Maggie Taylor sat at the airport bar, drinking black coffee and trying to figure out how it all went wrong.
It’s just a job.
That had been her mantra in the months since getting back from Venezuela. Stop making it personal, stop making iteverything. Leave room for the rest of life.
Nothing focuses your attention more than being in a combat zone. You block everything else out to get through each day—and as a way to accept that you might not make it home. That’s what Taylor and everyone around her had done in Afghanistan.
The CID was different. It was still military service, but you could clock out. It was about as close as you could get to being a civilian without being a civilian.
Scott Brodie didn’t make that distinction. He’d never clocked out. He was on one long deployment, one unending war, and it wouldn’t be over until he was dead. Taylor wondered what had happened to him in Iraq. But that was a question you don’t ask.
Some soldiers say they left a part of themselves on the battlefield, but that had always sounded wrong to Taylor. She’d come home from Afghanistan with a lot more than she’d brought with her. And not good stuff.
That was one of the main draws of Scott Brodie, if she was being honest with herself. A license to be broken. To not move on. To embrace what war had done to you, and to turn that vulnerability into a weapon. But that method had its limits, and Taylor had just run into hers.
Scott, you idiot. She was worried about him. Probably more than she should be. Definitely more than he deserved.
She sipped the coffee. It was bad. Should she have a drink? She was already sitting at the bar. Well, maybe not in her state of mind. She didn’t need to amplify these feelings.
She replayed the moment at the embassy when she’d submitted her report to Jason Butler, that smug look on his face when he glanced at it. Like he was going to wipe his ass with it, and he knew that Taylor knew that, and he was just fine with it.Prick.
Something caught her eye on the TV above the bar. It was the military file photo of Harry Vance, on some German news channel. Then it cut to a podium, where a man in a suit who Taylor didn’t recognize, mid-sixties, was speaking. Standing behind him were Sharon Whitmore, Chief Inspector Schröder, and Captain Soliman, as well as two guys she didn’t recognize wearing suits with American flag lapel pins. Must be their CID replacements from the 5th MP. They looked like good guys. Hopefully they were.
There was no English closed captioning, but Taylor didn’t need it. She knew what this was. It was the beginning of the end.
She looked away from the TV, then flagged the bartender and ordered a Jack Daniel’s, neat. A touch of Tennessee in a bottle. She was depressed. Might as well ride it all the way down.
Before her drink came, a man standing slightly behind her asked, “Seat taken?”
She didn’t look at him and replied, “No.” In fact, almost none of the seats at the bar were taken. Maggie Taylor was not in the mood for this shit. She stared down into the black coffee, which was burned and bitter, just like her. She pushed it away.
The man asked, “Can I get you a Tennessee whiskey?”
She turned and looked at the man and froze. He looked back at her, a kind of glint in his eye, and that obnoxious half-smile she remembered. He looked tan. Probably had just gotten back from somewhere tropical. He’d say it was vacation, but Trent Chilcott didn’t take vacations. He traveled the world with purpose, breaking things.
Taylor recovered and asked, “What the hell are you doing here?”
Chilcott’s smile did not crack. “Work. Same as you.”
She wanted to ask how he knew she was here on assignment, but that was a stupid question to ask a CIA officer. “Small world.”
“Big world. But the world we live in is small.”
She didn’t respond to that, but asked, “Are you coming or going?”
“I’ve been here. Got in about the same time as you—and your partner.”
No use asking him how he knew that. Trent knew everything. Or pretended he did, which was part of the job. Or the act. And she was tired of his act. She asked, “What hotel was I staying at?”
Chilcott smiled. “The Art Hotel.” He opined, “Shithole,” then asked, “Where’s your partner?”
“You tell me.”
“All I know is that he’s not here.” He added, “Where he’s supposed to be.”
“People are not always where they’re supposed to be, Trent. Get used to it.”
“Thank you for that advice.” He took a seat next to her. “We need to talk.”
