The Last Hour (Thompson Sisters), Sheehan-Miles, Charles [reading an ebook .txt] 📗

brought only grief and loss. Sarah settled in next to me, and said, “Is your Mom always like that?”

I shook my head. “No. But this isn’t exactly normal circumstances.”

“No shit. I can’t wait until your mother and mine meet up. I wonder if we can get body armor for everyone else.”

“A long as they leave Carrie alone.”

“I’ve never seen her go off like that before.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Yeah?”

She nodded. “Carrie’s a tiger when it comes to defending or protecting the rest of us. But on her own behalf? It’s never really been like that.”

“Maybe it just hasn’t been necessary. ’Cause I’ve seen her blow her stack a couple times.” I’d sure as hell seen her that way. Only because occasionally I’m a complete idiot. You wouldn’t know it from her normally icy calm exterior, but that woman’s got a temper.

“I don’t believe it,” Sarah said. She looked at me with wild eyes.

“Trust me,” I said, a grin forming on my face. “Next time you’re at the condo, ask her why we have new sliding glass doors.”

“No!”

I nodded.

“That must have been some disagreement,” she said. “What did she do?”

“You know that copper head that sits on the mantel?”

“The head! Of course I remember it!” As she said the words, a nostalgic grin crossed her face. I looked at her, eyes raised, hoping she would elaborate.

“I don’t remember exactly how old we were ... maybe four? Julia had gone away to college, so it would have been about then. Carrie would go get the head, and sneak it into our room at night, and tell these bloodcurdling ghost stories to me and Jessica and Alexandra. Stuff about spirits from Jakarta which followed the head back when Dad brought it back to the states, and how they would get revenge in all kinds of bloody ways. It was so freaky. I don’t know where she thought up all that stuff. Jessica was terrified of that head. And Mom would freak when she found us, because the head is some kind of antique.”

I glanced at Carrie, who sat, arms folded across her chest, pointedly not looking at my mother. I tried to imagine her as a mischievous teenager, sneaking into her twin sisters’ bedroom at night to tell ghost stories. I could just see it. I didn’t know that side of her, but the more Sarah told me about their childhood, and how Carrie had sheltered and protected her sisters, it became just one more reason to love.

I choked up a little as I said, “Sarah, I want to get out of this. I haven’t known Carrie nearly long enough.”

 She nodded. “She’s the best big sister you could ever imagine.”

I squeezed my eyes shut for a second, rubbing my fingers against my eyelids.

“So why did she throw the head anyway? What did you do to her?”

I laughed. “Some things stay private, Sarah.”

What I’d done was made a complete ass of myself, and I didn’t really want to share that with Sarah right now. I mean, nobody’s perfect. Least of all, me. But that night I’d hurt her, and Carrie hadn’t deserved it. She hadn’t deserved it at all.

The truth is, from the moment Major Smalls and Jared Coombs showed up at our hotel in New York on New Year’s morning, I think I figured Carrie was going to flake out on me. They had led me downstairs that day, to an ugly looking government sedan, where I sat in the back seat. Coombs had driven, heading out of the city at a good clip. And all I could think at the time was that none of this was going to lead anywhere good. Even if I won, we were still going to lose. And I wouldn’t have blamed her. I wouldn’t have blamed her at all, if she’d just deleted my number off her phone and moved on.

We were halfway through New Jersey when I felt like it was confirmed, because my phone hadn’t made a single chirp. No incoming messages, no nothing. I slipped it out of my pocket and realized what a complete idiot I was. The phone was dead because I hadn’t charged it. I’d had much bigger things on my mind.

“So what’s the plan, Major?” I had asked her.

She glanced over her shoulder at me. “You’ll in-process at Fort Myers, and for now you’re assigned to Headquarters, Criminal Investigation Division. We get you settled in there and figure out what’s next.”

“So we’re winging it?”

“Does that bother you, Sergeant?”

“It kind of makes it hard to make life plans. You know I’ve got college apps in for the fall.”

“Where?”

“American University. Georgetown.”

“Well, that’s convenient. We won’t be far away, if you get held over past the fall.”

Jesus. “You think this is all going to take that long?”

She nodded. “More than likely. The investigating officer was appointed late last week. He’ll be collecting information for some time, before we even get to the hearings.”

“I don’t know how all of this works,” I said. “And why Washington, anyway? I’m surprised this isn’t happening at Fort Drum.”

“Normally it would,” she said, “but Sergeant First Class Colton is currently a patient at Walter Reed.”

I grimaced. “Really? What happened?” Colton and I hadn’t exactly stayed in touch since I left the Army.

“A stroke, and there’s been some complications. He was transferred to Walter Reed last week, so they made the call to conduct the investigation out of here. Aren’t you happy? Isn’t your girlfriend going to work for NIH?”

I nodded, though I was disturbed they even knew about Carrie’s fellowship. I certainly hadn’t told Smalls about it. But they’d already shown far more knowledge of our lives than I was comfortable with.

“How constrained are my movements going to be? Am I restricted to the base? Will I be able to see Carrie?”

Smalls frowned. “I don’t see any reason for any kind of restrictions, Sergeant; you’ll be treated just like any other soldier on active duty. You’ll have assignments, a job to do, and will have normal time