Chapter 20
We drove north on I-95. Washington, D.C. was our destination. I’d wait for Marlowe by his house. Turn over the evidence and find out what he had planned for Keller. We stopped and picked up the cheapest laptop we could find. Jessie transferred the audio file to the computer and burned it onto a CD.
It turned out to be a good thing she had been held hostage by Martinez, notwithstanding the emotional scarring and baggage the ordeal would leave her with. She kept her spirits up, though, and regularly made jokes at my expense from the back seat.
We crossed the state line into Virginia. The topic of what her next steps were hadn’t been discussed yet. I turned in the passenger seat and looked back at her.
“Do you want to go back home, Jess?”
“Do you think it’s safe now?”
I shook my head. “Probably not.”
“Yeah, I didn’t think so.”
“I can take you with me to New—”
“Dulles, Jack.” She looked out the window to her side. “Take me to Dulles when we get to D.C.”
“Where do you plan to go?”
“I don’t know.” She shook her head slightly. “I don’t know.”
I cleared my throat and turned back to the front and stared out the window for a moment.
“What about you, Bear?”
“What do you mean?”
“Pretty sure with everything that’s happened we can convince Marlowe to give you an honorable discharge.”
He shrugged and didn’t say anything.
I waited a moment and then continued. “You’re thinking about staying in?” The thought hadn’t occurred to me. I figured he was as antsy to get out as I was.
“What else am I going to do, Jack?” He placed both his hands on the steering wheel. Gripped it so tight his knuckles turned white. “I’ve got two years left. I’m going to finish out those two years.”
Bear had principles, and the commitment he made meant a lot to him. I knew that. But what about the commitment they made to us and the fact that they broke that commitment? I don’t recall reading anything on my contract that stated permission to terminate at will. I brushed the thought aside.
“You know, even if they don’t scrap the program, there’s no way you’re going back to it.”
He shrugged and looked at me for a second, then back toward the road. He quickly scanned the cars. “That’s fine with me. I’ll take a desk job for a couple years.”
I laughed. Bear behind a desk? The big man would go crazy.
“Where the hell are they going to find a chair and desk big enough for you?”
A few seconds passed and then Bear broke out into laughter.
“I know, right. What the hell am I thinking?”
“Why don’t you leave? We’ll go into business together.”
“Doing what? Crime scene creation?”
Doing what?
The words hung in the air above me. I hadn’t given any thought to it. I had a few hopes. I hoped that Jessie would be part of my own “doing what.” I hoped that I could travel for a couple months before my official retirement while using up my accrued leave pay. I hoped that something would just turn up. I’d only known the Marines, and more specifically, the joint program with the CIA. The actual Marines were a mystery to me. Before that, my future had been planned by my father and high school football coach. I tried not to think about either of them, nor the future I had left behind.
“What about you, Jack?” Bear said, interrupting my thoughts.
“I’ve got three months leave built up.”
“So you’re done?”
“Yeah, Bear,” I said. “I’m done. This is it. I’m giving this tape to Marlowe and getting him to put my honorable discharge in writing, effective the last day of my leave. Then I’m going to do—” I leaned back and stared at the ceiling. “Then I don’t know what I’m going to do. I’ll figure it out at some point in the next three months.”
He opened his mouth to say something and must have thought better of it. His grip had loosened on the steering wheel. A smile crept up on his face. He seemed relaxed. At peace. I hadn’t even thought about the possibility that our partnership stressed him out.
“Bear, does being around—” I stopped mid-sentence, deciding not to go down that road. “Never mind.”
“Never minded.”