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“Then why are you going to these lengths to have this conversation with me?”
“I just think you deserve to know what’s going on, that’s all,” I told him. “I don’t want you to find out the hard way if, God forbid, I have to turn in a report of malfeasance in the Air Force or something.”
“Is that where you’ve been assigned? The Air Force?”
“I don’t have my assignment yet. It might be. They’re taking a bunch of us entry-level analysts and assigning each of us to a different branch.”
“Well, try not to get into the Air Force. You know how airmen can be. They won’t respect you.”
“They’ll respect me,” I spoke these words with every ounce of confidence in me. I did know how members of the military, in general, could be when it came to young civilian women. But Dad was mistaken if he thought I’d put up with anything less than complete respect in the workplace. Anyone who thought they could be sexist toward me was going to be in for a rude awakening, Air Force or not.
“Maybe you should ask to be assigned to the SEALs,” Dad suggested.
“Don’t you think that’s a bit of a conflict of interest?” I didn’t want the SEALs as my assignment. That sounded like the worst-case scenario to me. I was committed to making a thorough and accurate report no matter how my assignment turned out, but I knew I would feel conflicted if assigned to the SEALs. Without feeling really guilty, I couldn’t give information on the military branch that had helped raise me, the branch that had been my father’s home and family.
I knew that reports of corruption weren’t precisely a betrayal. If anything, I would be helping the branch I was assigned to by rooting out anything destructive that was going on.
Still, it wasn’t going to feel good to be a whistle-blower—if that was something I ended up having to do.
I would do my best to avoid being assigned to the SEALs.
“I don’t like this,” Dad said. “I thought when you went to work for the FBI that we were finally getting someone on the inside who understood the military way of life. You were raised around the military, Alison.”
“I know, Dad. And one thing I learned from that was how much the military values abiding by the law. Come on. You wouldn’t want me to go in there and give them a free pass.”
“I suppose not,” Dad agreed. “I just don’t want to see you make a spectacle out of this.”
“I’m not going to make a spectacle. But it’s my first assignment at this job. I’m a junior analyst. I need to earn my stripes if I’m going to prove that the FBI was right to take a chance on me. I need to prove that I belong in this job. I need you to support me.”
“You know I’ll always support you, no matter what,” Dad chided. “And you do belong in the FBI. You’re going to be great in that job. They’re lucky to have you, Allie.”
“Thanks, Dad.”
“I want to see you do well. You know that. You know how long I’ve wanted to see you in a job like this one.”
“All my life.”
“Yes. And now it’s happening, and I couldn’t be prouder of you. So, you do what you’ve got to do to make a success of your first assignment. I know you won’t find any corruption anyway, so there really isn’t anything to worry about.”
He smiled and picked up his menu again. “I think I’m going to go with the ribs today,” he announced.
“Right,” I murmured.
I should have felt better. He’d given me his support, hadn’t he?
But I couldn’t help feeling that his support was conditional. Yes, he wanted me to do well on my assignment—as long as there was nothing underhanded going on for me to report on.
He was so sure that there wouldn’t be anything.
Well, I wasn’t going to cause a scandal on purpose. I wasn’t going to create controversy where there wasn’t any.
But I couldn’t deny that a part of me was hoping Iwouldfind evidence of wrongdoing.
After all, how better to make a clear-cut success of my first assignment than by bringing back a report that contained something? That would prove to my bosses that I was worth keeping around, and it would lead to bigger and more groundbreaking assignments for me. I wanted that.
I could never confess it to my father, but the truth was that I was hoping I would catch the military doing something wrong.
Chapter three
