About Face

by Christian, Claudia Hall

  “So?”

  “Enough,” Raz said. “I’m not discussing this with you. Get dressed. Now.”

  Unable to ignore his direct order, Alex did what she was told. She put back on her filthy clothing. Raz wrapped a towel around her arm, and they left the room. There was no guard on their door. They walked out into the night.

  The moment they stepped outside, they were hit by the icy wind and snow.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  Raz put his arm around Alex, and they leaned against each other to keep warm. Walking down the sidewalk, they wove between broken-hearted and addicted souls too poor to make it into the motels around them. A old Volkswagen sedan pulled up next to them.

  “Hey!” a young woman yelled from the driver’s seat.

  Raz looked over his shoulder, and they kept walking. The car crept along with them.

  “Hey! Alex!” the young woman said.

  They stopped and turned to look at the car. The girl rolled down the passenger window.

  “It’s me, Beth Anderson!” the young woman yelled. “You know, Tommy’s oldest?”

  Alex and Raz gawked at the girl. She stopped the car.

  “Get in!” Beth said.

  She pushed her stuff off the passenger seat and onto the floor. Raz helped Alex into the passenger seat and got into the back seat.

  “Let’s get out of here,” Beth said. As if she were nervous, Beth started talking fast. “I couldn’t believe it when I saw you. You just came from that crappy hotel, right?”

  “What are you doing here?” Alex asked.

  “I go to school in Greeley,” Beth said. “I come home on the weekends. I mean, home to Paige’s house. My mom moved back to Minnesota after dad died. Anyway, Paige was always more of my mom than my real mom. She does my laundry when I come home, cooks lots of food so I can take it with me. I get to hang out with the kids, you know. I usually go out with my friends on Friday nights and then head home early Saturday. I try to get there before the kids wake up.”

  Beth nodded. Alex grinned at the girl.

  “Am I talking too much?” Beth asked.

  Raz spoke up before Alex could say anything.

  “You sound like your dad,” Raz said.

  “My Dad?” Beth asked. “He would never shut up. He said the only person who ever asked him if he ever shut up, I mean besides me, was you. Is that true?”

  “It boggled my mind that your father could talk for hours and hours at a time,” Alex said. She shivered from the cold. “The crazy thing was that he was never boring. He was always thinking about something or reading something or saw a great movie or . . . Unbelievable.”

  “I know,” Beth said. “Wasn’t that weird?”

  “Brilliant,” Raz said. “Your father was brilliant.”

  “Here, let me turn up the heater,” Beth said. “This is dad’s old car, so everything doesn’t work great.”

  The vents wheezed a breeze of hot air.

  “Our house is close,” Beth said. “Why don’t I take you there? Paige will make you something awesome. She’ll probably call the other girls, and they’ll fuss over you.”

  “Alex needs a doctor,” Raz said.

  “You do?” Beth asked. “How ’bout a nurse?”

  “Paige is a nurse now,” Alex said with a nod.

  “She’ll be really mad at me if I don’t bring you home,” Beth smiled. She glanced at Raz and then at Alex. Without waiting for a reply, she added, “Then it’s settled.”

  Raz leaned forward so that his hand wrapped around Alex’s shoulder.

  “So you guys . . .” Beth asked. She wiggled her eyebrows. “Were you there to, you know?”

  Alex looked at the girl, and Raz laughed.

  “Yes, after traveling together to incredibly beautiful and romantic places all over the world and staying in five-star resorts, for almost a decade, we decided to wait until we were in a by-the-hour motel on Colfax,” Raz said with a laugh.

  “You never know when that urge will hit,” Beth said with a laugh.

  “No,” Alex said finally. “Someone tried to kill me tonight. The FBI took us to this hotel.”

  “More like kept us captive,” Raz said.

  “We just escaped,” Alex said. “I have this injury and . . . Honestly, I don’t think we know what’s going on.”

  “There wasn’t even a guard at the door,” Raz said.

  “That sounds bad,” Beth said with a laugh.

  “You have rescued us,” Alex said. “Do you have a cell phone?”

  “In my coat,” Beth said. “Next to your feet.”

  Alex pulled up the coat.

  “In the pocket,” Beth said.

  Alex found the cell phone. She gave it to Raz. Raz leaned away into the seat to call Homeland Security command. A few minutes later, he leaned forward.

  “They didn’t know what happened to us,” Raz said.

  “Seriously?” Alex asked.

  “No,” Raz said. “There’s no record of Steve going to any hospital and no record of your friend Scotty.”

  Beth gasped. Having grown up in the military, Beth didn’t need to be told that something awful was going on.

  “They’re launching a search for Steve,” Raz said.

  “He has a tracker,” Alex said.

  “That’s what they said,” Raz said. The phone rang. “Just a second.”

  “Do you have a tracker?” Beth asked.

  “I don’t,” Alex said. “Raz doesn’t, either.”

  “Did Dad?” Beth asked.

  “No,” Alex said. “It’s the kind of work we do. You probably remember, but Sensei Steve is blind. He has it in case he gets lost.”

  “Does he get lost?” Beth asked.

  “No,” Alex said.

  Alex turned around when Raz hung up the phone. Raz leaned forward.

  “Steve gave them the slip,” Raz said. “Jack and Neev saw the commotion and came to look. Steve was able to get away with them.”

  “And Scotty?” Alex asked.

  “Disappeared,” Raz said. “I’ll tell you this. I called Denver Police.”

  “I used the button in the laundry,” Alex said.

  “Denver Police received two calls from our residence but logged them as misdials,” Raz said. “They have no record of arresting Scotty.”

  “Wow.” Alex leaned back into her seat. “What about the FBI?”

  “No record of ever being contacted,” Raz said.

  Beth looked at Alex and then at Raz.

  “Well,” the young woman said. “Dad always said you can’t fix what’s already happened.”

  “Time to figure out where you are and what you have,” Alex and Raz finished Tommy’s usual comment with Beth.

  Alex’s eyes flicked to the girl. In this light, she looked so much like her father that Alex had to smile.

  “Thanks for the reminder,” Alex said. “Let’s see. We have the great fortune to be with you in this car. That’s where we are.”

  “We’ve managed to slip away without them knowing it,” Raz said.

  “Another distraction,” Alex said. “This time leaving them inside our home.”

  “Oh, no,” Raz said with a laugh. “Jack and Cian got them out of there.”

  “What?” Alex turned around in her seat to look at him.

  “Jack didn’t like the look of things,” Raz said. “He woke up Cian. They called the number we gave them and went over. The bad guys were tied up when DHS got there. According to Jack — that’s who just called — our house is a mess, but quiet. They are greatly relieved that we’re all right.”

  “Jack asked if we were having electrical problems,” Raz said with a laugh. “Turns out a few of them were shocked.”

  Alex smiled at Jesse’s handiwork.

  “We are lucky in our friends,” Alex said. She smiled at Beth.

  “Do you still want to go to Paige’s?” Beth asked. “She usually make waffles when I get there, and you need to get your wound stitched.”
<
br />   “That sounds great to me,” Alex said. “Raz?”

  “Perfect,” Raz said.

  Smiling, the girl turned left off of the busy street and into the neighborhood. She went a few streets before pulling into a driveway. Beth grabbed her bags, and they followed her into the house.

  “Hi!” Beth said as she passed through the door. “You’ll never believe who I . . .”

  Alex lost track of Beth’s voice when she walked into Tommy’s home. As if she were in a movie, she saw Tommy standing by the fireplace playing charades. A second later, he walked out of the kitchen carrying a pitcher of margaritas and a bowl full of guacamole. Alex felt Raz’s hand at her elbow. She glanced at him and saw that he was as overcome as she was. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. The place smelled like hope, possibility, and love.

  “Alex?” Paige ran out of the kitchen to hug Alex.

  Standing in the home of her beloved friend, holding on to his wife, Alex was overcome with a sense of grace. Tommy wasn’t here, and she was.

  It was up to her determine what happened next.

  “We live in one direction — from the present to the future,” Alex whispered something Tommy always said.

  “Yes, we do,” Paige said. “Now get out of those dirty clothes, and let me look at that arm. Raz?”

  Paige gave him a fierce hug.

  “John called the Fey Wives a half-hour ago,” Paige said. “No one knows where you are. We’ve already talked to Jack, Cian, and Neev. The girls have called the hospitals, and . . .”

  “I’m here now,” Alex said.

  Paige gave her a scanning look before nodding. She tugged on Alex’s long-sleeved T-shirt.

  “Let me take a look,” Paige said.

  F

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  Twenty-four hours later

  Sunday early-morning

  November 13 — 1:21 a.m.

  Denver, Colorado

  After a few fabulous hours with Paige and Tommy’s three children, Raz and Alex were picked up by agents from the Denver field office of Homeland Security. They spent the entire next day either filling out paperwork or in debriefings. They stumbled home only to find that the rooming house was considered a crime scene, and yet another set of detectives were waiting to interview them. They finally escaped to Raz’s carriage house around eight o’clock.

  Raz stumbled upstairs to bed while Alex camped out on the couch to talk to her family. She finished around nine. John promised to call her in the morning before the kids woke up. She lay on the couch for a while before getting up to wander around.

  She took a shower in the downstairs bathroom and then poured a glass of wine. Setting her wine somewhere, Alex looked out the window to their backyard. From where she stood, she could see the playground in Jack and Neev’s yard, the farm that was the rooming-house yard, and the orchard in Samantha and Colin’s backyard. This time of year, the ground in their backyard was turned over in expectation of spring. The bees were hibernating and the chickens were in their warm coop. The winter stillness of the yards could never compete with the spectacular beauty of the Pacific Ocean, but it was her comfortable home turf.

  Raz’s line rang, and Alex went to answer it. Samantha was on the other end. Alex took the wireless phone up the open stairwell to where Raz had collapsed on the bed. She shook him awake and prepared to head downstairs. He patted the side of the bed, and she sat down. She unconvincingly pretended not to listen to Raz and her sister’s conversation. He hung up after a few minutes.

  “You okay?” Raz asked.

  “Restless,” Alex said.

  Raz’s grey eyes opened and closed in an attempt to stay awake.

  “Back to sleep with you,” Alex said. She leaned over and kissed his cheek. “I’m sure tomorrow will be another annoying day.”

  “No doubt,” Raz said.

  Alex stayed long enough for him to fall asleep. After years of sleeping together, she knew when he was asleep enough for her to not disturb him. Remembering her wine, she slipped downstairs to look for it. By the time she got downstairs, she’d completely forgotten about the wine. She wandered around for a while before going to look at the garden again.

  This time, she noticed a light was on at Jack and Neev’s house. Jack was usually awake this time of night, dealing with what he called his “goblins” — a mix of PTSD and chronic pain from HM Prison Maze-inflicted injuries. She watched him cross their backyard and go into the rooming house. After a few minutes, he came out and went to check Samantha’s house. Alex pulled on the sweater and thin jacket Paige had lent her and put on her boots. She was standing on the path through the yard when Jack came back from checking Erin and Matthew’s house.

  “Alex?” Jack asked.

  “Jackie,” Alex said.

  “What are you doing out here?” Jack asked. “You’re like to catch your death!”

  “I wondered if you’d take me to The Factory,” Alex said. “I still don’t have my wallet and . . .”

  Seeing his searching look, Alex stopped talking.

  “The goblins got your mind?” Jack asked.

  Alex gave a slight nod.

  “Well, ’tis that time of the night,” Jack said. “You want to go to The Factory?”

  Alex nodded. Jack took out his keys, and they walked to the family’s new truck. He opened the door, and Alex got in. He went around to get into the driver’s seat. Before starting the car, Jack reached behind him and pulled out a thick parka with fake fur around the outer edge of the hood.

  “Put it on,” he said as he threw it at Alex.

  He waited until she’d complied before starting the car. Neither one dared to give voice to their thoughts. Instead, Jack drove, and Alex watched the road. Jack turned into the warehouse district and went up the street to The Factory. He got out and unlocked the gate. Alex scooted over to drive the truck through the gate. He closed the gate and locked it before getting back into the driver’s seat.

  “They’ve taken the flooring out because the connection to the walls was rotted,” Jack said. “Something about making sure the structure was stable first. Some kind of regulation for government buildings. The roof’s off, but just for the next day or so, until the walls are inspected.”

  Alex nodded and started to leave the car. Jack grabbed her arm. Alex looked at him. He gave her a heavy LED flashlight and a key.

  “You can see the lighting on the outside is on,” Jack said. “Inside, it’s pretty dark. You’ve got a foot or so step down. They haven’t started digging out the basement, so you’re walking on dirt. The worksite is clean and clear. Just be careful.”

  Alex nodded and moved to get out of the truck.

  “I’ll stay right here,” Jack said. “Just know that the contractor comes personally to open the site at four-thirty. The full crew is working at five. Inspector is coming today at seven.”

  Alex glanced at him, nodded, and got out of the truck. She walked down the wide, old brick pathway to the original doors. She used the key and swung open the tall, wide doors. Using care, she jumped down to the dirt.

  She was standing in an enormous, three story-high, red-brick box that was open to the stars. The just waning moon peeked over the west wall. The sky showed a scattering of stars against a deep-bluish black night. She started walking the edge of the building.

  The Factory had been Alex’s idea. She wanted to create a beautiful environment that the Fey Team could never be forcibly removed from. She’d pitched it to the Admiral about a month before he was given the nod to move to the Joint Chiefs of Staff. As far as she knew, no brass other than the Admiral knew about this building.

  She was pretty sure that, if Admiral Ingram knew about this place, he would have already taken it from her. It gave her hope that maybe, just maybe, her friend and mentor hadn’t been mocking her this whole time.

  “WHY?” Alex screamed at the top of her lungs.

  The sound hit the brick and echoed until it bounced out to the stars above.
r />   She’d had so much hope when they’d planned this building. Everyone on the Fey team had participated. They’d planned and argued until they finally agreed on what they needed to do. After they agreed, their ideas had been passed to the Army Corps of Engineers. A month later, they had a plan for the building that made it strong, safe, and very beautiful. The lead engineer told her that he’d never enjoyed a project more. Like remembering another life, Alex remembered setting off to Washington find the funding.

  With Raz at her side, she’d laughed her way through dinners and conversations. She’d agreed to personally put up a third of the money. She would borrow the second third to be paid off by rent to other agencies or possibly other people who needed secure offices. The last third came from the Pentagon building fund.

  She’d never doubted that they would hand her the check. They’d even given her the check over lunch. She’d joked about having them out to ski. They’d smiled at her and nodded. They’d acted like she was a part of their team.

  “How could you be so stupid?” Alex screamed with rage herself. “You’ll never be more than that stupid girl! Stupid! Stupid! Stupid! They’ll take everything away from you. And why not? You’re just a stupid pathetic girl!”

  Jesse appeared in front of her.

  “I’m furious,” Alex said. “I’m just so . . . And you were right all along. Who the fuck do I think that I am that I can be a Green Beret and lead a team and do any fucking thing?”

  “When did I say that?” Jesse asked.

  “When we were in Bosnia, and I kept applying to SF school,” Alex said. “And look, you and Cathy Sue both knew I couldn’t do it. Why did I ever fucking try?”

  “Alex, that was a long time ago,” Jesse started.

  “Except it’s worse. I did do it, and they’re taking it all away from me.”

  “You can’t . . .” Jesse tried again.

  “I can’t what?” Alex asked. “I can’t finally fucking see the truth that every dream I have would be achievable if I had a penis? But because I don’t have a penis, I’m destined to give everything that I have and have it taken away from me.”