My Sister Is the Warlord Queen novel · Chapter 22 of 24

Chapter 22: Ashore

"I'll give you my answer in person," I said.

"Commander, the board is in Virginia."

"Then put the chairman on a plane. Friday, four o'clock. The Harbor Grand, ninth floor."

I hung up before he could say no.

Roisin was staring at me in the crosswalk with her hot chocolate face on hold.

"Back on a ship?" she said.

"That's what he wants."

"What do you want?"

The light changed.

Neither of us moved.

"I want to be here in the spring," I said. "When she waves for real."

Roisin put her arm through mine and walked me across the street.

"Then go tell him, Sergeant."

The suite on nine was the one where I'd scrubbed an arms broker's toilet for three months.

It had been cleaned since.

Somebody else had done it, and they'd missed a spot behind the bar sink.

The chairman of Ironwatch's board was a tall, dry man in his sixties with a Virginia flag pin on his lapel.

He sat at the dining table with his back to the harbor and two lawyers on either side.

He didn't stand when I came in.

"Commander. I assume you're packed."

"I'm not going."

"Then I'll take your resignation."

"You won't get that either."

I sat down across from him.

"Command moves to Boston. I run it from shore."

He actually laughed.

"You don't make conditions. You work for the board."

"Then the board should hear from the people who work for me."

There was a knock at the door.

My second came in, in his gray windbreaker, carrying a cardboard box.

He set it on the table in front of the chairman and stepped back against the wall.

The chairman looked into it.

Envelopes.

A lot of them.

"Every team leader in the company," my second said. "Dated Monday. If she goes, they go."

"That's mutiny."

"No, sir. That's notice."

The chairman's phone buzzed on the table.

He glanced at it and didn't pick it up.

It buzzed again.

Then one of the lawyers' phones started.

"Answer it," I said.

He did, with his jaw tight.

He listened.

His face changed.

"Yes," he said. "Yes, Mr. Whitlow. I understand. Whitlow Shipping won't sign without her."

He hung up.

The phone rang again before he set it down.

He looked at the screen.

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