Lean on Me (31 page)

“
You know what to do,” he
said. “Let’s not waste time. In the worst-case scenario, someone
wants to take civilization back to the seventeen hundreds. Our
best-case scenario is that we don’t know. Get moving.”

He nodded and left the room. Mammy followed
him out of the room.

“
You know how to get me,”
Alex said. “I’m back on duty tomorrow morning.”

She glanced at Raz. In this room of odd
company, Raz seemed perfectly at home. He smiled at her and she
nodded. She raised a hand in a wave and left the living room. She
found Mammy and the Mister in the kitchen. Wrapped in an embrace,
the two lovers and friends seemed to echo the very nature of love.
Alex smiled and let herself out the backdoor. She made a quick
journey around the gates and up her back steps.

She had just poured herself another cup of
coffee when Maggie came blasting through the house to find her.
Breathing hard, the dog circled Alex and went to get a drink from
her bowl.

“
How was the run?” Alex
asked as John and Troy entered the room.

“
Great,” John said. “How
was your lunch date?”

Troy grabbed a container of chocolate milk
and went to find his kids.

“
The lunch date in your
mind?” Alex asked.

“
So you haven’t eaten?”
John asked.

Alex shook her head.

“
Great,” he said. “I’ll
shower, and we can get something.”

He gave her a sweaty kiss and went up the
stairs. She heard Troy’s kids squeal from the basement playroom.
She was about to take another sip of coffee when John appeared
again.

“
Care to join me?” he
asked.

She responded with her crooked smile and
followed him up the stairs.

F

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Monday afternoon

November 2 – 4:47 p.m. MST

Fairmount Cemetery, Denver, CO

Wearing their full dress uniforms, Trece,
White Boy, Alex, Matthew, Joseph and Raz carried Dahlia Jasper’s
coffin to the front of the chapel. The remaining members of the Fey
team stood with Cian and Eoin, waiting for the coffin. Like a
solemn statue, Troy held Hermes and Hector James’s hands.

Because Troy and the boys were Dahlia’s only
living relatives, they had decided to bury her in the historic
Fairmount Cemetery. Dahlia and the boys had been so excited about
getting married. Hermes and Hector James wanted her last
celebration to be the wedding she’d hoped for. Alex and the team
filled the chapel with delicate white roses, her favorite flower,
and a brush of vibrant blue delphinium. Eoin made a gorgeous tiered
white cake with matching blue flowers. There was plenty of bubbling
apple cider to go around.

Troy wore his dress uniform and the boys
were dressed in the tuxes they’d bought for the wedding. The
funeral parlor had dressed Dahlia in her dream wedding dress
complete with a veil to cover the damage to her forehead from the
shot gun blast.

While Alex had been to plenty of funerals,
she’d never been to one quite like this. The chapel was gorgeous
and the music light. Out of respect for Troy, the families of the
Fey Team filled the chapel seats. The familiar faces of Fey wives
and their children intermixed with the new Fey Team families. When
they were done here, Alex and the team would escort Dahlia away
from the boys’ eyes and to the crematorium. She would be buried
next to a white rose bush in the Highline Gardens area of the
cemetery.

They were halfway down the aisle with
Dahlia’s casket when the door opened with a bang. Alex felt, more
than saw, Troy’s mother, Elizabeth, run down a side aisle to the
side of the church.

“
Grammie!” Hermes
yelled.

Hermes held his arms out and Elizabeth
picked him up. With her other arm, she hugged Hector James and then
Troy. When Dahlia reached the front of the chapel, Elizabeth was
standing as if she’d been there the entire time. They set the
coffin down on a stand and stepped away at attention. Troy came
forward.

“
We don’t have a big
ceremony planned,” Troy said. “We’d like to celebrate Dahlia’s
beauty and her life. If you’d like to say something, please feel
free. The boys will get us started and I’ll say a few things when
we’re done.”

Troy gestured to his eldest son and Hector
James stepped forward.

“
What I remember the most
about my mommy was how she loved to sing,” Hector James said. “She
would get up before anyone else to get ready. She would sing in the
shower. She couldn’t sing very good. But good enough for
me.”

Hermes squirmed in Elizabeth’s arms and she
set him down. He ran to his brother’s side.

“
I remember how pretty my
mommy was,” Hermes said. “She was prettier than any model. Even on
the bad days, she could find something pretty – like a flower in
the grass or a pretty snow flake – for my brother and
me.”

When Hermes began to cry, Troy picked him
and Hector James up. The boys tucked their heads into Troy’s
neck.

Alex stepped into the uncomfortable silence.
When she looked out, she saw tears falling from all but the
youngest children. They may not have known Dahlia, but they knew
loss.

“
I have to agree with
Hermes,” Alex said. “What I remember most about Dahlia was her
beauty. She had this capacity to be so lovely right in the middle
of mayhem. I used to call her the elfin princess because she was so
fragile and yet so powerful.”

Alex nodded to Matthew who stepped to her
side.

“
I loved the way Dahlia
laughed,” Matthew said. “Especially after a glass of wine. She
would wrinkle her nose as if to try to keep the laugh inside. When
it came, she would burst open with laughter. In the last week or
so, I’ve seen Hector James laugh the same way. I’m delighted that
this laughter has not faded from the world.”

Matthew hugged Troy and the boys and
returned to his seat. Raz took Matthew’s spot next to the
casket.

“
I met Dahlia through Troy,
of course,” Raz said. “She was visiting probably about a year
before Hermes was born. Alex and I stopped in to see them on our
way to… somewhere, I don’t remember. What impressed me about her
was that for all her beauty, all her magic, all her laughter, she
could be very thoughtful and deep. She and I stayed up late one
night drinking brandy and talking about Hegel and
Nietzsche.”

Raz chuckled.

“
She had a lot to say. She
was very bright,” Raz said. ”I’m sorry for her loss.”

Raz hugged Troy and the boys. Elizabeth came
forward to speak.

“
Boy, I have a lot to say,”
Elizabeth smiled. “Very little of it makes any sense right now. I
never imagined I’d be here and Dahlia would be… and the
boys…”

Elizabeth seemed to draw into herself for a
moment before she looked up.

“
I loved her,” Elizabeth
said. “Now that I know everything, I love her all the more. Not
just because her acts of heroism saved my son and hers, but because
of the whole of who she was – good, bad, difficult, funny,
thoughtful and… I hope wherever she is, she’s at peace. She
deserves it.”

Elizabeth hugged Troy and the boys. Still
carrying the boys, Troy nodded to the crowd and stepped
forward.

“
I’d like to tell you a
little bit about the Dahlia I knew,” Troy said. “We met in High
School Geometry. I was already taking Calculus at the local
community college. I had to take these classes to graduate. It was
a warm fall and Dahlia wore her hair in a pony tail almost every
day.”

He smiled at the memory.

“
Under her mass of blonde
hair, she had this tiny curl at the nape of her neck,” Troy said.
“I sat behind her just itching to touch the curl. She ignored me.
It wasn’t until we were matched up for an assignment that we
talked. I don’t know if I believe in love at first sight, but I
remember that assignment like it was yesterday. I loved her then.
And no matter what I’ve ever done since then, I’ve always loved
her.

“
Since that time, she’s
always been with me.” Tears fell down Troy’s face. “I thought about
her when I was alone in some foreign country. Her beautiful face
would pop into my mind before I fell asleep. I can’t tell you how
much comfort she brought me.

“
Now, she’s gone. And I
will miss her for the rest of my life.”

When Elizabeth hugged Troy and the boys,
Alex stepped forward.

“
We would like you to join
us in a toast,” Alex said.

Cian and Colin brought bottles of sparkling
apple juice to the front. With much ceremony, they opened the
bottles while the rest of the team passed out glasses to the
audience. Colin poured for Troy and Elizabeth, and Cian poured
glasses for Hermes and Hector James. Troy set the boys down so they
could hold their glasses.

“
Hold it up,” Cian coached
the boys.

“
To Dahlia!” Troy held up
his glass.

“
To Dahlia!” The Fey team
repeated.

Troy nodded his head and everyone took a
drink.

“
Please stay for cake,”
Troy said. “Dahlia would have wanted you to enjoy what she
cannot.”

Alex watched Troy, with Hector James on his
hip, walk toward the reception area. His mother followed with
Hermes in her arms. The audience followed the family into the
reception area. When the chapel was clear and the doors closed,
they carried Dahlia to the crematorium. They lifted the interior
wooden casket from the ornate coffin and set it on the conveyer
belt. Alex dismissed the men to the reception and stayed with the
coffin. After they were gone, she removed Dahlia’s jewelry and said
one last prayer for this woman to find peace. When she was done,
the proprietor started the process.

Alex waited for Dahlia.

She knew she didn’t have to. She knew they
would call when they were done.

She just knew what it was like to lose
someone she loved. While she was in a coma in Germany and then
Walter Reed Hospital, the Fey Special Forces team was buried. She
felt a tremendous comfort that Joseph had been with every single
member of the team as they were dispatched. This was her chance to
give that comfort to someone else.

“
I thought you were very
nice about Dahlia,” Jesse said.

“
I totally misjudged her,”
Alex said.

“
No, you didn’t,” Jesse
said. “She used Troy and hurt him. You’re his friend. You didn’t
like the wreckage she left behind.”

“
Nice of you,” Alex
said.

“
Did they do this to…?”
Jesse left the question linger in the air.

“
No,” Alex said. “You were
buried. Maria thought if there was a second coming, you’d be so
pissed if you’d been cremated. She didn’t want to hear about it for
an eternity.”

Jesse laughed.

“
Can you stay with me?”
Alex asked. “Or do you have to get back?”

“
I’ll stay,” Jesse
said.

“
I feel really sad,” Alex
said. “Lonely. Miss everyone.”

She felt the tingle of Jesse’s arm around
her. For the next hour, they sat together through the waves of
sorrow and loss. When Dahlia was ready, Alex was too. She wiped her
eyes, smiled at the proprietor and took the ornate urn. With a nod
to Jesse, she went to get Troy. She and Matthew would accompany him
while he buried the love of his life.

FFFFFF

Monday night

November 2 – 9:24 p.m. MST

Denver, CO

“
It was very sweet of you
to go to the funeral,” Raz said.

He rolled over in bed to stroke Samantha’s
naked back. She’d left her long auburn hair down for him. He loved
the way it spread across her translucent skin.

“
It was… Is there a word
that means both beautiful and sad?” Samantha asked.

“
Poignant,” Raz said.
“That’s the best we came up with.”

“
We?” Samantha asked. “You
mean you and Alex.”

“
The guys?” Raz sat up to
look at her. “Alex was with Dahlia most of the
reception.”

She looked away from him.

“
Are you going to ask me
about the picture?” Raz asked.

“
What picture?” Samantha’s
blue eyes flashed liquid fire.

“
Okay, okay,” he flopped
back to the bed. “Have it your way.”

“
My way?
My way
!?” Samantha’s
voice rose with each word. “Yes, you’re right. It’s my way that
my
boyfriend
takes
my
sister
to some
romantic event that no one knows anything about. And that picture?
Disappeared off the Internet! Every copy! TechCrunch says the only
a high-level CIA operative would have the authority to make a photo
like that evaporate. Know anyone like that?”

“
Samantha,” Raz
said.

“
Why don’t you just admit
it?” Samantha asked. “Man up; admit it.”

“
Admit what?”

She flipped off the bed and stood naked next
to the bed.

“
You love Alex.”

“
Do I love Alexandra?” Raz
asked. “That’s true. Is that what I’m ‘manning up’
about?”

He sat up.

“
So, I’m the replacement?”
She pulled on her clothing. “A second best while you wait for
Alex?”

“
No, that’s not true.”
Puzzled, he watched her get dressed.