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Guilliam walked into the navy’s investigation department and stopped at the doorway to Jasper’s private office.

Jasper looked up and grinned. “There’s a sight for sore eyes.” He hopped up and came around.

The two men bro-hugged, and, with the noise of the greetings, the others gathered to see what was going on. Guilliam turned and smiled at Masters, reaching out to shake his hand. When Guilliam saw Gideon, his arms went wide open. With lots of laughter, the four men gathered around. He looked to see a couple others standing off to the side.

“More team members?” he asked, as he walked over and shook their hands. “I’m Guilliam,” he murmured. “Nice to meet you.”

One of the men glared at him.

Another shrugged and pointed to the glaring guy with him. “We were part of the original investigation team. Not exactly sure what we are at this point, after the MPs locked up Morgan. I’m Lichen, and that’s Sam.” They both promptly walked off.

Guilliam’s eyebrows shot up at that. You could expect trouble when you came into these investigations in progress, especially if the members weren’t all in sync. Guilliam returned to Jasper’s office, sat down, and noted, “There is dissent among the natives.”

Jasper nodded, along with Masters and Gideon. “There absolutely is, but most of these natives won’t be around long enough for me to give a crap.”

Guilliam raised an eyebrow. “What is it? Are they bad, incompetent? What’s the problem?”

Jasper shrugged, with a nod toward the open door of his office. “It’s more than I want to get into right now.” Then he looked over at Guilliam. “I presume you’ve been to the hospital.”

“I have. First stop.”

“And did you see… Was Mason awake?”

“No, he wasn’t, but Tesla was, so I spent a few minutes with her.” He frowned. “She’s pretty stressed.” A note of accusation filled his tone, as he looked over at his friend. “We need to solve this and solve it fast.”

“Oh, I agree,” Jasper replied. “A shitshow of other events is happening at the same time.”

Guilliam nodded. “Fill me in.”

Tristan now joined the rest of Jasper’s team and shut the door behind him.

Jasper snapped at Tristan. “Why are you here? You need time off, so take it. Then come back so your other team members can have their downtime as well.”

Tristan groaned. “I wanted to be here for the update at least.”

“Fine,” Jasper grumbled, “then off you go.”

Guilliam listened as first Jasper, then Masters, Gideon, and Tristan filled him in on the various issues up until now.

“And Nicholas?” Guilliam asked. “Surely we can get more information from him, right?”

“He was held and tortured for four months,” Gideon shared. “I’m not sure he’ll give us anything in the near future. You know how it is. Our mind shuts down to handle the trauma. The memories fade. Sometimes they come back. Sometimes they don’t. There hasn’t been any surfacing so far, and we can’t push the process. It must be organic.”

Guilliam frowned at that, tapping his fingers on his knee as he contemplated the situation. “What’s next then?”

“The sniper and his girlfriend are accounted for. We have three visitors in our jail cells at the moment. Some are talking. Some are not. We’re verifying the information we’re getting on various people, basically finding associations and other potential connections between these people, whether dead or alive, all to figure out who hired the sniper in the first place. And, of course, the USB key held by Nicholas contains a lot of blackmailable material that gives us more suspects. Unfortunately these weak points to be utilized by our mastermind, or others of that ilk, are mostly in the navy and reside on base.”

Guilliam blew out a long breath. “And the sniper is dead, correct? I heard the fake death-by-suicide attempt was followed up by finding his real body, sporting a bullet between the eyes.”

They all nodded.

“Good. Well, not good, but, yeah, you know what I mean.”

“Exactly,” Jasper agreed. “We’re not looking at anybody else as the one who pulled the trigger. However, we also don’t know whether the shooting was a good one or not.”

Guilliam stopped to consider that and nodded. “Right, that makes sense too. Was missing a deliberate act? Depends, I guess, on how good a shooter Drew was.”

“One of the navy’s best snipers, according to his military record,” Jasper shared.

Guilliam frowned. “So then, we must assume that it was an intentional miss.”

“But bad shots do happen,” Masters pointed out, “even for the best of us, just not very often. In Mason’s shooting, the pressure would have been immense.”

“Was it a windy day?”

“It was, so we don’t have a clear-cut answer on whether it was a good shooting or not.”

“Right, but still not the main issue,” Guilliam concluded. “Drew took the job for some reason and was planning to run afterward because he knew perfectly well that somebody was sure to track him down.”

“That’s what I think,” Gideon agreed.

“Have you gotten anywhere on all of the cross-referencing yet?” Guilliam asked.

Jasper shook his head. “Still in progress. So far no leads.”

Guilliam frowned. “There has to be something.”

“Of course. There always is.”

“And yet we’re struggling to find anything definitive. You’ve gone over Mason’s past cases?”

“Tesla has been going over a bunch we shortlisted, but, so far, nothing to connect directly to the assassination attempt.”

Guilliam shook his head at that. “She shouldn’t be involved.”

“Yeah, right. I agree,” Jasper replied, with a smirk. “Have you had any luck telling her what she should or should not be involved in?”

Guilliam burst out laughing at that. “Okay, that’s a very good point. Plus, with her being pregnant, she’s in major protective mama-bear mode. Regardless, we need to sort out what the next step is.” And he pondered that a second. “I’m thinking I’ll take a trip to the site. I know nothing is still around, as far as the crime scenes goes, but I just want to make sure we’ve covered every base.”

The men just nodded.

“I can take you over,” Gideon offered.

Guilliam agreed. “Sounds good to me.” He stood up and looked back at Jasper. “Did you check the banking on the suspects to date?”

He nodded. “Yes, and we found a couple irregularities. One large payment was made recently.”

“Large payments are good,” Guilliam stated, with a smile. “You just need to know where it came from.”

“Canary Islands.”

He wrinkled up his nose. “Which was probably where Drew was running to then.”

“That would make sense. Not necessarily the best place for him to go, if you think about it, but—”

“And not a bad place either,” Guilliam pointed out, as he considered it. “There will always be people looking to go someplace like that.”

“Sure, but we’re just not certain that’s where the man behind all this might have gone. And Drew didn’t have airline tickets booked.”

“Not even under another name?” Guilliam asked.

“If he did, we don’t have that other name.”

“Right. Dammit. You guys been to Drew’s house yet?”

They nodded.

Masters added, “Forensics was still working on it, and they wouldn’t let us in.”

“They’ll let me in,” Guilliam declared, with a smile. “Mostly because they won’t know.” He looked over at Gideon. “You okay to make a stop there as well?”

“Sure, I want in there too.”

“Good enough.” He pointed toward the door. “Let’s go.” With that, Guilliam got up and walked over to the huge whiteboard, holding a lot of the information regarding Mason’s case. Guilliam took several photos and then nodded. “I’ll study this a little bit later,” he murmured.

With that, he nodded at Gideon, and the two of them walked out.

*

Janelle Packers walked back to her mother’s hospital bed. Out loud she murmured to herself, “Well, Tesla, I knew it wouldn’t work. He just doesn’t want to see me. Of course I may have jumped the gun, being so excited to see him, but he wasn’t of the same opinion, at least not at first glance. Maybe he’ll change his mind a little bit later.” Yet Janelle wasn’t so sure.

When her phone rang, she looked down to see it was Tesla. “Yes, I saw him,” she began. “Can’t say he looked terribly happy about it, though.”

“He just found out you were here,” Tesla reminded her. “You’ll have to give him a little bit of adjustment time.”

“Not sure I’m up for giving him too much time,” she stated in a dry tone. “This is me, after all. Remember?”

“I know. However, let’s not forget that this is Guilliam, and he’s been through a lot too.”

“I understand, but now I’m at the end of my mother’s illness. In a way, it,… well, it would have been better if I’d met him in another couple months.”

“Life is not that easy,” Tesla murmured. “You know that.”

“I do know that. I was just hoping that maybe, for once, it would be easy.”

“Easy?” Tesla chuckled. “How are you doing? How is your mom?”

“She’s okay. I thought moving her back home might bring her some joy, just in getting her away from the treatment facility and her specialist, which only reminded her of her cancer. That trip was hard on her, but I thought she perked up once she knew where she was again. Unfortunately that was a short-lived stay and she’s back in the hospital,” Janelle sighed loudly. “Maybe all that didn’t matter. I mean, she’s unconscious and hopefully not in pain, yet clearly nearing the end. They’re trying to get her moved to a hospice facility, but we’re having an issue finding a place with an opening.”

“Of course. That’s been an ongoing problem recently. It seems as if everyone is having more than their fair share of challenges lately,” Tesla noted. “Hopefully it won’t be too long, and that will get resolved, and they’ll get her moved and settled.”

“Right. Still, she’s being well cared for right here.”

“Absolutely,” Tesla agreed. “Back to Guilliam, give him a break. He was head over heels.”

“He was. It’s the past tense part that’s important to remember.”

“Just think of it as not being the right time back then.”

Long after she hung up with Tesla, Janelle wondered if it could be that easy. Would Guilliam even think of that, or would it seem like something completely different in his mind? She’d hurt him and had hurt him badly. She knew that. Yet, at the time, her focus had been on her mother and not on him. However, he was right about one thing. Janelle didn’t have to discard the one good thing she had going for her just because her mother’s health had deteriorated. There should have been a way to keep the good, while dealing with the bad.

Back then she just hadn’t been able to see another way, to see that her choice was the problem. Then she’d pretty much exploded the one thing that was good in her life in order to help her mother. Something she couldn’t feel bad about, yet she knew, especially now, that there had been another way—if only she hadn’t been quite so blockheaded about it all. But then, apparently being a blockhead was something she excelled at. With a groan she sat back down beside her mom. Janelle stared across the bed at the frail woman, watching her labored breathing.

One of the nurses came in a few minutes later. “I’m sorry that setting up the hospice care is proving to be such a hassle.” She looked over at her mother. “Honestly, it’s possible she may not make the trip.”

“I know,” Janelle responded. “I was hoping that she would just pass here, instead of putting her through that added stress.”

“And she might. She might, indeed. If it’s that close, they might not even move her because it’s just harder on her.”

Janelle didn’t say anything to that, just nodded in agreement. Funny how the cancer specialist had told her that the flight home might do her mother some good at this point. Janelle was torn, not sure if yet another move would prove to be hard on her mother physically, or maybe it was more about how her mother wasn’t necessarily here mentally anymore. Such a very strange situation for Janelle to find herself in, after the long battle with her mom’s cancer, and it was not easy by any means.

When the nurse was gone, Janelle stared down at her phone, wondering at the sense of contacting Guilliam. Once again she reminded herself that she needed to give him space. However, after seeing him, she just wanted to be with him. She’d lost so much time with Guilliam, and she didn’t have any decent understanding as to how their relationship had all gone to pieces—except that, back then, she’d felt Guilliam wasn’t as understanding about her mother’s condition as Janelle may have wanted. Still, looking back, she realized she had been acting out in more of a panic, and certainly not rationally.

Janelle hadn’t realized how bad her mother’s situation would get and what being her primary caregiver would require. Only experience gave her that information. So, at the beginning, she had been all in as far as caring for her mother. In the back of her mind she’d assumed that, when the cancer was gone, she and Guilliam could pick back up—if that’s what they wanted. Three years ago, though, it hadn’t even been a part of Janelle’s thought process. So she’d more or less just bolted to her mother’s side. And that was not without good reason. She had been very, very close to her mother growing up. Her mother had also adored Guilliam and had told Janelle that she was being a fool for breaking up with him, but she wouldn’t listen.

Of course she wouldn’t listen. That wasn’t part of who she was, unfortunately. She seemed to spend more of her time making decisions that upset other people. She shook her head at that, realizing that no good would come from that speculation. Once she got this harsh memory out of her brain, it would be a whole lot easier.

As she sat there at her mother’s bedside, Janelle checked her emails, checked in on work too. She was ever so grateful that she now had a work-at-home job where she could work part time and on her own schedule because it allowed her to keep busy while she was—and this was a terrible way to look at it—waiting for her mother to die. God, that made her feel so awful. She wasn’t waiting for her mother to die. The reality was that her mother was dying, and it was a process, one that Janelle had never been through, a process she never wanted to experience, a process that left her struggling to do anything else that she needed to do.

It was horrific, plus incredibly sad and debilitating to watch. She hated to say it, but she was at the point where she could only hope that her mother would go to sleep one night and not wake up. Yet that’s not what was happening. Instead it was this slow physical decline that also entailed a mental decline and was ten times worse than anything she’d ever thought it could be. There should be an easier way to check out when you got to this point in life. Why there wasn’t one such exit, she didn’t know.

If they could send people to all kinds of locations in the world, even to the moon, why wasn’t there an easy way to make one’s last days peaceful, kind, and gentle? Instead the physical body was ravaged, until it just gave out. Her mind resurrected one glimmer of hope from something she had read not that long ago. The theory was that our souls left our bodies before the final event, escaping some of the horrors that the family left behind had to deal with, if only vicariously.

She felt the tears choking up her throat again. She got up and walked over to the small bathroom, got herself a drink of water, and splashed some cold water on her face. When she heard a rattling noise, she walked over to the hospital bed and picked up her mother’s hand. “It’s all right, Mom,” she whispered. “I’m here. It’s okay.”

Her mother opened her eyes briefly and sighed. “Yes, I know that you’re still here. I just don’t want to be here too.”

Janelle winced because she didn’t have any means to change the situation, and that hurt too. “Just go back to sleep,” she whispered.

Her mother opened her eyes, looked up at her, and gave her a breathtaking smile. “I’ll sleep, if you sleep too.”

“I will. Honest.”

Her mother shook her head. “Liar.”

She winced because her mother always seemed to know. Janelle sat on the edge of the hospital bed and continued to hold her mother’s hand.

Her mother whispered, “Don’t be sad.”

“I’m sad that you’re suffering,” Janelle clarified. And that was the truth.

Her mother gave her the gentlest of smiles. “Hopefully it won’t be long now.”

Janelle wanted to rail at her for being so complacent about it, yet who was she to say anything? Without even meaning to, she shared, “Guilliam’s back in town.”

Her mother slowly opened her eyes and stared at her. Miriam beamed with joy. “Good timing.”

Janelle frowned at that. “What do you mean?”

“You’ll need somebody when I’m gone,” her mother whispered, “and it’s always been him.”

“But that doesn’t mean he wants anything to do with me,” Janelle noted. “Remember how I’m the one who walked away from him.”

“You were a fool,” her mom replied. “I told you that.”

The trouble was, her mother had, indeed, called Janelle a fool, but it wasn’t exactly something she had been willing to hear back then. She watched as her mother’s eyelids slowly closed again. Confirming that she was asleep, Janelle slowly returned to her chair.

Her stomach growled, and the thought of another hospital meal was enough to nearly break her. Plus, she didn’t want to leave her mother and go down to the cafeteria either. Then she thought about Tesla, staying at her husband’s bedside, constantly waiting, just in case he woke up, and realized that maybe she could do something for her friend.

Janelle quickly called Tesla and murmured, “I will head down to the cafeteria shortly. Do you want anything?”

“A juice would be lovely,” Tesla replied in delight.

“How about tea?

“And tea would be lovely too,” she agreed, her voice gentling at the thought. “How sad to think our world has come down to this right now.”

“I know, and, while I’m so close to having this over, I still dread the fact that it will be over.”

“Of course you do. You love your mom. The two of you were always very close.”

“We still are. That’s why I’m sitting here, waiting for her to fade away permanently. And I feel terrible because of that.”

“That’s because you love her, but you also don’t want to see her suffer anymore.”

“God no,” she whispered back. “Look. I just… I need to get out for a few minutes. I’ll pop down to the cafeteria. What about food? Do you want a bite to eat?” she asked, returning to a more businesslike tone, so she wouldn’t feel on the edge of tears.

“No, I think I’m fine for food,” Tesla answered.

“You say that, but…”

Tesla chuckled. “If they have any decent muffins, bring me one.”

“Ah, decent , and that is where the problem lies, isn’t it?”

“It is,” Tesla agreed, with a groan. “But you never know, something decent could be there.”

“I’ll go take a look.” And Janelle hopped up and ended the call. With another look at her mother, she headed to the cafeteria, several floors below.

She got in line, picked out a few muffins, grabbed a couple hot teas, one for Tesla and one for herself, and got the juice that Tesla wanted. As Janelle paid for them, she watched a man in a white coat casually walking through the cafeteria. She didn’t think anything of it, but his hands were in his pockets, and he seemed deep in thought. Just like any doctor , she thought to herself. They dealt with people like her mom all the time. No joy in that job.

She wondered at the empathy and compassion so many of them possessed. It took a special person to work with the dying on a daily basis like this. She didn’t think she could do it. She was dealing with dying on a daily basis with her mother, but it was hard, and not something she ever wanted to do again if she had such a choice. She wasn’t sure if she did. This wasn’t an easy pathway for her, and yet she was holding on, and that’s what she would stick with.

She was holding on, and the rest of the world was holding on with her.

With a tray in hand, she turned and headed back up to Tesla to drop off her goodies. She passed the doctor one more time as he leaned against a wall and stared out the windows at the end of the hallway. She smiled at him as she went by, then spoke to him. “You have a job I don’t think I could ever do.”

Startled, he stared at her.

She smiled as she added, “I’m finding it hard enough to deal with the slow death of a loved one. I can’t imagine what it’s like to deal with this on a daily basis.”

He gave her a clipped nod and then shrugged. “You get used to it.” And, with that, he turned and walked away.

Not exactly the answer she’d expected, but not everybody felt the same way about life and death as she did. Hell, she wasn’t sure anybody did. She was as happy as anybody to live a good life, but, when the time frame of that good life ended, she wasn’t sure there was such a thing as a good life anymore.

Yet so many people were out there who were such firm believers in heaven and hell, seemingly certain that people should be happy to go where they were intended. Janelle wondered if maybe she was the odd one out. Her mother hadn’t been religious, with absolutely no belief in God or the devil. Her mom had done everything on her own as a single parent. She had been a huge blessing, and Janelle would miss her terribly.

Her mother’s comment on Guilliam’s perfect timing said much about her mom’s worries about Janelle and how her daughter would manage when her mother was gone. As far as Janelle was concerned, she would grieve intensely for quite a while, and then, with any luck, she would gradually get over it, eventually moving on, holding the memory of her mother dear.

That was what she envisioned, though it wouldn’t be easy to do. She couldn’t imagine moving on as ever being easy. Her mother was such a special part of Janelle’s world, yet hadn’t been for a big chunk of her lifetime. Like so many children who grew into adulthood, Janelle had walked away, claiming her independence and carving out her own world on her own terms. Now she regretted so much of that, with absolutely no way to take it back, no time to go for a visit, to call her mom, to see how she was doing, or even to send her a message saying hi. The regrets were the part she would struggle with. With that, she checked in with the guard on Tesla’s door, then walked in with the tray.

First, Janelle handed Tesla the tea. “Here you go,” she said, with a smile.

Tesla looked up with a smile in return and reached out for the hot cup of tea joyously. “What is it about a cup of tea?” she murmured.

“Comfort,” Janelle responded instantly. “It’s all about comfort. And, boy, do we know what it’s like to not have it.”

Tesla nodded. “It’s so hard, isn’t it? You think you’re doing well under the circumstances. You think that you’ve got this, and then it hits you sideways, and you realize you don’t have it at all.”

“But Mason, he’s doing okay, isn’t he?” she asked hesitantly.

“Yes. No. I guess,” Tesla replied, with a small smile. “The doctors don’t seem to be unhappy with his progress. What can I say? The head takes a long time to heal, apparently. I wasn’t quite prepared for how long.”