CHAPTER 19
Here They Lay

"Excuse me?"

"You heard me, Sergeant," the Captain snapped. "Active deployments are classified information and yet you—"

Sergeant Anders' face hardened. "I'm not asking you to break confidentiality, Captain, just for you to—"

Grey sighed and pushed her hands deeper into her pockets, the December cold seeping in through her overcoat. She'd been standing outside the National Guard Recruitment Office for over ten minutes now, watching Sergeant Anders spectacularly fail at ascertaining Lydia Walsh's whereabouts.

She and the Sergeant had thought it best if he made the initial approach, use the guise of a fellow serviceman checking in on an old friend between tours. Staff were more likely to open up to a soldier than a judge advocate, or so they'd assumed. Clearly this Captain had an axe to grind over something, and the Sergeant had the misfortune of fumbling straight into whatever it was.

Grey was half tempted to walk over and rescue him, but she wasn't too keen on having a Captain aware that JAG Corps was sniffing around the National Guard. She also didn't want word of her activities getting back to Cantrell, however unlikely that was.

After the Captain pulled a, "Look, you may think you have authority here but let me tell you" out of his arsenal, Grey decided Plan A was a bust. Time for her to improv a Plan B.

She pushed off the Sergeant's Corvega and crossed the parking lot, careful to stay out of the Captain's line of sight. She ducked behind a parked IVF and looped around the back of the barracks. The hum of traffic abruptly faded, quickly replaced by boot slaps, grunts, and whistles. She followed the sounds, rounding an empty security station and climbing a short concrete staircase to the training yard above. Roughly a half-dozen recruits worked their way through an obstacle course of razor wire, metal tubes, and climbing frames. She could see the patches of sweat seeping through their clothes, laboured breaths condensing in the cold. The drill sergeant continued to up the pace, showing indifference even as one man's cough began to mimic that of a sick dog.

She spied a woman on the sidelines in grey Army sweats, tearing off muddied kneepads and massaging her muscles. The woman made the slightest of eye rolls as the drill sergeant reminded them they'd be thanking him the next time they had to hump ninety pounds of equipment down the Alaskan coastline with red coats riding their asses so hard they'd have saddle burn.

"He's a bit intense," Grey commented as she approached.

The woman looked up passively then did a double take before snapping to attention and giving a solute. "Ma'am!"

Grey nodded and motioned for her to sit. The woman did so stiffly, nearly tripping in her pads. Her cheeks burned red as she continued to steal nervous glances at the golden JAG Corps insignia pinned to Grey's collar.

Army training liked to impart the notion that any infraction would get your ass instantly court martialed and your career ended. It was a fiction, of course. Most infractions were either ignored or met with a stern brow and forceful, "Don't do it again". But that wasn't the story the recruits were told. No, the goal was deterrence and fear, and facts often detracted from that outcome, so why include them? The unfortunate upshot of this was that judge advocates were often treated, at best, with blatant suspicion and apprehension. Grey counted herself lucky the woman was only giving her anxious looks. Of the reactions she'd had when approaching a soldier in her dress blues, that was pretty damn tame.

"May I ask your name, soldier?"

"McLeod, ma'am. Private Teri McLeod."

McLeod's jaw was so tight, Grey was afraid her teeth might shatter.

"Really, Private," Grey said with a smile. "I'm not here in any official capacity. A friend of mine had some business to attend to inside and I decided to stretch my legs. Plus his car smells like wet dog." She made a face to sell the lie. Well, partial lie. There was the faintest whiff of dog in Sergeant Anders' car.

McLeod's expression eased slightly, reason urging her toward caution but intuition telling her a judge advocate wouldn't be this friendly if they were about to fuck up her afternoon. Grey flashed another smile, giving intuition a nudge in the desired direction.

The drill sergeant upped the pace again, one of the recruits now coughing so loudly Grey was all but certain the next thing to leave his mouth would be bits of lung. McLeod knit her brow, nose crinkling.

"He always this dogmatic?" Grey asked.

"Worse, actually. If you can believe it."

"And here I thought I had it bad when my training CO had us up and running laps before the sun rose."

"Oh, he does that, too." McLeod peeled off another muddy pad.

Grey took a seat beside her, crossing her legs to stave off the cold.

They sat in silence for a bit, Grey pretending to watch the recruits, McLeod working her fingers into her calf. Grey made a few absent comments, nothing too eager, just enough smalltalk to convince McLeod she was indeed harmless. Then there was the friendly chitchat, musings on the weather and its potential impact on deployment schedules. Scheduling always got messy closer to the holidays, people vying for leave and so few getting it. Mix that with a random blizzard and it often spelled discontent. Grey had always preferred to work through the holidays, but she was cognizant that the average American saw that as a travesty. McLeod didn't seem too fussed about the schedule, however. And whilst Grey would have liked to think she'd found a like-minded individual, she knew another outcome was much more likely.

"You're recently back from tour?"

McLeod shifted awkwardly. "That obvious, huh?"

Grey offered a half smile. "I get it. Sometime, after what we've seen, real life doesn't quite feel real anymore."

It was a bullshit line, of course. Grey had never been stationed outside of the Commonwealth, much less outside the country, but she'd heard enough soldiers say it to know it held some weight.

McLeod sighed. "It's the stillness, honestly. My father, he just sits there, reading his newspaper, coffee growing cold. So damn still. Like everything's okay and—" She shook her head. "At least there's life here at the barracks. Motion. Structure."

"Familiarity."

She nodded. "Yeah, exactly."

"Lydia said the same thing to me once, after her first deployment." Grey uttered the lie so casually she nearly believed it herself.

She leaned back on the bench, choosing her next words carefully.

"You may know her, actually. Private Lydia Walsh?"

McLeod paled, fumbling one of her pads.

Grey took that as a yes. A beautiful, wonderful yes.

She ignored the grin pulling at her mouth. Finally, it was time to get to work.

—

Sergeant Anders leaned against the back of his Corvega, teeth cradling a fresh cigarette. Waiting. He was always waiting where Lieutenant Grey was concerned. He couldn't help but wonder if she preferred it that way, keeping him on edge, hanging on her every word.

His hands absently played with his lighter. Some Chinese knock-off, bastardized English carved into the tarnished metal. He'd pulled it from a combatant's hand after he'd sunk a combat knife into his femoral artery, thinking the man was about to pull a grenade out of his coat. But no, it was a fucking lighter. Anders shook his head.

A hand snatched the cigarette from his mouth. He turned abruptly as Grey leaned towards him, black hair windswept and his cigarette perched between her pale lips. He lit the tip.

She stepped back and inhaled deeply, her expression distant and unreadable. She blew a line of smoke over his shoulder before handing it back.

"She's dead."

That was it. No explanation. No concern. Just two words, quick and dry. It might as well have been her coffee order.

The filter paper flirted with his lips, brain still processing.

"How did you—"

"Her unit was decimated by a stealth operative when they camped overnight. They sent her remains home seven weeks ago. Funeral was held on the thirtieth of October."

Anders stood silent, cigarette continuing to burn. Why hadn't he known? Why didn't Walsh tell him, invite him to the wake? He'd thought they were closer than that. They had been closer than that. Him, Walsh, and Lydia. How she'd always watch and smile as the boys carried on, Specialist Blake and her sharing a beer and jeering as Walsh and James roughhoused. So why hadn't he—

"Don't."

He furrowed his brow at the Lieutenant. "Excuse me?"

"Don't," Grey repeated, voice stern. "Whatever mental gymnastics you want to put yourself through right now to make her death somehow your fault? It discredits you and it discredits her. So you file it and you move on. Process it later for all I care, but don't do it on my time."

Heat crawled up his neck. He wanted to argue with her, wanted to turn and shout and tell her this ice-queen routine wasn't cutting it for him anymore. But…

He inhaled, the nicotine like tendrils soothing his nerves.

"You're right."

She looked surprised by that, like she hadn't quite expected him to agree with her. Her expression softened and she moved alongside him, leg brushing his as she leaned against the car. He passed her the cigarette and she took another drag before speaking.

"I'm not unsympathetic, it's just…" She exhaled, as if trying to find the words. "I don't presume to understand the bonds you form with your fellow servicemen. But I do understand loyalties, and I know what it's like to feel like you've failed everyone around you and everyone you thought you were responsible for."

His gaze slid to her face, to the intensity in her brow, the glimpses of something dark hidden beneath.

He knew nothing about her, he realized. Nothing but the scuttlebutt, and the more time he spent with her, the more he believed it all to be false.

Anders lightly ran his fingers down her temple, pushing her hair back from her face. He wanted to peel back the falseness and the unknown around her, see what was beneath. See how her mind really worked, what she actually felt. But she wouldn't allow that. She told him this subtly, not in words or pushes or refusals, but merely with her eyes. They were watching him intently, pupils like pinpricks.

He pulled his hand back and pushed it into his pocket.

He wasn't sure how long they sat in the cold, the silence thick and palpable. They'd acted out this scene far too many times over the past three weeks. Him asking, "What next?" and her furrowing her brow before eventually posing an innocuous question that led them on some maddening scavenger hunt. Yet with every lead, every discovery, he felt further removed from his original query. Faked records, false commendations, now Lydia.

The timing couldn't be a coincidence. Lydia dies and days later, Walsh supposedly puts a bullet in James' head? What Anders couldn't fathom was the why. Did Walsh attack James out of grief maybe? But even if he did, why James of all people? Why not Lydia's CO or some survivor from that night? What would be the motive? James and Lydia had never been close, and he couldn't see how James would be involved in her squad's demise. From what he'd gathered, James had been stationed on the East Coast for the past year and hadn't been near Alaska since their squad was decommissioned in 2074. Unless Logistics was involved somehow…?

"We're out of options."

Grey's words pressed down on him like a weight.

He watched her clench and unclench her jaw. Every bit of her body language told him she didn't like what she had in mind. She'd probably spent the last fifteen minutes trying to mentally talk herself out of it with little success.

"What are you thinking?" he asked.

"That we need to speak to Walsh."

"But you said—"

"I know what I said, Sergeant." She took a deep breath, voice quieting. "I know. So trust me when I say I'm not making this call lightly."

"What's the plan then?"

"Don't have one, not yet at least." She ran a hand through her hair, revealing flecks of silver at the root. "Give me twenty-four hours. Can't promise I'll have a good plan, but…" She shrugged, pulling her coat closer around her.

But trust me. That was the connotation, the unspoken expectation. Just trust her, follow her down the rabbit hole. Continue to push reason and reservation away.

Even as they drove back to Boston, he couldn't help but continue to study her. Watch her as she gazed out the window, tension ebbing and flowing through her face as she thought.

It was silly, but all he could think about was her. Not Lydia's death, not James' lying still in his hospital bed, face black and blue, wrapped in bandages and gauze. Just Grey. About her pull on him. Her pull on everyone. But most importantly, who had she'd failed?

And who had she lost?