Behind her, Jason Graves, the ship’s XO was no longer watching with amusement. He’d seen Brodie intimidate men with just a glance, a slight gesture of his hands, or with a few choice words. Brodie had never been a screamer or a man who liberally used profanity. Instead, Brodie possessed an ability to read people and discover their particular weakness, their specific ghost he could use to test them. Sometimes, he found the weakness after thirty minutes of questioning. But with this new officer, Brodie had discovered her Achilles’ heel immediately, and he’d shaken her from the very beginning. Whether or not Brodie had learned something during the normal research he conducted on all new officers, Graves couldn’t be sure. But what was certain was that Brodie now had the woman staggered, almost punch drunk.
It was obvious something was preventing her from answering the question he kept asking. It was an incredibly simple one, a question that any fool should be able to answer, and she was certainly no fool. Graves had seen her record and knew she’d been a Trident Scholar at the Naval Academy, an elite group of truly gifted midshipmen. Her file rated her IQ at over one hundred seventy, and she’d answered every one of Brodie’s increasingly difficult questions without fault, something Graves had never witnessed before. But he now watched, more out of curiosity’s sake than anything else, as Brodie continued.
“Come now, Lieutenant,” Brodie asked, “surely someone as smart as you knows why you’re here?”
Graves watched impassively as Brodie began to slowly circle her, almost as if stalking her.
“Why are you here, Lieutenant?” he asked again, his hard eyes seeming to see right through her. “Perhaps you think you’re the twenty-first century’s Susan B. Anthony?” he asked. “Are you going to start the next wave of feminism?”
Whitaker found her voice again. “No, sir! Not at all, sir.”
“What then?” Brodie asked and paused, still staring at her, watching every minute movement of her facial muscles. “Oh, I know what it is….” Brodie said accusingly, suddenly nodding his head as if in understanding. He leaned in close to her, the hint of a smirk on his face. “You want to be famous. That’s it, isn’t it?”
“No, sir,” she insisted. “I don’t care anything about that.”
Brodie rolled his eyes, clearly not believing her. “Come on, Lieutenant,” his tone was filled with doubt. “Your face was on the cover of Navy Times. Hell, you met the President and the First Lady. I watched it all on CNN.” He resumed circling her, but his critical eyes stayed on her. “I saw you seated in front of Congress testifying about how you’re being oppressed! How the whole world is against you! Those fools swallowed it all, hook, line and sinker, didn’t they?”
“That’s not true, sir,” she insisted, and Graves heard something unusual in her tone, something he’d never heard any new officer use toward Brodie: anger.
“Bullshit,” Brodie snapped crisply with a whip-like voice. “I saw you,” he reminded her. “The whole world saw you sitting there giving your pitiful little ‘woe is me’ tale to those congressmen. You enjoyed every minute of it. Didn’t you?”
Graves was beginning to feel a little sorry for her. He’d seen Brodie turn full-grown men into pools of emotional jelly, and for a few moments it seemed like Brodie had her on the verge of tears. Graves hadn’t been too happy about having her on board. It had nothing to do with her being a woman; he could care less about her sex. But the sub was on an incredibly compressed turn around schedule. Nearly a third of the enlisted men on board were fresh out of basic submariner training and were just learning the ropes. Added to these difficulties, the Commodore, the Admirals, and the CIA were screaming louder every day for the Seawolf to put back to sea, and they didn’t have time to deal with this “female experiment.” Now, despite the pressure they were all under, Graves was no longer comfortable watching Brodie’s almost brutal interrogation of her.
Brodie stopped circling and was now beside her, staring at her, watching for her reaction. Graves could see Brodie had made her angry and he knew it. She seemed on the edge of either breaking down or slapping him. Brodie looked almost curious as to which response she would choose.
Then, she turned her head to look at him. Her eyes no longer showed any hint of nervousness or intimidation, only cold fury flickering in her own icy glare. “Are you mad?” she asked him bluntly and turned her head back to look straight ahead.
Graves watched in fascination as a slightly pleased smile crossed Brodie’s face, knowing he’d hit his mark. Graves knew this was what Brodie had been waiting for. Not the prim and proper, well-rehearsed new officer, but the real person underneath the skin. Brodie was a fighter, and detested weak-kneed officers who were easily cowed.
But the lieutenant was just warming up.
“Do you honestly think I enjoyed being dragged before Congress and publicly humiliated by having to justify myself as a woman before the whole world?” she asked angrily. “Do you truly think anyone would enjoy being vilified, ostracized, and having her reputation and career — a career I’ve worked my entire adult life for — thrown under the bus in front of God and everyone?”
She was literally trembling with rage, and Graves saw her fists clenched tight. For a moment he thought she might swing at Brodie, and he briefly wondered if that was exactly what the captain wanted.
Again, she turned her head to look at Brodie, who was motionless beside her. Her eyes were filled with barely contained rage. “I’m fourth generation Navy, Captain! Do you honestly think for one moment I relished knowing my ancestors were rolling over in their graves when I dared question the almighty men in the admiral’s mess?” Her chin rose slightly, her left hand now pointing toward him. “Can you, for a moment, imagine what it is like to be told you’re incredibly qualified for the job you’ve dreamed of, fought for, and sacrificed for, only to be told in the next breath you aren’t good enough because you had the bad manners to be born the wrong sex?”
Graves took a tentative step forward. Her tone had gone from anger to rage and she was on the verge of becoming disrespectful; he felt he needed to intervene. But Brodie raised a barely noticeable finger and stopped Graves in his tracks.
Her anger and resentment had boiled over, just as Brodie had hoped all along. “Do you have any fucking idea how utterly dehumanizing and humiliating that is?!” she demanded, her voice sharp and irate. “Do you?!”
Brodie shook his head and replied softly, “No, I don’t.”
Brodie glanced toward Graves, a slightly amused look on his face. Brodie had baited her, and she’d taken it. Graves shook his head, not having expected this. No one raised their voice to Sean Brodie. No one.
Yet this mere Lieutenant JG had. She hadn’t folded and wilted before him as most junior officers did. Instead, she’d come out with her guns blazing.
Interesting.
Kristen felt the rage leave her as she realized it had been Brodie’s intent the entire time to provoke her, and she’d allowed it to happen. She couldn’t recall the last time she’d allowed her temper to get the better of her. She’d worked for years to keep her volatile nature under wraps. Over the past three-plus years, no one had managed to get her blood boiling the way her new captain had, and she hated herself for letting him get to her. But the damage was done.
She’d stepped way over the line with him. He hadn’t said or done anything to warrant her outburst. She’d not only raised her voice to him, she’d cursed him. And all of this in front of a witness. He could easily get rid of her now. It would take nothing but a simple phone call, and she would have no defense.