In the Grey (9 page)

His voice was so matter of
fact that Alex found herself nodding as if she already knew the
information.

“
I’ll show you how you can
tell,” Hector James picked up the nanodrone and turned it over.
“See this dot?”

He pointed to a tiny light
blue screw.

“
That’s Mommy’s dot,”
Hector James said. “She made them at our kitchen table. I helped
her put on the dots.”

“
Did she make a
lot?”

“
Mmm,” Hector James looked
up to think. “More than a thousand, I think. She used to keep track
on the refrigerator. But Daddy gave her the plans
and . . .”

“
Hector?”

“
No, Troy Olivas,
my
daddy invented
fairies for
my
mommy,” Hector James voice rose with emotion. “Hector
was
not
my daddy.
He was not nice or funny or sweet, and he did
not
love me.”

The boy leaned back into
her.

“
He was really bad,”
Hector James said.

Alex felt the boy’s body
quake. She glanced down, and he was crying.

“
You want to see them
again?” she asked.

Hector James
nodded.

“
More hot chocolate?” Alex
asked.

Hector James nodded. He
hopped off Alex’s lap, and she got up to make his hot chocolate.
She made herself a macchiato while his milk warmed. Hector James
stood in front of her desk. He touched one item and then the next.
When she came back with their drinks, he was holding the gold
bee.

She set the drinks on the
shelf and sat down. He climbed on her lap with the gold
bee.

“
That’s a pretty bee,
isn’t it?” Alex smiled.

“
I don’t like it,” Hector
James said.

“
How come?”

Hector James
shrugged.

“
Have you’ve seen it
before,” Alex said.

Hector James
nodded.

“
I don’t know where,”
Hector James said. “I think it has a hidden
compartment.”

“
That’s kind of
weird.”

“
Yeah, that is weird,”
Hector James shrugged and set the bee in his lap. He picked up his
hot chocolate. “I don’t know where I’ve seen it,
but . . . do you have to know? Maybe Hermes
remembers it. I can go get him.”

“
Why don’t we just watch
our pictures and rest for a bit?”

She felt Hector James’s
head nod against her shoulder. She turned on soothing music and
watched the light from the photos dance off the boy’s curly dark
hair. He made it through about half of his chocolate before falling
asleep. She took the cup and the bee and set them on the
shelf.

Rather than move on to
what was next, Alex used this quiet time to think. She was so lost
in thought that she didn’t notice the slideshow had ended. Feeling
eyes on her back, she turned in her chair to find Troy standing in
the doorway. He smiled at Alex, picked up his son, and carried him
up the stairs. Alex watched them go and sat staring at the door for
a moment.

She spun in her chair and
started making calls. By the time John got home, she was humming,
“When you wish upon a star” and responding to email.

“
Happy?” John asked from
the doorway.

Maggie jumped up to greet
him.

“
That you’re home,” Alex
got up from her chair. “Want to see how much?”

“
Why don’t I take Maggie
out while you lock up?” John asked.

She turned off her
computer and the gas fireplace before locking up her office. She
met John and Maggie on their way in the side basement door. With
Maggie leading the way, John chased Alex upstairs.

F

Saturday
morning

November 6 – 9:27 a.m.
MDT

Denver,
Colorado

“
Olivas,” Sergeant Dusty
said from the doorway of the team workroom.

“
I’m right in the middle
of . . .” Troy pointed to his computer
screen.

“
The LC would like to see
you now,” Sergeant Dusty said.

“
I . . .”
Troy pointed to his computer screen again.

“
Now
,” Sergeant Dusty said.

Troy glanced around the
room. He’d been so focused on what he was doing he hadn’t paid much
attention to what was going on around him. He scanned the room.
Alex wasn’t there. Neither was Joseph. Matthew wouldn’t meet his
eye. He looked at White Boy, who nodded to him in a kind of “time
to face the music” way. He looked back at Sergeant
Dusty.

“
Let’s go,” Sergeant Dusty
said.

Troy got up from his seat
and followed the sergeant down the hall.

“
I feel like I’ve been
called to the principal’s office,” Troy said.

“
You have,” Sergeant Dusty
said.

The sergeant patted Troy’s
back and opened the door to Alex’s office. Alex was sitting behind
her big mahogany desk. Joseph was standing just to her left and her
father, General Patrick Hargreaves, was standing to her right. Troy
glanced at Alex. Her solemn face made him swallow hard.

“
What did I do?” Troy
asked.

Sergeant Dusty closed the
door.

“
If this is about what I
did in SF training, I’ve apologized
and . . . ,” Troy started.

“
Please come in and sit
down,” Patrick said.

Troy had never been afraid
of the man until this moment. Alex’s fun-loving dad looked every
bit the severe, tough-assed general everyone said he was. At least
people said he was fair. Troy shuffled to the chair in front of her
desk and sat down.

“
What do you know about
this?” Alex set the plastic container with the nanodrone near the
edge of her desk.

“
It’s a drone, a
nanodrone. You found it at JFCOM,” Troy said. “I found the plans on
Hector’s computer. I helped you find someone to manufacture one
from the specs. It didn’t work.”

Troy looked at her still
face.

“
Um,” Troy
said.

Alex glanced at Joseph and
he nodded. She looked at Patrick.

“
What’s a fairy?” Patrick
asked.

“
Seriously?” Troy
asked.

“
Answer the question,”
Patrick said.

“
Listen, I get that I did
something that was bad. But I’d really rather you tell me what’s
going on. We can talk it through,” Troy said. “I don’t have a great
capacity for this high pressure stuff anymore. It makes me want to
kill myself and . . . I have two little boys who
need me to be their everything.”

Patrick raised a scary
eyebrow and glanced at Alex.

“
You don’t need to break
me down; I’m already broken,” Troy said.

Troy tried to catch Alex’s
eyes, but she was lost in thought. She picked up the plastic
container, looked at it, and set it under her desk lamp.

“
This morning, Hector
James told me a number of things about this drone,” Alex said. “I
was on the phone and he picked it up
and . . .”

“
If he broke something, he
knows better than to . . .” Troy started.

“
No, son,” Patrick said.
Troy looked up at Patrick, and the kind man he’d always known had
reappeared on the General’s face. “The child hasn’t done anything
wrong.”

“
He actually fixed it with
my nail file,” Alex’s eyes finally lifted up to look at him. Troy’s
heart lifted with her glance. He couldn’t help but give a little
smile. “Hector James said that you designed the fairy for
Dahlia.”

“
I did?” Troy’s hand went
instinctively to his chest.

“
He called this a
‘fairy,’” Alex said. “He said you gave the plans to Dahlia and that
she built them at their kitchen table. She used to keep track of
how many on the refrigerator. He said she made ‘maybe a thousand,’
but it’s hard to know exactly how many.”

Troy shook his head in
disbelief.

“
He said you could tell it
was hers by the blue dot on the bottom of the drone,” Alex said.
“As you know, we’ve researched every detail of this drone. Every
drone we’ve found so far has a tiny blue dot on it.”

“
We had it analyzed,”
Joseph said.

“
It’s nail polish,” Troy
said. “Yes, I was copied on that report.”

“
Hector James said this
drone doesn’t do anything,” Alex said. “Doesn’t transmit photos and
isn’t carrying a weapon, but he asked me not to tell Hermes,
because he thinks the drones transmit his image to
Dahlia.”

Troy looked absolutely
dumbfounded.

“
I didn’t press the
child,” Alex said. “He was distressed enough.”

“
We’ll need to talk to the
boys further,” Joseph said.

“
Of course,” Troy said.
“Anything within reason. They’re little boys. Should I go get
them?”

“
No need,” Alex
said.

“
Have you ever read any of
your brother’s books?” Patrick asked.

“
No,” Troy said. “I know
Alex asked me to, and I tried. I did, but it was too hard. I asked
Matthew to read them for me. He’s my partner, so I thought it
wasn’t any big deal.”

“
Good thinking,” Joseph
said. “I would have agreed to that if you’d asked.”

“
Wait,” Troy said. “Before
we start holding hands and singing Kumbaya, why were you upset when
I came in?”

“
Why didn’t you tell us
that you designed the drones?” Alex asked.

“
I don’t remember
designing them,” Troy said. “Seriously.”

“
Do you remember the first
thing you said to me when you saw my fairy tattoo?” Alex
asked.

“
No,” Troy shook his
head.

“
You said that fairy was a
good name for me. You were going to use it in your thesis about
winged flight.”

“
What was the premise of
your master’s thesis?” Patrick asked.

“
I looked at bees,
butterflies, and dragonflies,” Troy said. “Basic aerodynamic
mathematics shows that they shouldn’t be able to fly – bodies too
big and heavy for their small wings. I postulated a mathematical
model consistent with their flight. But it wasn’t published. The
journals panned me because the reviewers were friends of my
father’s and . . . Wait. You’re saying that
worked?”

“
Did you ever give plans
to Dahlia?” Joseph asked.

“
Plans?” Troy looked
confused.

“
Think back,” Alex said.
“You were working on your master’s thesis when Dahlia came for a
visit. You were in Argentina for the summer. You went to Uruguay
for a week’s leave? We met you there on our way to
Brazil.”

Troy shook his
head.

“
You know, about nine
months before she had Hector James?” Alex asked.

“
Holy crap,” Troy said. “I
used the math to make a test model. A little plastic thing. I made
it out of stuff I had around. I gave it to Dahlia when she left. I
told her that I would always be with her.”

“
Anything specific about
the model?” Joseph asked. “Anything a little odd?”

“
You turn it on by
clapping. You know,” he blushed, “like how you save a fairy?
From
Peter Pan
? I
had a Clapper, the light thing. They were all the rage in
Argentina. That’s where I got most of the components.”

Alex opened the top of the
plastic bottle and gave a loud clap. The nanodrone sprung into
life.

Troy reacted like he’d
been shot. He fell forward with his elbows on his knees. His hands
covered his face. His back shook when he started to sob. Joseph
came around the desk to kneel down next to Troy. After a few
moments, Troy looked up to see compassion in Alex’s
eyes.

“
What else did he say?”
Troy asked.

“
Nothing more,” Alex
said.

“
What does this mean to
you?” Troy asked.

“
I believe your brother
stole your work,” Alex said. “His career took off around the time
that Dahlia had Hector James. Rather than sending her to you in
order to get pregnant, like we thought, he might have sent her to
steal your work. She would have gone just to be with you. He could
have easily heard about what you were doing, maybe even seen a
draft of your thesis. He wanted the finished version.”

“
But the plans don’t
work,” Troy said.

“
That’s the question,”
Alex said. “Why did Dahlia have to make them?”

“
Ok, why?” Troy
asked.

“
Because she wouldn’t give
Hector a full set of the plans,” Joseph said. “She knew something
about these things that’s not evident in reverse
engineering.”

“
You mean, the plans on
his computer were reconstructed from that thing,” Troy said. “Like
we did.”