“Huh?” A faint thread of hysteria cracked in Grace’s voice as she placed her glass of orange juice back on the table. Her eyes had a strange glare in them as her attention bounced between Eric and Marcus.
The girl was clearly spooked, but Marcus sensed there was more going on inside her head that had nothing to do with the General’s disappearance.
“Spike teams,” Eric said, before Marcus had a chance to delve too deep into what might be troubling Grace. “Hatchet forces.”
“Close. Close.” Marcus nodded perfunctorily. “Just not quite so universally known. And a bit more clandestine.”
“So, they work pretty much under the same pretense as our good friends in the Army?” Eric posed the question, but judging by his perceptive expression understanding had awoken in him. “But with a lot less scruples,” he added, confirming Marcus’s suspicions.
“You’re getting there now,” Marcus said, almost laughing. To see that he and Eric still had the ability to anticipate each other’s thoughts was refreshing. “They take what they want. No matter the costs. And they don’t care who gets hurt in the process.”
Playing with the scrambled eggs on his plate, Eric asked, “No rules, huh?” His light tone melted some of the tension that had started brewing when Marcus received Eric’s phone call yesterday.
“Just don’t get caught,” Marcus said, opting to drive the mood in an informal direction. Finally, somebody had found a way to ease the tension and he had no plans to thwart the effort.
“Wait a minute...” Grace’s objection invaded their repartee as she waved her fork elaborately in the air. “Isn’t that the kind of shit you guys live for?”
“Typically,” Eric said, as if he really knew the topic. Marcus doubted it. If Eric was that knowledgeable on the subject, he wouldn’t have come looking for Marcus.
Time to shed some light. “But not when we have to be reinvented as a person.”
“Maybe you should just go ahead and spell it out for me,” Grace said with the dejected look of surrender, and laid her fork across the center of her far-from-empty plate.
“Well...” Marcus glanced at Eric. Who better to use for show-n-tell? “If Eric here decides to join our secret military group...at that point, Eric Wayne no longer exists. He gets a new identity and is forever cut off from his former life.”
“And if I say, no...” Eric said with a grand air and reached for his cup of steaming coffee. “I find myself in some serious shit.” As he sipped the coffee, Marcus doubted Eric was truly aware of his accuracy.
“Precisely.” Marcus’s zeal poured out in a full-throated roar. “It’s then that he’s accused of some crime or another that’ll buy him twenty-to-life in Leavenworth.”
“Why?” she asked with a long, exhausted sigh and reached for her fork.
“Because...” Marcus said as Grace poked at the mixed fruit, mostly melons, on her plate. “If you say no, you have to be neutralized.” He couldn’t begin to appreciate this reasoning, but he understood it. “These types of operations depend upon secrecy and no one but its own agents knowing it exists. Well, no one credible anyway.” The entire concept was clever, and Marcus had to laugh at the irony. “And who’s going to believe Eric Wayne’s accusations if he’s doing time in Leavenworth?”
“So what you’re saying is...” Grace’s words lingered on the air as she paused, probably searching for some viable logic to what sounded like nonsense. “If Eric is targeted for recruitment, but he says ‘no thanks guys’...then they go out and frame him for a crime he didn’t commit just so they can lock him away in case he decides to tell somebody? And all the while, they’re hoping against hope that nobody’ll believe him, if they decide to listen to him in the first place, since he’s supposedly a criminal locked up in Leavenworth?” Grace judged Marcus with doubtful, shuttered eyes. “I ask you, where is the logic in that?”
“Truth is stranger than fiction, Gracie.” Marcus let it go. Acknowledging what he was proposing had to be right up there with discovering the General’s grave was missing. He just needed to make her see the validity of his claim. “Besides, who’s going to believe Eric if he speaks up? Hell, I’m not even sitting in Leavenworth,” he pointed out, “and you don’t believe me.”
Marcus didn’t blame Grace for doubting his theory. Swallowing it was tough. Especially when nobody, not even Marcus, understood the reasoning behind its purpose.
Grace stabbed her fork into the mound of potatoes on her plate and waved her catch at him. “And you’re saying my father was a part of this?”
“At this point, I wouldn’t rule anything out.” Marcus let his words roll off his tongue in a calm, careful, and casual manner. “Especially since the General’s grave has disappeared.”
“Geez, Marcus,” Grace said as if the entire conversation was beyond her tolerance level. “You’re starting to sound as crazy as those V.A. records they sent me.”
Crazy, maybe. But Marcus wasn’t half as cracked as the lunatics who’d tampered with the General’s V.A. file and made off with his grave. That scheme took ingenuity, not to mention nerve. He wished he understood their thought processes. What good could come from the ruse?
Marcus had always been able to figure out the criminal intent of his clients. But these guys—he was so far from understanding their objective that he doubted he’d be able to follow a road map, even if they gave him one.
That’s why Eric and Grace needed more help than Marcus could offer. Luckily, Marcus had a good idea about who they could turn to—if she was still in the same place.
Then again, “they” might anticipate that Marcus would head in her direction, and if that was the case, he could be leading Eric and Grace into a trap.
Not a comforting feeling. Perhaps he should consider bringing along “the girls”.
Eric woke up in the same position he’d passed out in—flat on his back. He had to give Marcus credit, the bed in this guestroom was damned comfortable and almost succeeded in luring him to stay there. But he couldn’t do that.
The room had been brightly lit when Marcus showed him to it, but now, only darkness seeped in through the slated blinds covering the window. He’d been asleep for hours. While he needed the rest, he wasn’t sure it was a good idea. Nothing was a good idea that didn’t bring him closer to finding the General, so he could get on with his life. An impossible feat until he parted ways with Grace.
He pushed himself to the side of the bed and lingered there for a moment, allowing the fog of sleep to dissipate as he swabbed his hands over his face. Finally, Eric rose and lumbered toward the doorway, softly illuminated by a dim light in the hallway.
If he hadn’t fully awakened during the time it took to traverse the hallway, he was jerked out of his drowsy state when he entered the living room and saw Marcus sitting on the couch polishing a sawed-off shotgun.
A subtle chill rolled up his arms, and Eric tried to hide the shudder that followed by shoving his fingertips inside the pockets of his Levi’s. “Holy shit!”
“You’re awake.” Marcus barely glanced up at Eric, but it didn’t break his concentration. “That’s good. We’ll want to get going soon.” Still, there was no urgency in his tone or his actions as he continued his task of buffing the gun.
“You think those are necessary?” Eric asked with a waving gesture at Marcus and his hardware. He sat down in the chair across from his friend, and fixed his gaze on the unsettling sight.
Not that Eric was afraid of guns, or the prospect of using them. Hell, he was an expert marksman. He could nail a target from a thousand yards—if he had to. But the thought that he might have to put his skill to use, that raised the danger level a notch or two above Eric’s comfort plane.
“Maybe. Maybe not.” Marcus carefully laid the shotgun at his right hand side and turned to the .9mm handgun to his left. He checked the clip and patted the barrel. “This is Helen,” he said, offering the weapon to Eric. “She has a hair-trigger, so you’ll need to watch that.”
> Eric cradled the handgun in his palm and carefully checked the safety. It was on. Good. He tucked the gun into the waistband at his back and pulled his t-shirt down, concealing it. “That one have a name?” he asked, imbued with idle curiosity.
Marcus held her up, resting the butt of the shotgun on his knee. “This is Lorraine.” His broadening smile conveyed his pride. “They are my girls.”
“Well, I guess if you’re going to have some girls hanging around, this is a good kind.”
“They haven’t let me down yet.”
“Well, let’s hope their track record remains intact.” Eric tried to infuse a bit of laughter into his worrisome tone. But the doubt was there, lingering on the edge of his thoughts. Just how much trouble were they in? “What are the odds you think we’ll need them?”
“In light of a missing grave and military records that have obviously been tampered with—” Marcus’s apprehensive tone bothered Eric. “—I wouldn’t rule anything out.”
Okay, well if he was going to put it like that, then Marcus might be on to something. But what, exactly?
Eric preferred the scenarios running through his mind, to Marcus’s—his need for guns. But Eric wasn’t convinced that there wasn’t a logical explanation, and logic, by definition, didn’t include conspiracy theories and an elaborate scheme to ‘erase’ a man’s entire existence.
He’d humor Marcus and Grace, for now, but in the end Eric was confident they’d discover this mystery was nothing more than a case of erroneous mis-identity.
“So, you have a plan then?” Eric asked with a fair amount of curiosity. Watching Marcus’s investigative intellect in action would be interesting.
“Sort of,” Marcus said with an offhanded shrug. “Mostly, I’m just making it up as I go along.”
At least Marcus was capable of thinking on his feet in a less than ideal situation. Eric was happy to pass the leadership roll off to him, it was better than trying to figure out their next move himself.
“So what is our next move?” Eric asked. “Should we consider leaving soon?”
“Yes.” Marcus motioned toward the hallway where they’d stashed Grace inside a guestroom. “Maybe you should go ahead and wake her.”
Eric stood, checked the gun at his back and strode toward the hallway, stopping at the first room on the right. He paused in the doorway for a brief moment, drinking in the sight of Grace sleeping soundly, her slender figure defined by the dim light in Marcus’s other guestroom. He was infused by a feeling of warmth and tried to push aside the desires he thought long extinct, buried, and forgotten... damn near it, anyway.
The stone center of his heart crumpled.
Remembering why they were here, at Marcus’s, Eric was overwhelmed by an inexplicable sense of danger. He considered his options, quick to discard all but the one where he had to protect Grace.
Since time was of the essence, he mustered the strength to tuck his wounded feelings aside. If they survived this thing—and that was a big if—there’d be plenty of time later for his incessant obsession.
He shifted from foot to foot before pushing himself across the room toward her. Leaning over her, he laid a delicate hand on her shoulder. A tingling tremor ran up his arm.
“Gracie...” he whispered, “wake up.”
Eric’s voice yanked her from the throes of sleep. She’d been dreaming about him, back when they first met. She wanted to go back, back to that wonderful dream. The memories were so fresh now. She recalled so vividly the unadulterated desire that invaded his eyes every time he’d looked at her. Back when they were falling in love.
Reality clouded with her memories of the past as she glanced up and saw him standing over her. She almost forgot they’d spent the last eleven years apart.
“What?” The reason they were there sank back in and Grace sat up. “What is it?”
“We have to go now.” His tone was serene, but it failed to screen the urgency of his words.
He wasted no time, scooped her into his arms and moved her swiftly outside to the car.
Through sleep-deprived eyes, she witnessed a distorted view of Marcus scrambling behind them. Then, as the picture began to clear, he moved like a perfectly choreographed dance around Grace and Eric and opened the front passenger car door.
Eric deposited her inside the front seat with a thud and she hoped it wasn’t on purpose. Fueled by resentment, she tracked his swift, sprinting movement around the car and eyed him as he slid in behind the wheel.
The sound of the backdoor closing intermingled with the roar of a revving engine, and the smell of gasoline filled the air.
“Leave the headlights off.” Marcus’s hand rested between Grace and Eric on the seat’s back. “Until we’re well out and onto the highway.”
“Why?” Grace asked, as Eric shifted the car into drive and hit the gas.
“If anybody’s watching, they’d better have night vision if they want to see us leave.”
Grace looked over her shoulder and saw two distinct and different guns on the seat beside Marcus. One, an automatic handgun. The other a sawed-off shotgun.
They almost made her forget what he’d said, about someone following them. Almost. But the two were kind of tied together—actually, handcuffed was more like it. After everything that’d happened, beginning with receiving those weird records on her father, why wouldn’t she think or expect that someone would be tailing her?
A lot of scenarios were running through her mind, too many in fact. At this point, she wasn’t ready or willing to consider most of them, especially the ones where her father was involved in the cover-up.
Maybe Marcus, and even Eric, was willing to consider it, but Grace wasn’t buying it for a second.
By the time they reached the highway, Grace was fully awake, and more viable questions were filling her head.
“I have a question,” she said, to no one in particular. “Where are we going? And why are we in such a hurry?”
“That’s two questions,” Eric said in a jesting way.
Grace cut her eyes at him. Her reaction seemed to amuse Eric.
“We’re going to see a...” Marcus’s words trailed off, like he was trying to decide his connection with whoever, whatever, or wherever they were headed. “...A friend of mine.”
CHAPTER 11
ERIC tilted his head up and looked in the rearview mirror. “Anybody I know?” he asked, his tone dripping with curiosity.
Grace shifted sideways, as much as her seatbelt allowed, and looked at Marcus.
“Cherilyn.” Just as the name rolled off his tongue, a sad sort of faraway guise passed across Marcus’s eyes.
“Ah-ha!” Eric taunted him. “The infamous Cherilyn.”
Eric didn’t know a whole lot about Cherilyn. Just bits and pieces of maybe a half a dozen conversations he’d had with Marcus.
If it hadn’t been for Tracy Kelley, Eric might have never heard Cherilyn’s name, much less anything about her.
Tracy Kelley. Now there was blast from the past. Even before Cherry Point and Gracie. Tracy had been Marcus’s lesson on ‘never lead a girl on when you’re not serious.’ Hell, even Eric had learned a lesson with that one.
She had thought marriage—to Marcus—was in the cards. And all because they’d slept together a few times. Well, actually, it was more like a few months. But Marcus hadn’t realized so much time had passed until it was too late.
“What can I say?” he’d told Eric. She was good, and he’d enjoyed their trysts.
To Tracy, they were an item. To Marcus, she was a great piece of ass.
That’s when Marcus revealed to Eric that he was already married—to a woman he’d met several years before when they were both stationed in Florida. She too was an officer in the Marine Corps.
Eric was shocked, to say the least. He’d never, in a million years, ever thought that Marcus could have a wife tucked away somewhere. But, undoubtedly this news had been the straw that finally broke the camel’s back for Tracy.
Marcus had later told Eric that he’d hoped by telling Tracy about Cherilyn, she’d decide, since he was married, that he wasn’t all that great after all.
When Tracy figured out Marcus wasn’t hearing wedding bells, she was devastated and fell into a deeply distraught state of mind. Eric had always thought that what she really wanted to do was grab Marcus’ attention. Shake him up a bit. Make him see the error of his ways. Eric didn’t believe she’d truly intended to kill herself when she took that bottle of pills. Nevertheless, that was the end result.
After that, Marcus nailed them once and moved on. Love ‘em and leave ‘em fast. That became his motto.
“Might she be an old girlfriend?” Grace’s inquiring tone dragged Eric’s thoughts back to the present.
I guess that’s one way to put it. Eric managed to contain the comment to just a thought.
“Well, if she is,” Grace said with a measure of reservation, “I hope you left on good terms.”
Unable to contain his amusement, the way he had his thoughts, Eric threw back his head and laughed out loud.
“Very funny,” Marcus’s muddled voice traveled up to the front seat.
“How long’s it been since you saw her last?” Eric asked.
“Hell...” Marcus’s voice trailed off as he took the time to think it over, “Must be, damn near twenty years now.”
“Twenty years!” Grace exclaimed, looking over her shoulder. “What makes you think she’s even going to remember who you are?”
“Gracie...” Marcus grabbed his chest playfully. “You cut me to the core.”
A few hours into the drive, Grace had talked Eric into stopping for a bite to eat. He pulled off the highway into a parking lot of a nearly-deserted diner that looked like a throw-back from the fifties. Gravel crunched beneath the vehicle’s tires as it rolled to a stop at the front door.
He cut the engine and car doors opened as he, Grace and Marcus exited into the chill of a cool spring morning. Advertisements lined the windows in bright blues, pinks and green neon, hawking a wide variety of beer.
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