The Walls of Troy

by L. A. Witt

  Oh, what the hell? Might as well do it here in the relative privacy of Admiral Dalton’s driveway rather than on campus, where anyone might see.

  I exhaled and pulled my shirt back, revealing the holster tucked beneath my left arm.

  Troy swallowed. I thought he even lost a little color.

  “Okay?” I let my shirt fall back into place. “Can we go?”

  “Yeah.” He broke eye contact and brushed past me, heading toward my car.

  I watched him for a moment. What the fuck? He wanted proof I was carrying, and now that he had it… This?

  But standing there trying to figure him out wasn’t my job, so I followed him to the car. After he’d dropped his books in the trunk, we got in and headed down the driveway.

  Without the torrential rain coming down, I had a better look at the neighborhood and surrounding areas. One thing I was quickly learning now that I lived in Hampton Roads—the cluster of cities like Norfolk, Virginia Beach, and Newport News—was that this area was one of those weird places where every layer of social strata was packed in together with no discernible boundaries. Trailer parks were backed up against gated communities. A high-dollar suburban development was across the street from Section 8 housing.

  The area around Admiral Dalton’s property was no different. While the houses immediately surrounding his were equally ostentatious, the next neighborhood over consisted of older homes, some of which had to have been standing since before World War II. The first cross street was lined with mostly well-kept yards and meticulously maintained houses. With each road we passed, though, the overall condition deteriorated until I suddenly found myself double-checking that the car doors were locked as we rolled past a condemned, graffiti-covered shithole.

  And three streets later, we were back to plantation-style houses with Jaguars and BMWs parked outside. No wonder burglary was such a problem here. If I hadn’t been a cop and I’d lived in a shitty little house down the road from someone whose car payment rivaled my mortgage, hell, I’d probably break in just for spite.

  The absurd thought made me laugh dryly, and Troy glanced at me.

  I tapped my fingers on the wheel. “So, um. I’m curious.”

  He fixed his gaze on something outside the passenger window and replied with a bored, “About?”

  “The reason I’m here.”

  The slightest ripple of tension went through him. “Okay.”

  “Uh, well. I wanted to hear it from you. In your own words. How exactly have you been harassed?”

  “Do you think I haven’t been?” The hostile undertone gave me pause.

  “What?” I glanced at him. “No, I’m just asking for specifics. Your take on it.”

  “You’ve been given the facts. My dad and Fowler should’ve told you everything.” He rested his elbow on the window and stared straight out the windshield. “Some jackasses don’t like gay people on campus. Someone left some threatening notes on my car last semester. You’ve already heard this, if Fowler’s doing his job.”

  “Right. What exactly did the notes say?”

  Troy squirmed uncomfortably. “One of them said ‘Fags end up in bags’.”

  I ground my teeth. “Assholes…”

  “Yeah.” He fidgeted again and kept right on staring out the window. “One was a rainbow flag with ‘Burial at sea for an admiral’s cock-sucking brat’ written across it.”

  My blood instantly turned cold. “Are you…are you serious?”

  Troy glared at me. “You really think I’d make that shit up?”

  “Hey, easy.” I patted the air. “I didn’t mean it like that.”

  “Then what the fuck did you mean?”

  I glanced at him. “I meant I’m trying to understand what the hell is going on so I can do my job.”

  “Your job is to stay with me and make sure no one fucks with me. That’s all you need to know.”

  “That’s what I plan to do,” I said coolly. “But the more I know, the more—”

  “If I knew more than that, I wouldn’t have to bother with a fucking bodyguard.”

  I couldn’t decide what to make of that. Was it the entitled voice of a Navy brat who knew his dad could make phone calls to Important People and resolve his problems? Was there something else? Or was I going to work myself into a migraine trying to figure out how to read every weird nuance of this irritable, eyelinered kid who I was getting paid to protect, not understand?

  Whatever the case, I let the subject drop, and we spent the rest of the drive across town in uncomfortable silence.

  Finally, I pulled into the student lot and found an empty space near the back row. We got out, and I opened the trunk so we could get our books.

  “Oh, do we have time to swing into the bookstore before class?” I glanced at my watch. “I still need to get the books for history.”

  Troy shook his head. “Don’t bother. They ran out of books for that class like two weeks ago. We’ll just have to share mine until they get more in.”

  “Okay, sure. Thanks.”

  “Isn’t like I have much choice.” He looked at me as he reached for his bag. “Dad says you want credit, so I guess we’re sharing until he figures out how to pull those strings.”

  Don’t sound so thrilled, kid.

  We shouldered our bags and headed from the parking lot toward the main campus.

  As we wandered past a group loitering by a couple of weathered sedans, I did a double take.

  Jesus Christ. When had college students gotten so young? Probably around the same time I’d become convinced the Navy had begun recruiting from middle schools. Even the pilots were starting to look like they shouldn’t have been old enough to drive, never mind dogfight over warzones in billion-dollar aircraft.

  Troy smirked. “Already trolling for girls?” As I was quickly coming to expect from him, there was an odd undertone to the question. Not quite an accusation, not quite a plea to stay with him, but definitely more than an amused observation.

  “Uh, no.” I shook my head. “Just aging myself a little.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean I haven’t set foot on a college campus in a long time, and everyone here looks about ten years too young to be here.”

  Troy snickered. “Does that mean you’re ten years too old to be here?”

  “Hey. Hey! Fuck you.”

  We both laughed, and whatever had been in his tone a moment ago was gone.

  A split second later, the ice was back in place, and he stared straight ahead instead of so much as glancing at me. What the hell?

  The brief exchange of banter had been weird. It was almost like he’d forgotten for a moment that he didn’t like me, or that he wasn’t the least bit thrilled about having a style-challenged bodyguard thirteen years his senior. Or that, at the same time, even the slightest bit of reassurance that I was here and not going anywhere seemed to relax him.

  Curiouser and curiouser…

  Chapter Three

  We hadn’t been on campus ten minutes before I saw a poster for an LGBT group. Not five minutes after that, as we crossed a crowded common area, a couple of guys walked by holding hands, and no one seemed to bat an eyelash.

  I supposed every place had its homophobic assholes, but this place already seemed pretty progressive. Not the kind of environment where I’d expect any queer student to need an armed guard in order to attend classes safely.

  But I wasn’t here to ask questions. I was just here to keep Troy safe. From what? Fuck if I knew.

  Our first class was in a huge lecture hall with stadium seating. At the front of the room, Troy set his books on a desk, but I shook my head.

  “Not here.” I gestured at the corner farthest from the door. “Back row.”

  “What?” He laughed and rolled his eyes. “You one of those jackwagons who likes to sit in th
e back and dick off?”

  “No, but under the circumstances? I prefer the back.”

  His humor vanished. “Be my guest. I’m here to pass the class, not slack off.”

  “We’re graded on papers and exam scores,” I said through my teeth. “Not seating arrangements.”

  “Yeah? So you’ve never seen those studies about grades steadily decreasing the farther students are from the front?”

  “I have. Have you ever heard that correlation and causation aren’t the same thing?” He opened his mouth to say something else, but I added a quiet, “And somehow I doubt any of the study subjects needed an armed, plainclothes bodyguard to attend their classes safely, so sit in the fucking back row.”

  His features tightened, eyebrow piercings glinting in the low light with the subtle upward flick that I probably wasn’t supposed to see. He stared at me as if he couldn’t decide between being freaked out by the reminder of why I was here, and being pissed off that I wasn’t toeing some invisible line.

  Without a word, he scooped up his books and headed for the back row. I watched him for a second but then followed. Man, this was going to be three long years.

  We took our seats. I set a spiral notebook and a couple of pens on the desk, and as I scanned the room, I couldn’t help laughing to myself. I was old-school, apparently, judging by the ratio of laptops to notebooks in this room. Whatever. I had to focus on doing my job as well as taking notes—the last thing I needed was a computer full of potential distractions.

  Other students came in and got settled. As they did, I studied them as well as the room. At least the door was at the front, not far from the professor’s podium. I’d spent too many years as a cop and too many months in combat situations to be comfortable sitting with my back to a door.

  Someone gave Troy the side-eye and sneered at him, but nothing in his body language came across as threatening. Maybe he just didn’t like emo punk kids, or maybe Troy had taken the seat the guy wanted, but there was no fags end up in bags in his eyes. I made a mental note of the guy’s face, just in case, and otherwise let it go.

  Eventually, the professor showed up, and he droned on over the syllabus and such. I didn’t hear much of it. Getting college credit for this would be awesome, but I hadn’t bargained for what a challenge it would be to turn off the cop brain and turn on the student one. Especially since I was here to be a cop.

  Maybe it would be different once the professor was lecturing about something more interesting than his office hours and the schedule of exams. For the moment, I was more focused on the fact that Troy seemed as bored as I was. Not the least bit nervous or uncomfortable. Well, aside from when he swore under his breath after losing a game of Minesweeper he’d been subtly playing on his laptop.

  The professor finally wrapped up his monotonous lecture and let us go twenty minutes early since it was the first day of the semester. Tomorrow, he warned ominously, we’d better be prepared to take some serious notes.

  On the way out of the room, I said, “I could go for something to eat. How about you?”

  Troy nodded. “I could eat. You don’t mind eating on campus, do you?”

  “Doesn’t bother me any. Besides, it beats the fuck out of ship food.”

  He raised a pierced eyebrow. “My dad’s always said the food on board is pretty good.”

  I laughed. “When was the last time your dad ate on the mess decks with the enlisted guys?”

  At that, he actually cracked a small smile. “Yeah, I guess the officers’ mess is probably a little better.”

  “A little?” I tugged my backpack strap higher onto my shoulder. “The officers’ mess probably didn’t condition your dad to die inside at the sight of steak and lobster.”

  “Wow. They botch them that badly?”

  “It’s not that. They actually cook them decently, most of the time. But by halfway through your first deployment, you learn that steak and lobster tonight means bad news tomorrow.”

  He cocked his head. “How so?”

  “Well, the first time we had it, I was thrilled because the crap we’d been eating recently had barely been fit for human consumption. And I couldn’t figure out why everyone else seemed really worried. They all kept telling me ‘wait til tomorrow.’ So I was thinking everyone would be sick or something the next day.” I shook my head as we turned down another crowded hallway. “Next morning, the captain announces our deployment’s being extended for at least another month.”

  “Oh, ouch.”

  “Yeah. About two weeks before we were supposed to head home, it was steak and lobster again.” I pulled open the door and held it. “Next morning? We were staying out for another month.”

  “Damn, that blows.” He stepped out in the breezeway and, as I let the door close behind us, said, “So you can’t eat steak and lobster now?”

  “Oh, I can now. I haven’t been back to a ship in a few years. But part of me still wants to dry heave when someone suggests it.”

  Troy wrinkled his nose, pulling open the door to the next hallway. “Nice of them to ruin good food for you.” He held the door while I stepped in, and we continued along with the thin crowd.

  “I wish I could say they only ruined steak and lobster,” I said. “But it’s the Navy, what do you—”

  Bang!

  Someone dropped something—a stack of books, from the sound of it. Everyone in the hallway startled slightly, though they barely missed a beat in their gait and conversation.

  Troy, though, damn near jumped out of his skin. He stumbled back a step, almost tripping over his own feet.

  Without thinking, I grabbed his arm to steady him. “Hey, easy.” In my hand, his arm was shaking. Shit, his whole body was shaking. His eyes were huge. Even the black eyeliner and smoky makeup couldn’t mask the panic, and definitely didn’t hide the way he was trembling all over.

  “Troy?” I loosened my grip on his arm but didn’t let go. “You all right?”

  He nodded, gently freeing his arm.

  “You sure?”

  “Yeah.” He leaned against the wall and kept his gaze down, scratching his neck with his black-painted nails. “I’m good.”

  Somehow, I doubt that.

  “Troy, are you sure—”

  “I said I’m fine, all right?” He glared at me. “Back off.”

  “Okay, okay.” I put up my hands. “Take it easy.”

  He lowered his gaze again and took some slow, deep breaths. As people rushed by us, walking and talking and completely oblivious, Troy seemed to shrink in on himself, his shoulders hunched and his arms folded tightly across his chest.

  “Troy?” I asked, proceeding with caution. “Are you—”

  “I’m good.” He lifted his head and cleared his throat. “We need to eat. We have to get to class soon.”

  He didn’t wait for a response before he started walking again, faster this time. I followed without arguing. By the time we reached the cafeteria, there was no sign of what had happened in the hallway. His hands were steady. His eyes were clear. His expression was neutral—well, as neutral as the goth-punk look could be. More like relaxed contempt, I decided.

  Which would have annoyed me had I not just seen him have—and shake off—a minor freak-out over a sudden loud noise. I might’ve convinced myself I’d imagined it if not for that sheen of sweat along his hairline.

  As I stood behind him in line now, I replayed that moment in my mind several times over but then shook myself and tried to ignore it. I was overthinking it. People startled. It happened. Everyone in the hallway had jumped, myself included.

  But it didn’t last. Most of them were back to normal chatting and walking before Troy had even begun to catch his breath.

  Troy glanced at my tray. “Don’t tell me you’re one of those Paleo eaters.”

  “What?” I looked down at the meager rations I
’d collected—an orange. A bottle of water. A hard-boiled egg. “No. Nothing like that.” I slid the tray along the counter. “It’s kind of like the steak-and-lobster thing. Being on a ship can put you off a lot of foods.”

  “Maybe they should film Kitchen Nightmares on a ship, then.”

  I laughed. “I think Gordon Ramsay would throw himself off the flight deck after five minutes.”

  Our eyes met, and we both chuckled. There was an odd note in his voice, as well as a strange look in his eye. He wasn’t on the verge of panic this time, but he definitely hadn’t forgotten it. I couldn’t decide if he was relieved that I was laughing too, or if he was just happy I wasn’t prodding him over what had happened in the hallway.

  We paid for our food and headed back into the cafeteria to find a table. As near as I could tell, Troy had recovered from…whatever had happened earlier. Still, I couldn’t shake the feeling that something wasn’t adding up here.

  Max and the other MAs didn’t think Troy actually needed a bodyguard, that there wasn’t really a threat. Reading between the lines, I wondered if they believed the harassment had happened at all, even though they’d apparently seen the notes left on Troy’s windshield.

  But I knew what I saw earlier, and while I was no expert, my gut and my experience agreed that threatening notes on a windshield didn’t wind somebody up like that. I’d seen that kind of behavior before. I’d seen plenty of people respond to sudden loud noises exactly the same way Troy had. After my buddy MA2 Scott and his dog had come back from Iraq, it was a solid year before someone could slam a door without both of them freaking out.

  Troy obviously hadn’t been to combat, but something had happened. Something was going on here. Whether all the information I’d been given was true or not didn’t negate the fact that Troy was scared. And quite possibly traumatized.

  But no one would tell me why.

  I wondered if every drive to and from the university was going to be this uncomfortably quiet. Most likely, given that he didn’t seem to like me even though I was there to keep his ass safe. Even the moments of conversation and banter were short-lived and rare.