"Today." The word is flat and certain. "Not tomorrow. Today."
Rivera's office is in the administrative building across base, institutional and efficient. The walk takes seven minutes. Ireland carries her laptop with the four-patient comparison loaded, and I carry the medication analysis and equipment calibration notes from this morning's sweep. The data between us fills two screens and three weeks of documentation and a growing certainty that something is wrong in my rehab center that neither of us can reach from the clinical side.
Rivera is a woman who processes information the way water processes rock: steadily, thoroughly, reshaping everything it touches. She listens without interrupting while I lay out the clinical picture.
I brief her the way I've briefed commanders in the field: measured, precise, evidence first, conclusions last. Four patients. Four parallel deviations. Clean surgical repairs, sound protocols, verified compliance. Input side confirmed across every variable accessible from the clinical workstation. Output side not matching, with the gap widening on a timeline that correlates to recovery phase rather than calendar date.
Ireland walks her through the patient comparison on the laptop. The four trajectories side by side, the inflection points within a five-day window, the equipment station overlap for three of the four patients. Her voice is clinical and thorough,the sharp edge underneath held in reserve. Rivera's eyes move between the data and Ireland's face with the focused attention of an investigator who is hearing a pattern she recognizes.
"The calibration settings on the equipment match the protocols," I tell her. "I checked them this morning. Medication orders, dosing schedules, surgical clearances. Everything on the clinical side is clean. But the systems I can't reach from a patient workstation, dispensing records, equipment maintenance histories, badge access data for pharmaceutical storage, that's where the gap is. If the answer is in those systems, we need authorization to pull them."
Rivera is quiet for a moment. Then she pulls up a case file on her screen and turns it toward us. "This is consistent with a pattern we've been tracking since the Garrick incident. Wes Garrick is cooperating from custody, and his debriefs describe a handler running a domestic network that targets military support infrastructure. The methodology is the same: recruit someone with inside access, embed them in a critical system, and degrade capability from within."
Ireland's fingers find the scar on her shoulder through her scrub top. The gesture is quick, automatic, and the look on her face tells me she's hearing what I'm hearing. "You're saying someone is embedded in my rehab center."
"I'm saying the pattern fits. Commander Hartwell is being briefed today. I'll need full access to your personnel records, equipment logs, and pharmaceutical dispensing data."
"You'll have everything I can give you," Ireland says. “But I’ll need access to some of them before I can get them to you.”
"And the access logs I couldn't pull from the clinical side," I add. "Pharmaceutical dispensing records, badge access to medication storage, equipment maintenance histories. That's where the gap is."
Rivera nods. "My team will have authorization by end of day." She assigns a case number, enters it into the system with a few keystrokes, and the investigation is open, official and federal. "I need both of you to maintain normal routines at the rehab center. The instruction is specific: do not alert whoever is doing this that an investigation has been initiated. Work the patients. Watch the space. Report anything that deviates from baseline."
Work the patients. The patients are the reason the controlled burn in my chest has a pulse.
The walk back to the rehab center is quiet. Ireland carries the laptop against her chest and her stride has the focused energy of a woman who just handed her evidence to a federal agent and is already thinking about what to document next. I match her pace without closing the distance between us, because the proximity we maintained in Rivera's office, shoulders not touching, voices professional, the data carrying the weight instead of the tension between us, is a discipline I need to hold for a few more steps.
In the corridor outside the ready room, Holden falls into step beside me. The timing is casual enough to be coincidence and deliberate enough that I know it isn't.
"How's the transition going?" The question comes easy and unhurried.
"Good. Getting settled."
"Rehab cases tracking?"
The question is still casual. The attention behind it isn't. I give him the short version: four patients with parallel deviations, Rivera briefed this afternoon, case number assigned, investigation open. Holden listens with the stillness of a man who's spent his career separating signal from noise.
"Smart to bring it to NCIS early," he says. "Better to flag it and be wrong than sit on it and be right."
"That's our thinking."
We walk a few more steps. Holden glances at me, and the look has nothing to do with patient data. It's the look of a man who went through his own version of this and knows exactly what the pull feels like when professional distance is thinning. He doesn't say a word about it. He doesn't need to.
I meet the look without flinching.
"Okay," he says. The word holds everything it needs to. He turns toward the operations wing, and the conversation that just happened required no more than a glance to cover the ground that mattered most.
After the last sessions, Ireland and I lock up together. Rivera's briefing sits between us in the parking lot, the weight of what we opened this afternoon pressing against the warm evening air.
"This could be nothing," she says. She doesn't believe it.
"Could be." I don't believe it either.
She holds my gaze in the late-afternoon light, keys in her hand, her car three spots from mine. Her hair is still down, catching the low sun, and the line of her throat is visible above the neckline of her scrubs. Standing in this parking lot with this woman while the distance between us gets thinner by the hour feels like holding a position I'm going to have to advance from or retreat. I have never been good at retreat.
"Good night, Boone." Her voice is quieter than the parking lot requires, pitched for me and not the space.
"Good night, Ireland."
