She turned the photo slowly in her hands.

No, facing her, the letters running all the right way, it still said the same thing. Her cheeks felt very hot, and a moment later she paused to consider the absurdity of being embarrassed in being caught when the note said she was in danger. But… but he knew, knew she was going to take the photo, knew how she felt; what else did he know? Why was he always two steps ahead of her?

She rushed back to the bed. Her fingers curled in toward the palm, knuckles brushed against her bottom lip: she bit them together, gritted teeth through flesh and darted her hand forward to peel back the next piece of film. Under the first photo, nothing, the second, the third. Was it only an anomaly? Fourth, fifth, sixth, she pressed them down to the glue again, turned another page, seventh, eighth, there! She read it through, read it again. No, that didn't make any sense to her. The tenth photo, more of the same. Garbled letters and numbers. What did it all mean?

She spends the better part of two hours pulling certain photos from the albums. The back of each one has been written upon. She cannot understand any of it. She can find no discernible pattern yet but placed one beside the next, one atop the next on her floor, they cover an area nearly the size of a queen bed.

She spends the better part of the night filling a 1 inch notebook with sheaves of paper lined with neat rows of letters, copied diligently. She falls into bed at 5 am, is 25 minutes late for her 8 am Tuesday appointment (certainly not the Captain), and does not have a chance to find the man she wants until shortly after noon. It is not difficult to find him, she need only think logically about the time. He is near the cafeteria.

"Lieutenant," he says, long before she rounds his shoulder into his line of sight. She stops.

"How did you know it was me?"

"Shoes click. Doc Watson, she wears square heels, they tap. Clogs just kind of shuffle, sometimes squeak. Patient's slippers don't make much sound at all. Men's dress shoes got their own tap, boots have their own weight. Thin high heels, they click… and there's only one pair of shoes in this hospital sound like that."

"You're very observant," she says quietly.

"Old habits die hard," he says, with a little laugh.

"I might be able to put them to good use."

That stops him watching through the glass in the cafeteria doors.

"What?"

"Just how good at puzzles are you, Wilhelm?"

OOO

Twenty five minutes later and she is waiting nervously at the steps in the rear courtyard of the hospital. The clouds are low and thick today; the summer air is stirred by a faint breeze near to the ground, hinting at the chill and the storm to come. The air is warm now, and clammy, like an old fever. She has a yellow envelope clutched in her hand, the notebook inside of that, and she thinks it reminiscent of the tint in the clouds. A perfect arc of lightning flashes in the distance. The thunder takes 27 seconds. She is waiting for the man she will deliver the envelope to, and does not even want to ponder what would happen if it should fall into the wrong hands. The fact is she has no idea what is contained within the pages and pages of code. Whether it is important, or trivial, or maybe it's just one big elaborate joke, she doesn't know, but what she does know is the meaning of the message the Captain had written to her in blue ballpoint pen, a pen she thought she had misplaced quite casually. She hadn't thought to worry about it then, hadn't known what she knew now: that in his hands anything became a weapon. How many times had he had the opportunity to kill her and had not? Did that mean what she wanted it to? Was he really coming to care for her?

But no, what the message meant? That meant she was in danger the instant she understood what she was carrying. She had been safe until that moment, but he knew the moment would come eventually. They might still serve a purpose… the words echo through her mind. She had thought, at the time, his purpose had been to satisfy her curiosity, to allow her to gain a new level of understanding in him, but no… the photos held something, some secret. He could have destroyed the albums, kept the secret forever, but he had left it in her hands, left it in her hands to figure it out. He had not said as much, but perhaps he could not. She would not put it past the Army to be listening in. Majors sometimes had secrets, Colonels certainly, General's definitely, but Captain's, Lieutenant's? No, they weren't so privileged as to possess secrets. But that would mean they had already overheard everything that had occurred, more than enough for a court marshal… but maybe they weren't waiting for that.

And maybe there had been further motivation in their choice of her for his case? Did they hope that he might build some sort of trust for her, that just such an intimacy might develop between them, that he would confide in her? Had they both played right into their hands? Or had they played into his? Had she?

And who exactly were they? Someone much higher up the chain of command than the both of them that was for sure.

Her mind is whirling: she imagines being on a merry-go-round spun much too quickly, and the envelope feels cool against her heated cheek. Calm down. Think, Harley, think.

There were at least two people who knew the Captain had given her that box. Would either have any reason to remember it? To report it? Did either have any inkling as to what the box contained? Obviously the Sergeant in Iraq knew what had been packed inside, but if they had discovered what lay behind the photos, they would never have sent it to him in the first place. Codes were codes, someone could always crack them, there were guys who did nothing but. Just because she had no idea what she was looking at did not mean they would have the same problem.

And she had a very big problem on her hands. If the note was true, if she were in trouble now, it was with the sort of people you did not want to be in trouble with, the sort of people you didn't want to have as enemies; the sort you did not know were even there until you were treated to the sound of your own neck breaking and then nothing at all, people like the Captain himself. He was perpetually wary, distrustful, even a little paranoid she would venture, but that had been bred into him through years of abuse in his early life, she knew: he was not easily surprised, would not willingly allow himself to be cornered. To have been ambushed, to have been bested physically by someone, that was not the sort of person she wanted to be faced with.

Lightning stabs to the left, the birds in the park are quiet, and the thunder takes 23 seconds. Harley thinks it fitting when she hears the first tap of his own dress shoes the second after the crack of the thunder splits the air. The lake is a sheet of glass: she watches it splinter as the distant lightning dances in its reflection. She looks back to him as he stops beside her.

"Why did you need to talk to me all the way out here?"

"Because I didn't want anyone overhearing. I need to ask another favor of you, just like the one I asked before. Have it your way: I want you to keep your mouth shut, but I need your help." She offers him the envelope. He accepts and glances inside of it discreetly, before tucking it under his arm casually. He could have been couriering a letter for anyone. Doctors weren't afraid to make nuisances of themselves: most had egos inflated enough to believe that all of their letters were important letters. She nods, satisfied.

"What am I looking at?"

"I don't know."

He smirks. "Good answer."

"But it's an honest answer. That's what I need you to figure out. Maybe you can tell me."

"You said something about puzzles…"

"It's in code. Whatever it is."

"Why not just take this to your guys, you got plenty of them crypto-types stuffed back in their little cubicles waiting for something to do, right?" The corner of his mouth twitches.

"You already know the answer to that," she says, simply.

"You can't. So you're telling me that you want me to once again knowingly conceal information from the Lieutenant-Colonel, but not only that, you want me to work and break a code in order to read a document that neither of us should probably even have in our possession?"

It seems a bleak prospect. She wrinkles her nose slightly and nods.

"That's what I'm telling you."

"Well," he says after a moment and a musing look, "nothing like courting unemployment and a prison sentence in the same week."

"You should be alright," Harley says, seriously, "I hear they love cops in prison…"

"Sure you didn't miss the sarcasm in that statement?"

"No, no sarcasm. You just have to change your interpretation of the word love." She arches her eyebrows.

"Cute."

"I try. Are you going to help me or not?"

"To the point. Yeah, I will. You're gonna owe me."

"Is that a threat? You didn't sell me out the first time.."

"No threat."

"So what do I owe you?"

"Haven't decided yet. You'll know when I do."

OOO

He was going to help her. As much as that was what she wanted, she wasn't entirely certain how to feel about it. He was a little too friendly. Nothing inappropriate, perfectly above bar, but he had a love of subtext, she was aware of that, and she was reading an awful lot into his.

It was five minutes after one… she was going to be slightly late to her next appointment. She was really going to have to start tightening up. No need to draw the Colonel's attention her way, especially not now.

If she remembered correctly… she did. He was waiting for her in her office. She stared at him for a very long moment, unable to believe what she was seeing. The nerve.

"Corporal Court. I see you've made yourself comfortable. Where did you get that?"

He was stretched out in her chair, feet propped up on her desk, a small paring knife carving into an apple, one probably as stolen as the other. The first spatters of rain hit the glass behind his head.

"If you look real close, Doctor, I think you'll find that young Corporal Court was KIA'd about a year ago in Haditha. You'll address me as Colonel, and you won't know my name, because you won't need to. You might think I look a little young, but I think you'll also find I'm very good at what I do. You're a little rude, Dr. Quinzel, but I'm going to ask nicely. Are you going to cooperate, or am I going to have to make you an example for him?"

She kept her face still. Her body was stiller.

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"You don't really want to play that game, do you?"

"What do you want from me?"

"You're going to answer some questions for me. In absence of that, you're going to carry on as though nothing is different and you're going to get the answers from him, and then you're going to pass them onto me."

"And if I don't?"

"Let's just say… you'll gain a new, intimate understanding of his case. Do I make myself clear?"

She grimaced.

"Crystal."