Overwatch

by Riley Flynn

  With that, he stalked toward the door. Jax fought against his instinct to stop him. What would he follow it up with? Another lecture? Would he try to beat some sense into the man? That might make him feel better, but what good would it do?

  And deep down, he couldn’t quiet the nagging feeling that he didn’t have the right to do anything other than watch Farries walk away. Not surprisingly, the former sergeant took a left outside the door, down a street which would take him to the bowling alley, where so many people these days gathered to drink their days away.

  “We need to get something straight right now.”

  Maggie fixed Jax with a glare that she hoped made her look intimidating. She figured if she was going to play the role, she might as well go all the way now that Ruben and Price had left the office.

  “What’s that?” he asked.

  “If Brian and I are going to be the law, you need to step back and leave it to us. There’s no way I’m doing this job if you’re just going to countermand me like you did with Farries.”

  Jax looked at the floor long enough to make Maggie fear she’d crossed a line. But she wasn’t going to back down.

  Finally, he looked up and directly into her eyes.

  “You’re right,” he said. “I apologize.”

  Thank God, she didn’t say. “I know you two have a past, and you wanted to go full father figure on him even though he’s not that much younger than you. Believe me, I get it.”

  Her mind flashed to her last exchange with her Uncle Kenny before he’d passed the mantle of sheriff on to her. It seemed like years ago, even though it had only been six months. You’re better than you think you are, he’d told her, his lungs already full of fluid from the Eko virus. You have to be.

  Jax ran a hand down his face. She realized that she’d already gotten used to him with that sandy beard; could barely remember what he looked like without it, as a matter of fact. Same with Ruben’s. It was like the men had all become cavemen now that hot running water wasn’t always available. That sparked a thought about her own furry legs and armpits. Nobody ever talked about how hairy the end of the world would be.

  “Again, you’re right,” he said. “Brad and I have been through a lot together. And I didn’t watch those men walk into a trap; it was bad enough hearing it from a distance and figuring out what had happened.”

  “Don’t blame yourself. I think everyone deals with things in their own way. There could be all sorts of reasons for him to act the way he is: childhood, depression, a history of addiction in the family.”

  Listen to me sounding like a psychologist, she thought with an inner grimace. Eat your heart out, Dr. Phil.

  Jax was nodding. “I don’t know about Price, but there’s something different about Ruben and me: both of us were orphans when we enlisted. We didn’t lose any family during the collapse. I mean, I lost Hayley’s mom—” She saw a flash of something in his eyes as he cleared his throat. “But at least I was there to say good-bye. I had closure; a lot of people didn’t. Brad talked about his folks a lot over the years, and I don’t know if he ever got the chance to call them before things went to shit.”

  “Did you ever ask?”

  He looked at the floor again. “No. No, I did not.”

  She touched his arm. “You had a lot on your mind, Jax. Hell, so did everyone. You can’t blame yourself.”

  He gave her a weak smile and nodded.

  “How about we change the subject?” she offered.

  “Gladly. What do you want to talk about?”

  She motioned for them to sit and she poured them each a cup of steaming coffee from a big metal Thermos on her desk. Behind her, a portable electric heater pumped out hot air to a very small area of the office.

  “Price and I were talking,” she said. “We realized that keeping the peace isn’t going to be a full-time job. I suppose some people would be happy about that, but we’re used to filling our time. We worked for you, after all, and you’re a goddamn slave driver.”

  He grinned and cocked his head. “What are you getting at?”

  “There’ve been some odd things that happened during and after the collapse that just kind of got ignored. Disappearances, to be exact.”

  She saw a look in his eyes that she couldn’t quite read.

  “You’re talking about Liane Peterson?” he asked. “Eric Peterson’s widow?”

  “She’s one, although my initial gut feeling on her is that we’ll find her body next to an empty bottle of pills someday. I’m also interested in a guy named Dylan Nguyen. He was apparently some kind of computer genius that they recruited to try to get the systems under the mountain back online. As soon as word got out, a couple of people came in to tell me about him. No one has seen him since mid-October.”

  Jax nodded. “Archer mentioned him once, a long time ago. I didn’t realize he was missing.”

  “That’s just it,” she said. “He may not actually be missing. I mean, Liane Peterson had her kids to miss her; it’s possible that Nguyen decided he just wasn’t up to the task and rather than admit it, he just lost himself in the crowd of Colorado Springs. It would be pretty easy.”

  “So why bother investigating?”

  Maggie grinned. Six months earlier, on parole, she never would have believed she could get so turned on by the thought of unraveling a mystery, but she was already hooked on this one.

  “Because it wasn’t just Nguyen who went missing. I asked around and apparently, his supervisor, a Lt. Purcell, also disappeared around the same time.”

  “Lt. Purcell.” Jax scratched his beard. “Never heard of him. Or her?”

  “Him. Nobody I’ve talked to knew his first name.”

  “That’s not unusual; a lot of people were brought here from somewhere else, including me. It does seem odd, though, the two of them falling off the grid around the same time.”

  “Exactly. So I’m thinking Price and I should start asking around, see if we can find some clues. Who knows? It might turn out that the two of them fell in love and didn’t want anyone to know, so they shacked up together and started calling each other by different names. Anything is possible.”

  “So they’ll be your priority over Liane Peterson?”

  She shrugged. “We’ll follow whichever one gives us the best trail, but maybe we should get her off the books first. I still don’t know exactly what happened with her husband and Marcus Chase; I was going to track down the guard who was outside his cell when the two of them were inside.”

  “I can tell you exactly what happened,” Jax said quickly. “I was there. I relieved the guard, went into the room and saw Eric Peterson with his gun to Marcus Chase’s head. I was the only one who left that room alive.”

  Maggie nodded. “That much I know. But was there any conversation?”

  “Peterson had admitted when he was captured that he’d piloted the drones that took out Air Force One. When I got there, he said he was going to use Chase as a hostage to get out of Cheyenne Base. Chase made a wrong move, Peterson shot him, I shot Peterson. It was all over in a few seconds.”

  “So why was the guard stationed outside instead of inside? A Cpl. Levitz, right?”

  Jax stared at her long enough that she almost asked if he was all right. “The whole thing was classified,” he said finally. “Peterson had just assassinated the president during a national emergency. Chase didn’t want anything getting out to the public at that point, and Levitz didn’t have security clearance to hear the interrogation. In hindsight, of course, it was a bad call. A lot of decisions in those days turned out to be bad calls.”

  “Mm.” Maggie sat back in her chair. “Well, that certainly makes the investigation a lot easier. Thanks.”

  “You bet.” He stood up and checked the chronometer at his wrist. “Duty calls. Thanks again for your help in this, Mags. And your understanding. You’re a good friend.”

  She feigned shock and fanned herself with her hand.

  “Be still my heart,” she said. �
�A compliment from Capt. Jackson Booth.”

  He smiled. “I’m still learning this whole diplomat thing. It’s not easy when you have to deal with shit like we just dealt with.”

  “Amen.”

  They said their good-byes and Jax walked into the street just as Ruben and Price returned from a jaunt to the bowling alley depot a couple of blocks away. The two Special Forces officers climbed into the Hummer and drove off while Price joined her in the office.

  “Looks like you parted on good terms,” he said.

  “Yeah, we’re fine,” she said.

  But as she took a seat behind her desk, Maggie Stubbs couldn’t stop thinking about the look on Jax’s face when he was talking about Eric Peterson; she could practically see the wheels spinning in his head.

  If she didn’t know better, she would have sworn her friend wasn’t telling her the truth.

  8

  Hayley glanced with dismay at the big table with the folding legs that was set up under the window of the classroom: lunch was going to be spaghetti and meatballs. Again.

  It wasn’t that she didn’t like it, and she was grateful that they finally had real meat on a regular basis instead of the canned stuff, but sometimes it seemed like it was all she ever ate. Like so much of her daily life lately, she was bored with it. The same classroom every day, the same white walls and bunk every night under the mountain. Val and Carly were gone, and Maggie was busy being a policewoman. Ruben would come by once in a while to play checkers, which she loved, but Jax always seemed like he had something more important to think about than her.

  She looked over at Brooke Peterson sitting next to her on the floor, reading a book called The Strawberry Girl by someone named Lois Lenske. The cover said it had won a Newberry medal, whatever that was. Hayley had turned nine back in January, which meant she was older than Brooke and thus far too mature for such a book herself.

  “I wish I was a strawberry girl,” she sighed. “Or a blueberry girl, or a raspberry girl. I just want some fresh fruit.”

  Brooke looked up at her with dark, owlish eyes and a serious expression. “I think you’re bananas, girl.”

  The pair burst into the mad giggles that only young girls can muster, prompting some of the other kids to give them a stern look. This was supposed to be quiet reading time. Hayley thought they were all just jealous.

  “Thank you, Brandon, that was an excellent talk.”

  The girls turned to see Brooke’s twin brother Brandon emerge from Ms. Sidley’s office, which was adjacent to the classroom. Every student did their sessions with her each Tuesday and Thursday, except for Lucas, of course, because he couldn’t talk. He lived with Ms. Sidley, like Brooke and Brandon. Even so, the twins still did their sessions, just like everybody else.

  At least, that’s what the other kids believed; Hayley knew that they would actually just play games for their half-hour in her office. Like Hayley, almost all the other students lived with foster parents because their real parents had died. Ms. Sidley didn’t want it to look like the Peterson twins got special treatment just because they lived with her, which Hayley thought was pretty cool. In fact, she thought Ms. Sidley was pretty cool in general.

  “Hayley.” The teacher smiled from the doorway. “Your turn.”

  Brooke went back to her book as Hayley stood and headed for the office. She and Brandon slapped palms absently when they passed each other. Inside the office, she settled into the big, comfy chair that all the students used while Ms. Sidley, as always, closed the door.

  “Did you wash your hair?” Ms. Sidley asked. “It looks very pretty today.”

  “Jax made me,” Hayley sighed. “I told him nobody cared what anyone’s hair looked like anymore, but then he started talking about how we shouldn’t get lazy and I was like, all right, fine.”

  “He’s right. Laziness isn’t going to help us build the new republic.”

  “And the new republic is our future,” Hayley said automatically. She’d recited the line so many times in the office that she was hardly aware she was even doing it anymore.

  Ms. Sidley smiled. “That’s right. Now, I heard that Maggie Stubbs has been named the new sheriff. Have you talked to her lately? Or did Jax say anything about it?”

  “Maggie’s been too busy,” Hayley said. “Everybody’s too busy these days. Jax said that she and Maj. Price are going to be partners, like in the TV shows.”

  “Did he say what they were up to?”

  She thought for a moment. “I asked if they were going to look for Mrs. Peterson, and he said yes, but first they needed to find a couple other guys, because they went missing first.”

  Ms. Sidley’s eyes widened behind her glasses. “A couple others? Who else is missing?”

  “Some guy who worked on computers. And another guy who I think was his boss. I didn’t pay very close attention.” She glanced up, suddenly feeling sheepish. “Sorry, I’ll try harder next time.”

  “That’s totally fine,” the teacher said sweetly. “I know it’s not easy to pay attention all the time.”

  That was for sure. There always seemed to be so much boring stuff going on around Hayley. Grown-ups were always blah-blah-blahing about this or that, especially the army people. No one ever wanted to do anything fun, and it had only gotten worse since the snow had started to pile up. She wanted to make snow forts—it never snowed like this in Germany—but everybody else under the mountain was worried about stuff freezing.

  “I asked him why they weren’t looking for Mrs. Peterson first and he said it was because the other people had been missing longer.”

  Ms. Sidley looked lost in thought for awhile, so Hayley sat quietly until her teacher finally came back to herself and smiled at her.

  “You know what?” she said brightly. “We’re going to end the session early today. How does that sound?”

  Hayley shrugged. “Sure.”

  “And I have an idea.” Ms. Sidley leaned forward as if the two were conspiring. “I think everyone should have some outside time in the snow after lunch. How about you?”

  “Yes please!” Hayley grinned. “It’s like you read my mind or something!”

  “You can go tell the others, okay? I’m going to stay here for a few minutes and then I’ll join you. Sound good?”

  “Sounds great.” Hayley beamed. She stopped to give Ms. Sidley a hug as she headed for the door. “I love you. You’re the best.”

  “I love you too, sweetie.” She patted the girl’s back. “Off you go.”

  Hayley gleefully told the others about their upcoming outdoor adventure, which prompted cheers and a round of high-fives. Even Lucas, who usually looked either bored or sad, seemed to perk up a bit.

  The commotion was more than loud enough to cover the sound of Ms. Sidley talking into the radio in her office.

  Emily Sidley sized up the man who called himself John Smith as he walked into her office. His dark hair, longer than military regulation to begin with, was below the ears now, his bangs almost brushing his eyebrows. He’d gained at least eight pounds, maybe more. Eating processed food for six months, combined with no longer having strenuous exercise as part of his job, had taken its toll. And not just on his body; she got the sense that his wits had dulled during his time pretending to be a commanding officer, and had only gotten worse since he was supposedly put on “administrative leave.”

  If Marcus Chase could see you now, she thought. Not that it mattered. She was stuck with him.

  “What’s so urgent?” he asked, propping his butt against the corner of the lunch table.

  She arched an eyebrow. “Have a lot on your plate these days, do you?”

  The ghost of a scowl crossed his face, but vanished just as quickly. Still, it was a marked change from when she’d first met him; nothing had fazed him back then. His slacking attitude these days was just more evidence that the wrong man had made it out of Pyongyang, while the right one had been trapped there with the virus.

  She fought the urge to think abou
t Quinn, and what might have happened to him in those final days. If there was anyone who could have survived at the epicenter of the Eko outbreak, it was him. But she had to resign herself to the fact that she would never know his fate.

  Smith surprised her with a grin. “Actually, I do have another appointment: I’m meeting with Archer to tell him everything I know.”

  She saw through his bluff—Archer knew about Smith, which was why Smith was still tolerated after his abysmal performance handling the situation in the mountains. But Archer didn’t know everything that Smith knew, which was quite a lot. In any case, she needed him to cooperate, so she acted worried. It wasn’t the first time she’d played him like this; she had, in fact, gone to much greater lengths to keep him compliant.

  “You’re right,” she said, her voice dripping with contrition. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that. I’m just on edge.”

  He seemed to soften with that out of the way. “What’s going on?”

  “I’m sure you know Stubbs and Price have been appointed as de facto sheriffs for Colorado Springs.”

  He nodded. “The sum total of their activity has been arresting a drunk member of Echo Company. Sgt. Farries. He subsequently quit, by the way.”

  Sidley knew this and more, thanks to her regular interactions with Hayley, but she acted surprised.

  “I didn’t know. Is that good or bad?”

  “Indifferent.”

  Ah, that complete and utter lack of strategic thinking. Chase once told her that Smith had gotten a perfect score on his SATs. At times like this, she wondered whether he’d been putting her on. Smith was incredibly resourceful, but he lived entirely in the moment, like an attack dog.

  “Anyway,” she said, “I need you to start keeping tabs on them.”

  “What for?”

  “A little bird told me that they’re looking into things we don’t want them looking into.”

  His eyes narrowed. “The Peterson woman? Even if they find her, it’s got all the earmarks of a suicide.”