In the Grey (14 page)

“
I’d suggest you call
now,” Raz said.

“
Oh yeah?”

“
State Department is
paying a visit to Buffy Joiner in the morning,” Raz scowled at the
mention of Cee Cee Joiner’s first wife.

“
Guess I missed that
memo,” Alex said.

Raz chuckled.

“
Oh sure,” Alex said.
“Leave the phone off for a few hours and suddenly life passes me
by.”

Raz laughed and she
smiled.

“
Do you think Buffy Joiner
knows more than she says?” Raz asked.

“
I was just going to ask
you the same thing,” Alex smiled.

“
You first,” Raz
said.

“
Okay,” Alex leaned back
and stared off into space. Used to her silences, Raz waited. “I’m
wondering what Trece, me, you, Steve, and Cee Cee Joiner have in
common. Trece’s tidily tucked away; Steve’s off the map; you and I
are going to China after Cee Cee Joiner; that creature Buffy is
getting a visit from the State Department; and then there are all
of those mind control subjects.”

“
What do you, me, Steve,
Trece, Cee Cee, Buffy, and the mind control subjects know?” Raz
asked.

“
Better question,” Alex
said. “What problem is solved by tucking Trece away in Pelican Bay?
It was easy enough to make it happen. Get his psychotic cousin out
of Pelican Bay and hand him over to the cartels.”

“
Swap the files,” Raz
said. “Easy to do.”

“
If you
can
do it,” Alex
nodded.

“
We’d talked about it
before,” Raz said. “It’s on our threat list.”

“
I know,” Alex
nodded.

“
Did you know when his
cousin escaped?” Raz asked.

“
No. I wasn’t
informed.”

“
I thought you were to be
alerted on his state of affairs.”

“
I did too,” Alex said.
“Sergeant Dusty checked everything – spam filters, email, phones –
everything. We did not receive notification.”

“
Did they send
it?”

“
They did,” Alex
said.

“
You’re sure?”

“
FBI sent a field officer
to Pelican Bay to check,” Alex said. “They definitely sent it. In
fact, they were surprised I didn’t get back with them. They sent
daily updates until they learned he had crossed the
border.”

“
Caught in transit?” Raz
asked.

“
I guess,” Alex shrugged.
“It happened while we were in China last time.”

“
That can’t be a
coincidence,” Raz said.

“
Exactly, and get this,”
Alex nodded. “When they didn’t hear from me, they sent a letter by
carrier. It disappeared in transit.”

“
Disappeared?” Raz asked.
“Do you think someone at the base intercepted the letter?
Dusty?”

“
I don’t believe it’s
Dusty,” Alex said. “But I don’t know and chasing after the
who’s
and
what’s
keeps me from
looking at the big picture.”

“
Which is what?” Raz
asked.

“
Exactly,” Alex said.
“Your turn. What do you think?”

“
Do you know about Ben’s
project?” Raz asked.

“
He’s tracking the events
of my life to see what was going on in the world,” Alex said. “Dad
said he added his life. They’re working on adding everyone from the
Fey Team and Dad’s team.”

“
But your father and the
team haven’t been called away,” Raz said.

“
Right,” Alex said. “Did
he find anything?”

“
Only that things like Cee
Cee Joiner’s disappearances and your assaults both happened at
fairly regular intervals,” Raz said.

“
Huh,” Alex shrugged.
“Maybe that’s when Joiner went out into the field?”

“
Probably,” Raz
said.

“
But what if it’s
something else?” Alex asked. “Did he come up with any
ideas?”

Raz shook his
head.

“
Why me?” Alex’s voice
came out in a whisper.

Raz pulled her closer to
him.

“
The dark still comes,”
she said in the same low voice.

“
I know,” he
said.

“
What did I do to ever
deserve . . . ?”

“
Nothing.” He kissed the
top of her head.

“
The more we know, the
more personal it feels, you know?” Alex nodded.

“
It does,” he said. “And
what if it is personal? What if all of this is about you, Alex?
What if that’s true?”

It took Alex so long to
respond that he leaned forward to look at her. She was lost in
thought. Seeing his concern, she smiled and shrugged.

“
What if it is all about
me?” Alex asked. “What if ‘what’ and ‘why’ are the wrong
questions?”

“
They
are
ones we can’t answer,” Raz
nodded.

“
What’s left?” Alex
asked.

“
How is this about you,
Alexandra Lea Hargreaves?”

“
How indeed.”

“
You’re a
twin.”

“
I’m a single zygote
male-female twin,” Alex said.

“
Yes,” Raz said. “You’re a
woman.”

“
I’m Army.”

“
You’re the Fey,” Raz
said.

“
Doesn’t it start earlier
than that?” Alex looked at him.

He nodded.

“
You’re Patrick
Hargreaves’s daughter,” Raz said. “You’re Ben and Rebecca’s
daughter.”

“
It’s because I can figure
it out, isn’t it?” Alex nodded.

“
I think so,” Raz
said.

“
Then maybe I should set
about figuring it out,” Alex said.

“
I thought that’s what you
were doing,” Raz said. “What we were doing.”

“
I like being in the
field,” Alex said. “Going from place to place. I never respected
the brass that stayed at a safe distance while the action was
unfolding. It always seems kind of cowardly to me. But maybe I
should sit out . . .”

Alex’s head exploded with
pain. She grabbed her head and leaned forward. He rubbed her back.
Her ears filled with the sound of dripping blood.

She jumped from her seat
and ran to the toilet. She fell to her knees and threw up. She
tried to catch her breath but she had to throw up again.

“
I’m going to kill you and
everything you love,” a man’s voice said.

The voice was so real that
Alex looked around the airplane stall to see if someone was there.
Even though she knew Raz was standing right behind her, her ears
heard blood dripping in rhythm to this man’s voice. Her vision
clouded and the airplane slipped away.

“
Hargreaves!” The man’s
voice yelled.

Her eyes focused on an
expanding pool of blood, her blood. Her mind told her that the
blood would be hell to clean up. The blood would probably stain the
limestone. She couldn’t stop the pool of blood from expanding. She
couldn’t stop bleeding. She gasped.

“
Jesse,” Alex said before
she passed out.

FF

Alex found herself
marching through thick fog. She couldn’t see the ground or the sky.
She had the sense that she was marching in the middle of a pack of
men. The fog was so thick that she couldn’t see the person beside
her.

She kept marching until a
man’s voice called them to halt. She instinctively stood at
attention. She felt an angry man – hot and belligerent – move
through the formation.

“
Hargreaves!”

Although she couldn’t see
him, she felt the man stop right in front of her.

“
Where is it?” the man
yelled. Heat and rage emanated from his body. Like a ball moving
toward her face, she felt him lean in. “Don’t lie to me! Where is
it?”

She tried not to flinch
when spittle from the man’s angry words sprayed her
face.

“
Where. Is.
It.”

“
Alexandra!” Jesse’s voice
came from the fog.

Without thinking, Alex
stepped forward. No one was standing in front of her. She ran in
the direction of Jesse’s voice.

“
Jesse!”

“
Aquí
!” Jesse yelled.

She saw tall evergreens
overhead and felt the gentle push of dirt and pine needles
underneath her boots. The fog settled around her. When a breeze
whispered through the pines, she knew where she was.

She was standing in the
Uwharrie National Forest where she had aced her Special Forces war
games test. She and Jesse had been placed on separate teams. When
push came to shove, Alex’s CO allowed her to save Jesse and his
team as long as she guaranteed her team would win. Her team won by
six hours. Running fast, she swatted at the tree branches to keep
them out of her face.

“
Jesse?” she yelled. She
stopped running to listen.

“
Aquí
!” His voice echoed.

She changed directions and
ran toward his voice. The scenery around her changed. Jesse
appeared in the near distance. He waved her forward. She sped in
his direction, and then he was right there. She had to skid to a
stop.

“
Jesse!” Alex
smiled.

He gave her a solid
hug.

“
Where are we?” Alex
asked.

The fog cleared, and they
were standing in a small, tiled room. The walls and floor were
covered in a pattern of one baby-blue tile to every two white
tiles. A small metal table and a chair sat just to the side of the
drain in the center of the room. A variety of sharp utensils and
cutting tools were lined up on the metal table. Hooks lined the
ceiling along the back wall. A wheeled cart with an automobile
battery and leads sat along the wall.

“
S.E.R.E.” The word came
out of Alex’s mouth in a grunt. She wiped her mouth with the back
of her hand.

“
You remember this room?”
Jesse asked in Spanish.

“
I should,” Alex said in
Spanish. “I spent the better part of three days hanging right over
there.”

She rubbed the scars on
her wrists.

“
Why are we here?” Alex
asked.

“
No idea,” Jesse said.
“What else do you remember about this room?”

“
I remember Mattie falling
out of the chair right there,” Alex said. “He fell over and lay by
the drain for . . . hours, I think.”

“
They just left him
there?”

“
Yep,” Alex said. “We sang
children’s songs. He told me that a couple weeks ago, Erin was
singing ‘Itsy Bitsy Spider’ while she gave Grace a bath. He had to
leave the house.”

Jesse nodded.

“
I remember you right
here,” Alex said. “In this chair. What do you remember?”

“
I don’t think I’ll ever
forget that,” Jesse turned in place in the room. “I remember a
man.”

“
All the fake torturers
were men,” Alex said.

“
Sure,” Jesse said. “This
was a man’s voice.”

Jesse pointed to the
speakers. Alex looked up.

“
Do you remember the man’s
voice?” Jesse gave her a hard look.

“
Hargreaves! Where is it?
Don’t lie to me! Where is it?” Alex repeated what she’d heard in
English. “I
know
you have it. I
know
you do. Stop lying to me!”

“
Right!” Jesse’s eyebrows
went up in surprise. He added in Spanish, “I hadn’t remembered, but
that’s exactly it.”

Alex looked up at the
speakers.

“‘
Where is it?’ is not so
different from ‘Where is the security token?’” Jesse
said.

Alex turned in place to
see if there was anything else this room could tell her.

“
Did something happen in
this room that . . . caused all of this?” Jesse
asked.

“
That’s the billion-dollar
question,” Alex said. “Or . . .”

“
What?”

“
What do the mind control
subjects and this room have in common?” Alex said.

“
Every protocol they use
here was developed through experiments on them,” Jesse
said.

“‘
Advanced Interrogation
Techniques’ as well,” Alex nodded. “They developed that protocol
from mind control tests.”

“
What does that mean to
us?”

“
No idea,” Alex
said.

“
What if the key is within
the program itself?” Jesse asked.

“
It’s not mind control
subjects, but me?”

“
Or what you have in
common with them,” Jesse said.

“
Exactly,” Alex said. “The
link is S.E.R.E.”

The room began to
fade.

“
Jesse?” Alex
asked.