Home - COD Simon Ghost Riley X Female OC

Chapter 4

The days were long with nothing to focus on. Most of the men found it relaxing. A reprieve. But Simon found it unsettling. A week they had been waiting for an answer from the US, and from what he knew, there had been nothing. That seemed typical, he thought. The events leading up to this battered his stillness, forcing him to move. He ran and ran and ran. Twice a day, usually, and all the time wondering if he had missed other captives, how many times he had been close to finding the one they had now, wondering what else he didn't know.

He made it back this time while breakfast was still hot. He sat with the others and let them talk around him while he ate and when he was finished, the medic caught him before he could disappear again.

"Mariana asked if I would send you to speak with her today." Rossi's dishes clattered in atop his. "I told her I'd see if you had time."

"Nothing but time." He answered, walking off before she could give him any more information. She shrugged and went back to her work.

The woman must be as bored as the rest of them, he realized as he made his way down the hall to the bay. Luckily, none of them had needed it and Mariana had kept it all to herself. She was sitting in the corner of the room on a sofa, a magazine in her hand.

He hadn't seen her in a few days, not since he googled her. What he had found hadn't changed the fact that he was always surprised by how calm she looked, how normal. We all wear masks, Simon Riley. She must be riding the high of knowing she was no longer knocking at death's door. He wondered how long that could last.

"Couldn't stay away, could you Lieutenant." She didn't look up from what she was reading, but she smiled at the page.

He sat down across from her. "You called for me."

She dropped her smile, closing the magazine, using one finger to keep her place. "Yeah. I did." She held the magazine up. "Thank you for sending these."

Damn. "What makes you think I sent them?"

She didn't miss a beat. "Unless the walls have ears," she motioned to the room around them, "you're the only one I mentioned reading materials to."

He looked down at his own gloved hands. "They weren't being used."

She waited for him to look back up before answering. "I appreciate it, Simon."

He shifted. "You're welcome."

She nodded as if that's what she had been waiting for before going on. "That's not the only reason I wanted to talk, though. I've been writing down some things as I remember them." She shuffled through her stack of magazines and pulled out a notebook. She stopped before opening it. "You're who I should share this with, right?"

She never stopped being amazed at how cold and blank a pair of eyes could be. They were a mask, too, she knew. A wall he hid behind. It certainly wasn't true that there was nothing in them. He had convinced her already that there must be multitudes behind them, that he must be fighting every second to hold back what he was seeing and thinking and feeling. Because they were still expressive, even though she knew he hated being close enough to someone for them to tell. She could feel that. That he would willingly come to sit and speak with her but that the lonesome proximity made his usual motionless façade fragile. Covering his face only exposed him more.

She was trained to see what was behind someone's behavior, to pinpoint a lie, or a fear. And she had spent the last year listening, watching, memorizing every small thing, down to a heartbeat. She found in these moments with him that she had not stopped. She shook herself out of it when he spoke again.