Still Alive

JONATO Base, Doha, Qatar

Wednesday, September 30, 2015, 9:30 AM

"It's simply a gut feeling that's been nagging at me, and everyone I've spoken to shrugs their shoulders because it's unimportant to them."

Brigadier General Morton Standish steepled his fingers as he listened to the colonel.

"Why is it important to you? You're supposed to stay in your own hula hoop, Bragg, you know that."

"Sir, permission to speak freely?"

Standish nodded. "By all means."

"That lady from Wolfram Resources did a fucking good job of guarding her words, and I couldn't read anything else by how she was conducting herself … I don't know, Mort. Wright's abduction wasn't coincidental. He was targeted for reasons I can't fathom, and, as I mentioned to you several weeks ago, Wolfram already had an interest in him.

"I understand what you're saying about this being out of my reach, but the fact that one of my own men was taken against his will and beaten for days is definitely within my hula hoop, as you put it, especially because I'm down a headcount and don't know whether he's going to return or be discharged."

"I understand your frustration, Richard, but I'm not sure what else I can do other than make a few upstream calls."

"Would you? Please?"

"Okay. I'll do my best. Dismissed."

Arlington, VA

Monday, October 5, 2015, 2:00 PM EDT

"That's a wrap," Jeff Wesson said, concluding their Monday staff meeting. "We've got nothing bubbling in the pot this week yet, so I want everyone who's qualified on anything doing periodic maintenance, software updates and patches, you know the drill. Any questions?"

The twenty-eight people in the largest conference room at Wolfram Resources shook their heads.

"Outstanding. Get to it. Martel, can you join me in my office? I have something I'd like to run by you," Wesson asked.

Martel ducked into the break room to grab an energy drink before joining Wesson in his spacious corner office.

"Close the door," he said when she stepped in.

Seldom did good news follow such a request. Martel's brows furrowed slightly in caution, a signal he noticed.

"Nothing's wrong, just want this to be on the DL for now. Relax. Paul Vogel, the VP of physical security at Teegram, called me on Friday expressing his thanks and offered kudos for the training you and Keel gave them last week. They said it was well worth the time their executives spent. I know it was a one-off, but I think your suggestion went between their goalposts. After all, helping their folks see and avoid the risks of being exploited helps everyone."

"That's great to know. Thanks," Martel said.

"I'm wondering if you might consider making it less of a one-off and more of a regular thing."

"What do you mean?"

"I've known Paul for years. He's a difficult man to impress. And since you did, I'm thinking I might redirect your experience and expertise into making it a course we can offer to all of our contracted clients. Large scale."

"I'm not sure we're geared up for that."

"I know we're not. If you're interested, you'd create a new department. You will have full rein. Staffing and everything. I'll even let you hand-select a couple of people from any of the other teams to help."

"Like Kris and Grady?"

"One, but not both. I'm hoping one will help you out, and the other might be willing to take over as logistics manager for your team."

"Are you kidding me? This sounds like an incredible opportunity, and the timing couldn't be better."

"Why's that?"

Ashley hesitated.

"Out with it," Wesson pushed. "What are you keeping from me?"

"To be honest, I'm approaching burnout. The Wright thing was … I don't know. It left its mark, no pun intended."

He sighed. "Ashley, you should have

told

me."

"You're right, of course, but I wasn't sure what would happen if I did. I mean … I was worried about what else I would be able to do. Going back to legal⁠—"

"Now you have another option. Is it a yes?"

"Yeah," she said after a few moments of deeper consideration. "Absolutely."

"Good. Draft a game plan and a blurb for the website but keep it all under wraps for now. We can talk about it next week."

Martel smiled and nodded.

"Speaking of the Wright thing, are you still chasing that character?"

"Uh … no. I don't guess I am," she answered.

"Gave up, huh?"

"I'm not sure how to answer that."

"Oh? Something happen?"

"I met him. In person."

Wesson's eyes showed his surprise as he lowered his head to peer at her over his glasses. "Yet another thing you've kept from me. Why am I just now hearing about this?"

Martel shrugged. "Well … you warned me about not sticking my neck out too far."

"That I did. Go on."

"You remember standing in my office when I called him?"

Wesson nodded. "I left before he answered."

"We talked on the phone for a few minutes, and I learned he was here in the metro area. He'd been moved to Walter Reed's ICU from the JONATO base hospital. He was released last month but is still sticking around until he gets cleared for duty.

"Anyway, he asked if we could meet for coffee. And …"

"And?" Wesson pressed after she paused.

"Al Bahbijn," she answered. "It was him, Jeff. I'm certain of it."

Wesson's surprise was evident in how he immediately erected himself in his chair. "He

told

you?"

"No, but that guy better avoid Vegas if he knows what's good for his bank account, because he has no poker face whatsoever. After some small talk, I laid it all out in front of him. He almost choked on his tongue.

"I mentioned the incident on the peninsula, the 2009 thing with Pablo Fuente, the one in Bhudraja, and … well, you were sort of right."

"About what, exactly?" Wesson asked, twirling a pen between his fingers.

"He thought I was trying to blackmail him, that I was some bogeyman out to get him."

"Yeah," he said, nodding knowingly.

"I was able to walk it back, though. I swore up and down that I had no ulterior motives, that I just wanted to know, and was only trying to render a connection to the fates of Farah Salman and Jassim Kahn. It took some work, but I managed to convince him that his secrets are safe."

"Okay, then what?"

"Things turned around. He invited me to join him for dinner. I accepted and asked where. It was the cutest thing when, outside of the coffee shop, he walked backwards a few yards, and opened another door." She chuckled. "It was a tapas bar.

"We …

he

ordered for both of us, in what the waitress said was excellent Spanish. We talked about ourselves and how we got to where we are. The guy even spent time on an aircraft carrier. Nifty, huh?

"He has an incredible sense of humor. He had me laughing a lot. He really is a very likable guy. Did you know his eyes are two different colors? One's green, the other's blue.

Very

striking. Anyway, he was totally chill until our dishes came.

"Tapas, you know? Dishes meant to be shared. It's a culture thing in Spain, I guess. Anyway, not two minutes after our food came to the table, the guy was paying the tab, leaving me sitting alone at the table with a crap-ton of food and sangria. The waitress boxed it all up to go. I had enough for days, but the sangria didn't⁠—"

Martel's lips stalled as her mind went into overdrive.

"Oh. My. God. Maybe she was

right

," she half-whispered.

"Start over. You're talking too fast, and I'm lost," Wesson said. "Other than packing up the food, what'd a server have to do with anything?"

Though Martel heard the words, her brain refused to let go of visuals replaying in the cinema of her mind. She downed two swigs of the cold energy drink.

"The forks. The fucking

forks

." Another gulp.

"Never heard that kind of spicy salsa from

your

jar," Wesson said with a chuckle. "What's going on with you?"

She had completely tuned the man out.

The waitress was right. I was wrong. I felt … I've been

lying

to myself.

"It was a

spark

."

"Hey!" Wesson said more loudly. "A what?"

The jarring sound returned Martel to the present. "A spark, Jeff. There was a spark."

"What the hell does that mean?"

"Sparks start fires. Fires burn things," she concluded. She drained the can of Red Bull Zero.

"You're making no sense," Wesson said, confused.

"I know. Are we done here?"

"Yeah, but ease up on that stuff, Martel. It's doing weird things to you."

She ignored his advice, stopping at the break room just long enough to drop the empty aluminum can in the recycle box and pull a full one from the refrigerator before almost sprinting to her office. She closed and locked the door, pacing the floor, scrolling through contacts on her phone. She selected one and made a call.

"Hello?" said a woman.

"Ms. Carter, it's Ashley Martel. Do you have a minute?"

"Anything wrong? You sound agitated."

"No, but I need to ask you a question. I'm calling you instead of Erin or Adam … I need to know something I doubt Adam would tell me because … you know, Marines and their

Semper Fi

⁠—"

"Slow down. What do you want to know?"

"When I was there with you all at the airport, we were talking about Mark's relationships with Farah Salman and the woman who was in his unit. I just now remembered something your brother-in-law said when he was describing Mark's reaction to his squad member's death. He said it was

another

gut punch, and that Wright'd had more than his share. I don't know how to keep this from sounding horrible, so I'll just ask. Ms. Carter, were there others?"

The line went silent.

"Shannon?" Martel prompted as it stretched.

"Yeah. There were."

"Can you tell me more?"

What the woman on the other end of the call related to Martel over the course of fifteen minutes had the distant one crying and brought seeds of tears to Martel's eyes, as well.

When Shannon finished, Ashley said, "I know this was difficult for you, so … thank you."

"I hope it somehow helps."

"Me, too."

"Bye," Shannon said before the call disconnected.

Ashley reclined in her chair, placed her cellphone on her desk, and focused on a fire sprinkler cover in a ceiling tile overhead.

"Can women be douchebags? Apparently, because I was. I let this job cloud my judgment. My god. This guy's been torched so many times I'm surprised he's anything but a pile of smoldering embers," she murmured to herself.

She reached for her phone and called Mark Wright's. That the call went immediately to voicemail didn't surprise her. The prior four during the intervening two weeks had, as well. The scattered texts she had sent remained unread. She'd been blocked.

She brought up a street map on her iMac and located the intersection of P and Seventh. Into the map's search bar, she typed "lodging" and noted the locations displayed near the shopping center where they'd had coffee and conversation.

She scrunched her eyes tightly closed so the images her memory projected on her mental screen would come into clearer focus.

"Come on, come on, come on," she whispered to herself, trying to recall the branding of the key card she had seen in Mark's cell case when he returned his Visa to its pocket. A logo came in an eidetic flash of memory. She found the matching brand on the map.

The Corps couldn't put the man in a better place?

she wondered as she transcribed an address into her phone's nav app.

She left her office for the storage room to check out a piece of equipment. A thirty-minute drive followed before she entered the parking lot of a motel. The available spaces weren't ideal vantage points for observation, so she chose an alternate plan by pulling into a stall across the street at a competitor's property.

She went to the office, requested a room on the second floor, and removed binoculars from a Pelican case after she entered it. It was the type of place which only accepted cash, and she was thankful she had the forty dollars required. She removed the binoculars from its case after she entered it.

"Shouldn't be surprised," she groaned when she saw two opened condom packets were on the stained carpet where the bed met the wall. She had no intention of looking for their contents.

She listened to music for hours until her AirPods' batteries died. She was almost ready to give up on her plan when she observed a familiar figure jogging toward the intersection. The person stopped at the crosswalk, and Martel drew a bead with the binoculars.

The man's chest was heaving, his shirt showing evidence of intense exercise as he waited for the crossing signal to change. When it did, he watched the traffic slow to a stop before he crossed the eight lanes of the road. He slowed as the distance shortened, cooling down. He glanced at the fitness app on his smart watch.

He turned toward his motel but suddenly hesitated. He pivoted, looked left and right across the four-lane road, heading in the direction of the motel Martel was in.

"

Shit

," Martel said with a gasp when he approached her car. He studied it as he had in the parking lot of the coffee shop. Unlike there, though, she saw him take a photograph or video of it using his phone before he began tapping on its screen.

A few seconds later, Martel's vibrated. She read the incoming message.

I don't like being stalked burner

… followed by a picture of her DC License Plate which held the characters "3URNER."

"I guess it's a start, at least," she whispered to no one.

Please. Don't move. I'm coming outside.

She packed the binoculars, tossed the room's keycard on the bed, and exited. Wright was standing near her car. She unlocked it and placed the Pelican case in the passenger seat before closing the door.

Mark strode up to her with purpose. "What the fuck, Martel? What are you doing here?"

"Getting closure, I hope."

"Closure for what?"

She grasped his muscular arms, rose on her toes, and kissed the man's cheek.

"That," she whispered. "Sorry. I'll go now."

"Oh, no you won't," Wright growled. "What the hell was that for?"

"To be honest? That was for me. Call me a selfish bitch if you want, but when I had an idea of why you ditched me at the restaurant and blocked my calls, I needed closure. Tell me I'm wrong, but I think we were truly becoming comfortable in each other's company, enjoying each other's histories, and … yeah. Enjoying ourselves. I think maybe I was even flirting a little.

"I know, it probably sounds stupid and juvenile, but the thing when our forks got tangled up was like our own little spaghetti noodle minute. You realized it

way

faster than me, and I think it panicked you."

"What the hell does pasta have to do with anything?"

"That old-ass Disney movie where two dogs were eating the same piece of pasta and they⁠—"

"You're out of your mind."

"You're probably right, but it made me catch on to what I think caused you to split."

"And that is?"

"Your past."

"Oh. Freaking great. Exactly what events are you going to accuse me of now?"

"You getting your heart devastated. Punishingly and … repeatedly."

Mark stared at Ashley in silence for a long beat. He laughed nervously. "Someone talked. I'm guessing it was Shannon or Erin."

"Shannon said nothing I couldn't have found in newspaper archives if I knew names and dug in."

"She's always had a little something for me, I think."

"You're right, because you're a person from her childhood she loves like a brother that's been hurt way too many times. She has the compassion to try to break the cycle."

"How? How's she going to do that?"

"Maybe she already has, Mark. Even though she doesn't know it, she led me to a point where I began to understand the context of your existence. I see now that what you've been doing on the sly for at least the last ten years has been a vengeful release that's going to wind up getting you killed some day!"

"Good

god

," he hissed. "Keep your voice down, would you? How does that give you closure?""

Ashley cast her eyes down to the sidewalk.

Mark pressed forward. "I still don't understand why you did what you just did. How does that give you any sort of closure?"

"Because I finally realized that I've become pretty freaking interested in you, and I don't mean simple curiosity. Even though you bolted out of the tapas bar like your hair was on fire, the time we spent together was a nice first date. And … if me kissing your cheek was the last, at least I got one."

"A date?" Mark said before laughing hard. "Wow. Aren't you the presumptuous woman."

"Mayhaps, but it's true. I like you. You're incredibly handsome, incredibly smart, and incredibly industrious. You're kind of … a genius."

"I don't know about that, but I'm pretty sure I'm broken, and no one else needs the sort of baggage I bring."

"No. You're burned, not broken."

Wright went silent at her words, uncertain of what to say. He decided, once again, to change the subject.

"Speaking of which … Burner?" he asked, pointing at her license plate.

"Yeah. It's what the guys at work dubbed me."

"Let me guess. Is it because your name … well, both of them, have Ash in them?"

She nodded slowly as her face formed a tender smile. "I knew you were a smart man. I think I'll ditch the plates and drop the nickname for something else. What I know now paints the name with a connotation I don't care for."

Again, Mark studied Ashley's eyes and expression. He saw nothing but sincerity.

"I remembered seeing this car in the parking lot at the coffee shop because of how nice it looked. I should probably tell you that it sticks out like a sore thumb in this neighborhood, so you might want to improve your approach if stealth was what you were aiming for."

"Fair point," she said with a chuckle. "Do they give you guys call signs, too?"

"No, but the flyboys give them to each other. Adam's is Kolache. If you talk to him again, ask him how he earned it. It's a funny … if not a wee bit bawdy story."

"I will," she answered and stared into the most beautiful eyes she'd ever seen. "Mark, healing starts with talking. Talk to a pro."

"It'd be too risky to talk to anyone about certain aspects of my life."

"Then talk about others. As for some of the things? I'm already aware."

"And, because you have a degree in psychology, you'll be my therapist?"

"I don't have a license to practice in that field, either, but we could talk anyway."

Wright focused on Martel's eyes. He'd long before found them to be entrancing. He allowed himself to soak them in.

"I'm sorry for being a dick," he cautiously said.

"Same, because I was a jane."

"A wh⁠— Dick and Jane? Nice. You're saying we're equals?"

"Maybe we're equally messed up."

"Who exactly

are

you?" he asked, quizzically.

"

Watashi wa Mato Ashuri

."

"

Hajimemashite, Ashuri-san

."

Ashley grinned with raised eyebrows. "Someone's been studying something."

"Yeah. YouTube," Mark said as he reached toward her, worried she'd retreat.

She didn't. He drew two fingertips of his right hand along her jawline. It warmed him when she turned her cheek into his palm. He moved forward a single step to return the kiss Martel had given him. Its tenderness flipped her senses inside out.

"I like you too, Ash," he whispered.

She placed her arms under his to draw him close.

"Uh … I don't think you want to do that."