Chapter 5

Harm all but leapt up from the couch when Diane and Mac reentered the room. He'd forced himself to sit down so that he wouldn't pace restlessly around the apartment, but he'd only succeeded in bottling up all his nervous energy and turning himself into a tightly coiled human spring.

"So," he began, with levity that was obviously and painfully false. "Did you find any differences, or are we going to have to issue name tags?"

Mac lifted an eyebrow. "Well, since none of you knows where my tattoo is…"

Sturgis cleared his throat. "Maybe we should name you Thing 1 and Thing 2, like in the Dr. Seuss books."

"I will not answer, Sam I Am," Diane promptly responded, eliciting a muted laugh from the others. Quickly, though, the room fell silent, and Diane drew a deep breath. "Okay, this isn't going to get any easier if I keep stalling, so I guess I'll just jump right into it. You all might as well get comfortable."

Mac waited uncertainly to see where Harm sat before choosing her own seat. Part of her wanted to sit down right next to him, clearly marking her territory, but she just wasn't sure how far her territory extended at the moment. He took the chair, though, leaving her little choice but to share the couch with Sturgis. Instead of taking the desk chair, Diane sat down on the floor, tucking her legs up underneath her.

"Let's start with what you already know. The night I was shot, I was going ashore to file a complaint against Commander Holbarth for refusing to address my charges of harassment. But that wasn't the only reason I left the ship. I also had a meeting set up with an agent from NSA, to discuss the position they'd recently offered me. They needed someone with my cryptology skills for a long-term mission in Southeast Asia, and they contacted me about a month before the Seahawk cruise ended."

She'd only begun this confession, but already Harm was stinging. Sensing his reaction, Diane rushed ahead. "I didn't have any intention of keeping that from you, Harm. It would have been the first topic of discussion that weekend, regardless of the sensitivity of the information. And honestly, I hadn't completely decided whether I was going to take the job. Until Holbarth stepped in and made that decision for me."

"He really did shoot you," Sturgis said, for clarification. Diane nodded, eyes cold, and her fingers touched an area just under her collarbone.

"If my sweater was a little more like Mac's, I'd show you the scar. He must have followed me to my car—I don't remember a lot of it. I didn't even know it was him until I saw the updated casefile a couple of years later." Her gaze flicked back to Harm, wanting to question him about that, but his hardened stare told her that now wasn't the time. "But just after it happened, my NSA contact came looking for me, and he called in a team of agency paramedics who kept me from bleeding to death. The agent in charge had to make a fast decision, and he decided that the opportunity to tie up some loose ends was too good to pass up. So they stabilized me, slowed my heart rate enough to fool whoever found me—"

"That would be Bud Roberts," Mac broke in. Diane's eyes widened, but she continued.

"—and switched their ambulance for a coroner's truck, and that was that. There were agents all over the place, pretending to be medical examiners or NCIS investigators, so they were always hovering around enough to keep any of the real investigators from looking too closely."

"I didn't want to look too closely," Harm said in a low voice, not looking at any of them. "As it was, five seconds after I saw you, I was already on the edge of the dock throwing up."

"They never told me you were there," Diane claimed, sympathy and remorse causing her voice to waver momentarily. "They just submitted a phony autopsy report and made me disappear. I woke up in an agency hospital two days later, and they gave me a choice. I could either go back to the life I had, where I wasn't sure of my future and where someone was apparently trying to kill me… or I could accept an assignment that would made vast strides in a critical area of our intelligence network. Since the damage to everyone I cared about had already been done, and since these people had saved my life, I agreed to take the assignment."

"Then you've been in Asia for the past few years?" Mac asked, trying to focus on the mechanics of the situation rather than the emotions.

Diane nodded again. "In Taiwan, working for a front company called Reliant Technologies. We deal in information technology and network support systems. A number of our customers are defense subcontractors who do business with the Chinese military. We got into their databases whenever it was safely possible, and as a result, we now have a much clearer picture of China's capabilities in terms of weapons development. It's an extremely well run operation. I was proud to be a part of it."

"So why did you come back?" Harm asked bluntly, looking over at her for the first time.

"We were all functionally undercover twenty-four hours a day for years at a time. You can only do that for so long before you start to push the limits of your cover." She sighed. "In my case, there was a man. Specifically, there was an American businessman who was fairly bright and wouldn't take no for an answer. I couldn't call the police on him without drawing more attention to myself. So I kept our director advised on the situation, and eventually he decided that I'd gone as far as I could without endangering the larger mission. I could have stayed with the NSA, but I wanted my life back, so I resigned."

"And you want to rejoin the Navy?" Sturgis asked.

"Well, to be honest, I don't know if I really have to 'rejoin.' I never officially separated from the service."

Harm snorted. "Your father has a folded flag in his possession. That's about as official as it gets."

Both Mac and Sturgis looked at him askance, put off by the unbridled bitterness in their friend's tone. Diane recognized it, though, and replied without commenting on it. "The Department of Defense doesn't do well with requests to change a service member's status. I realize that. I also realize that even if I succeed, I'll be coming back as an O-3, and I'll probably be serving under O-4s and even O-5s who are years younger than I am. But I still want to serve. It's the life I chose, and I still take a kind of refuge in it. I want to be back out at sea, especially now, with the world so uncertain. I can't imagine that the Navy would be so rigid that they'd refuse a qualified cryptologist just because they already played Taps at my funeral."

"Don't underestimate them," Mac said dryly. "No, I'm sure we can make some inquiries and find out if it's possible to get your status changed. But shouldn't your former superiors over at NSA be able to give you some help with this?"

"I wish. But in bringing me in the way they did, my chief even had to bend some of NSA's own rules. Officially, no one named Diane Schonke ever worked for the National Security Agency. From the moment I left the hospital six years ago, I was Alison Markham. Even letting two people deep inside the Pentagon in on my cover would have been two too many for their liking. If someone comes out and publicly admits to the DoD that a deception of this magnitude was perpetrated on the Navy, all the usual inter-agency skirmishes will escalate into a full-blown war, and that's the last thing anyone needs at a time like this. So any help I get from NSA will have to be extremely quiet. You see, that's why I need you—at least, as many of you who are willing. I need to sneak this through the tiniest backchannels possible to avoid a public confrontation."

"That's not going to be easy," Sturgis warned. "We all know a few people who can get things done, but they're not going to act without some kind of corroboration for your story. If you walk up to the Navy with evidence of nothing besides your identity, the first thing they'll probably do is make us charge you with desertion."

"Worst-case scenario," Mac added, her brow furrowing. "You were assigned to the Seahawk at the time of your... disappearance, and your battle group had just returned from supporting Operation Deliberate Force in Bosnia. If the convening authorities wanted to get really nasty, they could try for desertion in a time of war."

Diane paled. "You don't really think—"

"Only if NSA completely cuts you loose, and even then it's not likely," Sturgis assured her. "Still, we have to be prepared. We all worked on a desertion case for a Jewish Marine last fall, and these two argued that he hadn't deserted in order to avoid hazardous duty. I think that applies here."

"Well, it didn't advance our case as far as we would have liked, but going from one branch of the U.S. government to another has got to look better than ditching the Marines in favor of the Israeli army." Mac turned to her partner. "And an attempt on a defendant's life is a pretty good rationale for a duress argument, wouldn't you say?"

Harm didn't respond, and the room took on an immediate chill. The three people there knew him better than just about anyone else on the planet, and his expression made it clear to them that he wasn't simply lost in thought. He knew he'd been asked a question, and he was choosing not to answer for a reason.

Ever the peacemaker, Sturgis chose to face the mounting tension head-on in an attempt to defuse it. "Listen, Di, none of us was in your shoes when all this happened, so we're not going to try and pass judgment on anything you did. Right, buddy?" When Harm remained silent, Sturgis kicked him none too discreetly in the shin. "Rabb. Speak."

Harm continued to focus his stony gaze on a corner of the coffee table. "I was always taught that if I couldn't say something nice, I shouldn't say anything at all."

Diane had expected him to be hurt, even angry. She hadn't expected this... coldness. "You don't even care, do you?" she asked, almost in disbelief. "I realize how awful this seems, but I thought you of all people—"

He gave a short laugh. "You're not in the best position to be talking about empathy at the moment."

"You think I haven't reconsidered that decision every day for the last six years? I didn't see that I had much choice! Someone wanted me dead, remember? You saw yourself what he did to me—"

"And now you see what that did to me. Does that make us even?"

She recoiled from the ugly tone. "Have you really changed this much?" she whispered. "I don't even think I recognize you right now."

"Of course I changed! I thought I'd lost everything that day, and it did change me, all right? It changed me into a person who was capable of taking vengeance, and believe me, that was a big step. Only now it sounds like maybe I had less to lose than I thought."

"Wait a minute!" Diane jumped to her feet. "Just what did you think you had?"

"I thought I had something worth holding onto. Something I wouldn't so easily have obliterated to go play spy games."

"Are you actually trivializing the concept of serving our country because of personal spite?"

"I'm not trivializing anything. I'm well aware that 99.9 percent of American citizens would probably approve and even praise your sacrifice. But all those people don't know you, do they? All I'm saying is that you chose that service over everyone who loved you. I know I don't get to decide whether that's right or wrong, but damn it, you don't get to decide how I feel about it!"

Harm flung himself out of the chair and stalked away from the group.

"What do you want from me?" Diane demanded hotly, trembling. "Am I supposed to apologize for not being dead? Is that it? I'm screwing up your tragic hero self-portrait or something?"

"I don't want an apology!" He whirled back toward her. "What I want is to know why I almost killed a man for something that turned out to be a lie!"

Silence descended heavily on the room. As they stared at each other, anguish burning white-hot between them, Sturgis rose from his seat. "I think we should go." He reached out to tug Mac's sleeve.

Fighting back overwhelming curiosity and concern for her partner, Mac reluctantly nodded and followed him. "We'll be in touch," she murmured in Diane's direction, then laid a hand on Harm's arm. "See you tomorrow?"

"Right." He didn't move, however, until the door had closed behind his friends.

"So, that discussion about the future," he began, in a more controlled voice. "The one we were supposed to have had that weekend at Norfolk. Since you'd been considering the NSA job, I'm guessing you weren't going to suggest that we make our relationship more serious."

"Your friend Maria might have had something to say about that," Diane fired back, still smarting.

"Oh, for the love of—I didn't learn to make Thai food and watch baseball for Maria, all right? I didn't spend four hours in the back of a freezing C-141 and break all speed limits on station at San Diego to pin lieutenant's bars on Maria! The only reason I ever spent any time with her in the first place was because I couldn't be with you, and we never pretended otherwise. What the hell did Keeter tell you, anyway?"

"Nothing I didn't already know. You weren't prepared to sit down and map out a future with me or anybody else. Why should I have rejected NSA out of hand, when all they were asking for at first was a trial assignment?"

The second part of that statement was completely lost on him as he struggled to grasp the first part. "What did I say or do to make you think I didn't want to think about the future? Why do you think I was so determined to see you that weekend?"

When she only looked at him, disbelieving, a new wound was torn open on his scarred soul. All this time, he'd held a certain image in his mind, a surprisingly romantic idea that had fate not intervened that night, everything would have fallen into place for them at last. That had somehow become his truth without him even realizing it—the lens through which he looked back on that chapter of his life. Only now, as that flimsy construct came crumbling down, did he see it for what it was.

"I see," he said dully, turning away from her. "I'm sorry. I must have... misinterpreted."

Beginning to understand, Diane felt a painful lump rise in her throat. She'd hurt him all over again, simply by not knowing how deeply she'd hurt him the first time. "It's not that I didn't want a future for us," she attempted to explain. "But you wouldn't have been able to make any major decisions at that point. You'd just started at JAG a few months before, and Luke had just died, and everything felt so up in the air..."

"You thought that I wouldn't be able to make a commitment, so you weren't even going to bother trying for one?"

"Harm, we weren't kids, even then," she said softly. "We'd known each other for more than ten years, and in all that time we'd never been able to get past a certain level. I couldn't find any reason to believe that things were going to change. Could you?"

His response was low, defeated. "Back then, actually, I could. Since everything else in my life had changed over the course of those couple of years, I guess I thought we could, too."

Tears brimmed in her large brown eyes, and she resisted the urge to reach out to him. "I'm so sorry," she whispered.

"Me, too."

She tried to laugh, but it came out choked and awkward. "Really? I'm sorry for the lies, and for not giving you the chance you wanted, and for ripping your heart out and stomping on it. What are you sorry for?"

He kept his gaze focused on the floor, only glancing up at her from under his brows. "I'm sorry for not taking any of the other chances we had, and for throwing everything back in your face tonight ... but mainly, I'm sorry for being late."

"Late?"

He shrugged impassively. "If I'd come to meet the ship when you first docked, maybe none of this would have happened."

There was another silence—not as painful as the first, but not comfortable, either. "So where do we go from here?" Diane asked tentatively.

Harm shrugged again, trying to sound neutral. "We focus on the task at hand. We find a way to get you back into the Navy, and I guess we see where that takes us."

She lifted a hand to tuck a lock of hair behind her ear, unsure of her next question. "Do you think we'll be able to be friends again?"

Before she could drop her hand, he reached out and caught it in his. "You shouldn't have to ask that," he said quietly. "I'm not saying it'll be easy, but as long as we both walk this earth, I'll still be your friend."

Scrubbing a few stray tears from her eyes, she squeezed his hand and stepped back to retrieve her purse. "I guess I'll talk to you tomorrow, then."

"You know where to find me."

After she'd gone, Harm stood in the center of the room, lost. In the span of a few hours, nearly every constant in his life had been torn to shreds, and the pieces seemed to be reassembling into something unrecognizable. Was he supposed to just buck up and move on in the same direction as before? How could he continue in the present when someone had altered the past?

Feeling more alone than ever, he reached for the phone and hit the memory button.

"Mackenzie."

Her calm, confident voice, so different from Diane's ... "Are you busy right now?" he asked, forgetting to identify himself.

Of course, he didn't have to. "I'll be there in a minute."

"Huh? How are you—"

"Do you need a friend right about now?"

He sighed. "I need you right about now."

Although he couldn't have picked up on it over the phone, that comment both elated and worried her. "Then don't question my methods."

"Okay." He slumped down onto the couch, too rocked by the evening's events to consider doubting her. "I'm so damn confused, Mac."

"You're entitled to be. They don't make self-help books for this one."

"But I ought to be able to handle it better. I ought to be happy, for God's sake. I thought she was gone, and now I have a chance to know her again. The thing is... what happened to her feels like such a big part of who I am, and I don't know how to undo that. I'm not even sure if I want to."

"It'll be all right. Unlock your door."

He frowned even as he moved to comply. "Mac, a Tomcat couldn't have gotten you here this fast."

"Just open the door, would you?"

He did, and a few seconds later, Mac walked through it, dropping her cell phone on his desk. She took one look at him, at the utter helplessness that marred his features, and immediately wrapped her arms around his neck.

"I was out front in my car," she confessed as he returned the embrace, willingly receiving the strength she offered. "Just in case."

"You're incredible," he mumbled into her shoulder.

She stayed for an hour, and in that time only a few words passed between them. She didn't need to be told, and he didn't want to speak. Yet that nearly silent visit would be his foundation for the days and weeks to come.