Secondary Targets

by Sandra Edwards

  “You’ll probably want to get in my car,” he said.

  “Why?”

  “I doubt they’ll let you, a civilian, inside in the dark.”

  “You’re a civilian too now.”

  “And you know this how?” he asked.

  “Because I went to Cherry Point after I left here, to see if I could find you.”

  “What made you think I’d still be here?”

  “Oh, I didn’t. I was shocked to say the least.” She wrapped both hands around the steering wheel and focused on the darkness in front of them. “I asked for a location on you and Marcus.” The mention of their best friend’s name brought both pleasant and painful memories. “I’m not really sure I can trust anyone else.”

  There it was again. The notion that she trusted him. Ironic. Eric’s overpowering reaction to her filled him with a bittersweet sensation. He shoved the fleeting moment aside and summoned a safer, albeit uglier, mood. The safety device wrapped around him like a security blanket. “The chance of finding me or Marcus was slim at best.”

  She held his stare, taking his remark in stride. “They told me you retired. Today.”

  “Yes, but...” Eric needed to get back on track and find out why she was here. The real reason, which he doubted had anything to do with him personally. “I may be retired, but the guard here at the cemetery doesn’t know that.” He turned on his heel and headed back to his car. Either she was going to follow him or not. He didn’t care, one way or another. He’d just as soon go home.

  Her car door slammed, and going home slipped off the table. At least until he visited the General’s grave.

  The General’s grave? What was she up to? What kind of angle was she working?

  Grace slipped into the passenger’s seat without waiting for him to open or close the door.

  And women bitch about how guys aren’t chivalrous anymore. Yet, he couldn’t remember the last time one had given him the chance.

  They passed through the gate without incident, and Eric intuitively remembered the way. Amazing since he hadn’t visited the General since the day of his funeral, and the man had almost become his father-in-law. But that was more years ago than Eric cared to count.

  In the western section of the southern region, he braked alongside the lane. He shifted the car into park and stepped out into the warm night air. A chill sped through the balmy twilight and wrapped itself around him. Eric scanned the area and leaned against his car door.

  The Crape Myrtles, a southern staple, had begun to bloom and their soft scents filtered through the cemetery. Their fragrance mingled with Eric’s reservations about trekking through the cemetery at night. Not to mention the age-old question rattling around in his head—where the hell had she been?

  Grace hopped out and scrambled through the field of tombstones at a speed-walking pace. Eric hurried after her. She was on a mission and it would take a lot to dissuade her. Just keep up with her, and defer the inevitable until later.

  Roaming around the cemetery at night didn’t seem to bother her nearly as much as it did Eric. His usual indifference to the dark offered hollow comfort now. He didn’t like it. Not one bit.

  The desire to demand answers swelled inside his head. He wanted to restrain his need to know, but the monster was out of control.

  “I can’t believe you’d just show up here after all this time and from out of nowhere.” His voice had gone high and squeaky but that didn’t stop him. “And what do you do? You drag me to a graveyard in the middle of the night.”

  “Come on...” She latched onto his hand and dragged him behind her.

  Her touch felt too good. He didn’t like it. “Can we step back and regroup?” He tried to retrieve his hand.

  She tightened her grip and quickened her pace. “No. We cannot take a break.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because...” She stopped abruptly. “You need to tell me how this happened.” She folded her arms at her waist and waited. After a brief interlude, her lips parted as if she wanted to say something but couldn’t make up her mind.

  Eric shook his head. She wasn’t supposed to get to him so easily. He let the zillion questions that’d come to him over the years slip through his thoughts. Maybe it would diffuse her influence over him, or take over and do what needed to be done—demand an explanation.

  Right about now that sounded like a good idea.

  “Well that’s a hell of a question.” A strong suggestion of reproach came out in his odd, yet gentle tone. “How this happened?” He ground the words out between his teeth, until finally, his anger bubbled over. “You want me to explain to you...how it is that it took you eleven years to show up?”

  His demands seemed to roll off Grace like she was shielded by some imaginary protective barrier. She threw back her shoulders and appeared to grow a full two inches before pointing to the grave before them.

  Her golden-brown eyes never left his steady gaze. “Where is my father?” Grace’s doleful, given-up look hardened the center of his heart.

  Eric let his attention fall on the headstone. She’d said something about her father, but the marker suggested they were standing in front of the final resting place of Captain Harry Reynolds, who’d supposedly died a full ten years before the General. He tried, without success, to wrap the confusion wandering around his mind in reality.

  Was this supposed to be the General’s grave? Eric checked the plot markers. He paced the length of several graves on either side. They had to be on the wrong aisle. The wrong block. The wrong row. Something. There had to be an explanation. A missing grave was crazy.

  A hollow, left-behind feeling swept over him as he stopped at the foot of the Captain’s grave. “What the hell’s going on?” he whispered, staring at the marker.

  Eric knew, as well as Grace, this plot was the General’s final resting place no matter what the damned tombstone said.

  Granted, Eric hadn’t been here in a while. Not since that fateful day, but he hadn’t forgotten. He had a lucid recollection of where the burial had taken place. Right here in front of him. Which is why a captain’s grave marker in place of the General’s made no sense.

  He cast an accusatory glare over Grace, and she wilted under it. “What is this? Some kind of joke?” Eric couldn’t bring himself to believe her capable of something so despicable.

  “Well, if it is,” her voice took on an offensive tone, “it’s not very funny.”

  Eric paused, stalling, waiting for this peculiar night to right itself. It didn’t. “What do you want from me?”

  “I want you to help me figure out what’s going on.”

  “Give me one good reason why I should, Gracie?”

  The utterance of his pet name for her sparked a glow that lingered long after Grace’s expression tempered. Her brown eyes still held the hints of a tawny hue, and something new—a hardness, a cool and aloof distance not quite camouflaged inside her poignant stare.

  “Okay, how about this...?” She gestured toward the grave but her focus remained on Eric. “Where is my father?”

  Mixed feelings of hope and dread surged through Grace. She had to find out what happened to her father, but she worried Eric would refuse to help.

  Fear hardened his expression even though an implication of annoyance hovered in his striking ice-like green eyes. She waited for his answer, but none came. Still, his unyielding glare showed no signs of relenting, yet his slouching posture suggested otherwise. He looked as if he wanted to disagree, but like her, couldn’t find a valid argument.

  Her father’s grave had disappeared. Who could explain that away?

  “Do you have any idea what’s going on?” she asked, a bit weaker than intended.

  Eric surveyed the darkness around them and raked his hand through his almost non-existent hair. Grace wondered if he’d let it grow now that he and the Marine Corps had parted ways.

  “I can’t even fathom a guess, Gracie.” Eric propped his hands on his hips and shook his head. “This
makes no sense.” He struggled with the words, the idea, the implication.

  “Well, I think it’s pretty obvious.”

  “What is?”

  “So what do you think...? The United States Military ran out of room to bury their dead?” She held the screams of frustration at the back of her throat. “You think they’re planting people on top of each other now?”

  Eric’s eyes lit up like a light bulb had turned on inside his head. “Who all knows about this?”

  “Just you and me,” she said. “Oh, and the state of North Carolina.”

  “North Carolina?”

  “Well, the vital records office.” She gave a dismissive shrug. “I asked them for a copy of daddy’s death certificate. They said there wasn’t one.”

  “Of course there’s a death certificate,” he said in a chilling, sarcastic tone. “Didn’t you get a copy when he died?”

  She nodded.

  “So why ask for one now?” he asked. “What’d you do, lose it?”

  She ignored the bit at the end. “Because his military records are all screwed up. The death certificate in there says he died on Christmas Day. In Arizona.”

  That look crossed Eric’s face again. The one that said, this makes no sense but he wasn’t willing to acknowledge it. He’d never been one to admit there were things he couldn’t explain away. This weakness probably had something to do with his childhood and the fact that his mother had been so horribly absent. He couldn’t explain that away any better than he could this.

  Why in the heck had Grace chosen Eric to come to for help? Mr. Ignore-it-and-it’ll-go-away.

  “Don’t look at me like that.” He showed no signs of relenting.

  Okay, so contacting him—bad idea. Grace took a couple of steps backward and turned away. “Just take me back to my car,” she said. “I’m sorry I bothered you. I’ll figure this out myself.”

  Seeking out Eric had been a mistake. One she planned to rectify immediately.

  “Gracie,” his voice charged after her like a pissed off bull after a matador.

  She picked up the pace. The front gate was close, maybe she’d walk to her car. Far be it from her to inconvenience anybody, especially the one man she thought she could trust.

  “Grace, please wait.” He latched onto the upper portion of her arm with enough strength that she stumbled backward when he stopped.

  “Look, you obviously don’t want to be bothered.” She looked at his hand on her arm and tried to will it away.

  “I never said that.” He released her. “It’s a lot to take in.” His frustration morphed him into a shell of vulnerability. “You’re suddenly here. The General’s not only gone, but somebody’s taken his place.”

  “Yeah, it kind of freaked me out, too.”

  They started moving again, in the direction of Eric’s car. He opened the passenger door and waited for her to slip inside before easing the door shut and trotting around to the driver’s side.

  His door closed and a sense of claustrophobia thickened around Grace, tangling her in a web of impulses. She wished her father were here. She wanted all this craziness to go away. And, she needed Eric’s forgiveness.

  Eric’s punishing glare told her none of those things were happening. He wrapped his fingers around the steering wheel. His lips moved, twitching, but no sound emerged.

  Whatever his reason for not walking away, she knew she hadn’t sold him on staying either. Gaining his help would take more than a pretty smile and a missing grave.

  He finally spoke. “You said the death certificate in his military records has the wrong information?”

  “Either that,” she said as if the possibility were real, “or I’m nuts.”

  “Well, if that’s the case—” He almost laughed. “Then you and I are having the same psychotic episode.”

  “What are the odds of that?” she said with a measure of reluctance.

  “Where’d you get his military records from?” he asked, ignoring her inquiry.

  “V.A.”

  “When?”

  “Last month.”

  His stare drilled into her. “And you obtained these records why?”

  “Genealogy.”

  “Genealogy?”

  “Yeah, you know...family history.”

  “I know what genealogy is.” He stiffened as though she’d struck him. “I just don’t understand what you thought you’d find in a V.A. file.”

  “The names of my grandparents.”

  “You didn’t know that?”

  “No,” she said, shaking her head. She didn’t recall her father ever, not once, mentioning her grandparents’ names.

  Suddenly, Grace felt clueless.

  CHAPTER 3

  NEARLY one thousand pages comprised Michael Hendricks’s V.A. file, and Eric had blanketed the majority around him on the couch in his living room. Grace had the rest stacked in her lap and stuffed between her legs and the sides of her chair.

  They’d stayed half the night reading and rereading, searching for clues. The morning’s wee hours had come and gone. The first rays of sunlight poured through the window, bringing with them a feeling of foreboding. And Eric hadn’t come any closer to understanding or solving his former commanding officer’s disappearance.

  Eric skimmed page after page, and waited for someone to step out of the shadows and say, “Great joke, huh?”

  But that didn’t happen.

  Instead of reading about the daring exploits of a decorated fighter pilot who’d climbed his way to the high-ranking position of Four-Star General in the Marine Corps, Eric faced countless pages detailing the eccentric and bizarre antics of a paranoid schizophrenic.

  This file made no sense. The service accolades Lance Corporal Hendricks had been awarded by the Army could be counted on one hand. General Michael Hendricks, the man Eric had served under in the Marine Corps, had so many medals he couldn’t wear them all at the same time.

  “You’re sure this isn’t the wrong file?” Eric already knew the answer, but he had to pose the question for the sake of thoroughness.

  Never mind the annoying little inquiry knocking at the back of his brain. Wrong file or not, there’s no denying a missing grave.

  “That was my first thought,” she said. “I contacted the Veterans Administration and they assured me, only one Michael Everley Hendricks ever served in any branch of the United States Military.” The implication sounded as final as her words. Disappointing, not to mention crazy.

  “Then what the hell is this shit?” Eric tossed a handful of papers onto the coffee table. “These aren’t your father’s military records.” He paused, all sorts of arguments swarming inside his mind. “When exactly was he supposed to be able to get together with your mother and have you? Why aren’t you mentioned in these records at all?”

  “Well, I never said you were supposed to take them at face value.” She flashed him a condescending glare. “I’m fully aware these things are falsified.” Grace paused and gave a forlorn nod. “You don’t suppose they did this because of...you know...?”

  The look on her face chipped at Eric’s heart. “No, Grace.” He fought the urge to hold her, comfort her. “They didn’t falsify his records because he allegedly committed suicide.” The ruling was suspect now, to say the least.

  “So why then?”

  Good question. An idea flickered inside Eric’s head. Why would someone do that? The whole thing made no sense. Eric didn’t know what to say, so he said nothing.

  “That’s why I need you to help me,” she said, in an almost pleading voice. The same one she used to use when she intended to be persuasive.

  She needed his help? Eric managed to contain the urge to laugh. Hesitating, he tried to muster the ability to “just say no”. He didn’t need to get caught up in some hare-brained scheme she’d devised for whatever reason.

  This had to be a hoax. What other explanation could there be? Nothing else seemed believable. But who was doing the hoaxing? Grace? Why would she
defile what little remained of her father’s good name? Simple, she wouldn’t.

  Grace must have sensed his indecisiveness because she moved from the chair to the couch. “If you don’t help me, Eric...” her words trailed off on her breaking voice. She drew a breath and swallowed hard. “I don’t know what I’ll do.” An increasing level of certainty charged her tone. “I can’t trust anybody but you.”

  Really? She trusted him? In fact, he’d just heard her say as much.

  Imagine that. Go figure.

  Eric made a last-ditch effort to latch onto the idea that he could turn his back and walk away. Even if his heart had agreed, camaraderie for a fellow Marine and former commanding officer wouldn’t allow him to ignore her plea.

  “How do you know you can trust me?” he asked, putting off the inevitable.

  “You told me I could.” She looked at him with a wide open stare.

  He pushed himself off the couch. “I’m not the same guy you knew eleven years ago,” he said, and headed for the kitchen. Eric needed coffee. Strong coffee.

  Footfalls fell in line behind him. With her hot on his trail, the kitchen felt so much smaller. He’d hoped to put a little distance between them, but she was making his effort hard.

  He grabbed a couple of mugs from the cupboard and offered one to her. “Want some coffee?”

  Coffee. Was he serious? Didn’t he remember her aversion to coffee? Showed how much she’d been on his mind during the eleven year absence.

  “Thanks,” she said sullenly, “but I’m not much for coffee.” She waited for his reaction, to see if he’d fluster once he realized his blunder.

  Nothing.

  Then again, Eric had never gone to a lot of trouble to put on airs or worry over appearances. Case in point, the house he lived in off base. There was nothing wrong with his home, per se. The décor, or lack thereof, told a visitor a lot about him. He was clean, efficient and single. The kitchen was as plainly furnished as the living room and the guest bedroom she had slept in last night. What he needed was there, but the home was free of nonessentials.

  Finally, after what seemed like forever, Eric gave a little chuckle. “That’s right,” he said with a nostalgic smile and then looked at her. “You want some hot tea?”