“So why are you out here?” I asked, his tone of voice rubbing off on me and making me feel as though we needed to get through this as quickly as we could—for reasons that I didn’t even start to understand. “And who sent you?”
“I’m here because decisions were made by those higher up than me. There’s a high concentration of veterans in Michigan, did you know that? And an even higher concentration of veterans with special training. It’s hard to tell why, though it could just be luck of the draw. Could be that people born and bred in Michigan have a higher chance of finding their way into Special Ops. Could be that when they get home, they’re attracted to the rugged, outdoor lifestyle the people lead here. Those things are unimportant. What is important is that in this small area, I have direct access to over fifty different veterans with special training. Special skills of one sort or another.”
“You’re a keeper,” I said softly, leaning back in my chair as I tried to wrap my mind around it. A keeper. I’d heard of them, of course—anyone who was in Special Ops had. They were people assigned to watch after specially trained veterans in the real world. Make sure they got back into society okay. Make sure they didn’t do anything stupid or use their training in ways they weren’t supposed to.
But I’d thought it was a rumor. I’d never thought they actually existed. I’d come home from my tours in Afghanistan one of the most highly trained Special Ops commanders, with skills that ranged from designing and running secret missions to peaceful interrogation. And I’d never once dreamt that anyone had been here watching over me.
I’d never seen any sign of it.
Marlon tipped his head back and forth twice. “I’m a keeper, but I’m also a whole lot more,” he muttered. “It’s my job to make sure that the soldiers who return to this area are healthy and getting on in society, yes. But it’s also my job to bring them here. I get them directly after they come home, and many of them are wounded. That’s why I have the surgical suite downstairs. That’s why I have all the rooms. I’ve housed up to twenty soldiers at once and nursed several of them back to health before they went out into the world.”
“How long were you watching us?” Angie suddenly asked. “How long were you watching John?”
Marlon moved his gaze to her but didn’t hesitate with his answer. “Since he arrived here.”
“And that’s how you knew what our movements were on the day you saved us,” she guessed.
“More or less. John wasn’t a man who required immediate assistance to reintegrate into society. He did that well enough on his own.”
He gave me a nod, which I didn’t return. I hadn’t reintegrated as well as he—or his program—thought I had. I still woke up with nightmares every night, and questioned almost every move I made.
But I also had Angie. And she was about the softest landing a man could ask for.
“John was also… a special assignment. So when you disappeared from town, I was immediately concerned. When you didn’t return, and your track showed that you had gone toward Randall Smith’s place… the concern grew. The day I found you, I was on my way to Randall’s house myself, to determine whether he’d seen you.”
I put the coincidence and convenience of those last few statements right to the side, because the first thing he’d said had grabbed my attention.
“What do you mean I was a special assignment?” I asked roughly.
Why did I feel like that was what this was all about? Why did I feel like this was where shit was really going to hit the fan—right here where I discovered that the military was here for me again?
What the hell could they possibly want? And why would they have sent some babysitting glorified nurse to do it for them?
Marlon looked right at me, his face incredibly serious. “You’ve asked time and again who I work for, and I’ve told you that I used to be in the CIA. The other truth is, I’m still an active member. I’m a recruiter. And they have a mission for you. But before we can learn anything more than that—because believe me when I say that I don’t know any further details—we have to get back to town. And we have to do it quickly.”
I lengthened my stride to catch up with Marlon, who had taken off from the kitchen after his last insane statement and was now striding through the snow toward the barn in the distance.
“What the hell are you talking about, go back?” I snapped. “We just got here. We have the people settled, and we have them safe. There’s absolutely no reason to move them again. No reason to go back and try to fight a losing battle against a madman who wants to claim the town as his own.”
Marlon cast a glance at me from the corner of his eye. “So you’re just willing to let him have the town? Willing to let him stay there indefinitely, in your homes?”
I bit my lip. The answer to that was definitely no, but that wouldn’t help my argument right now.
“Not necessarily,” I hedged. “But that doesn’t mean we need to go back right now. The people are safe here. I want to give them time to rest.”
“You can give them time to rest. But I’m telling you that you and me, we need to go back. And it’ll be a hell of a lot easier if we take most of the men with us and just win the town back at the same time.”
I grabbed his arm and yanked him to a stop. “We don’t have the weapons for that.”
He gave me a sly grin. “Want to bet?”
He turned away from me and shot forward into the growing gloom, his eyes on the barn, and I darted after him, too confused at this point—and honestly, too overwhelmed—to be able to get my mind around what he was talking about, or what he could possibly mean.
But when he finally reached the door of the barn and I caught up to him, I had my next answer prepared.
“Why the hell do we need to get back there so badly?” It was short, and it was blunt. But I wanted a straightforward answer from him, for once.
“Because, John, my communication with my superiors depends on it. I have a communication device hidden in that town, and it’s the only way I get my news. It’s how I knew about the EMP. It’s how I knew what we were supposed to do about it. It’s how I get all my orders, and it’s how we’re going to figure out what we’re supposed to do next. We’re on a relatively tight timeline here, and though I don’t know all the reasons for that, I do know that the only way to get them is to ask.” He paused and looked at me. “I assume you want answers to all the questions currently running through your head.”
Damn right, I did. I wanted more than answers. I wanted motivations. I wanted big explanations. And I wanted to know who was behind it all.
“I do,” I said grudgingly.
He nodded. “Then we have to get to that communicator so I can ask them. The sooner we do that, the sooner we get rid of Randall and get out of this mess. The sooner we can figure out whether there’s any help coming for us.”
Well those were… good reasons. Those were very good reasons. Because I hadn’t forgotten about the danger that Randall presented. The man could show up at any moment with his gang of thugs, and we’d be defenseless.
And I also hadn’t forgotten that we were out in the middle of nowhere, with no electricity and no way of knowing when—or if—it would come back. We had no way of calling for help, no way of knowing what was happening in the larger world, or how it would affect us.
Except that we evidently did. If Marlon was telling the truth—and I’d never known him to actually lie—then we did have a way of communicating with the outside world, and calling for help.