“I should have gone down and spent time with them.”
“Why?” Jeff sat up in bed and looked at me. “So you can tell them, again, that you think what happened is all your fault? So they can tell you, again, it’s not? So that you can say, again, that you’re sorry?”
“Yeah, I guess. I mean, it’s what you’re supposed to do. And I didn’t. Not enough. And you’re supposed to be there to comfort your friends and I didn’t even know what room Caroline was in until just now.”
“While you were supposedly going to the bathroom but were actually crying in the closet, Uncle Richard told us that the family just wanted to be together. No one blames you, and they said that, too.”
“Naomi does.” Which made the whole thing hurt all the more.
“Naomi’s under the influence of a drug. Which you discovered so it could be countered, I might add. No one in control of their own mind blames you, baby. If I’d had any way to call in a strike team and tell them where to go, I would have. You activated the only things that had a shot of finding our people. You didn’t know Walter and his team were on the way, any more than we were advised that the Marines were deployed.”
“But my order is the reason two of our own are dead.”
Jeff made the exasperation sound. “Are you listening to me? At all? I can’t tell. I realize you want to wallow in guilt for some reason, but it’s misplaced. Leaders make calls, run plays, try different tactics and strategies. And sometimes what they try works, and sometimes it doesn’t.”
“I’m listening. I just—what we tried worked, but the wrong way.”
Jeff stroked my face. “I know. But, we’re in a war, baby. It’s covert, but it’s still a war. And in wars, we lose people. Did I want to see my cousin murdered in front of me? No, of course not. Did we do everything we could to prevent it? Yes, we did. The outcome is one of the worst we could have ended up with, but death is a part of life. We can complain about it, but we can’t change that.”
Algar had certainly said the same. Decided I was exhausted and just wanted to sleep. Jeff realized, because he lay back down next to me, pulled me close to him, and kissed my forehead. “Go to sleep, baby. Let’s put this day from hell into the past.”
“O-kay,” I said, with a yawn between syllables. Focused on the hair on Jeff’s chest, how nice it felt when my face was snuggled in between his awesome pecs, and drifted off.
Was rudely awakened by someone tapping my shoulder.
“Missus Martini, how nice to see you again.”
Looked around. Lucky me. There I was, back in front of my friends, The Congressional Grand Inquisition.
CHAPTER 50
PERFECT. Because the day just hadn’t been “fun” enough already.
“Why are we here?” I asked.
The congressmen looked at each other and shrugged. The Senator in Charge turned back to me. “We’re here to pass judgment on your latest failures.”
“Oh. Good. Look, per everyone, I need the sleep.”
“Per us, you need to explain why things went haywire today,” one of the Committee said.
“Just lucky, I guess.”
“Let’s put her in prison and get on with it,” one of the other Committee members said. “I want to convict someone, and she’s conveniently here.”
“I want a lawyer.”
“I’ll represent the accused.” Turned to see Michael standing there. He didn’t look like he’d been shot. Heard a mewling sound and Fuzzball jumped up onto Michael’s shoulder. “My associate will give the opening arguments.”
The Poof started mewing. Hopped up and down. Lots of tiny growls. Went large and toothy for a bit, still jumping up and down, though the growling was a lot louder. It finished up, went small, and jumped back on Michael’s shoulder.
“I see,” the Senator in Charge said. He turned to me. “What do you have to add to the learned council’s comments?”
“Ahhhh . . .” I had no idea what the Poof had been saying. At all. It was just so much cuteness from what, if I looked at it out of the corner of my eyes, was a somewhat insubstantial version of Fuzzball. Michael looked somewhat insubstantial, too.
“I say we sentence her now,” one of the other Committee members said. “I have a golf game to get back to.”
“No, my client is more important than your golf game,” Michael said. The Committee and all the rest of Congress, all of whom were, once again, in attendance, grumbled but finally they waved at Michael to continue. “My client will make her statement now.”
Turned to him. “Are you a ghost? Or just a figment of my imagination?”
He flashed me his typical “you so hot, babe” smile, the one he gave to any woman between the ages of 18 and 98. “I’m whatever you want me to be.”
Chose to not take this as a come-on line, seeing as Michael was both engaged to Caroline and also dead. Though he looked alive right now. Very, vibrantly alive. Turned my head and looked at him again out of the corner of my eye. He looked insubstantial again.
Turned back. He looked alive again. Worked for me. “I want you to be alive and unharmed and all of yesterday to have been a really bad dream.”
Michael shook his head. “Doesn’t work that way. You need to explain what happened yesterday. In a bottom line way.”
“We want to know who’s responsible for what happened,” the lead senator said.
“I am. I was the acting Head of Field.”
“Can we just send her to the chair?” one of the others on the Committee asked. “She wants to take the blame for what the terrorists did, after all. Having a scapegoat is wonderful. Gives us something to focus the people on, instead of the bigger picture, or what’s really going on.”
“No,” Michael said. “We find the other side’s scapegoat, that’s great. But that only avenges us for who pulled the trigger, not who gave the order.”
“I gave the order.”
Michael gave me the “really?” look. “So, you told the assassin to kidnap, torture, and kill us?”
“Well, no, of course not.”
“You gave the order to overtake Home Base and the Science Center?”
“No.”
“You called in me and Brian, along with other non-Security personnel, so we’d be easier to capture?”
“No, Gladys did that.”
“Did you tell her to?”
“No, Ronaldo Al Dejahl did.”
Michael nodded. “The Defense rests.”
“We do?”
Fuzzball jumped up and down on Michael’s shoulder. “Ah,” he said, “good point. My colleague would like to ask if anyone believes that Ronaldo Al Dejahl is in charge.”
“He took his own sweet time showing up on the scene,” the Senator in Charge said. “Seems to me he’s a convenient face for the new Al Dejahl terrorist group.”
“Not as if his father ever acknowledged him, after all,” the Committee member who wanted to send me to the chair said. “It seems to me that he was found after his father was killed.”
“By someone who was told where to look,” the Committee member who wanted to play golf added. “Despite his claims to the contrary.”
The others all nodded.
“Wow, you’re all buying in to the idea that the Mastermind is behind all of this?”
Everyone in the room looked at me. “There is another,” the Senator in Charge said.
“Right, right, another Jedi out there. Or another Sith. You mean the Apprentice.”
“Someone won the job,” Michael said. “Or else this wouldn’t have happened.” Fuzzball mewed again. “Oh, right. Kitty, try to remember that you’re not responsible for what anyone else does.”
“Right, everyone chooses their own path. I don’t remember being this hung up on Star Wars as a kid, but I guess I was.”