What’s going on?”

  He got close to her and without thinking, she swung a punch at him. It was wild, she didn’t like fighting, but where she grew up, and with her mum and dad to learn from, she knew how. She connected with his eye and felt her teeth clench as the pain shot through her hand, but she swung at him again with her other hand.

  “What the—!”

  He stepped back, stumbling, his legs crossing, and fell onto his backside.

  Natasha didn’t follow him; she knew better than to go to ground if she could help it. She waited until he went down and then swung a kick at him.

  He rolled away from her, getting back to his feet quickly and holding his hands in front of him in a defensive posture.

  “What’s going on?” he said, sounding a little less frightened now, still worried, but he’d overcome his initial shock and some anger was creeping into his voice.

  “You’re what’s wrong,” she said, and feinted a punch to his head, watching as his hands and eyes moved to protect it, and then swinging a hard kick at his groin.

  Her foot missed, glancing off his thigh, and she lost her balance, turning a bit and showing her side to him.

  He was on her in a flash.

  Natasha flinched, her teeth clenched and bared as she anticipated the pain of a slap or a punch, but instead she was wrapped up as he threw his arms around her, gathering hers against her own body and lifting her off the ground.

  She kicked and threw her head back, trying to head-butt him, but he was muscular and strong, and she had little hope.

  “Stop it,” he said, his voice firm. “Pack it in. What’s wrong with you?”

  She ignored him, still wriggling, even as she felt the energy start to drain out of her.

  “Natasha. Stop,” he said again. “I don’t know what’s happened, but whatever it is, I know one thing for sure, I’m on your side. Okay? Whatever it is, I’m with you. I’ve got your back, whatever it takes until we get it sorted. Okay?”

  Natasha heard the words and felt suddenly exhausted, the adrenaline dissipated and her limbs heavy and sore.

  “You happened,” she said.

  He’d grabbed her almost from behind, slightly from one side, and he was holding her tight, his head just behind hers, his cheek pressed against hers.

  “What?” he said, speaking almost directly into her ear.

  “You happened,” she said again. “You told Jason we’d slept together. You sent him pictures of when you jumped on me at the ship’s barbecue.”

  His grip loosened, but he didn’t let go.

  “What?” he said.

  Natasha would have hit him again, but she’d nothing left in the tank, no energy left to do it.

  “You heard me, and now he’s dumped me, because he thinks I’m sleeping with you.”

  Mark released her, slowly, putting her back down on the floor and then turning her around to face him.

  “Tash, whatever you think I’ve done, I can tell you now, I haven’t. I like you. I like you a lot and I feel close to you. But you know what, I want you to want me because you like me, too, not because you’ve been dumped. I’d never do that. I’d never do anything like that. I can’t believe you think I would.”

  She couldn’t look at him as he spoke, but as she thought about what he’d said, she knew he wasn’t lying.

  “Someone sent this picture to Jason,” she said, and picked her phone up from the floor where it had fallen, thankful that the screen was still intact. She showed him the image.

  “Tash, it wasn’t me. I swear it. I haven’t even seen this one before. Who took it?”

  He handed the phone back to her.

  “Did he say what e-mail address it came from?”

  She shook her head.

  “Well, look. It’s someone on the ship, right? Because those pics are only on the ship. As far as I know, they’re all in the same folder on the shared drive.”

  Natasha nodded.

  He reached out and gently touched her arm.

  “I wouldn’t do this to you, Tash,” he said again.

  She looked at him, reached up to move his hand, but squeezed it as she let it drop.

  “Ask him how he got them, what the e-mail address was, or whatever, then we’ll go to the ship’s regulator and tell him.”

  Natasha sniffed and wiped her sleeve across her face. “He said they were e-mailed, that you e-mailed him and told him we were having sex.”

  “I’d be more likely to, you know, high-five people than e-mail anyone,” Mark said.

  Natasha looked at him and sighed, her face stern.

  “Too soon,” he said, bowing his head and apologizing. “Definitely too soon. My bad. But seriously, I don’t even know your fella’s e-mail address. I don’t know his surname. I wouldn’t even know how to find him on social media or anything. I mean, who’d know what e-mail address to even send it to?”

  21

  Tuesday, February 3

  “What do you make of him, then?” asked John as they walked back into the SIB offices.

  Dan stopped and turned to look at him.

  “You know, I believe him. I didn’t like him at first, not that that matters, but I didn’t. He felt aggressive, but now I’m more inclined to think he’s a mixture of worried and feeling plain guilty for being a dirty doer.”

  “Yeah, maybe,” said John.

  Dan started to walk again.

  “But you know, I do feel like someone isn’t being truthful,” she said. “I think we should go back to Defiance, kick some butts and take some names.”

  John grinned as though nothing would be more fun.

  Dan walked past a cluster of desks in the main office, but only one of them was currently occupied.

  The area she was in now, just along the corridor from her own office, housed the majority of the regulators who made up the Special Investigation Branch in Portsmouth Dockyard, but Dan’s team was small: herself, John, and a shared resource of two petty officers and four leading regulators, who all had other varying full- or part-time responsibilities.

  It wasn’t official, but over time this had come to mean that during normal working days, Dan had “first dibs” on one of the leading hands, while the remainder worked on other assignments under different command chains.

  Leading Regulator Josaia “Josie” Nakarawa looked up from her screen and smiled as she saw Dan arriving.

  “Anything on the young girl from Defiance?” Dan asked.

  “There is, ma’am, but not much,” she said.

  Josie looked bright and awake, as she always did. This despite the fact that she was nearly always in the office first and worked tirelessly throughout the day, often staying back after the base had been secured; Dan envied her energy, especially today.

  “I called all known contacts and family for the MISPER last night, but there’s still no news. They say they haven’t seen her, and you know what, ma’am, I believe them. Not one of those people seemed to care a damn that she was gone, honestly, not a one of them.”

  “It’s sometimes the way,” said Dan, remembering how little interest she’d aroused from Ryan Taylor’s parents when she’d managed to speak to them again, not all that long ago. She wondered if they were the ones who’d called in and told Harrow-Brown that she’d been to speak to them, that she was still pursuing their son.

  “Well.” Josie shook her head.

  The word “well,” when spoken by Josie, could often be regarded as its own sentence. It meant a multitude of things depending on context and how she pronounced it. It could also serve to end conversations when she had nothing more to say.

  “I also called the officer of the day on Defiance, ma’am, and they still haven’t seen her. I know they’d call if they had, but it doesn’t hurt to check.”

  “No, it never hurts to check,” agreed Dan.

  “Whose turn is it to get the tea?” asked John.

  “Yours,” said Dan and Josie in near unison, and Jo
hn’s face changed to a hangdog expression. “I swear I did it last time,” he grumbled before heading through to the small kitchenette.

  Dan heard the kettle go on, then he came back out to grab her mug from her office and then Josie’s from her desk on the way past.

  “Going okay, Josie?” he asked, looking over her shoulder at her screen.

  “Yes, Master,” she said. “But, you know how you thought you recognized the picture of that girl from Defiance?”

  John nodded, and Dan raised an eyebrow.

  “You mean I thought I recognized the picture,” said Dan.

  He smiled. “I did, too.”

  “Well,” said Josie. “Either way, I was checking and I think you’re both mistaken. I think the picture you’re thinking of is this one.”

  She pulled a photograph out of a brown folder on her desk. Josie held the picture up and Dan and John looked at it.

  “That’s the one,” said Dan, stepping forward and taking it, then handing it to John.

  “Not the same girl,” said Josie. “This young lady, Stephanie James, went missing, lost overboard a year or so ago, when Defiance was coming back alongside. She fell overboard at night when the ship was maneuvering; body never recovered.”

  Dan looked at John.

  “What do you think?” she asked.

  “What should I think?”

  “They look very alike.”

  John scrunched up his nose.

  “Natasha Moore didn’t fall overboard. The harbor’s crawling with people during the day, and the Queen’s Harbour Master has confirmed that the seaward footage is clear.”

  Dan looked to Josie.

  “You know, just find out as much as you can about that. I know a link’s unlikely, but it won’t hurt to take a look.”

  Josie took the picture back and tucked it in the file.

  “Did you get someone round to check her flat?” asked Dan.

  John nodded. “I went and did it myself last night,” he said. “It was empty. I checked through the letter slot too, as far as I could. There was one of those free papers still wedged in it and I could see a load of mail on the floor, so I doubt anyone’d been home for a few days, at least.”