The Fey (33 page)

“
We’ll talk about the
Circus when you’re done,” the White Boy said from the driver’s
seat.

“
We can’t leave you here
alone,” Matthew said. He put a hand on Alex’s shoulder and the
other on Joseph’s shoulder. “I’m sorry.”

Alex turned to look at him, “Thanks for
doing this.”

“
I’m on watch,” Troy
said.

Glancing at the rifle and scope in Troy’s
hand, Joseph nodded.

“
You’re burning time,”
Trece said.

Alex opened the door to the Expedition.
Stepping into the cold the October pre-dawn, she held her hand out
to Joseph. They walked around the Expedition to the Memorial and
Troy stood in the doorway of the truck. Alex turned one last time,
catching the watchful eyes of her friends, then walked to the
Memorial. As they approached, they saw that the families had
decorated the graves for the anniversary.

Starting at Alexander’s grave, adorned with
a large bouquet of sunflowers, Joseph set a votive candle and a
stick of incense. Together, they clicked their lighters touching
the flame to the candle first, then the incense. They moved in
silence to Nathan’s grave.

A picture of Nathan and his teenage son
hugging was stuck in the grass next to the grave. Making a space
for the candle, Alex pointed to a picture of a baby, Nathan’s first
grandchild. Joseph kneeled to pick up the pictures. Ripping a
plastic picture holder from his wallet, Joseph slipped the pictures
into the holder and placed them near the top of the grave. Nathan
talked about his son all the time. Alex touched the baby’s picture
with her index finger. She could almost hear him brag about the
baby. Sniffing back their tears, they lit the candle and
incense.

Paul’s grave had a bright red bouquet of
Gerbera daisies on top. Alex saw a drop of water on the flowers and
looked to the sky to see if it was raining. Unable to see the clear
sky through her clouded eyes, she realized that she was crying. As
they touched flame to the votive candle and incense, she saw tears
dropping from Joseph’s eyes as well.

Alex fingered Jax’s tattered Badwater
Ultramarathon T-shirt, his lucky shirt from his first Badwater.
Joseph pointed to the stethoscope near the top of Jax’s grave.

“
He would have been such a
great doctor,” Joseph whispered.

Alex nodded. Bending together, they lit the
candle and incense at Jax’s grave.

Dean’s grave was covered with crayon
drawings. Alex touched a plastic wrapped crayon picture of Dean.
Joseph held up a crayon picture of a red girl and purple boy with
their green mother. In block blue letters, the child had written:
“WHERE ARE YOU DADDY?” Alex covered her mouth to stifle a sob.
Joseph moved the pictures away from the flames and they lit the
candle and incense.

Scott’s grave was clean and polished. Andi,
his flower child wife, had painstakingly clipped the grass around
the granite stone. A tidy and precise person, this is exactly how
Scott would have wanted his grave. Joseph and Alex placed the
candle and incense away from the stone as to not disrupt the
precision.

“
Andi misses him
horribly,” Alex said.

“
Me too,” Joseph
nodded.

Alex looked up to see Jesse standing next to
Tommy’s grave.

“
Get down,” Jesse said.
“M21, longrange rifle.”

Alex tackled Joseph just before two shots
rang out across the Memorial. Jumping from the Expedition, Trece
and the White Boy ran to Alex and Joseph while Matthew took off
running across the grass.

“
Are you all right?” Trece
pulled Alex to standing.

“
We’re fine.” Joseph took
the White Boy’s offered hand.

“
Finish up,” Trece said.
“We’ll take care of this.”

Tommy’s stone was covered with sayings
written in white wax pencil. Tommy loved language, words and
communication. A variety of hands had written his favorite sayings
on the black granite with his favorite saying, ‘Only the mediocre
are always at their best,’ under his name. Alex smiled touching the
‘I love you’ written in a teenage girl’s hearts and curls. They lit
the candle and incense for Tommy the communicator.

Alex touched the Pyrex cooking dish sitting
on Dwight’s grave. Raised by his grandmother after his mother
over-dosed on heroin, Dwight’s grandmother brought his favorite
meal to his grave every Sunday. The groundskeepers asked her to
stop. She told them that she made her baby Sunday dinner every week
for almost forty years. She was not going to stop because of some
groundskeeper. Joseph made a face when he opened the lid. They
placed the candle and lit the incense against the smell as much as
to remember their friend.

Overcome with sadness, Alex fell to her
knees in front of Jesse’s grave. Even with the apparition of her
friend floating nearby, she felt Jesse’s loss like a hole in her
heart and her life. Reaching in her pocket, she intended to leave
the St. Christopher medallion among the bright pink and blue
blossoms which she and Maria painstakingly lay on top of his
granite marker.

“
What’s that?” Joseph
asked.

“
I found Jesse’s St.
Christopher in the vault. It was the only gift he ever received
from his mother. I was going to leave it here.”

“
I think Jesse would want
you to keep it,” Joseph said.

“
I keep telling you that,”
Jesse said.

Alex nodded and placed the medallion back in
her pocket. Joseph dropped to his knees to hug her. With an arm
around each other, they lit the candle and incense.

Alex wiped her face with her hands then
still on her knees, she placed a piece of incense at Mike’s grave.
She flicked a leaf off the top of the grave, then wiped the dust
with the arm of her jacket. Joseph gave her his handkerchief and
she cleaned the granite.

“
She’s with a woman now,”
Joseph said of Mike’s wife.

Alex nodded. Married on paper only, Mike and
his wife stayed together for their three children. Alex’s heart
broke to see that powerful, funny, quick to temper, loveable Mike
received as little from his wife in death as he had in life. She
promised herself to look after his grave. Lighting the incense and
candle at Mike’s grave from her kneeling position, she looked
around for Joseph.

Joseph was standing, sobbing into his hands,
at the end of Charlie’s grave. Alex stood to hug Joseph. He pushed
her away then dropped his head to her shoulder and wept. He had no
words to express his loss, a sadness that never seemed to
lessen.

They stood crying in each other’s arms at
the end of Charlie’s grave until, hearing cars driving into the
Memorial, they knew their time was up. They bent to light the
candle and incense for Charlie together. Joseph collapsed against
her in grief. Alex held him up with an arm around his waist.

Trece and the White Boy, armed with M-16
machine guns, came forward again to escort them to the Expedition.
Once in the car, Troy pressed Joseph and Alex’s heads into their
lap. The Expedition slowed to pick up Matthew then drove out of the
cemetery.

“
Can we get up yet?” Alex
asked.

“
You’re so beautiful like
that,” Trece said. “I thought we’d just leave you
there.”

Alex laughed and sat up.

“
Snooze?” she asked. They
had planned on meeting Max, John and Erin for breakfast at their
favorite breakfast restaurant.

“
I going to have the
pineapple upside down pancakes,” Trece said.

“
You’re off carbs, Trece,”
the White Boy said.

“
That’s right, I’m not
eating carbs right now. My percent fat is up a half
point.”

“
It’s a celebration of
life,” Joseph said. “Pineapple upside down pancakes sound
perfect.”

“
Oh sure, you want me to
get fat. Just because I’m at four and a half percent fat and you
are not, doesn’t mean I should get fatter. Jeez. Alex, you didn’t
tell me that your Captain was a food enabler.”

“
A what?” Alex asked.
“WAIT, I don’t want…”

“
Someone who encourages
people to eat food that’s not good for them. Honestly Alex, I
thought you knew that. I mean…”

“
Andy!”

“
Oh right, I’m supposed to
be quiet so you can reflect. You have to admit. I’ve been doing a
good job keeping quiet.”

“
I think you’ve been doing
a great job, Trece,” the White Boy said.

“
I am trying to be
respectful. I’ve lost friends. Hell, I lost Jesse. I might not have
spent every day with Jesse, but I loved him. Losing friends is like
a wound that never ever heals. Sure, you feel guilty that you
survived, especially when you see the families. I mean…”

“
ANDY!” Alex, Joseph,
Matthew and Troy said in unison.

“
You guys sound pretty
good. Oh, all right. I’m going to be quiet now.”

Trece zipped his lips with his hand then
looked out the window. They drove to the edge of Fort Logan
National Cemetery.

“
Where are we going?”
Trece asked.

Everyone laughed.

F

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Three hours later

October 8 – 9:00 A.M.
Downtown Denver, Colorado

Alex stood near the edge of the crowded
room. The families of the Fey Special Forces Team planned a very
small, family only, ceremony for the two year anniversary. They
would meet at ten o’clock at Alex and John’s home, then make their
way to Fort Logan together. Alex had even arranged for a Denver
Police escort.

What a difference two months makes.

Alex and John’s house was gone.

Their private ceremony became a large public
event where every politician and all of the military brass would be
in attendance. The Secret Service expected at least four hundred
people and every media outlet. The families were cajoled, begged
and manipulated into attending with their children.

But the desire to be together, on this day
of all days, was greater than the President or something as
insignificant as a home explosion. Max found the largest and nicest
meeting room in the Cash Register building where his international
law firm rented three floors. Rebecca arranged for caterers and
decorators. Everything was beautiful.

“
Major Alex?” Dwight’s
grandmother asked coming over to Alex.

“
Yes, Mrs. Harris,” Alex
said. She took the elderly woman’s hands in her own. A small woman,
with deep creases in her skin, Mrs. Harris looked up at Alex
through the mesh of her black hat.

“
I wanted to thank you for
my necklace.” Mrs. Harris put her gloved hand to the diamond
encrusted platinum cross around her neck. “Dwight told me you each
received a diamond. It never occurred to me that he would have made
something for me.”

Alex smiled. She spent the last week with
the team’s families. She wanted to tell them in person what
happened and give them the diamond jewelry she retrieved from the
vault. Each team member received their choice of diamonds after
they rescued the board of directors of a large diamond corporation.
No one knew what to pick, so Alex called Raz. The ex-New York City
cop helped them choose diamonds. He also arranged for a jeweler in
Paris. Raz picked a large diamond for Alex then convinced her to
wear it in her belly button.

“
Dwight was very clear. He
wanted you to have something you would wear,” Alex said with a
smile.

“
I have another question
for you.”

“
Yes, ma’am.”

“
My Dwight was shot in the
head. I wasn’t able to have the casket open at the funeral. The
other men weren’t … disfigured in this way.”

Alex’s eyes glistened with tears as she
searched Dwight’s grandmother’s face.

“
Did they mutilate my baby
because he was Negro?”

“
Dwight was shot in the
chest, the abdomen and the legs.”

“
Yes, ma’am. Seventeen
bullets. The doctor said ‘enough bullets to down an
elephant.’”

“
We kept our weapons in an
area of the vault. One person stood guard…”

“
Jesse Abreu was on
guard,” Mrs. Harris said. “You said there was no way for him to see
what was coming. Professional killers.”

“
Yes, ma’am.” Alex nodded
her head. “It was our habit to drop our weapons in a particular
area then go about our business. After Dwight was shot...”. Alex
paused and searched the elderly woman’s face again.

“
You can tell me anything,
Major Alex. Nothing in this whole world is worse than my baby’s
dying before me.”

“
The shooter shot from
left to right, then back right to left. Somehow, Dwight was still
alive. He pulled himself along the floor with his arms toward the
weapons. I fired at the shooter…”

“
With that handgun you
always carry.”

“
Yes, ma’am.”

They were silent for a moment as the
information and inference lingered in the air.

“
You’re saying that my boy
was a hero.”

Tears sprung from Alex’s eyes, “Yes ma’am.
Your boy was a hero.”

Mrs. Harris pulled Alex into a hug. The
women stood together for a moment. Stepping back, Mrs. Harris
passed Alex a tissue she had tucked up her sleeve then used one
herself.

“
I said to my boy,
‘There’ll be no end of trouble if you have a woman on your team.’
He said, ‘Momma, you of all people should not be prejudice.’ Over
the years, you would pull them out of one crazy situation after
another and Dwight would say, ‘See Momma. You were wrong.’
Alexandra, I’m sorry I misjudged you.”