“Is there someplace we could talk?”
She’d been avoiding him for the past day and a half, trying to sort out her feelings. She couldn’t afford a romantic entanglement right now, let alone an illicit one. Her HAC had to be front and center, every waking moment. Eyes on the prize.
Fine. She knew all that. But right now, this morning, she needed to talk to someone about what Sloane had told her, and who else was there but Scott?
“Sure,” said the JAG officer. He picked up his breakfast tray and walked with her to an empty table at the back of the wardroom.
“I talked with my brother last night. In Pensacola…” She stopped.
“And how is he?”
She watched Scott take a bite of eggs. The thought of eating nearly made her gag. “He’s great.”
“Family doing okay? Your mom?”
“Yeah.”
She’d lain awake most of the night, waiting for morning so she could come find him and talk. Now that she was here she couldn’t get out the words.
She put her hands in her lap and took a breath. “Scott…I think I know why Kris was acting weird. I think she’d been assaulted.” She didn’t dare say by whom.
Scott stopped chewing and stared at her. After a moment he resumed chewing. Then swallowed, speared another bite, and paused. “I’m trying not to say the cliché thing here.”
“Monica, you have to stop torturing yourself?” she said.
He smiled. “Monica? You have to stop torturing yourself.”
She pinched off a bit of toast, balled it up, and threw it at him. “Predictable, Commander.”
He continued eating. “True, though.” After a moment he set his fork down and wiped his lips with his napkin. “I want to tell you something.” He tapped a knuckle to his titanium leg. “You already know how I got this. You want to hear why I got it?”
“I know,” she said softly.
She knew the whole story: how his leg was shredded by 7.62 rounds in the same ambush that killed two of his friends; how the docs said they could save the leg but he’d never regain anything like full function; how he’d made the brave decision to go ahead and take the leg off just below the knee, then pushed himself back into fighting shape with his new titanium leg and worked his way back up the officer track.
“So you’d have a shot at getting back into the field. So your friends wouldn’t have died for nothing.”
He was silent for a moment. “Yep,” he said. “That’s the story. Wanna hear the truth?” He paused again. “Once the morphine wore off and I saw where I was, lying on a hospital bed in Frankfurt, I started to cry. And I couldn’t stop. Every time I looked at that chewed-up scrap of leg, all I could see was those two brothers I left behind, and I couldn’t live with the reminder. I begged them to take it off.” He looked up at her. “That’s it. I didn’t need to lose the leg. I got rid of it out of pure guilt.”
Monica’s heart churned with conflicting reactions. She was moved that he would share such an intensely personal confession with her. There was something broken in Scott, something deep inside. She’d sensed it from the day they met. Maybe that was part of what drew her to him.
At the same time, she felt placated—and it pissed her off. He was telling her she needed to stop feeling guilty and “move on.”
Move on? Monica? Whose mantra was Never back down?
“I get what you’re saying,” she said gently, “and don’t think I don’t appreciate what you just told me. But this is different. The firefight that took your friends was completely beyond your control.”
Scott sighed.
“No, listen,” she said. “I knew Kris was in trouble. I knew something was wrong. I should have forced her to talk to me. I can’t be positive that would have changed anything, but I sure as hell can’t be positive it wouldn’t.”
Scott pushed his plate to the side and set his elbows on the table. “Hey. This was not your fault.” She started to argue but he cut her off. “No, seriously, I mean, factually not your fault.”
She looked at him sharply. “What do you mean?”
“You just have to trust me on this. You need to let this go.”
Her face hardened. “Let this go?”
Scott sighed again. “Shit. Okay, listen.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “The thing with Kris? It may not have been suicide.”
“Like what, maybe she tripped and fell? Jesus, Scott!” Monica grabbed her tray and got to her feet.
“No, wait. Wait.” He put out a hand to stop her. “Christ.” He looked around, muttered “Shit” once more, then leaned in close. “Listen, this stays between us. I mean, no-shit classified, heads-will-roll-level stays between us. Okay?”
Monica sat back down. “What are you talking about?”
“Okay?”
She nodded. “Okay. No-shit classified.”
He leaned closer and whispered. “There’s some thinking in play that it may have been a homicide.”
Monica’s face went blank. In an instant she was back in her stateroom lying on her rack, staring at the overhead in the semidarkness, Kris’s voice floating up from the lower bunk.
Do you feel…safe here?
“Who thinks that?” She spat the words without looking at him. “Based on what?”
Scott leaned back and ran both hands over his face.
Monica glanced around the wardroom—and happened to catch a glimpse of her CO striding in with a tray and taking a seat up front near the door. He hadn’t noticed them. She quickly averted her eyes, staring at the wall, the floor, anywhere but in his direction.
Her mind spinning.
Papa Doc?
Papa Doc?
Oh, Jesus.
“It’s a working hypothesis, all right?” Scott still talking. “That’s all I can say. Which I never said, okay?”
Monica didn’t hear him. She was back in that passageway outside Kris’s ready room, watching the two of them face off. You know you’re supposed to fly those things, right? Not play hopscotch with them.
And what had Monica herself said about that confrontation? That he pushed her too hard. Just like he pushed everyone too hard.
He pushed her.
He pushed her.
“Monica?”
She saw exactly how the scene would have gone down. Kris goes out to the catwalk to be alone. Papa Doc follows her out. They exchange words. She tells him she’s going to report him for assaulting her. He knows the inquiry will dig up the old Academy rumor. The past will come spilling out. His career is over…he’ll do prison time. He loses his cool. One aggressive shove—
“Monica?”
“Mmm?”
Scott was watching her, wary. “What are you thinking?”
She finally looked up and met his eyes.
“Nothing,” she said. “Nothing at all.”