Free The Fey by Claudia Hall Christian Page A

at Fort Logan. I stand right here and watch Alexander’s stone.”
He paused for a moment. His baby blue eyes searched her face. “I
know that a part of you is buried here.”
    She nodded.
    “ Sir,” a male voice said
from the road. “We are running short on time.”
    “ Thank you Justin,”
Patrick said to his intern. “I need a few more minutes.”
    “ Intern?” Alex
asked.
    Patrick nodded.
    “ He looks like he’s twelve
years old.”
    “ I think he is twelve
years old,” Patrick laughed.
    “ Did you ever think that
you saw or heard any of your friends, you know, after they
died?”
    “ Never,” he said.
“Why?”
    “ Oh nothing,” she
said
    “ When’s your next
surgery?”
    “ It’s scheduled for this
week but I want to make sure Erin’s all right first. I mean who
would have thought that Erin would be in a relationship like that?
Erin? I’ve been so focused on my own crap that I haven’t even
considered her or really anyone in a long time.”
    “ You are the very heart of
everyone who knows you, Alex. You’ll sort it out.”
    Patrick leaned to kiss her cheek then walked
across the grass without saying another word. Alex turned back to
the monument while his limousine passed behind her. With a sigh,
she made her way across the uneven grass.
    F

CHAPTER SEVEN
    Four weeks later
    March 8 – 6:35 A.M.
Denver, Colorado
     
    Three weeks after a full hip replacement,
Alex was running on a treadmill between Max and Erin. They made a
pact to workout every morning at six-thirty. So far, despite
injuries, they had been successful.
    And they had fun. Erin was treated to an
inside view of the delightful insanity of the twins. In their
funny, friendly company, she began growing into herself again.
Right now, she was making faces at Alex while Alex told her about
peeing from a helicopter. Max laughed so hard that he had to turn
his treadmill off.
    “ Hey you have a text,” Max
said pointing to Alex’s fanny pack.
    “ You’re the only one who
texts me, Text Boy.”
    Max snatched her fanny pack from the floor
then pulled out the phone.
    “ Ten bucks it’s an ad,”
Alex said.
    Max opened the phone then puzzled at the
message.
    “ Well?” Alex asked. She
turned off her treadmill to see what was going on.
    “ It says, ‘You have six
hours before they die.’”
    “ It does not say
that.”
    Alex grabbed the phone from him. Staring at
the phone, Alex’s heart sank inside her chest. As if responding to
her stare, her phone rang. Walking away from her siblings, she
answered the phone to her Sergeant.
    “ Fey,” she said. “Hey I
just…”
    “ You have to wait,” her
Sergeant said. “Okay, go ahead.”
    “ I just received a text
message that says…”
    “ You have six hours before
they die. That’s 1230 hours our time.”
    “ Right,” Alex
said.
    “ At approximately 1230
hours, Afghanistan, three soldiers disappeared.”
    “ That’s…”
    “ Four hours ago. We were
notified about a potential map issue because the soldiers walked
into a GPS dead zone. Then…”
    “ What is today’s
date?”
    “ It’s March
eighth.”
    “ I’ll call you
back.”
    Alex jogged to the bathroom. She just made
the handicap toilet before throwing up. Wiping her mouth with the
back of her hand, she focused on tile in an effort to stay present.
Four blue tiles. Six green tiles. She threw up again. The walls are
made of white tile with blue and green tiles in a diagonal
line.
    “ Alex?” Erin
asked.
    “ I’m here,” she
said.
    Erin rattled the door to the handicap stall
where Alex was standing. Alex flipped open the lock. Erin looked at
Alex’s white face and the toilet. Reaching past Alex, she flushed
the toilet.
    “ I didn’t know you still
did this,” Erin said. “I thought that being a Green
Beret…”
    “ Some habits die hard,”
Alex said. “I usually don’t eat when I’m working. It’s why I get so
thin.”
    “ What happened?” Erin
asked.
    Matthew and Troy are in Afghanistan.