Fires of Autumn (29 page)

As the
battle went into the second hour of play, it got louder.  Brody and Colt were
becoming comrades in arms and Brody was having a great time.  There was lots of
‘watch your back, dude!’ or ‘behind you’ from the players as they helped each
other navigate the alien bombardment.  As Casey sat back on the couch next to
Colt, glass of wine in one hand and the other hand on Colt’s back, Hunter
suddenly appeared in the doorway.

Casey
caught a glimpse of her oldest as he hovered in the door jamb. She glanced over
at the boy.

“Hey,
Hunt,” she said casually. “Want to play?”

Hunter
remained in the doorway, his eyes on the television. “I dunno,” he shrugged,
moving around the couch and giving the players a wide berth as he came to sit
on his mother’s opposite side.  He plopped down next to her. “I could hear it
all the way upstairs.”

Casey knew
that.  It was for that reason that she had Brody and Colt play the game.  She
shifted her wine glass to the other hand and wrapped an arm around her eldest.

“Grandma
and Grandpa are flying in tomorrow for Thanksgiving,” she hugged the boy. “Is
your room all cleaned up for them?”

Hunter
groaned. “Why do they have to sleep in my room?” he wanted to know. “Why can’t
they have Brody’s room?”

Casey was
patient. “They’re not sleeping in your room,” she said. “Aunt Riley is. Grandma
and Grandpa are sleeping in her room.”

“But I
don’t want to sleep in Brody’s room,” Hunter whined. “He snores.”

“Then wear
earplugs.”

“Can I
just sleep on the couch?”

Colt just
finished a brutal kill by splashing alien guts all over the screen.  As the
game recalculated, he looked at Hunter and Casey.

“When I
was about Hunter’s age, my grandparents came out from Montana one year to spend
Christmas with us,” he said. “Mind you, I’ve got a younger brother and at that
time in our lives, we had a real love/hate relationship.  I was supposed to
sleep in Kennedy’s room and absolutely hated the idea because not only did he
snore, but he just had one bed and I was expected to sleep with him in it. He
kicked and thrashed around, so I really wasn’t looking forward to it. Anyway, I
concocted this elaborate plan so when we went to bed on Christmas Eve, I made a
big deal about sleeping in the backyard in my boy scout tent so we could watch
for Santa Claus.  Ken got sucked into it, and we went outside, got into the
sleeping bags, and waited for Santa.”

Casey was
grinning at him. “What happened?”

Colt
cocked an eyebrow. “Now, mind you, I’m about eight, so I knew damn well there
was no Santa, but Ken didn’t yet. He was kind of on the cusp of getting too old
to believe. Well, Ken falls asleep and I bailed from the tent, went inside,
locked up all the doors, and got into his bed.  I think it must have been the
middle of the night when Ken woke up because it was freezing and realized I
wasn’t there. He tried to get into the house but I’d locked all the doors. 
He’s so little that he’s afraid to go walking around to the front of the house
where the master bedroom and our parents slept, so he stands in the back yard
and throws rocks at his bedroom window because he knew I was in there.  He
ended up busting the window and we both got in trouble.  I didn’t get my
Christmas presents until New Years.”

Casey
laughed softly and even Hunter grinned.  Colt could see he had the boy’s
attention. “Do you have a tent or a dog house you could get your brother in
to?” he asked Hunter.

“Hey!”
Brody turned to him, grinning. “I thought you were on my side.”

Colt
laughed at the kid. “Just kidding,” he said. “If your brother kicks you out,
just head over to my place.  I’ve got a sixty inch plasma screen that would
make killing aliens feel like the real thing.”

Brody was
interested. “Really?” he asked, then looked at his mother. “Mom, can I stay
with Colt while Grandma and Grandpa are here?”

Casey
smiled at her youngest over the rim of her wineglass. “I don’t think so,” she
replied. “Grandma and Grandpa will be disappointed if they don’t get to see
you. You need to stay here.”

Disappointed,
Brody turned to Colt. “Do you have any kids?”

Colt shook
his head. “No,” he replied. “No kids. Just a younger brother, three nephews and
a niece.”

“Oh,”
Brody’s mind was recalculating like the game. “Are you sure you don’t want a
kid for Thanksgiving? I’ll volunteer.”

Colt
grinned as Casey shushed her boy. “Actually, I have to work,” he said. “Maybe
I’ll see you for leftovers.”

“Why are
you working?” Brody wanted to know. “My mom has the day off and you work with
her. Isn’t everyone taking the day off?”

Colt
shrugged and sat back against the couch. “My job is a little different from
your mom’s.   I don’t follow a normal work schedule.”

“You got
shot,” Hunter was suddenly in the conversation, completely off the subject. 
His violet eyes were intense on Colt. “My mom said you were a hero.”

Colt
looked at the young boy, with fine features like his mother. “I did my job,” he
replied modestly. “I’m paid to protect the President and that’s what I did.”

“Did it
hurt?” Brody wanted to know.

Colt gave
the kid a half-grin. “I didn’t even feel it.”

“Seriously?”
Brody was awed.

Casey
shook her head, interrupting. “Of course he felt it,” she sounded like she was
scolding both Colt and Brody. “He got shot, for heaven’s sake. He could have
been killed.”

As Colt
put his hand on her knee to soothe her, Hunter moved onto the floor next to his
brother so he could see Colt a little better.

“Do you
wear a vest?” he wanted to know.  “My dad does.”

Colt
lifted an eyebrow, glancing at Casey. “What does your dad do?”

“He’s a
state trooper.”

“Oh,” Colt
hadn’t known that. He focused on Hunter’s question. “Yes, I wear a vest.”

“Mom said
you got shot in the neck and in the leg.”

“Everywhere
the vest didn’t cover.”

“Were you
scared?”

Colt’s
smile was back. “I wasn’t thinking about being scared,” he said honestly. “I
was just thinking about making sure the President was safe.”

“Oh.”
Hunter thought on that; he seemed to be warming to Colt in the slightest, a
good sign. “How did you get to be in the Secret Service?”

“I applied
when I got out of the Marine Corp.”

“What did
you do in the Marines?”

Colt
shifted on the couch and ended up leaning against Casey, who casually put her
hand on his left thigh.

“I was
with the 3
^rd
Light Armored Infantry division in charge of the 2
^nd
Weapons Platoon,” he replied. “When I graduated from the Naval Academy, I was
stationed in Somalia for awhile before moving to Iraq.  We saw a lot of action
there.  I was in the Marines until ’99, joined the Secret Service, and my first
assignment was Clinton’s last year in office.”

Both
Hunter and Brody were all ears. “Did you kill a lot of people in Iraq?” Brody
wanted to know.

Before
Casey could scold him, Colt answered. “You know,” he said evenly, thoughtfully.
“I think a lot of people think that’s all we did, go in and kill Iraqis, but
that’s not what we did at all.  For the most part, the Iraqi people were very
gracious and kind to us.  I made some good friends over there.  I also lost
some good friends over there.  The bad guys, Saddam Hussein’s guys, would take
kids your age and make them fight. That was a problem. If I saw a kid your age
coming at me with a gun, I know he meant to kill me.  So what am I going to
do?  Not defend myself because a kid with a gun is trying to kill me? Things
like that still haunt me.”

By this
time, the boys were very serious, as was Casey. “Did you kill some kids?” Brody
asked.

Colt took
a long, slow breath. “If I’d had any other choice, I wouldn’t have,” he said
softly. “One kid put a bullet in my gut. He was about seven years old.  As I
lay on the ground, his fifteen year old sister tried to put a bullet in my
brain.  It was the worst thing I’d ever seen.  There’s an old saying that war
is hell; it really is.  I know because I lived it.”

Casey
squeezed his leg. “Whoa,” she murmured, smiling at him when he looked at her.
“That’s pretty heavy stuff for an eight year old and an eleven year old.”

Colt
looked at her. “Why?” he wasn’t arguing with her but it was a legitimate
question. “You let them play video games where they’re smearing alien guts and
brains all over the screen. You don’t think that’s pretty heavy stuff, too?”

Her smile
faded. “It’s just a game.”

He lifted
his eyebrows at her but refrained from saying anything more. He could already
see that it was something they weren’t going to agree on and he didn’t want to
spar with her. He returned his focus to the boys.

“I like
doing what I do,” he told them, diverting the subject somewhat because he could
see that Casey wasn’t thrilled with his topic of choice. “Have you guys thought
about what you want to do when you grow up?”

Brody
shrugged, and turned back to the television with his controller. “I want to do
Black Ops.”

Colt shook
his head regretfully. “No, you don’t. You really don’t.”

Hunter
jumped in, taking the other controller. “I want to be a state trooper like my
dad.”

“That’s a
good goal,” Colt agreed.

The
conversation died as the boys returned to the alien-killing game.  Colt sat
back on the couch with Casey, discreetly gathering her fingers off his thigh
and holding her hand when the boys weren’t looking.  She leaned against him,
snuggling, as they watched the boys protect the world from alien invaders.  She
ended up handing him her half-full glass of wine, which he finished off, all
the while cuddling with her.  It was as heavenly and satisfying as he could
have imagined.  It made him want it forever.

Hunter
Nantz wasn’t so standoffish with Colt the next time he met up with him.

***

Nick and
Janice Cleburne flew in two days before Thanksgiving to spend the holiday with
their two children and two grandchildren.  Because of her work schedule, Casey
didn’t see them a whole lot but the boys did, hanging out with their
grandparents as their mother and aunt worked. She didn’t get a chance to
introduce them to Colt at all because he was tied up with the President for
those two days, which in hindsight, was probably best considering Casey hadn’t
been able to talk to her parents about Colt and break them in a little.  She
wanted to give them plenty of time to get used to the idea of a Sheridan in the
family.

Because of
this, Colt didn’t come over late at night like he usually did. He didn’t want
to chance running in to the parents.  He went home after he was finished with
his shift but he couldn’t sleep, not without Casey in his arms, so he would sit
up and work until the early morning hours. 

He spent
all of one night organizing the images he took of the President’s bank
statements and emailing the woman who wrote the article about Talbot’s alleged
cartel connections.  He’d been so swept up with Casey and her boys that he
hadn’t done anything with the images or the newspaper reporter.  If he was
going to keep Meade and the old boys off his back, he was going to have to do
what he had been assigned to do, but he was increasingly reluctant to do it. He
was just going through the motions.  He wanted out. 

But it
wasn’t mean to be, at least not right away. The woman who wrote the article
back in the late nineties about Talbot’s cartel connections emailed him the day
before Thanksgiving and on his lunch break, he called the woman with a
disposable cell phone he’d purchased out in Alexandria and gave her a phony
story about how he was from the Washington Post and he wanted more information
on the article she had written. 

The woman,
Katy Ross, was reluctant at first but ended up agreeing to meet with him. The
only time she could do it was on Thanksgiving Day because she now lived in
Hawai’i and this was her only day in New Mexico with her family before
returning home.  Colt made some swift arrangements to cover his shift on
Thanksgiving Day and agreed to fly to Albuquerque to talk to her. She wouldn’t
do it any other way; not by phone and nothing in writing. It was face to face
or nothing.

Thanksgiving
Day, he was up well before dawn.  His flight didn’t leave until nine in the
morning, which would have him in Albuquerque at ten o’clock given the time
difference. He would meet Katy at the airport and had two hours with her until
his flight departed back for D.C.  He’d get back home around six in the
evening, plenty of time for him to head over to see Casey.

 He went
to the gym down the street and worked out for about an hour, emerging from the
gym to see that it was still dark, although the eastern sky was just starting
to turn shades of pink.  As he made his way up the street back to his townhome,
his cell phone went off in his gym bag and he unzipped it, pulling the phone
out of a pocket.  The caller I.D. was Casey.