Free Bound for the Outer Banks by Alicia Lane Dutton

red scarf, and a white cape would run up and down the sidelines stopping every twenty five yards or so to lunge and thrust his pelvis towards the stands. After every West Point touchdown, all thirty six cadet company mascots plus the live Army mule would take over the end zone and perform a short individual touch down dance. Nuna was so entranced by all this she usually didn’t know the score of the game until the very end.
     
    For Chogan “Chief” Montauk, the days of West Point and fighting in the Middle East were far behind him. Today he could think of nothing but the director and deputy director of The Bureau deciding his fate in a meeting with his shrink and his investigative team members. Today they would decide if Chogan would be able to stay on the job as an agent or if he would be forced to go on paid administrative leave until they felt he had time to recover from the trauma he had witnessed days before.
     
    The Bureau had been closing in on a member of the United Sacred Crown who was a suspect in a shooting six months earlier which had killed two agents. Chogan and his partner had been staking out the suspect’s home along with two other Bureau members. Someone had tipped off the organization and Chogan’s partner had been shot in an ambush.
     
    The hit man had popped up and placed a .45 against the glass of the driver’s side window, shooting Chogan’s partner of two years and best friend, Brad Reilly, in the head. Chogan immediately reacted and shot the hit man through his forehead. Chief always kept his firearm on his lap with his finger stretched alongside the trigger guard, a habit he learned in Officer’s Candidate School before he deployed to the Middle East.
     
    Only after his quick reaction to the threatening gunman did Chief notice the blood splatter, the soft gelatinous brain tissue, and shards of skull that he was now covered with. Brad Reilly’s body had slumped to the side toward Chief from the impact of the bullet. The exit wound from the bullet had left a large gaping hole where the right side of Brad’s skull had been.
     
    Just like Jackie Kennedy, after a bullet had shredded her husband’s skull, Chogan’s first reaction was to try to put the pieces back together on what was formerly Brad Reilly’s intact head.
     
    The other two agents on the stakeout stationed on the opposite corner of the street ran to Brad’s and Chogan’s vehicle. While one of the agents yelled into his surveillance communications face mike for an ambulance, the other agent gently took the brain tissue and pieces of shattered skull from Chogan’s trembling hands.
     
    Two days after burying his partner and friend, the deputy director of The Bureau summoned Chief to his office to decide his fate. Chief was how everyone now addressed Chogan completely ignoring the memo on political correctness.
     
    Chief walked the two blocks back to The Bureau on Pennsylvania Avenue after paying for his two nonalcoholic beers and tipping the bartender handsomely for not bothering him with meaningless small talk. Chief looked somewhat intimidating with his six foot three inch solid frame, shoulder length coarse black hair, and almond shaped black eyes.
     
    As Chief entered the office both he and Flynn, the deputy director, wore solemn faces.
     
    “The good news is that you are not being placed on leave. You will be staying on the job for now,” said Flynn.
     
    Chief breathed a long sigh of relief. Every agent dreaded the thought of being placed on administrative leave without their firearm and badge, left to while away the days at “the cathartic church” with other people who were in the purgatory of being unemployed or having no particular place to go for whatever reason.
     
    “You need to go home and pack, Montauk,” Flynn said in a very demanding manner. He knew he was going to get pushback from Chief, one of his finest agents.
     
    “Why? You said I could stay on the job,” asked a confused