Valerie suffered a concussion and superficial scrapes and scratches, but healed quickly. Deion was not so lucky. Just days after, he was almost killed in Dallas. He wasn’t wounded as badly as Taylor Martin, but he lived, unlike their teammate Roger Johnson.
He took it as a good sign. After clearing it with Eric, he started calling and emailing Valerie. They carried on a long distance romance, seeing each other over the ensuing two years, but now he was ready to introduce her to his family.
She noticed his sudden seriousness. “Uh-oh. Breakfast is that bad?”
“No,” he said with a grin. “The breakfast is fine. They’ve got blueberry muffins. I know you like blueberry muffins.”
“I do like blueberry muffins, but that’s not what’s bothering you. Is it your dad?”
He thought about it for a moment. “I just want everything to go well.”
She frowned. “Is it because I’m white? Or because I’m ten years older than you? You think he won’t like an old white woman dating his son?”
“It’s not him I’m worried about. My brothers can be—”
“Jerks?” she asked. “Assholes? Racist, ageist, white-woman-with-a-few-gray-streaks-hating bastards?”
He bit his lip. That was exactly what worried him. Valerie was older, by over a decade. Her short pixie cut black hair was streaked with fine silver, and while he found it endearing, he could imagine his brother’s jokes. As for her skin color? “Let’s just say I love them like brothers, and sometimes I want to smack the everloving shit out of my brothers.”
“I can handle them,” she said confidently. “I’m more worried about how you’ll introduce me. You never read them in. They have no idea what you really do. Doesn’t that concern you?”
He shook his head. “No.”
“Why didn’t you read your father in, at least?”
“Paps had enough to worry about after Mom died. He managed to put us all through college. That was big, putting four boys through college on his salary. Once I was an officer, I just never found the right time.”
“Doesn’t he wonder why you hardly visit? Doesn’t he wonder what you do?”
He shook his head again. “I work in the import-export business. I spend a lot of time overseas.”
“Riiight. And I work for the State Department. You could have told him. At least give him an idea.”
“I couldn’t. He still had to look after my brothers. I was the lucky son, the one who got the scholarship to Harvard. They expected a successful business man, not a CIA spook.”
“If only they knew how important your work was. If only they knew what you did.” She hesitated. “Come to think of it, I don’t even know what you do.”
He turned away and grunted. “Not this again.”
“Damn it, I’m not a civie. Something’s not right. People have asked about you, and I can’t tell them anything because I don’t know anything. I’ve heard of off-book ops, but you’re so far past off-book you couldn’t see it in a mirror. You’re in the deep black stuff.”
He took her face in his hands and kissed her softly. “Nothing I can say, Val.”
She pulled back. “Can you ever read me in? Who is Eric? Is he your boss? Your teammate? What exactly do you do? Where do you work? I don’t even know where you live.”
He reached for the bottom of her gray T-shirt and pulled at the hem. “Maybe. Someday.”
She yanked her shirt back down. “I think I want to get breakfast.” She stood and pulled a pair of jeans over her thin hips and wiggled into them.
“You’re right about one thing. You’re not a civie,” he said. “Of all people, you should understand how this works.”
She sat on the edge of the bed and pulled on her socks. “Let’s just get breakfast.”
Karen sat across from Nancy in the cafeteria. It was a large room with acoustic tiles covering the ceiling and bright white tables. Technicians and soldiers ate, and by the food on their plates, ate well. The OTM spared no expense to feed them, a sharp contrast to the well-maintained but decades old tables.
“You ever wonder where they got these?” she asked.
Nancy shrugged. “Surplus. You wouldn’t believe how much of this stuff is laying around, forgotten. We put analysts on it and found massive amounts of inventory just waiting to be destroyed. It was easy to have it trucked into the Groom Lake facility while the base was being refurbished and expanded.”
Karen nodded. She knew the underground base had once housed a vast collection of stolen military aircraft, and that as the world’s military powers had shifted from stealth fighters and bombers to drone technology, the OTM had re-purposed the underground base. The Groom Lake facility was still in use and still testing aircraft, but most of the new aircraft were American designed, stolen and modified by the Russians and Chinese. The base no longer needed to maintain a standing fleet of Soviet MiGs.
The base was enormous. Nuclear-powered boring machines developed by the CIA had melted massive tunnels in and out of the base, then the military had blasted rock and hauled it away to create massive chambers now occupied by the War Room and the StrikeForce labs.
Not to mention Nancy’s favorite female bonding spot, the shooting house that Eric built to train John Frist.
“You never answered,” Nancy said. “Do you have time this afternoon? We will have the shooting house to ourselves.”
Karen tried not to sigh. “I know, but I’m waiting for a job to finish. It’s scheduled to complete in a few hours.” She hesitated. “Dewey is trying to free up more time on the mainframe cluster. If he does that, it might be sooner.”
Nancy grimaced. “Dewey.”
“You still seeing him?”
Nancy rolled her eyes. “Seeing him? What is this, the fifties? I use him.”
Might as well give it a shot. “He’s a nice guy, but he’s… different. Interpersonal relationships aren’t his thing.”
“That’s exactly why I picked him. No entanglements. No expectations. He’s adequate. Not clingy, or judgmental. I don’t have to be myself with him.”
“Aren’t you supposed to be yourself during sex?”
Nancy laughed, which made a table of soldiers — three men and two women dressed in camo fatigues — turn and stare. Nancy met their gaze and they quickly turned away.
“Myself?” Nancy said, turning back to her and fixing her with a chilly stare. “Myself isn’t likable. Myself is scary. Everyone thinks so.”
You got that right, girlfriend. “I don’t believe that’s true. I think growing up the way you did makes it hard to relate to others. It didn’t make you inhuman or a monster. Not like Frist….”
Nancy stared without blinking. “Barnwell would argue with that.”
“Then Barnwell is an ass. You can’t let others define you.”
Nancy took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “You’re a good person. Like Eric. How is he?”
“He’s stressed. It’s a hard job. I can’t imagine anyone doing better.”
Nancy finally blinked. “Barnwell agrees. He thinks highly of Eric, and he would know. He’s been my father’s right hand man since… before I was born….” Her voice trailed off. “I realize now that’s why my father treats me as he does. He’s seen… terrible things. My head knows that, but my heart still doesn’t. I’m still angry with him.”