Free Crosscut by Meg Gardiner Page A

reputation. The military performs biowar experiments on convicts. Psy-ops types keep children in cages. Space aliens play pass the anal probe. It’s all tinfoilhat stuff.”
    “I’m not talking about UFOs.”
    I reached the end of the deck and turned. He spun around and curved into my path, stopping me.
    “You know what Jax has been hinting at. You’re simply avoiding it.”
    I looked at him, and the ocean, and up at the night sky. He touched my arm.
    “Evan, call your father.”
     
It was late in Key West, but my dad was a nighthawk. He’d be watching the History Channel or reading a Patrick O’Brian novel if he wasn’t working at the computer. I dialed on my cell phone and headed inside. As his phone rang I took up my pacing again, back and forth across the hardwood floor in the main room. Jesse came in and turned on the stereo. My dad’s phone continued ringing.
    The music spilled across the room, unfurling like a silk banner up to the cathedral ceiling. It was jazz and it was old. I looked at Jesse, surprised. Normally he preferred bands that had torched their guitars onstage circa 1969.
    “Stress management,” he said. “New tunes for a happier head.”
    Walking past him, I rubbed his shoulder. Whatever worked. Anything to pull him out from under the grief and survivor’s guilt that had crushed his spirit to dust. Anything to stop the nightmares. To keep the sound of a siren or a gunning engine from igniting a flashback, putting him in Mission Canyon again, lying broken in the ravine, watching his best friend die. My hand lingered on his shoulder.
    He shrugged. “All part of the shrink-wrap.”
    That was what he called the recovery program he’d worked out with his doctors. It included drugs for neuropathic pain, antidepressants and antianxiety meds, and a group for survivors of violent crime. The rest was his own doing: throwing out the booze, swimming every day. And now switching from the Stones to John Coltrane. It was a slow struggle to shore, but at least now when he drove away I didn’t worry that he’d smash the car into a bridge abutment.
    Now I had other worries.
    In my ear the phone rang one more time and a message clicked on saying the call was being diverted. A new ring-tone sounded. My father answered.
    “Kit? What’s up, honey?”
    Four words and I felt safe. Time had added gravel to his voice, and the prairie rhythms had deepened. Nobody made gruffness sound more welcome than Philip James Delaney, captain USN, retired.
    “I’ve been hit with a wild pitch. The thing is, I think it’s aimed at you.”
    “Sounds serious. Does it involve your cousin Taylor?”
    That made me smile. I hopped up and sat on the kitchen counter. “You don’t want to know about Taylor. This is something else.”
    “Shoot.”
    “Project South Star.”
    On his end I heard a television burbling theme music. Four bars, six, eight.
    “Dad?”
    “Are you on a land line?”
    Ting. I felt a cold drip on the back of my neck. “My cell. At Jesse’s.”
    “Hang up.”
    I set my phone on the granite counter, feeling the chill seep down my spine. He wanted me off the cell.
    Jesse’s phone rang. He turned toward it, but I jumped off the counter. “That’s Dad calling back.”
    I picked it up from the coffee table in the living room. The brusqueness in my father’s voice no longer sounded protective.
    “Who’s dredging up South Star?”
    “Nobody you know.”
    “Whoever it is has an agenda. Probably seeking publicity for himself. Whatever they’ve told you, just forget it. Drop the whole matter.”
    “Publicity is not the issue.”
    “Then why’d they throw this at a journalist? Who is it, a politician? Or one of those activists who thinks the government kills puppies for oil?”
    “Dad, tell me about the project.”
    “I can’t. It’s classified.”
    I exhaled. Across the room Jesse watched me, trying to assess the conversation.
    Dad’s voice sharpened. “Somebody’s yanking your chain, Evan.