Page 10 of Winter Lost

“Dad said Jimmy doesn’t get off shift until eleven p.m. We’re going to drive straight through, so it doesn’t matter when we start.”

“It’s not too late for me to fly you all out,” he said.

She smiled. “Auntie Elyna doesn’t fly, and Dad wants one last family vacation.”

“Five cops, you, and your unrelated auntie,” he said.

“Hey,” she said, “family is where you find it.”

He sat up and put his feet on the floor, resigned to getting up. “I like yours better than mine,” he admitted. “Though I still haven’t met your auntie Elyna.”

She was a writer, he’d been informed. She kept odd hours and she’d been finishing a book the past six months while he and Tammy had been falling in love. He’d bought a couple of Elyna’s books; she wrote horror good enough that he’d had to turn on every light in the condo—and laughed at himself while he did so. Tammy said Elyna wrote romances, too, but no one could get her pen name out of her.

He stood up and stretched.

Tammy watched him, her eyes appreciating what they saw.

She let the oversized T-shirt—one of his—that she’d been wearing slip to the ground. “Done sleeping?” she asked.

2

Adam

Adam entered the virtual meeting room, and four faces, including his own, filled his computer screen.

He wished he were doing this in person. He could tell a lot more when his wolf could use his senses. He could, for instance, tell if someone was lying to him. Not that he had any reason to suspect the people in this meeting of being liars. But it might be nice to be certain. Relying on virtual communications made him uneasy.

“Welcome, gentlemen,” said the man running the show. His fair hair was a faint memory, trimmed short where it still traced a circle around his head, just above his ears. He wore black-rimmed glasses like the ones that Adam’s own father had worn more than half a century ago. He looked like a mild-mannered bank clerk and had spent twenty years as a Special Forces sniper. And despite the glasses, Don Orson could still put a bullet anywhere he wanted it to go—both literally and figuratively.

Don ran the New Mexico branch of Adam’s security company, and had done so for over a decade, since Adam had moved his main operations up to the Tri-Cities. They’d worked together for five or six years before that. Don was smart and resourceful and had a reputation for honesty and forthrightness that was almost as useful as the fact that he actually was both honest and forthright. He was also better than Adam at keeping a cool head in rough waters. The fire in his eye told Adam that Don’s cool head was deserting him now.

Don didn’t like losing people any more than Adam did. They’d both lost a lot of them in war—though their wars were in different centuries. It was not acceptable to lose them here and now.

“I want explanations,” said the third of the four people in the virtual meeting.

They’d been told they would be talking to someone in the Pentagon, but Adam didn’t recognize this person, a Black man with flawless skin that would have made him look a decade younger than Don except for the strain in his eyes. He was wearing a dress shirt, sleeves rolled up mid-forearm. The small buttons of his collar were undone, so he’d probably started today with a tie.

“We are going to have to go to the press,” he said. “I don’t want to do that without more information.” He showed no signs of introducing himself.

Adam rubbed his ear as though it itched. Don’s eyes widened slightly at the signal—Adam was usually better than Don at identifying random high-ranked political appointees.

A text announced its arrival quietly, and Adam glanced down at his phone to see that Orson had sent him information. SecDef. A name might have been good, too, but the position he held was more important.

Adam examined the man currently expressing his opinion of the recent events. At some point, Adam had lost track of who held the office of Secretary of Defense. The last few years had left him disliking politics even more than usual—he hadn’t approved of any politician since John McCain died. Maybe because he and McCain had been from the same era, born to the same values, and refined in the crucible of the same war. That was a reason, but not an excuse. Adam’s job was to keep his people—pack and employees—safe. To do that, he needed to keep track of the political climate.

Technically, the national laboratories at Los Alamos were, like the ones in the Tri-Cities, under the Department of Energy, even the secret labs like the one in question. That was why Adam’s security company was employed rather than the military. Adam wasn’t sure why they were talking to the SecDef instead of the Secretary of Energy. It might be important.

The SecDef demonstrated that he’d been a general at some point with a five-minute screed designed to make all of them sit up and pay attention. Orson looked serious but not worried, Adam’s own face was blank, and so—Adam noted with interest—was the face of their fourth member.

The young Hispanic man wore his Hauptman Security uniform with the same smartness he’d have worn his marine uniform. His straight back was obvious even in the limited screen view. His skin bore shadows that spoke of fatigue, and his eyes looked a little reddened. He’d been awake since he’d gone on shift last night, Adam knew. He’d refused to go home until after this meeting. He was their man on the ground.

Ortega had been patrolling with another guard when they’d been ambushed. His partner had been killed immediately. By Ortega’s account, Ortega had killed two people and wounded a third before the enemy withdrew, leaving only his dead comrade to verify his story. The enemy had taken their dead and wounded—and inexplicably (for now), the cameras in that area had been off.

That lack of corroborative evidence apparently bothered the SecDef, too. Eventually, he turned his considerable ire on the former marine corporal, Ortega.

Adam would have interfered then, but Ortega wasn’t flinching. If he could hold up under the barrage, it would do the whole situation a lot of good. If the SecDef learned a little respect for their witness, matters would be considerably cleaner. Adam caught Don’s eye and shook his head, telling him to stand down, too.

Adam wished they were all in a room together. It would be a lot easier to make these calls.

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