O’Malley laughed again, then turned, walking out the door. “See you around, Just-Andrew.”
At dinnertime, Andrew headed down to the mess hall with every good intention of backing out of his promise to help Dani’s squad. O’Malley’s thinly veiled threat still weighed over his head, the veritable Sword of Damacles. More than this, though, his own mental remonstrations echoed in his mind, and he knew it would ultimately be in his own best interest to give Dani Santoro as wide a berth as possible for the rest of his stay. As much as he disliked the idea.
Dani, however, had other plans.
“Forget it,” she said, presenting him with a large plastic bag filled with green peppers, enough that he had to cradle it with both hands to carry it. “I spent three hours this afternoon trying to clean the silt out of your radiator and flush your fuel lines. You owe me.”
“You worked on my Jeep?” he asked, surprised and absurdly touched.
“That’s why they pay me the big bucks,” she replied. “Come on over here. We’ll get started on the peppers while the others work on the meat and sauce.”
As they crossed the kitchen, she paused at different cabinets or steel tables where soldiers gathered, hard at work. At each one, she’d introduce Andrew to her squad members.
“This is Boston,” she said, pointing to a young man busy lining large aluminum foil baking sheets with pre-cooked corn tortillas. He nodded once in greeting to Andrew, sparing him a glance before resuming his layering. “Over there is Hartford, and that’s Maggitti, Reigler and Spaulding.”
“Hey,” one of the privates, Reigler, said to Andrew, lifting his hand in a quick wave without letting go of the metal spatula he used to stir ground beef sizzling on the flat-top griddle.
“How’s it going, man?” said another, PFC Barron, who stood over an industrial-depth sink basin draining enormous cans of stewed tomatoes.
Dani set her bag of peppers at an empty workstation. She motioned to Andrew and he positioned himself opposite her, watching as she slid an enormous wooden cutting board between them. “Barron, there, he’s from your neck of the woods, I think. Didn’t you say you were from Alaska?”
“Anchorage,” Barron told her, with a curious glance at Andrew.
“Fairbanks area,” Andrew said.
Barron grinned. “Ten bucks says the Seawolves take the Nanooks this year by at least three.”
Andrew laughed. “You’re on, man.” Because Dani looked at him, visibly puzzled, he said, “Hockey. There’s a big rivalry between the college teams in Anchorage and Fairbanks.”
“Oh.” She nodded. “Me, I watch the Rangers.”
He tried to hold the pepper the way she did, with her fingertips curled slightly under, to best avoid whacking the tips off inadvertently. She moved her knife easily in a fluid, up and down, hinged motion he tried unsuccessfully to mimic.
“You’re pretty good at this,” he noted.
“Yeah? I’ve had lots of practice.” With a demonstrative wave of her knife, indicating the other soldiers, she said, “Someone’s got to show these guys how to cook.”
“O’Malley said you’re the only woman stationed here. Besides Dr. Montgomery, I mean. That doesn’t bother you?”
“No.” Dani laughed. “Not really. I’m pretty much used to it. You don’t see a lot of women in my line of work. I’m the youngest of four sisters. So these guys here…” Again, she motioned with her knife. “The ones in my regular Guard unit, they’re all like the brothers I never had.” With a pointed look at Reigler, most readily in earshot, she added with a grin, “Some of them, the ones I never wanted.”
“Yeah, that’s what O’Malley told me earlier, too,” Andrew said. “That you’re like a sister, I mean.”
“Really?” Her brow arched. “Sounds like you and Thomas had quite the conversation.”
Andrew laughed dryly. “You could say that, yeah.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Andrew didn’t expect the warm welcome he’d received from Dani’s squad mates would be extended that night in the mess hall, and was pleasantly surprised to find that it was. O’Malley, however, was conspicuously absent.
“I wonder where he is,” Dani murmured with a puzzled frown.
“Yeah,” Barron, said. “It’s not like O’Malley to miss a meal.”
“He needs to,” muttered another soldier, Reigler, making the others around him laugh.
“The Major was looking for him earlier,” said a third, Spaulding. “Maybe he’s in a briefing or something.”
After supper, Andrew offered to help with the remaining dishes. “No, thanks,” Dani said, plucking his tray from his hands before he could sputter in protest. “We’ll take it from here.”
Back upstairs in his room, he lay down on his belly atop his bed, watching a video he’d borrowed from the staff library downstairs, the cringe-worthy Universal Soldier with Jean-Claude Van Damme.
When Dani came to the door, she knocked softly and he scrambled up. Without even asking who was there, he opened the door, then smiled. “Hey.”
“Hey, yourself,” she said. “Still want to let me see that scrapbook?”
“Of course. Sure. Come on in.” He sidestepped to give her room. “You want a beer?”
“You bought one of those six-packs from the PX?” she asked, eyes widening. “They’re, what, fifteen bucks?”
“Twenty,” he replied, fishing one of the still-cold bottles of Bud Light—the only variety the canteen offered—from the pack beside his bed and twisting off the cap. “But it’s okay. My wallet’s all dried out now. My money, too.”
Taking the bottle as he held it out to her, she shook her head and laughed. “You’re crazy.”
Sitting down against the side of his bed, she took a long swig. “Oh, man,” she said, closing her eyes and sighing happily. “That’s good. I haven’t had a beer since I got here. I haven’t wanted to pay that much for them.”
He leaned against the wall, but reached out to tap his own bottle against hers in a toast when she offered. He couldn’t help but notice yet again the conspicuous absence of a wedding ring on her hand.
“Okay, let’s see it,” Dani said, and his attention snapped from her finger to her face.
“What? Oh, the book. Okay. Sure.”
She scooted back on the bed to make room as he sat down beside her, lugging the scrapbook out of its hiding place in a dresser drawer and setting it between them. He showed her some of the articles he’d gone through, giving her time to read each.
“This place is a hospital?” Dani asked, tapping the photo of Moore and Alice standing outside of Gallatin.
“A state mental institution, I think it must be,” Andrew replied. “She told me her mother had to get a court order to have her committed there, and Dr. Moore had to petition for another one to get her out.”
“How long was she there?” Clearly, the haunting image of Alice cradled in her father’s arms, her eyes vacuous, as if she was a life-sized doll, troubled Dani. A slight cleft had formed between her brows and her lips had pursed, an unhappy frown.
“Three years.”
“God,” Dani whispered. “How could someone do that to their child?”
“I don’t know.” Andrew shook his head. “Alice told me she used to be violent, hitting and kicking. She said she was better now, but still, I can’t imagine. I mean, it’s a little strange sometimes, the things she does. But she’s a nice kid.”
Closing the scrapbook, Dani pushed it away as if it was something soiled. “I don’t understand. You said Alice told you Dr. Moore was doing things to those chimpanzees to make them smarter, their brains grow.”
“Siamangs,” he corrected.
“Whatever. I wish we could get into that lab and snoop around some, try and find out what he’s up to out there.”