Chương 9
Mara stood at the window another minute.
Then she texted Major Ross.
I’ll meet Vega.
The meeting took place the next morning in a small conference room at brigade headquarters.
No lawyer.
No investigator.
Mara had insisted.
Ross refused to leave them completely unobserved, so she sat outside with the door cracked open.
Vega arrived in uniform without his campaign hat.
Mara noticed immediately.
“Where is it?”
He knew what she meant.
“Office.”
“Why?”
“I’m not currently serving in training status.”
“Administrative action?”
“Temporarily reassigned pending investigation.”
“To what?”
He pulled out the chair across from her.
“Inventory.”
Mara blinked.
“Seriously?”
“Yes.”
“That’s almost cruel.”
“It is extremely cruel.”
She laughed before she could stop herself.
Vega sat.
For a moment neither spoke.
Then he said, “Bowen called you.”
Mara’s amusement disappeared.
“How do you know?”
“She told me.”
“You told her to?”
“No.”
“She needs boundaries.”
“Yes.”
“Your platoon has my number.”
“I know.”
“How?”
He looked irritated.
“Apparently somebody screenshotted a contact sheet from the emergency response packet.”
“That seems bad.”
“It is.”
“What are you doing about it?”
“Made everybody delete it. Reported the privacy issue.”
“Good.”
Vega placed both hands on the table.
“I didn’t ask to meet about that.”
“I assumed.”
He looked at her for several seconds.
Then he said, “Your brother saved my life once.”
Mara’s expression hardened.
“Don’t.”
Vega stopped.
“What?”
“Do not make this the part where you tell me Daniel was a hero so I understand you loved him all along.”
“That wasn’t what I was going to say.”
“Good.”
“He didn’t save me in combat.”
She looked at him.
Vega’s mouth tightened.
“We weren’t deployed together. He found me choking on a piece of steak at a promotion dinner.”
Mara stared.
Vega continued.
“He hit me in the back first. Didn’t work. Another guy did the Heimlich.”
Mara began laughing.
She covered her mouth.
Vega looked offended.
“I almost died.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You’re not.”
“No.”
Her laughter grew.
She tried to stop.
The image of Daniel saving Vega from a steak was so perfectly stupid that grief could not organize itself quickly enough to resist.
Vega waited.
When she finally quieted, he said, “He made fun of me for six months.”
“That sounds right.”
“Called me Sergeant Ribeye.”
Mara put both hands over her face.
“Oh, God.”
Vega’s voice changed.
“That’s why I remember him.”
She lowered her hands.
Not because Daniel had written the memo.
Not because he died.
Because he had been irritating about a steak.
Something inside Mara shifted by a fraction.
“What did you want to tell me?”
Vega looked at the table.
“That the notebook doesn’t have everything.”
She went still.
“What’s missing?”
“After Daniel died, Mercer and I had a conversation.”
“Where?”
“Company office.”
“Anyone else present?”
“No.”
“What did he say?”
Vega swallowed.
“He said if investigators learned Daniel had raised concerns before the march, they’d treat every decision that day as negligent.”
Mara waited.
“I told him they should know.”
“And?”
“He asked if I wanted to destroy the careers of every leader in the company over a complaint Daniel hadn’t finished routing.”
Mara’s fingers curled under the edge of the table.
“What did you say?”
“I said no.”
There was no defense in his voice.
Mara felt anger returning.
Not hot.
Heavy.
“Why isn’t that in your notebook?”
“I tore the page out.”
She stared at him.
“Of course you did.”
“Yes.”
“Where is it?”
“Gone.”
“You destroyed it?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“The night before my original interview.”
Mara stood.
The chair legs scraped the floor.
Ross appeared in the doorway.
Mara waved her off.
“I’m fine.”
Ross did not leave.
Mara looked down at Vega.
“You came here to tell me you destroyed evidence.”
“I came to tell you because Price is interviewing me tomorrow and I’m going to tell him.”
“You expect me to be grateful?”
“No.”
“Then why me first?”
Vega looked up.
“Because if you heard it in an investigative summary, you’d think I was still deciding how much truth you deserved.”
Mara’s jaw tightened.
“And you think this fixes that?”
“No.”
“Stop saying no like it’s courage.”
Vega’s face hardened.
For the first time since the march, real anger surfaced.
“What do you want me to say?”
“I don’t know.”
“You keep asking questions where the answer is ugly and then getting angry because I don’t clean it up.”
Mara leaned over the table.
“You lied about my dead brother.”
“I know.”
“There it is again.”
“What sentence would you prefer?”
She had none.
That made her angrier.
Vega stood.
Ross stepped closer to the doorway.
He kept his voice low.
“You want me to be one thing.”
Mara laughed bitterly.
“You don’t know what I want.”
“I know you looked disappointed when Keller laughed with me at the clinic.”
Her face changed.
Vega continued.
“You looked angry when I remembered Daniel being funny.”
“Careful.”
“Why? Because it would be easier if I hated him?”
“Because you do not get to explain my grief to me.”
“I’m not.”
“You are.”
“I’m telling you mine.”
The word stopped her.
Vega looked away.
He pressed his tongue against the inside of his cheek before continuing.
“I liked him.”
Mara said nothing.
“I also thought he was a pain in the ass. He challenged me in front of soldiers. He made problems harder. He kept pushing after people told him to stop. And when Mercer put my career on one side and Daniel’s complaint on the other, I chose my career.”
His voice remained controlled.
“That does not mean I wanted him dead.”
Mara’s eyes burned.
She refused to blink.
Vega looked at her.
“And it does not mean I get to feel innocent because I didn’t.”
Ross shifted in the doorway.
Mara sat again.
Her knees had started shaking.
She hated that her body still had opinions about the march.
Vega sat too.
For nearly a minute, no one spoke.
May you like
Then Mara said, “Tell Price everything.”
“I will.”
