Page 83 of Lieutenant

Everyone here has been kind and bending over backward for us. They ruled out terrorism, since it was a charter flight. Based on the cockpit recordings and black box data, it looks like a stupid, catastrophic mechanical or structural failure with the starboard engine, probably triggered by the severe turbulence they encountered.

Fricking random bad luck.

I want to rage and scream but I keep that locked deep inside me. I keep my expression as neutral as possible and nod when talked to, carefully choosing every word I say before I say it. Despite all the US and foreign government wonks here now from various alphabet-soup agencies, somehowIhave become the de facto spokesperson for what’s left of the group of family members.

The stoic husband, the decorated war vet, the chief of staff.

The widower-apparent.

Part of me starts to think maybe I should ask Owen if he wants to pull out of the race. No one would blame us if he did. We can quietly return to Tampa at the end of his term, grieve, and eventually get married. Maybe go to Vegas, to the same chapel where I married Susa. Exchange the same vows.

Try to love as much pain as we can from each other’s souls.

Part of me knows if I did that, if there was any truth to the theories about ghosts, that Susa would mercilessly haunt us for giving up politics after working so damn hard to achieve as much as we have.

I know her. I know my sweet, vicious little pet. She’d be screaming at me to capitalize on this, use it, mercilesslyleverageit into a slam-dunk victory. Milk every ounce of sympathy we can from it.

Iknowshe would.

But…to be honest? Even the bastard extraordinaire has his limits. I don’t have the heart to do that, I don’t think. Not unless Owen tells me that’s what he wants, to honor her like that by staying in and continuing to work for re-election.

If he does? Then absolutely, that’s what we’ll do.

Otherwise…

I don’t know anymore. The plan has…dissolved.

I feel like a significant part ofmehas dissolved.

I’m not sleeping more than an hour or two at a time. My nightmares plague me—both the old ones of Germany, and that day in the desert, as well as new ones.

Of Susa screaming and reaching for me, her hand slipping out of mine every time before she’s pulled into an abyss where I can hear her screaming and can’t reach her.

Can’t save her.

Can’t keep her safe and protect her, the way I promised I would.

I cannot make myself admit that I’ll never again stare into her blue eyes. Don’t want to admit I’ll never hear her sweet moans as I make her come.

Refuse to admit that my heart breaks even more knowing the three of us will never become parents.

That it’s Owen’s most secret dream, and one I can no longer make come true for him, shatters my already shredded heart into a million jagged pieces.

* * * *

It’s the middle of the night when my personal phone rings. I don’t recognize the number, but I groggily answer anyway because I’m not sure who I gave this number to over the past three weeks. I’ve gotten used to hanging up on reporters.

“Carter Wilson.”

At first, I have difficulty understanding the caller and his accent when the man hurriedly introduces himself. It’s more my exhaustion and just-awakened state than his thickly accented English.

Yet it’s his next words that send a jolt of adrenaline pinballing through my system.

“I have positive news about your wife, Mr. Wilson. She has been recovered, and is being transported now with others.”

At first I think the man is fucking with me. As much as I’m desperate to at least recover Susa’s body to bring her home so Owen and I can have her cremated and keep her with us in some small way, I know the chances of them ever finding her or the other fifty-plus passengers who are still unaccounted for is slim to none, at this point. Not this long out. I only hope she died quickly and didn’t suffer.

I hope she died knowing how much we desperately loved her.