LITMIR.BIZ

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drummed his fingers on the steering wheel, then ran his hands through his hair. “I don’t know. I’m tired as hell. I’m getting put on the Joint Terrorism Task Force.”

      “That’s good, right? You’ll be able to see this through to the end.”

      “Maybe. We’ll see. They might have me running around town with my dick in my hand.”

      She cleared her throat, trying to hide the laugh.

      “Sorry, Sam. That was crude of me.”

      “You’re fine, Fletch. The image was priceless.”

      He laughed with her then, and the light turned. He took a right, then a left, and she was at her door a moment later. There was a pause, awkward and three beats too long. He looked like he wanted to say something important, but refrained. Instead, he shook it off and said, “Get some sleep. You did good today.”

      “Thanks, Fletch. You, too. Call me if you need anything else, okay? And if they get the results back on the toxin, let me know.”

      “Will do. Last round of calls got it down to two or three, with ricin still leading the pack.”

      “If that’s true, we’re damn lucky there are only three people dead.”

      “You said it, sister.”

      He watched her go up the stairs, waited until the door was unlocked to drive away.

      She caught the blue glow of the clock on the microwave. It was nearly two in the morning.

      Exhaustion suddenly paraded through her body, and she sagged a bit. She wanted a shower and bed. She took the stairs carefully, quietly.

      She found Xander crashed out cold on top of the covers. Just the sight of him caused a little thrum in her stomach. She stopped in the doorway and watched him, marveling at the fact that he belonged to her.

      With a soldier’s unerring ability to sense a threat, he opened his eyes, and she saw he already had one hand tucked under his pillow, where she knew he kept a loaded weapon. Only one of many stashed throughout the house.

      “It’s me,” she whispered. “Go back to sleep.”

      He rolled up in one smooth motion, both hands free.

      “I’m glad you’re home. We need to talk.”

      * * *

      He gave her fifteen minutes to S-cubed—military jargon for shit, shower and shave—and met her in the kitchen with a fresh pot of coffee and her laptop glowing on the table. She took one look at him and went to the liquor cabinet, fetched a bottle of Lagavulin. She splashed some in both their cups, then tucked her damp hair behind her ears and settled in, recognizing Xander in full operational mode. He might as well have had his uniform on and a rifle strapped to his chest.

      Loaded for bear.

      He sat across from her, took a deep drink from his cup. Xander made seriously good tea, but he was a first-class coffee maker. A connoisseur. Sam was amused when the first thing he did was buy her a Bunn, claiming it was one of the finest coffeemakers in the world. She found that ironic, considering he often made his coffee by throwing the grounds in a pan of water and heating it over the fire. He took personal affront at Starbucks and the like, instead preferred to grind his own beans, which he imported from a friend in Colombia. She wasn’t entirely sure that was legal, but she could hardly complain—the coffee it made was out of this world.

      “There’s a message from GW on the answering machine. I heard them leave it. School’s closed for the rest of the week.”

      “Not surprising. I assume they are going to have people combing that Metro stop and the surrounds for a few days to make sure things are safe.”

      They sipped their coffee. Finally, Xander set down his cup.

      “Aren’t you going to ask?”

      She stared into his eyes, best described as a deep chocolate-espresso—eyes that were so like the dark, intense brews he favored—and sighed.

      “Fine. You were here in D.C. at least an hour before you should have been if you’d heard about the attacks on the news. Which means you fibbed to me this morning about your fishing date gone wrong.”

      He smirked. “I didn’t fib. My guy didn’t show, and I did go to the café to check things out.”

      She knew the café he mentioned was the Mountain City Coffeehouse in Frostburg, Maryland—the closest internet café to Xander’s cabin that had decent food and coffee. She had to admit, it was a quaint, charming place, perfect for him to stay under the radar. He liked the window by the fireplace; he was able to see the rest of the room, the entrance and exits. Once a soldier, always a soldier. The cabin didn’t have internet access, so Xander made it a routine to head to Frostburg a couple of times a month to check his mail, set up his appointments as a fishing guide, and generally check up on the world. She was tempted to buy him an iPad so he could save himself the trip, but she knew it was more than that. He shed his humanity in the woods—like his daily piano practice, the bimonthly sojourns were his way of keeping himself engaged. He didn’t want more than that, and his psyche couldn’t stand less. Without some sort of socialization, he might truly get lost.

      Then he dropped his bomb.

      “But that was all yesterday.”

      All sorts of words rushed to mind, but all she managed was, “What?”

      He flipped the laptop around so it was facing her.

      “See this?”

      She looked at the screen. It was a message board of some kind. “What’s this?”

      “One of the groups I sometimes look in on. It’s comprised of people...like me.”

      He rose to fill his cup again, leaving her to wonder exactly what that meant. She wasn’t able to focus properly.

      “Soldiers?”

      “Some. Some want to be. Some could have been, but chose a different path.”

      Sam felt the edge begin, the panic, like an annoying little mosquito buzzing around her head. She pulled her hair back into a chignon, stuck a chopstick through the knot to hold it in place. She closed her eyes for a moment and took a deep breath. In four counts, hold four, out four, wait four. Then, the urge to wash her hands dispatched, she addressed her lover.

      “Xander, honey. It’s late. I’ve been up for twenty hours, been in the middle of a terrorist attack, did an autopsy on a congressman, and have my own little anxiety disorder brewing. Would you mind cutting to the chase?”

      “Survivalists, Sam. I don’t think this was a terror attack. I think it was one of our own.”

      Chapter 11

      Sam’s expression moved from confusion to incredulity in a matter of seconds.

      “You’ve got to be kidding. Are you talking like...what, a militia?”

      “No. Well, sure, some of them. It’s like any group of people, there’re bad seeds mixed in with the good and innocent. There are militias spread all across the country, homegrown groups who like to think they’re the law, parade around in uniforms, ragtag batches of locals who spew nonsense and are basically harmless. But there are groups who are dead serious, people you wouldn’t want to cross. The government keeps a damn close eye on them. And some of them are idiots, people who are just wrong in the head and can’t be fixed. Skinheads, those kinds of yahoos.”

      “Ruby Ridge?”

      “Right. But the people I’m talking about—no, they’re not militia. Just concerned private citizens who have shared their knowledge of survival to help like-minded individuals prepare in case there’s a catastrophic event. Anything from a nuclear bomb to economic collapse to a tornado.”

      She

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