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  “U.S. Army, sir,” the men called in unison.

  The sound was deafening. Outside the door, people stopped to take a look at what was going on.

  “Special Operations?” JS continued, and Alex laughed. This was their Colonel’s pet peeve. “Or Spec Ops?”

  “U.S. Army, sir,” the men replied in unison.

  “Special Forces?” asked JS.

  “U.S. Army, sir,” the men replied.

  “You are . . .?” JS asked.

  “We’re Green fucking Berets, sir!” The men were practically screaming now. Alex grinned at the sound of their SF training drill-sergeant’s call coming from these young men.

  “And what is she?” JS yelled.

  “U.S. Army, sir!” the men yelled.

  “And she is . . .” JS called.

  “A Green fucking Beret!” the men said.

  “Be specific,” JS yelled.

  “She is our Fey, sir!” the men yelled.

  The men dropped to their knees with more grace than seemed possible. They set their weapons in front of them and bowed their heads.

  “Awaiting your instruction, sir!,” the men said.

  Without a command, the men picked up their weapons and popped to attention. Alex returned their salute. Collectively, they saluted her. The men turned to their right. They marched out of the room the way they came in — along the walls. Stunned, Alex and Raz looked toward the door.

  “I thought you’d like to know,” JS said mildly as the last Green Beret left the room.

  He turned in place and left the doorway. Suddenly, Alex and Raz were standing in the airport lounge alone. The call for their flight came over the loud speaker. Unable to do much else, they tucked their weapons away and picked up their bags. By the time they left the lounge, there was no evidence that the Green Berets had ever been there. Alex and Raz rushed to their gate as fast as Alex’s heels would allow. They were escorted onto the plane and into their seats in first class.

  “Well?” Raz asked, leaning over toward Alex.

  To keep from crying, Alex simply nodded.

  “I thought you’d say that,” Raz said. “More champagne?”

  “Oh, God, no, please,” Alex said. “No more champagne.”

  Laughing, Raz ordered beer for both of them, but insisted on pouring Alex’s in a glass. She clinked her glass against his bottle and laughed.

  With her laugh, he knew that the Green Berets had done the trick. She was back to her old self. By the grace of some higher being, these men had kept the depressive cloud away from his Alex. He grabbed her hand and held it tight. She smiled at him and he leaned back in the seat.

  They made the trip to San Diego without further interruption.

  F

  CHAPTER NINE

  Tuesday night

  October 11 — 8:01 p.m. PDT

  San Diego, California

  “Oh, you monkeys! How did you get so huge?” Alex laughingly asked.

  Her sorrow, rage, and confusion tucked away, she pretended to struggle under the weight of her children. Joseph Amir Drayson clung to her back with his arms around her neck. His fraternal twin, Máire Wafa Drayson, hung on with her arms around Alex’s neck. As if they were heavy, she leaned into each step of the standard white-synthetic-fiber-carpeted stairway of the normal tract home they had rented. As she usually did on these stairs, she felt a pang of longing for their weird, crazy rooming house in Denver and their creaky old wooden staircase with its red-and-white floral wool carpet in the middle.

  “I wish we were at home,” Alex said in French.

  “Moi aussi, Maman,” Joey said from her back.

  “Moi aussi, Maman,” Máire said.

  Alex was so surprised that she stopped pretending that they were heavy. Máire and Joey would be just one years old in December. They were just starting to acquire words in American English and Arabic. Like Irish Gaelic, French wasn’t a daily necessity. Their word acquisition in French had been lagging far behind the others.

  “How . . .?” Alex started

  “When you say something often enough, love, even the youngest among us will remember it and respond,” her husband, Dr. John Drayson, said in his clipped London accent. He grinned at her from the top of the stairs.

  “Uh, huh,” Alex said. “And?”

  She kissed his lips as they passed in the narrow, standard-tract-home hallway. John lifted Joey from her back and took him into the hall bathroom. Alex relished her time with her baby girl. She took her time brushing and braiding Máire’s hair. Although Máire was potty trained, Joey had trouble at night. Her daughter insisted on a night diaper like her twin. Alex pulled a clean pair of pajamas over their subterfuge.

  Joey was already lying in his crib when Alex and Máire came out of the bathroom. Alex snuggled Máire one last time before setting her in Joey’s crib. They were long past the pretense that the children didn’t sleep together. They only had two cribs because they’d given in to Alex’s mother, Rebecca’s, concerns of impropriety. Alex picked up her son, snuggled him, and set him back in the crib. Máire reached an arm around Joey, and they both fell asleep.

  “I thought we’d started reading them books,” Alex whispered to John.

  “They like to read during the day,” John said.

  He put his arm around Alex, and they went into their standard, boring, tract-home master bedroom.

  “Why did they speak French on the stairs?” Alex asked with a squint of her eyes.

  “Helene arrived just after you left,” John said. Helene was Alex’s goddaughter and biological sister. “She’s been working with the kids on their basic French. You could have said, ‘The day is warm,’ and they would have responded ‘Moi aussi, Maman.’”

  “Who’s coming?” Alex asked. She wrinkled her nose in anticipation of the response.

  “Her mother,” John said.

  Alex loved Ben’s wife and Helene’s mother, Claire. She smiled, and he laughed.

  “Not so awful?” he asked.

  “Easier to deal with in the middle of all of this . . .” Alex said with a shake of her head.

  “Crap?” John asked.

  “Contemptuous garbage,” she said in an imitation of his British accent.

  He laughed. She held out her arms, and they held each other tight.

  “It’s been only three days,” Alex said.

  “I’ve missed you terribly,” John said.

  “What are we going to do?” Alex said in one soft out breath.

  “I don’t have enough words to tell you how sorry I am for what you went through,” John said.

  “Even though you predicted it?” Alex asked.

  He kissed her nose. They started their usual get-ready-for-bed dance. Alex tossed the ridiculous Rebecca-gifted pillows onto the rug while he turned down the comforters. They had taken to going to bed early because he had to get up early to do rounds before classes. He went into the bathroom, and she followed him.

  “How did you know?” Alex asked from the doorway of the standard tract-home bathroom.

  “Oh . . .” he said.

  To her obvious delight, he stripped off his clothing. He was heavier and more muscular than he’d been when they’d married. But at a time in life when many men were gaining paunch, he was trim, strong, and fit. She grinned appreciatively at his nakedness.

  “The head of my fellowship acts this way. In the last months, three of my colleagues have received such treatment,” he said. “For the insecure, the more competent a person is, the more you need to crush them under the hefty weight of your ego.”

  “How do you avoid it?” Alex asked.

  “I’m British,” John said with a shrug. “And mediocre.”

  He winked at her and Alex laughed at his joke.

  “It’s horrible to watch,” John said. “Very hard to be around such a bully.”

  He put toothpaste on his toothbrush, and she grabbed her toothbrush. He started scrubbing, and she put toothpaste on her brush. She scrubbed, and h
e spit in the sink. He took a drink of water, and she spit in the sink.

  “They don’t want you to pursue this Black Skeleton thing,” he said, while he put his toothbrush back in the holder. “Or . . .”

  He turned to look at her so quickly that he caught her deflated expression before she could pack it away. He reached out, and his long fingers stroked her face.

  “You’ve had a brutal day,” he said. He took her toothbrush and put it away. He used the toilet. “Why don’t you join me in this boring old tract-home shower?”

  Grinning at the idea, she used the toilet. He stepped over the lip of the bathtub and turned on the shower. She stepped out of her pants and pulled off her top. She flushed the toilet.

  “Or?” she asked.

  “Or it’s the same old misogynistic bullshit you’ve dealt with since basic training,” John said.

  “Could be. Doesn’t feel that way,” Alex said with a nod. “This feels more personal.”

  Leaning out from the textured plastic sliding doors, he saw that she had taken a break from their dance to vent her worry on her bottom lip.

  “Let’s drop it for now,” he said. “This moment and the next . . .”

  “ . . . are all we have,” Alex said with him. Her brown eyes caught his cobalt-blue eyes. The charge between them held such fierce intensity that tears formed in her eyes. “We may as well live within the bounty of these moments while we have them.”

  He gave her a soft smile and leaned over to adjust the water temperature.

  “One thing that’s awesome about this horrible place that isn’t our home . . .” he said in a voice loud enough to be heard over the running water.

  Alex stepped in behind him.

  “Source point hot water,” they said in unison.

  She stepped close to him, and he turned around. The water fell onto them and his arms held her tight. For the first time since hearing Admiral Ingram wanted to see her, she felt like maybe, just maybe her life would continue on.

  “I’m going to love retirement,” she said.

  “‘Retirement’?” He leaned back to look at her. “You?”

  Raising her eyebrows, she nodded. He rolled his eyes and laughed. He was so expressive that she laughed.

  Grinning, he started to wash the day from them.

  F

  CHAPTER TEN

  Three weeks later

  Wednesday mid-day

  November 2 — 12:31 p.m. PDT

  Ocean Beach Dog Beach, California

  Alex threw the ball into the surf, and her English Springer Spaniel, Maggie, raced off across the sand to get it. Maggie was met halfway by Alex’s sister Samantha’s copper-colored cocker spaniel, Precious, and Precious’s best friend, Moose, Colin’s enormous brown Labrador. The three dogs raced to the water, where Erin’s yellow Labrador, Daisy, was waiting with the ball in her mouth. The dogs chased Daisy through the water until she gave up the ball. Maggie snatched the ball. With Precious barking up a storm, Maggie raced across the sand to spit the ball at Alex’s feet. Alex picked up the ball and threw it into the surf.

  “Shhh,” Samantha said in a slurred voice a second after the dogs raced after the ball.

  Nested under an umbrella, Samantha was sleeping off a late night of revelry with some old JAG friends. In the shade of her own umbrella, a very pregnant Erin gestured toward Samantha with her thumb, and Alex laughed. Darker skinned, Alex sat in the full sun in a tankini bathing suit, while her pale sisters were covered in long sleeves and floppy hats. Alex’s short hair was covered over with a long brown wig attached to a baseball hot. The day was just beginning to get hot.

  “Not funny,” Samantha said.

  “She’s your dog!” Erin said incredulously.

  Samantha tried to sit up. Groaning, she flopped back onto the towel.

  “She barks too damned much,” Samantha said.

  “Precious?” Alex asked.

  “You!” Samantha said with a laugh.

  The sisters laughed. Whenever possible, the Hargreaves sisters got together on the first Wednesday of every month. This dog beach was less than fifteen minutes from Erin’s lab. They met at the dog beach for her afternoon break.

  “Speaking of barking . . .” Alex said under her breath.

  Erin turned to look.

  “Over here, Mom!” Erin waved to their mother, Rebecca Hargreaves.

  Samantha sat up with a gasp and made an effort to be presentable. Rebecca’s male white German Shepherd, Thor, raced past them to play with the other dogs. Her female white Shepherd, Sif, came to each of them to say hello before finding her favorite spot under Erin’s umbrella. Her arms full of belongings and her feet stuck in expensive pumps, Rebecca made slow progress across the sand. Alex hopped up to grab her mother’s umbrella and purse before they fell. Holding onto Alex, Rebecca took off her impractical shoes. Alex put up her mother’s umbrella before returning to her spot in the hot sun.

  “You look grim,” Rebecca said to Samantha.

  She took a bottle of sunscreen from her bag and gave it to Erin. She took another bottle out of her bag and gave it to Samantha. Knowing their mother would never be satisfied until she had actually witnessed their use of sunscreen, Samantha and Erin obediently slathered on the SPF 50. If the pale, redheaded Hargreaves women envied Alex’s brown hair and dark tan, they didn’t dare say anything about it. Instead, they passed the bottles of sunscreen to Alex, and she tucked them into her mother’s bag.

  As he did every time, Thor trotted back with the ball he’d easily stolen from the other dogs. Precious followed close behind expressing her extreme disapproval for his behavior. Thor settled into a spot under Rebecca’s umbrella and began chewing on the ball. Samantha groaned at the noise and flopped back on her towel, causing Precious to lay down next to her. Moose dropped down next to Precious. His sheer bulk pushed Samantha out from under her umbrella.

  Alex laughed. Samantha shot her a look of sisterly loathing, which only made Alex laugh harder. Hiding a grin, Erin moved over so that Samantha could share her umbrella.

  “Now, girls,” Rebecca said. “You shouldn’t be so amused at your sister’s misuse of alcohol, Alex. Alcoholism is . . .”

  “No laughing matter,” Alex, Erin, and Samantha joined Rebecca in saying.

  Rebecca grinned at them. When Maggie returned, Alex took another ball from her bag and threw it. Maggie and Daisy danced across the sand after the ball.

  “Thor, you are such a stinker,” Rebecca said. She looked at Samantha. “Sami, you look terrible.”

  “I know,” Samantha said. “How did I get to be this much of a wimp?”

  “You don’t drink much anymore,” Alex said.

  “I have to get back into training,” Samantha said.

  Samantha shot her mother a look. Rebecca took a breath and launched into her “Evil Effects of Alcohol” lecture.

  “You remember Colin!” Rebecca said near the end.

  “We do, Mom,” Erin said. “She was joking.”

  Rebecca looked confused for a moment before bursting out laughing.

  “Why is that funny?” Alex asked.

  “I sit on the board of a non-profit that helps veterans with their addictions,” Samantha said with a grin.

  “Now that you’ve retired, Alex, you should make an effort to know what your sisters are up to,” Rebecca said with a sniff.

  “I thought I died,” Alex said.

  “Retired. Pretended to die,” Rebecca said. “What’s the difference?”

  “If I’m dead, I don’t have to keep up,” Alex said with a smirk.

  Erin and Samantha laughed. Rebecca looked indignant for a moment before she shook her head.

  “If you were dead, you’d be much less . . .” Rebecca grinned at Alex but couldn’t finish her joke. “Actually, I’d miss you a great deal.”

  Alex let her mother hug her for a moment. Feeling a wet nose nudge her side, Alex pulled back and threw the ball for Maggie. The interaction was too much for Precious. The li
ttle dog hopped up. Barking, she raced after Maggie and Daisy. Moose took the opportunity to spread out under the cool shade of Samantha’s umbrella. Thor got up from his spot and tried to invade Moose’s space. The gorgeous white dog’s every effort failed to move Moose. As he did every time, Thor burst out in a growl and bark in frustration.

  Surprised, Alex gasped and jerked. Samantha moaned in pain. As she did every time, Sif got up and went to Thor. She licked Thor’s face and led him back to a spot under Rebecca’s umbrella.

  “You’re jumpy,” Erin said to Alex.

  Alex shrugged.

  “Out of place,” Rebecca said. Alex turned to look at Rebecca. “Your father was like that when he retired.”

  “As a Senator?” Alex asked.

  “Well, that too,” Rebecca laughed.

  Watching the dogs and the surf, they fell silent. Alex threw the ball into the surf, and Maggie returned it.

  “At the risk of offending . . .” Rebecca said. She looked at Alex out of the corner of her eye. Alex scowled. “You may remember that I went to that conference on autism?”

  Samantha showed her disapproval of the topic by pulling her floppy sun hat over her face. Erin looked at Alex before turning her attention to Rebecca.

  “Why are you looking at me?” Alex asked. “Do you think Máire? Joey?”

  “No, no,” Rebecca said with a slight shake of her head. “Joey and Máire are perfect, as are Grace and Paddie.”

  Rebecca cleared her throat and slightly raised an eyebrow. Sitting just behind Rebecca’s back, Erin rolled her eyes at her mother.

  “Oh, I see,” Alex said with a laugh. “This is about me and Max.”

  “Now, Alex . . .” Rebecca said.

  “No, please, go ahead,” Alex said. She couldn’t help but grin. “Do tell, mother. Why did you go to a conference on autism? Is someone on the board of an autism group?”

  Alex looked at Erin, who shook her head. Samantha didn’t deem it necessary to respond.

  “It’s very common,” Rebecca said.

  “What is?” Alex asked.

  “Autism,” Rebecca said. “One in a hundred children now are diagnosed with autism. No one is sure if there are actually more children or that it’s better diagnosed.”