Authors: Kathi S. Barton
“Yes. Mostly in the morning however. He’s a very busy man, I think. He said that you’re to have the best. That’s what has your mom so upset. She thinks she’s the best.” Lauren told him she was. “She’d be happy to hear you say that. You should tell her when she comes in. It’ll do her heart a world of good.”
“My men.” He shook his head and told her what Pete had told her about the man that she’d come in with. She knew who it had to be, and was glad to think he’d made it too. “Can you do me a favor? Can you get in touch with Phillips? Tell him I’m up and pissy. That should bring him in.”
“I’m sure.”
The door opened and her mom and three armed service men came in. Lauren looked at each of them and knew that they were under orders from someone higher on the chain of command than she was. But it didn’t stop her from trying.
“Soldier? Do you have any idea who the fuck I am?” All three of them nodded and stood at attention. She nearly grinned but only stared at them. “When you come into a room with a higher ranking officer, what the hell are you supposed to do?”
“We were told to keep you safe.” She said nothing, and that made them both stammer out some bullshit about being under orders. “Major Burcher, we were told to keep you from talking to other civilians. And that as soon as you were…you opened your eyes, we were to stand with you until someone could come and talk to you. Sir.”
“My mother and father are not civilians, soldier, and they do not understand the protocols that come with it. How would you like it if I stood near your mommy with an M-16 rifle at the ready? Not much, I’m betting. And when you address them, it’s as if you’re talking directly to me. Get Major General Phillips here now.”
They nearly fell over each other to get out of her room. Even as the door closed behind them, Lauren knew that getting what she wanted had cost her. She slipped into the darkness even as her dad was asking her about her title.
When she woke the next time, the room was darker but not black. She saw Tony sitting in the chair using a smallish computer with earbuds in. They were alone. Instead of letting him know she was awake again, she watched him.
He’d recruited her for her first mission. He had told her that any person that was as mean as her deserved to have every shit job there was out there. And Tony had made sure she’d had some really shitty jobs too. Right up until she’d been in the right place at the wrong time.
“You going to stare at me all night, or say thank you for getting your ass out of there when I did?” Grinning, she told him to fuck off. “Such a mouth on you. Does your mom know you talk like that?”
“No. And she’d better not find out, either.” He nodded but didn’t move. She had expected...well, Lauren wasn’t sure what she’d expected. Questions for sure. Reasons? She didn’t have any of those either. Instead of asking or even telling him anything, she moved on to her parents. “My dad said you’ve been taking care of them very well. Thanks for that.”
“They’re very good people. Your father told me how he came to have you as a daughter.” She didn’t say anything. If her dad told him everything, she was sure that Tony would have even more questions, and she didn’t want to answer them right now. “Pete is a good kid. I think he was thinking about joining up until the other morning.”
“What happened?” He didn’t answer her, and she looked at him. “Did you talk him out of it or did someone else? Who do I need to thank for that?”
“Your man, McCullough. He’s a good man too. I’m sure you’re aware of that.” She was. Something flittered through her mind, but it was too painful to catch right then. “He’s here too. Doing better than you, but I suspect you knew that he would be.”
Tony was a cat. A tiger. She’d always thought his parents had a strange sense of humor naming him that, but who was she to argue about parents and what they did? She’d not come from the best of them. Had only ended up with the best.
She was sure that there were people who knew what Tony was, but Lauren didn’t care. Hawkins would have known. They could sort of sniff people out that were like them. But as far as she was concerned, people were people. Some were assholes, others worse, but for the most part they were just people. Lauren thought of her men, the ones that had been there with her when she’d been following orders.
“The rest? They’re all gone?” He nodded. Turning away from him, she thought of the things that they’d run into the moment they’d been dropped off. “We were ambushed. But I’m sure you knew that as well. They not only knew that we were coming, but when and how many of us there was going to be. They murdered those men as surely as if the ones that gave the orders had been there with us.”
“Yes, you were ambushed. And I’m trying to figure out how the hell it went down. Something wasn’t right, and we both know it.” He didn’t elaborate and she didn’t ask him how he knew. “I had to make some pretty painful calls these last few weeks. Those men didn’t deserve that. Neither did you. Their parents, they have a lot of questions that I just don’t have answers for.”
He was keeping something from her. She knew it, and she was pretty sure that he knew she did. Tony was a straight shooter, so whatever it was, it was going to hurt her pretty badly. Not just physically but also in her head. There were too many gone for it not to be that bad.
“What do you not want to tell me, Tony?” He didn’t say anything, so she turned to look at him. “Are they putting me out to pasture? Are they blaming this one on me?”
“No. They aren’t blaming anyone right now. As for you being put out to pasture…do you want to be?” Lauren wasn’t sure and said as much to him. “Good. Don’t let it overwhelm you. But I will tell you as much as I can for now. You weren’t shot—at least not only shot. We let your parents believe that because they weren’t going to be happy with just telling them that you’d been hurt badly. Shrapnel hit you everywhere. The one in your chest is what we were most concerned with, but a buddy of yours came in and helped you along with that one. Victoria said you and her are now even.”
Victoria was an old vampire. Someone she had befriended...well, befriended might have implied they weren’t friends, but they both knew that for whatever reasons, they needed each other. Both then and off and on over the years they had come to depend on each other a great deal. Victoria would have come to her, knowing that had she been hurt, Lauren would have gone to her.
“What can you tell me? And I don’t mean the bullshit stuff you’re going to tell them. I want to know what happened, not the watered down version that they’re going get from you.” She asked him what he meant by that. “You know as well as I do that someone wanted you dead. And if I know you as well as I think I do, then you’re going to keep some of the shit that went down close to your head so you can review it and work it out on your own. You no more trust them than I do at the moment. So give it to me straight.”
“As soon as we landed, we knew we were in the wrong place. There was so much personnel around that it looked like a fucking convention. We had our orders, and no matter how many times I checked, no one would tell me who gave them. Not one shit hole there had any idea who had called us in, either.” She thought about the building that they’d entered. “The first man through the door was Jacobs. He was ahead of me by two, maybe three steps. He just disappeared. I think he set off the chain of events unknowingly, and that’s when we were hit with it. They were us, Tony. Not rebels or any other faction. They were army.” Tony asked her if she knew what squad they were in. “No. I know now that we were targeted. Just not a reason for it. Do you?”
“No. All we know is that you and your men were to go in, secure the building for the next group, then stand down when they arrived. Of course when the second squad arrived, they were put in the middle of the shit storm, and six of the eleven there were killed as well.” She asked him why they were there at all. “That’s what we’re trying to figure out. You were supposed to let them know when the building was secured. Then twenty-four hours later, they would come in. Nothing went as directed.”
“And now that it went to shit, they’re scrambling to figure out what to tell the public.” He didn’t say anything, but then he didn’t have to. Lauren had been at this long enough to know a fuck job when she heard it. “How bad is it going down?”
“Your man McCullough has your back. He said that he was near you, as were the rest of the men, when the orders came in. And that they were executed with your usual flare of grace under stupidity.” She could almost imagine the man saying that. He was...colorful was about the term she’d call him. “He also said that had it not been for you, things might have been worse.”
“How the hell could it have gone any worse? I had nineteen men. Now I have no one.” He handed her a file, and she looked at the cover. The stamp TOP SECRET was in bold red letters. “I’m not authorized to see this.”
“You are now.” She didn’t ask, and wouldn’t…not now at least. “McCullough said that you pulled them back and regrouped even when the odds were stacked poorly in your favor. You had them fire on the men there. Twenty-nine men, all from a group that isn’t claiming responsibility yet. And now we both know why. They were under orders, the same as you. What do you suppose was going through their head when they realized they were firing on friendlies?”
“When we landed, our naked asses put there, I tried twice to call it in. Something was…off. I didn’t like it and most of the men didn’t either. Especially the ones that could smell it like yesterday’s shit rags.” She knew that, like other things in the army, it was a “don’t tell and we won’t ask” sort of mentality. So while there were shifters on her team, she doubted very much if anyone gave a shit so long as the job was done. “The orders finally came in to take the building at all costs. Secure and call. So we did.”
“Do you remember who you talked to? Any name given?” She frowned. The name? Lauren laid her head back and tried to think, but it hurt. “Don’t. Don’t hurt yourself trying to think for now. Just tell me what you remember.”
She didn’t like not remembering. It was there, right on the tip of her memory. Closing her eyes, she tried to let it flow through her, and that, too, hurt. The pain washed over her, not just in her head but all over her body. Lauren could hear Tony asking her if she was all right then. Well, nothing.
~~~
Colin wasn’t any happier here than he’d been back at the plant two weeks ago. But instead of hearing, “I don’t know,” he was hearing, “I’m not at liberty to share that information with you.” Not any better at all. He looked at Hawkins when he laughed.
“You hate not being in charge and knowing it all, don’t you?” Colin told him it was his job to know it all. “Yeah, well suck it up, big brother. No one is going to tell you shit. Not unless you need to know. And even then, you won’t get all of it.”
“I’m glad to see you having so much fun at my expense. Several days ago you were crying like a baby about how hurt you were, and now you’re making fun. See if I drop everything and come here for you again.” They both knew that he would. And Hawkins would do the same for him. “When do you get out of here, anyway?”
“Can’t go until they release me, you know that. And I doubt it has much to do with all this shit that happened to my pretty body.” No, he doubted they were holding him here just for a few broken bones that had healed the moment he woke up, and would do so faster when he was able to shift. Hawkins hadn’t been able to since he woke. The first day he was awake, Colin had begged him to do so, but Phillips had told him it would not play well with the others if he was all neat and pretty. “Have you been in to see my CO yet?”
“They have a guard on the door. And every time I ask, I get the same shit. Too much pain.” He’d been trying for the last few days to walk down the hall and talk to this Burcher person. Each time he’d been turned away. He wanted to thank him for getting his brother out alive, and then beat the ever loving shit out of him for letting his brother get hurt. “Do you suppose they’re keeping us from him because they think he had something to do with all this?”
Hawkins just laughed, as he did every time he tried to talk to him about his commanding officer. Colin did really want to meet him. And his parents. Someone had done a bang up job on raising this man, and he wanted to tell them that. He knew for a fact that his own parents, even with what they’d had to work with, had raised them right.
When Phillips showed up ten minutes later, Colin went into the hall. He knew that he’d be asked to leave anyway, and didn’t want the man to have to be polite in asking. He tried, but it was more like he was commanding him, and Colin hated that as well.
Before he was halfway down the hall, he saw a group of military men, dressed like they were going to war and armed that way as well, going toward the room he’d been told the CO was in. This was not going to be good, he knew it. Whatever was going down, blood was going to be shed.
Making his way in that direction, he paused at the nurse’s station. He’d been talking to them, all the nurses and doctors, every day since he’d been there, and felt confident that they’d tell him what was going on if they knew it. Instead of finding the place a beehive of activity as it usually was, the entire area was empty. Not good, his mind told him. Not good at all.
Hawkins, something is wrong here.
He asked him what was going on.
Six dressed to the teeth men are standing around the door to that CO of yours. The nurses, docs, and even the regular staff is gone. The armed guards that were out there not an hour ago are missing too. Tell that boss of yours. Shit is going down.
The door opened behind him, and he glanced back to see Phillips coming toward him. When he stopped in front of him, he turned with his back to the men that had just moved around the corner and out of his direct line of sight. He handed him a handgun.
“You know how to use this?” His voice was low but hard. When Colin took the offered gun, he nodded. “You stay here. If they make a move, shoot for the head.”
Head? He wasn’t sure he could shoot someone in the head, but nodded. If this went sour—and right now, he doubted there was anywhere else for it to go—he would do what he needed. The elevator door opened to his right, and he looked at his family just as they were ready to speak.