In the Grey (7 page)

“
Precisely,” Ben
said.

Alex hugged
Max.

“
Do you want to do it?”
Ben pointed to Alex. “It’s either you or Patrick.”

“
Why not you?” Alex
asked.

“
Because I’m going to find
out why the hell Wyatt Klaussen, MD, PhD was programmed,” Ben
looked furious. “He’s family now, and God damn it if I’m going
to . . .”

The toilet flushed inside
the bathroom. Wyatt opened the door.

“
I’d prefer Alex, if
that’s all right,” Wyatt said. “I trust her completely, and I’d
rather not do it in front of my fathers-in-law.”

“
You don’t have to do
this,” Max said.

“
Did I split?” Wyatt asked
Ben.

“
Yes, son,” Ben
said.

“
You were disorganized at
first – some there, some here – and then you switched,” Alex
said.

“
You brought me back?”
Wyatt asked Alex.

“
I did,” Ben said. “It
looks like you have a complete separate identity. I’m
sorry.”

“
Then I have to do this,”
Wyatt put his arms on Max’s shoulders. “I want to be able to trust
myself with you, with our children, with the family. I can’t do
that now.”

“
We’ll leave you,” Ben
said. He looked at Max and added, “Ten minutes.”

Max gave a sad nod. Alex
followed Ben out of the room.

FFFFFF

Saturday, early
morning

November 6 – 3:21 a.m.
MDT

Denver,
Colorado

Raz leaned back against
the hot tub in a small window-lined room behind the kitchen of the
house next to the rooming house. He gazed up at the stars through
the line of windows in the ceiling and let the warm water work on
his tight sore body. He felt a nudge and looked up to see his
girlfriend, Samantha Hargreaves, holding out a full glass of red
wine to him. He smiled and took the glass. She slipped off her silk
robe and got in the tub with him.

“
How was it?” she
asked.

“
Awful,” he said. “One of
the most painful things I’ve ever been involved with.”

“
Can you tell me why it
was so bad?” Samantha asked.

“
I can always tell you
about me,” Raz smiled and put his hand on her thigh.

“
Why was it bad for you?”
Samantha asked.

“
Because I like Wyatt,”
Raz said. “And I know Alex likes Wyatt, but
she . . .”

He shook his head and
emptied his glass. Samantha smiled. She reached over and refilled
his glass.

“
I brought two bottles,”
Samantha said.

He kissed her.

“
Alex can be so fierce, so
tough,” Samantha said. “And all the while, she seems so incredibly
kind.”

“
I could hear the
kindness, her caring for Wyatt, and she just kept pressing,” Raz
said. “I would have let up but . . . I would have
been wrong.”

“
I watched while she
interrogated the senator, you know the
guy . . .”

“
Last summer,” Raz
said.

“
She was awesome,”
Samantha said.

“
She wasn’t very nice to
the senator,” Raz said.

“
No, she was not,”
Samantha said. “I just . . . I know what you
mean.”

Raz put his arm around her
and closed his eyes.

“
Whatcha thinking?”
Samantha asked.

“
I’m thinking this hot tub
was a wonderful idea,” Raz said. “I’m thinking I’m glad you and
Colin removed the concrete behind your home. The trees are
gorgeous. With the fence down, you can see our little farm and your
peaceful forest. I love the privacy of being inside and still being
able to see the stars. Colin’s upstairs?

“
I think so,” Samantha
shrugged. “His entrance is open now, so I don’t see him come and go
anymore.”

She leaned her head
against his shoulder.

“
It was really nice of you
to wait up for me,” Raz said.

“
I knew it would be hard,”
Samantha said. “I wanted to help if I could.”

“
Mmm,” he looked at her.
“I appreciate it. You put this hot tub in for us. You wait up for
me. You don’t feel threatened if I sleep at home.”

“
I sometimes want to sleep
in my home,” Samantha said. “Sometimes I need my space.”

“
I like that about you,”
He smiled at her.

“
Can I ask how Wyatt is?”
Samantha asked. “Were you successful?”

“
He’s asleep,” Raz said.
“Max is with him. Alex thinks she got most of it out of him –
missions, training, when it started, who was involved – and helped
him break through the barrier to this other part of himself. He has
a few tools to help get him through rough patches. Max will work
with him. Alex too. He really loves Max; Wyatt does. He’s
so . . . masculine . . .”

“
Butch,” Samantha
said.

“
Tough soldier,” Raz said.
“And he loves Max. I hate to admit it, but it’s lovely to
see.”

“
Why do you hate to admit
it?” Samantha asked.

“
Because I’m becoming an
old softy like Alex,” Raz smiled. “I’m losing my New York cop’s
edge.”

“
Maybe the New York cop
has a little softy in him,” Samantha kissed him.

“
Little?” Raz raised his
eyebrows at her. “Softy?”

Samantha
laughed.

“
You want to talk about
having a baby,” Raz said. “Can we talk about it
tomorrow?”

His eyes looked over her
silent face.

“
I guess not,” Raz sat
up.

“
I don’t want it to be a
problem,” Samantha’s words came out in a rush. “Don’t be mad. And I
know you’re tired. I just want to know.”

“
What?” he tried to smile
to ease her anxiety.

“
What’s the problem?”
Samantha asked. “Why can’t we just get pregnant?”

“
Because I had a
vasectomy,” Raz said.

“
You did?” Stunned,
Samantha leaned away to look at him.

“
All of the guys got them
on the same day,” Raz said. “Vince’s wife Emily did them. You can
ask her.”

“
All of the
guys . . . You mean Alex’s old team?”

“
The Fey Special Forces
Team,” Raz said. “Everyone except Paul. He wanted to wait until
he’d had at least one child.”

“
Why?” Samantha asked. “I
always thought that was weird, you know, that everyone banked
sperm. The Fey wives said it was Alex’s idea,
but . . . It’s pretty weird.”

“
It was a couple of
things,” Raz said. “The guys had rescued a couple of hostages whose
testicles were destroyed in one way or another.”

“
Yuck,” Samantha
said.

“
At the very least,” Raz
said. “The guys wanted to be sure they could have kids, so they
banked sperm.”

“
That makes sense, I
guess,” Samantha said. “And the vasectomies?”

“
Since Vicki
and . . . everything, I’d wanted a vasectomy,” Raz
said. “I just never got around to it. Then Alex and I worked this
weird case where this government official was hit with ten
paternity suits from women he’d never slept with. We could prove
that he was in other cities, countries, or states at the time the
women got pregnant, but the DNA tests proved they were his
children.”

“
How . . . ?” Samantha shook her
head.

“
His ex-girlfriend. Right
before she broke up with him, she started passing his sperm out to
her friends who wanted kids,” Raz said. “The crazed soon-to-be ex
read an article on the Internet that taught her how to use
non-spermicidal condoms and how to flash freeze it so that it was
still viable. That was enough to convince the guys to get
snipped.”

“
I thought it was because
they were screwing around and didn’t want to get caught,” Samantha
said.

“
The Fey Special Forces
Team?” Raz shook his head. “No way. They had the same policy we
do.”

“
What about the whole sex
in the bathroom thing?” Samantha asked.

“
You’re right,” Raz smiled
at the memory. “Mike used to egg Alex and Jesse on with his ‘sex
with redheads in the loo’ stories, but he was mostly full of it.
The rest of the married guys? No way.”

Samantha nodded and leaned
back against the hot tub. After a few minutes, she leaned forward
again.

“
Did you bank sperm?” she
asked.

“
Alex talked me into it,”
Raz nodded. “She said that I never knew. I could meet a smart,
pretty woman who liked her own life and space just like I like my
own life and space. I wouldn’t want to regret it in the
future.”

“
I wonder if she was
talking about me,” Samantha said.

“
I’ve wondered that
myself,” Raz said. “What about getting married?”

“
What about
it?”

“
Do you want to be
married?” Raz asked.

“
No, I think you’re
right,” Samantha said.

“
About what?”

“
You can’t give the kind
of love a wife needs. I don’t want to expect it,” Samantha said.
“Plus, I can’t really give the kind of love a husband needs either.
No, I like us exactly as we are. You have your carriage house; I
have my flat. We see each other when we want to, keep separate bank
accounts, and stuff like that.”

“
And if you change your
mind?” Raz asked. “There’s a rumor floating around that Erin’s
changed her mind.”

“
Is that a big surprise?”
Samantha asked.

“
Not really,” Raz
smiled.

“
I’ll tell you if I change
my mind,” Samantha said. “But I don’t think I will. I like that we
live really close, but not together. I like that I have my own
space . . .”

“
And closets,” Raz
said.

“
I’d hate to share
closets,” Samantha said. “But I’d like to have at least one
biological child.”

Raz took a sip of his
wine.

“
What do you think about
that?” Samantha bit her lip.

“
We should practice,” he
smiled, and she laughed.

“
No, really, what do you
think?”

“
What’s it to me if
you
have a child?” Raz
shrugged.

Shocked and hurt, Samantha
looked away from him. She was working on a biting reply when she
realized he was teasing. She grinned and he raised his glass to
her.

“
We’ll share custody?” Raz
asked.

“
Of course,” Samantha
said.

“
You’ll work out the legal
stuff before we try?” Raz asked.

“
Of course,” Samantha
said.

“
You promise not to get
all crazy and use the baby to steal government secrets?”

“
I signed a non-disclosure
agreement when we started dating,” Samantha said. “I can’t tell
anyone anything about you. Period.”

“
So no ‘Who’s the baby
daddy’ talk shows? No WikiLeaks?”

Samantha
laughed.

“
I’m in,” Raz said. “We’ll
see the doctor . . .”

“
Tomorrow?”

“
How about when this
action settles down?” Raz asked. “I don’t have any idea where this
is going. I don’t want to disappoint you.”

“
But you promise we’ll
go?”

“
We’ll go when this
project is resolved,” Raz said.

Samantha gave him a bright
smile.

“
And tonight?” he
asked.

“
We should practice,”
Samantha moved to sit on his lap.

“
I am so glad you made
this room,” he said.

“
Me too,” she
said.

F

Saturday, early
morning

November 6 – 3:21 a.m.
MDT

Denver,
Colorado

Alex pushed her computer
screen and keyboard to the back of the armoire that served as her
desk. On the edge of the shelf, she set her brand new Magic 8 Ball
next to the shiny gold-colored card holder with a sunflower etched
on it. She took her old Fey Special Forces Team lighter, microSD
card, and plastic pieces of a black security token and set them in
a row next to the Magic 8 Ball. For good measure, she wrote “GOLD”
on one sticky note and “VAULT VIDEO” on another. She stuck them on
the other side of the gold-colored card holder. She leaned back in
her chair and thought for a moment before getting up.

She took the antique world
map off the wall and set it next to the chair where Maggie was
sleeping beside the gas fireplace. Maggie opened her eyes to look
at Alex. She ruffled Maggie’s head for good luck before taking
Mike’s small journal, Charlie’s journal, and the two journal’s
she’d protected in the limestone vault when everyone was killed –
her small journal and the larger team journal – from the safe. She
set the journals in a stack next to the gold card holder. Standing
in front of the armoire, she moved the card holder next to the
security token and stepped back.