I ran down the hallway, taking the stairs two at a time, sprinting into my master bedroom. I went straight to the closet, pushing aside Mark’s old winter coats, and dropped to my knees. I pulled up the loose floorboard in the back corner and retrieved the small metal lockbox I kept hidden there.
I opened it. The cardboard box sat inside.
I pulled out the oil-stained canvas and unrolled it on my bed. Mark’s silver aviator watch caught the morning light. The glass face was cracked, a jagged spiderweb pattern obscuring the numbers.
When I first opened the box yesterday, the shock of seeing the watch had paralyzed me. The Navy had sworn his jet sank into the Marianas Trench. They said nothing was recovered. Yet here was his watch, smelling faintly of jet fuel and salt water.
But it wasn't just the watch itself that had terrified me.
It was the time frozen on the dial.
The hands were permanently stopped at 0200. Two o'clock in the morning.
Mark’s official crash report stated his engine failed at 1400 hours—two in the afternoon. I knew that report front to back. I had memorized every redacted line. If the watch stopped when it hit the water, it meant Mark was flying twelve hours after the Navy said he died.
I picked up the heavy silver timepiece. Mark had loved this watch. He bought it when he made lieutenant. He always told me it was waterproof up to five hundred meters, built like a tank.
My thumbs ran over the thick metal casing. The back plate, usually perfectly flush, had a microscopic gap near the hinge. It was slightly misaligned, as if someone had pried it open and forced it shut in a hurry.
I walked into the bathroom, grabbed a razor blade from my cabinet, and wedged the thin metal edge into the gap on the back of the watch. I twisted it sharply.
The metal backplate popped off with a metallic clink, bouncing onto the bedspread.
I stared at the exposed gears. Nestled between the tiny brass cogs, wrapped in a tiny piece of clear plastic, was a black micro-SD card.
My breath caught in my throat. Mark had hidden this. Someone had found his body, found the watch, and mailed it to me, bypassing the military’s entire screening process. Vance hadn't realized the card was inside, but he knew the watch existed, and he was terrified I had it.
I grabbed my laptop from the desk, my hands shaking violently as I slid the tiny card into the USB adapter and plugged it into the port.
A single file popped up on the screen. It was an encrypted audio file, labeled with a string of numbers.
I clicked it. A password prompt appeared on the screen.
Enter Encryption Key.
I stared at the blinking cursor. Mark and I had a thousand inside jokes, a hundred shared memories. But if this was a military encryption, it wasn't going to be our anniversary. It was going to be something only a pilot would know.
I typed in the tail number of his first jet. Incorrect.
I typed in my old call sign. Incorrect.
Warning: 1 Attempt Remaining Before Data Wipe.
I froze. A cold sweat broke out across my neck. If I lost this file, I lost whatever Mark died trying to tell me.
I thought about the watch. The stopped hands. 0200.
I typed: 0200.
The screen flashed green. The file decrypted.
An audio player opened, the static hissing softly through my laptop speakers. Then, a voice broke through the white noise.
“Sarah.”
It was Mark. His voice was ragged, breathless, and backed by the screaming roar of a fighter jet engine.
“If you’re hearing this, it means I didn't make it back. Listen to me very carefully. Vance isn't running training flights. The Black Falcons are running a smuggling ring out of the Pacific fleet. They’re stealing the Aegis radar jamming modules and selling them to a private buyer. I found the manifest. They know I know.”