Page 7 of Radar

“I haven’t said thank you yet.”

“That’s not a thing we say to each other. It’s a given that we help when we can.”

“Still.” Xander swallowed as the bitter taste of bile slicked up the back of his throat. Fear was fear. They trained his team to feel it, deal with it, and do their job. But they could never train a soldier enough to make fear go completely away. “Thank you.”

The bartender showed up with the shots on his tray and set two in front of each of them.

When he was back behind the counter, Xander said, “I haven’t seen you since Peter was brought home. You know about that?”

“Johnna White got word to me, yes. His death has been hard,” Anna admitted, pulling one of the shots in front of her and looking into the amber liquid. “Here in Bratislava alone and all. It would have been good for the team to get together.” She lifted her gaze. “Have you seen Tink?”

“Tink is having a lot of mental health issues. She just wanted her husband buried at home, and the time it took the Kyrgyz government to repatriate him seemed to have broken her.”

“God.” Anna’s face melted into grief.

Xander lifted his glass and waited.

Quietly, Anna intoned. “Peter, never forgotten.”

“Never forgotten.”

They tossed the whiskey back. The shot slid aggressively down Xander’s throat, landing in his gut. As they sat in silence, each in their own head, Xander remembered Peter and Tink falling in love, getting married, and serving side by side. He wondered if being in the same fight, shoulder to shoulder, made the job easier or if it was a distraction and added burden.

Xander didn’t have a good point of reference. He’d never been in love. He didn’t even know if he had the capacity for the kind of devotion he’d seen between Tink and Peter.

Of course, with his job, Xander was never in a single place long enough to form those kinds of bonds. When Xander dated, he wasn’t seeking out the type of woman who wanted a stable relationship. He dated busy women. Distracted women. It worked best for everyone. But, as he stared into his empty glass, he thought he was probably making a mistake.

Just not a mistake he knew how to correct.

Xander lifted the second shot. “This one is for f’ing Delta Force Echo and Jett finding and saving Scott and Tink.”

“To Echo and Jett with gratitude.” Anna downed the shot, then dragged the back of her hand across her lips to catch the drips. “Just say it, Xander.”

“Say what?”

“You’re always saying ‘f’ing.’ If you want to drop the F-bomb, have the balls to drop it.”

Xander shook his head. “I promised my grandmother I’d never say the word again. It’s stress relieving, though, biting my teeth into my lip and hissing out my frustration, so ‘f’ing’ is my compromise. Has been and will be.”

Anna tipped her head. “How old were you when you made this promise to your grandma?”

He shrugged. “Six, maybe.”

“Six,” she repeated with emphasis, maybe some exasperation. “This was your Babka Belov?”

“Babka Belov swore like a drunken sailor. No. This was my Oma Meyer, my mom’s side. A promise is a promise. I never go back on my word.”

Anna rested her elbows on the table, leaning forward with a heavy sigh. “I know it’s not me putting the world in danger. It’s my family. But I still feel responsible for what happened to the AWG team in the Kyrgyzstan mountains, for Tink’s pain and Peter’s death. I keep thinking that if I had done my job better, I could have pinpointed The Family’s damned doomsday machine and would have known exactly what they were testing out there and why.” She frowned deeply. And Xander sat silently, giving her the space to say what she needed to say when she had so few opportunities to express herself freely.

The pause was long and poignant.

“While the team was roaming the Kyrgyzstan mountains and facing death,” tears filled Anna’s eyes, “I was fine dining and going to the opera in beautiful ball gowns.” She shifted her gaze off into the distance, looking miserable.

“We each have our roles to play,” Xander said. He understood that guilt. He felt it acutely. His AWG team needed him, but he was elsewhere doing his bit. This spring, though, he’d get his turn in the mountains searching for the Zorics’ Machine Against Humanity.

“You’re the first person I’ve seen from the old team. When White told me about Peter, she’d started to tell me about Scott getting injured, but we were interrupted before I heard the story.”

“Here’s the short version,” Xander said. “When Peter and Tink were in trouble, Peter set off a flare, hoping his signal would get them help. Scott was up on the mountain alone with his AWG K9 Digger. Scott saw Peter’s signal and raced up the mountain to see the trajectory so he could figure out the point of origin, and his foot went into a crag.”

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