Chapter Eight #3
Quaid looked to Mackey. He was out of his depth, but Mackey’s expression was pained, too. As a man with a mother, five sisters, and a father who had died suddenly several years ago, family shit hit him hard, too.
“We have to tell Bess,” Elizabeth repeated.
Harrison put his hands on his hips, lips tight, reluctant to say what was on his mind. As Hunt’s former commander, this situation may have been repeated in some form or another in his command experience.
But Quaid liked all the facts before reacting. “Harry, what’s your take?”
Elizabeth stiffened.
“For context,” he whispered to Elizabeth.
Harrison studied Elizabeth closely. “The Navy will want DNA to confirm. Dangerous to do that before its born. That’s all I was going to say.”
Hunt set Cait on her feet, and the two moved closer to the group.
The six of them stood in a loose circle, reaching for each other.
The thick silence held a hard hit of grief.
Their shared history awakened old instincts developed from shared missions, dangerous situations, multiple deaths, and silent commitment.
They pulled together. They always had since Afghanistan.
Mackey looked to Hunt. “What would Baxter want?”
Hunt cleared his throat, his eyes flat. “He loved kids. Would have been a great father. He’d want us to do what we could to help her.”
“Bess is that baby’s grandmother. We cannot exclude her.” Elizabeth’s soft voice rang with stubbornness.
“And you shouldn’t.” Alanna stood in the doorway, papers in one hand and the other on the doorknob, eyes focused on Elizabeth.
A silence fell, tight and unforgiving.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to interrupt. I could hear.” She moved a few steps into the room.
Quaid was torn in two. A deep desire to pull Alanna in sparked its way through him. But this was family, their family business, and Alanna, as much as he liked her, wasn’t in this core. They protected each other at all costs.
She licked her lips and continued softly, showing respect and deference to the topic. “Let Bess keep her agency. The power of her motherhood and making choices he would have wanted is all she has left. Keep that intact for her.”
Elizabeth nodded, her eyes steady on Alanna’s face. “She’s right.”
Alanna’s eyes shifted to Hunt and Cait. “And it costs you nothing to help this woman. Even if it turns out later everything isn’t as it seems because sometimes you have to take your miracles when you get them.”
Cait’s eyes glossed over with tears. “Thanks,” she whispered.
“I’m here if you need a shoulder.” She walked out, shutting the door behind her.
She never looked his way, clearly not expecting anything. That pounded a crater into his world.
People expected things from him.
She expected nothing.
That bit at him.
He inhaled quietly, searching for stable ground in his head.
Agency. A word she knew everything about.
&&&&&&&&&&
Alanna didn’t have an office as such at QM, so she retreated to her living quarters on the fifth floor.
She wanted no company. She needed the quiet after Drucker lectured her about her hearing, and she needed to think, to keep her reactions private.
She swallowed two Tylenol, kicked off her shoes, and fell face first on the bed.
Boss reports be damned. The room with its quiet colors and soft textures on the bed soothed as she’d hoped because the rest of her was in turmoil.
To find them all like that – together – left her on the outside. Not with meanness or on purpose, but with shared history she didn’t have with them. There was grief there, yes, but deep loyalty, too, all wrapped in an authentic brotherhood and a meaningful common purpose.
Quaid belonged right in the middle. They were close those six people. Their shorthand with each other, the shared wound, their trust, and the instinctive protection said it all. Those men had been to war together, and it united them.
Seeing Quaid without his mask cracked her impressions of him, too.
She didn’t know his full story and had used her assumptions instead.
Foolish and short-sighted. He wasn’t shallow.
He compartmentalized, only giving the personal parts of himself to those who cared enough to understand him.
Granted, she had only interacted with him superficially for two weeks and intensely for three days, but facing death together changed both of them.
She’d been at the FBI for close to seven years, and she had people she knew, a boss she trusted, but none did she let in.
That chilled her.
She swept apart the bed to cover herself with the white fuzzy blanket, needing the warmth even though the room was a perfect temperature.
A reaction to teenage trauma or a choice?
Maybe both, but she wasn’t a team with those people like QM was to its crew or like those six friends were to each other. She never realized the depth of that deficit, what it meant, or that it would tear at tender places because it was a flaw inside her.
To have a partner, a colleague, a friend to turn to – she drew in a sharp breath and held it, trying to squash the spreading ache – that idea had always represented a risk, a danger in her world, and she’d never wanted to take it. Until now…