“I’m sorry, sir.”
“You bet you are.”
“Should I—” I began, amazed that I was even asking the question. “Should I send the kits back?”
“It’s not about the kits, Hanwell,” the captain said. “It’s about respect for the chain of command.”
“I respect the chain of command, sir,” I said.
“Do you? Because what do you do when a ranking member of the crew tells you to do something?”
He blinked at me, waiting for an answer.
“You do it, sir,” I said.
“And what if a ranking member of the crewdoesn’ttell you to do something?”
I sighed. “You don’t do it, sir.”
“We’re clear on that?”
“We’re clear.”
He turned back to his computer. We were done here. “Good,” he said then. “Now scram.”
I walked to my locker feeling stunned—but also very lucky that I hadn’t been in trouble for what I thought I’d been in trouble for. Maybe the rookie was right. Maybe our going on a date would not lead inevitably to the end of my career.
Maybe we were going to get away with it.
Or maybe not: because when I opened up my locker, I discovered that somebody had scrawled graffiti all across the inside. Very specific graffiti that made it clear somebody somewhere knew something.
In terrible handwriting, in five-inch-tall letters, in Sharpie—there was one word:Slut.
I SLAMMED THEdoor shut the second I saw it.
I felt a sting of panic through my body. Not cool. Not fair. Not even, you know—accurate. Not even close.
Six-Pack looked over. “Everything okay?”
“Yep,” I said. But I was breathing fast.
The timing was uncanny.
Six-Pack was still eyeing me.
“The lock sticks sometimes,” I said, leaning hard against the door, breathing.
Had the captain recognized me? Was that why he was so weirdly mad that I had just earned the station four thousand dollars’ worth of safety equipment? Or had there been someone else there we didn’t see? Or maybe word of mouth? Of course, by the end of the party, every single person there knew that Owen had screwed a very drunk girl in the coat closet.
All anybody had to do was recognize me.
I’d been warned, of course. Captain Harris had warned me—as had a lifetime of being female. If we broke the rules, I would be the one punished. I had known the risk I was taking when I went to that party with him, though I had not truly been able to imagine what the consequence would feel like. But I’d persisted. Like a fool.
Now, pressed up against my locker, frozen against it, really, my heart racing, my adrenaline on high alert, I was starting to get it.
This was not good.
Six-Pack frowned at me.
