Silt, Denver Cereal Volume 8 (36 page)

“
Did I mention my name?”
the man asked.

“
Nope,” Aden
said.

“
I’m not housebroke,” the
man said. “That’s what the ex used to say. Anyway, I’m Erik Le
Monte.”

He held out a beefy hand and Sam shook it.
Jacob nodded to the house, and the men started across the field.
Aden and Jacob fell behind Sam and Erik.

“
I think we can manage the
farm,” Aden said.

Jacob turned to look at him.

“
There’s enough land with
the adjoining farms to start the project,” Aden said. “We can
create a farming zone like they have in Boulder, or just keep the
farms the way they are. By the time the city is up and running, our
kids will be grown.”

Jacob stopped walking to turn and look at
Aden.

“
Don’t give up, Jake,”
Aden said. “That’s what I’m saying. It was only a few angry people.
The rest of Lipson just don’t know what to do. You have to lead the
way.”

Jacob nodded and they went into the
house.

~~~~~~~~

Saturday morning—10:00 a.m.

“
It’s just this way,” MJ
said.

He pointed down a long hallway in the
basement of a building at Buckley Air Force Base. Gracie had never
been anywhere near the building. MJ used his ID card and thumbprint
to get into this hallway. That was after they had gone through a
body scanner and given their IDs to the building guard. When she
saw the nameplate on the door, she groaned.

“
You’re on the Fey Team?”
Gracie said, in a terse whisper. “You don’t think you could have
told me? Shit. Shit. Shit. I can’t believe you got me into
this.”

Gracie turned to leave, but Honey was
rolling behind her. She sneered at Honey.

“
You didn’t ask.” MJ
opened the door.

The door opened to a small office. The
sergeant at the desk smiled at MJ. The young man looked like he was
trying to swallow a laugh.

“
This is Dusty,” MJ said.
“He goes by Sergeant Dusty.”

“
Ma’am,” Sergeant Dusty
said. “They are waiting for you. Do you want to wait with me,
Honey, or do you want to go in?”

“
Why would she wait with
you?” MJ asked.

“
Because this is military
business,” Sergeant Dusty said.

“
It’s probably better that
I go,” Honey said.

“
Suite yourself,” Sergeant
Dusty said.

He got up from his desk and opened the door
behind him. From where they stood, they could see a long conference
table, a comfortable seating area, and a wide mahogany desk near
the windows. There were two people standing and one person sitting
behind the desk. The bright light from the windows made the people
into dark silhouettes.

“
Please.” Sergeant Dusty
gestured for them to go inside.

“
You know
I . . .” Gracie said.

“
Oh no you don’t,” Honey
said. “You started this; in you go.”

Gracie turned in place. Moving further into
the room, she could make out the people behind the woman at the
desk. A dark-haired man who looked like an accountant stood at her
right hand. His fatigues insignia tab indicated that he was a
captain in Special Forces. His assignment patch was a large black
Vivaldi “F.” The man on the woman’s left was Gracie’s superior
officer. Gracie groaned.

“
Please come in,” the
woman at the desk said.

Gracie looked at her for the first time. She
was in her mid-thirties. She had a pleasant kind of face that
looked like it was mostly used for smiling. Her short brown hair
stuck straight up in a military cut. Oddly, her fatigues insignia
tab indicated she too was in Special Forces, a lieutenant colonel.
Gracie popped to attention next to MJ.

“
I’m Lieutenant Colonel
Hargreaves,” the woman said. “This is Captain Mac
Clenaghan.”

MJ bristled at the formality in his
superior’s voice. Even though he knew this formal ruse was designed
to cut through bullshit, he found the whole thing unnerving.

“
I believe you’ve met
Captain Handon?” the woman asked.

“
Yes, ma’am,” Gracie
said.

“
Sir,” Captain Mac
Clenaghan said. “You will address the lieutenant colonel as
sir.”

“
As you may have noted, we
are a highly classified intelligence team,” the lieutenant colonel
said. “In order to maintain the classified nature of our work,
personal disruptions require our immediate attention.”

“
Yes, sir,” Gracie
said.

“
At ease,” the lieutenant
colonel said.

“
You may be seated,”
Captain Mac Clenaghan said.

Gracie and MJ sat down in the chairs in
front of the desk. Honey rolled around to MJ’s side. He glanced at
her and she smiled.

“
Hi, Honey,” the
lieutenant colonel said.

“
Alex,” Honey
said.

“
Sergeant Scully?” the
lieutenant colonel said. “Can we get directly to the
point?”

“
Gracie and I went out for
a while before I was injured,” MJ said. “I think you’ll remember
that I went from Walter Reed to Mologne House and was assigned from
there.”

“
I remember,” the
lieutenant colonel said.

“
I think you’ll also
remember that I joined the Marines . . .” MJ
started.

“
You what?” Gracie’s voice
rose with surprise.

“
Second Lieutenant, being
at ease is no excuse for being disrespectful,” her superior officer
said.

“
Yes, sir,” Gracie said.
“Sorry, sir.”

“
I joined the Marines just
after being assigned,” MJ said. “I met Honey while on assignment
after returning from basic training.”

“
Yes Sergeant,” the
lieutenant colonel said.

“
I forgot a few things
along the way,” MJ said.

The lieutenant colonel nodded. She looked at
Gracie. Her brown eyes seemed to penetrate her very soul. Gracie
instinctively put her hand over her heart.

“
Second Lieutenant?” the
lieutenant colonel said. “Would you like to tell us what this is
about?”

“
I . . .
um . . .”

“
From the beginning,”
Captain Mac Clenaghan said. “That’s the best place to
start.”

Gracie’s eyes flicked to her superior
officer. He gave her a look that reminded her to do what she was
told. She nodded.

“
I met MJ at my brother’s
funeral,” Gracie said. “He tried to save my brother when
he . . . he . . .”

Gracie cleared her throat.

“
Do you remember that?”
Honey asked MJ.

MJ shook his head.

“
That would be Ivy’s
father,” Honey said and Gracie nodded. MJ shook his
head.

“
Sergeant Scully has a
traumatic brain injury,” Captain Mac Clenaghan said. “He has blank
spots in his memory. I can assure you that if he says he doesn’t
remember, he does not.”

“
I don’t know if that’s
not worse.” Gracie looked at him.

“
I remember you,” MJ said.
“I don’t remember your brother or his injury. How did he
die?”

“
Sniper shot through the
helmet,” Gracie said. “You kept him alive all the way to the field
hospital and then . . .he . . .he
didn’t make it.”

“
I’m sorry, Gracie,” MJ
said.

“
Anyway, we dated for a
while,” Gracie said. “We talked about getting a place together, but
he was SF and I was a pilot. We spent leave together all over the
world for about a year. Do you remember that?”

MJ nodded.

“
We were supposed to meet
in Greece,” Gracie said. “No phones, no computers, just the beach.
I didn’t find out about your team until a month later. I thought
you’d stood me up. You’d done it before. I figured you were freaked
about settling down. Then I thought you were dead. Now, come to
find out, you’re not dead, but you have settled down. You’re not
dead. You’re settled down.”

She gestured to Honey. MJ shook his
head.

“
What happened?” Gracie
asked.

“
As near as we can put
together, his team hit an IED, probably some kind of land device,”
Captain Mac Clenaghan said. “MJ helped save his teammates, but on a
trip back to the Humvee, the second explosive blew. He placed a
tourniquet on his own leg and went back to working on the rest of
his team.”

“
You lost your leg?”
Gracie looked horrified.

MJ gestured to his calf.

“
After that, he was in
Germany, and then at Walter Reed,” Captain Mac Clenaghan said.
“During the time MJ was there, the wards were extremely
overcrowded. A lot of things fell through the cracks. That may be
why you weren’t notified.”

“
We had twelve guys in our
room,” MJ said. “When I first got there, I couldn’t talk at all, so
they let me be. I couldn’t tell anyone to call you, Gracie. With
all the pain and trying to walk, and get another job and stuff, I
forgot almost everything.”

“
After Walter Reed, he was
placed in Mologne house,” Captain Mac Clenaghan said.

“
We recruited him from his
hospital bed,” the lieutenant colonel said. “He’s been on active
deployment since then.”

“
Honey, why are you here?”
Captain Mac Clenaghan said.

“
MJ and I really like Ivy,
Gracie’s niece,” Honey said. “I want to make sure we resolve this
without a problem so MJ can keep his job and we still get to see
Ivy.”

“
Why would MJ lose his
job?” Gracie asked.

“
We are an elite
intelligence team,” Captain Mac Clenaghan said. “This kind of
interpersonal strain is disruptive to our work and leaves us open
to security risk. We either work this out today, or MJ will be
replaced.”

“
Sir,” MJ said. “May I say
something?”

Chapter Two Hundred and
Forty-Four
Your truth

The lieutenant colonel nodded.

“
I wanted to
say . . .” MJ cleared his throat. He glanced at
Honey, and she smiled to encourage him. “I’m sorry,
Gracie.”

Gracie scowled at him.

“
I wasn’t a very good
friend to you,” MJ said. “I’m sorry for it. You deserved a lot
better. But I wasn’t . . .that.”

“
And I suppose you are
now?” Gracie sneered.

“
I’ve changed a lot since
we were together, Gracie,” MJ said. “I don’t treat people like I
did. Not because of my job, but because I realized that people
matter. I don’t have fighting relationships anymore—not with
anyone. I even made up with my mom.”

“
Fighting relationship.”
Gracie nodded. “That’s what we had.”

MJ nodded.

“
You’re a great girl,
Gracie. You probably think I’m just saying this
because . . .” MJ gestured to the officers in front
of them. “But you are. I’d like to be your friend now, if I could.
Honey would too, I think.”

Honey nodded.

“
You broke my heart,”
Gracie said.

“
I did,” MJ said. “You’re
right. I’m really very sorry. I was good at breaking hearts, took
great pleasure in it. I don’t break hearts anymore.”

“
Why?” Gracie asked. “I
get that you were injured and in the hospital. And I get that you
didn’t remember us and everything. I understand that. I don’t get
why or how you’re so different. I mean, you were never ever wanted
to even be in the same room with Honey and now you have a baby
and . . .”

Gracie gestured to Honey.

“
And you’re
nice
, so nice,” Gracie
said. “You made sure last night that I was taken care of and a part
of the whole Hollywood thing. You even brought me a blanket so I
wouldn’t be cold. You weren’t nice like that before.”

MJ nodded.

“
What happened to you?”
Gracie asked. “And what happened to Honey? Did you do
that?”

“
I think that’s our cue.”
The lieutenant colonel stood up. “Captain Handen, I believe I
promised you a good cup of coffee.”

“
And a pastry,” Captain
Handen followed her out of the room. “You promised
pastry.”

“
That I did” the
lieutenant colonel came around her desk. She touched Honey’s
shoulder and winked at MJ before leading Gracie’s superior officer
out of the room. “We have pastries—not Parisian, you understand.
They are good, though.”

They waited until the superior officers were
gone.

“
What was that?” Gracie
looked at MJ.

“
Second Lieutenant, this
matter is not resolved,” Captain Mac Clenaghan said.

“
Yes, sir,” Gracie said
and swallowed hard. She hadn’t realized that the Captain was the
hard-ass in the room.

“
Sergeant Scully, I
believe the Second Lieutenant asked you a question,” Captain Mac
Clenaghan said.

Gracie gave a partial smile. At least, he
was a hard-ass to MJ, too.

“
I know death now,” MJ
said. “That’s the easiest way to say it. Me, Honey, we both almost
died; by all rights, we should be dead, both of us. I used to keep
death over there some place.”