Page 18

THE WAITRESS COULDN’T hold off any longer. We all ordered something we knew we wouldn’t eat, and with the weight of all that I now knew hanging on my shoulders, I hardly noticed Nick leave to get some air. Karli Breecher and I sat ignoring each other and our coffees, taking some solace in watching two small kids racing each other up and down the aisle beside the booth in which we sat.

“Nick said you guys were checking in with each other every couple of months,” I said eventually.

“Right.” Breecher nodded. “That was something Master and Dorrich insisted on. They wanted to make sure no one was going to talk. After a while, I found myself checking in on them too.”

“Why?”

Breecher eased air through her lungs.

“Because they were my teammates,” she said. “Yes, they did a terrible, terrible thing. But I can’t just shake off what we went through together. It does something to you. Fuses you together. I don’t know. Maybe I wanted to understand what they did, or… see if it had any effect on them.”

She held her head the same way Nick had, like the sheer burden of her troubles was weighing down her skull.

“I guess I just didn’t see that Dorrich was on the edge.”

“What do you think his message means?” I asked. “Who do you think he means has found out? And why didn’t he give Nick a heads-up, too?”

“I don’t know. And it could be anyone.” Breecher shrugged. “A journalist? The New York Times is always looking for stories like this, trying to undermine the whole deployment. This would be an international sensation. And then the trial. A trial would be…” Words failed her. “But maybe it’s someone inside the army. Or maybe one of the relatives.”

“How did the killings play out to the people over there when it happened?” I asked. “Surely something like that didn’t go unnoticed.”

“We made the whole thing look legitimate,” Breecher said. “Dorrich and Master instructed us on what to do. After the family was… when there was no one left alive, we took the farmers’ old rifles and shot up our own vehicle. Then we fired on the house from the outside. When it came to explaining what had happened, we told our superiors that two men from the house had fired on us out in the desert. We said it was a random act. Unprovoked.”

Breecher paused to wipe at her eyes.

“We told them we did what any other company would do. What we were trained to do,” she continued. “We pursued the men to a small farmhouse and engaged them there. We said we didn’t know there was a family inside until it was too late.”

“I don’t understand.” I shook my head. “Why would Dorrich and Master do something like this? Was it for kicks? Was this a game to them? Why did they take you two along? They must have told you something.”

Breecher wouldn’t look at me. I gave up on getting an answer for now, while everything was so raw. Her face had become aloof and stiff again, like a wall.

“Where’s Master?” I asked. “He might know what Dorrich was talking about in the message.”

“He’s not answering his calls,” Breecher said. “I went to his house and it’s locked up tight. If he knew we were in danger, he’d have told us. Rick probably heard Dorrich was dead and did what I did: went to ground until he could figure out what the situation is. I was hoping Nick would know more, or be able to help me track Master down so we could ask him together.”

I saw Nick through the glass front doors of the IHOP, standing with his back to us, watching cars roll in and out of the lot, his breath making mist in the cold air.

“What’s his situation like?” Breecher asked, nodding toward my friend. “It’s been a few months since Jones and I talked. He sounded strange last time. Like he was distracted.”

“He’s been surviving,” I said.

“Jones told me he’s had some mental health issues,” Breecher said. “Last year. Starting to hear voices, get paranoid. It’s probably natural for us all to feel a little paranoid, knowing what we did. But is it serious?”

I explained a little about how Nick had fled Baltimore wanting a reprieve from violence in his life. I talked a bit about the Inn on the Sea, the town of Gloucester, how I watched out for Nick, tried to read his moods and head off any episodes. I held off on the more serious details of Nick’s mental health—his violence, his delusions, his ability to lose all sense of time and place, finding himself lost in memories or newly created dreams, and waking with no recollection of his behavior during those times. Those were not my tales to tell. “When Nick starts to flounder, me and the other people at the inn, we help him out.”

“What’s he been doing for work?” Breecher asked.

“He has his benefits,” I said. “And I pay him to fix things around the inn now and then.”

“So that’s all he does?” she asked. “He’s just been hanging around? Living on his benefits?”

“Yes.” I felt an awkward flutter in my chest. “Why? Are you worried about his financial situation? Has he said something?”

“No, no,” Breecher said and shifted in her seat as Nick slipped back through the doors of the IHOP and headed toward us. “I just want to know he’s OK. He’s not the most forthcoming guy in the world, as you can imagine. And I think he’s better when he’s busy. We all are. Veterans. We need a mission.”

“We should go,” Nick said when he got to the table. He flopped a couple of bills onto the table, for the uneaten food. “We can sit here and talk about this all day long, but the reality is that we’re not safe here. And until we figure out what’s coming for us, we need to do the smartest thing we can in a situation like this.”

“What?” I asked.

“Return to base,” Nick said.