After the mess hall was cleared, Ju was taken to medical under guard.
That angered her at first.
“I’m not the threat,” she said.
The medic, a captain named Rowan Price, did not argue.
“No,” he said. “You are the target.”
That answer silenced her.
The sauce had dried in her hair by then. Her uniform smelled of vinegar, coffee, and humiliation. Her hip throbbed from the fall. Her hand shook every time she remembered the fork leaving her fingers under the impact of Reed’s shot. The sound still lived in her bones. Not as rescue. As warning.
She had been one breath away from becoming the image Willy wanted.
Ju sitting in medical, sauce still on her collar, while two MPs stood outside the door, felt less like protection and more like confinement. Then Reed entered.
He had removed his sidearm. His hands were empty.
Ju looked at him. “You shot the fork out of my hand.”
“Yes.”
“You could have hit me.”
“Yes.”
“Then why?”
Reed pulled a chair beside the bed.
“Because you were about to let him decide what every camera remembered.”
Ju swallowed hard.
“I wasn’t going to stab him.”
“I believe you.”
“Then why shoot?”
“Because belief after the fact is weaker than evidence in the moment.”
That sentence made her angry because it was true.
Reed continued. “If you raised it another inch, his people would freeze the frame and build the rest of your life around it.”
Ju looked away.
“He poured sauce on my head.”
“I saw.”
“He said Aaron died because of me.”
“I heard.”
“He kicked my chair.”
“I know.”
Her voice broke. “And I still had to be careful.”
Reed’s face did not soften, but his voice did.
“Yes.”
For a few seconds, the medical bay was silent.
Then Ju asked, “Did you get the wafer?”
Reed reached into his coat and placed a sealed evidence pouch on the table. Inside was the black data wafer.
“We did.”
She stared at it.
“How?”
“The academy contact you used did not ignore you. He brought it straight to my office.”
Ju’s eyes filled before she could stop them.
For six weeks, she had believed she was carrying the truth alone. Now it sat in a sealed pouch with a case number, photographed, logged, and beyond Willy’s immediate reach.
“What’s on it?” she asked.
“Enough to prove Aaron was investigating his uncle.”
Ju closed her eyes.
“And enough to prove Willy sold the route?”
Reed hesitated.
That hesitation scared her.
“Not alone,” he said.
Ju opened her eyes.
“What does that mean?”
“It means Willy is guilty. But he was not the highest name in the exchange.”
A coldness moved through her.
Reed leaned closer.
“Kharan Ridge was not only about killing Aaron.”
Ju stared at him.
“It was about retrieving something he found.”