Wickerman Cove

Part 3: Consequences

Don't put hallucinations in your report. It was so basic that they didn't even tell you about it in training.

Maybe they should have, or more accurately, before you list a civilian intelligence asset, make sure someone else can see them.

She'd left out the bit about being in two places at once, but Adja Islam was found dead in one of the other houses. It looked like her skull had been crushed by accident and they'd tried some kind of resuscitation. Young gave a report on how Steph went off the rails, and he let himself be dragged along so that she didn't get herself killed. He told everyone how she'd spent the whole march to the village muttering to the desert night and dropping candy onto the ground.

She got three months of medical leave pending a psych eval, and her career in the Marines was done. She was probably lucky not to be going to jail.

Christ.

Now she knew why Sidibe said some of the men were scared – they thought she was crazy.

The Corps flew her off-base faster than she could have expected, which meant a couple of days in Paris and then the rest of the way flying commercial. She looked in the airplane bathroom mirror a lot during the flight, trying to imagine herself out of the military, and wondered what the hell she was going to do with her life.

She'd only just put the US Sim back in her phone when it rang.

"Hi," she said, her gut twisting at the thought of speaking to anyone. "I, um... yeah."

The fact that the voice was familiar made it worse. "Zoubie? That you?" Hitch asked.

Wilson 'Hitch' Hitchens, her best friend through basic training, and one of the only people alive who still called her 'Zoubie.'

The rising star who'd been headhunted by Military Intelligence, then the Department of Homeland Security. The man who had made it possible for her to be on a mission she hadn't supposed to be on, where she'd hallucinated and could have gotten everyone killed.

"It's me," she said, trying to inject a little hope into her voice. "Look, I'm sorry—"

"I don't want to hear that," Hitch said. "As far as I'm concerned, that was a one-hundred-percent successful mission. We got the women back and took out the bad guys. Our people got everything they wanted."

"I'm glad to hear someone is happy," Steph said, trying not to cry. "I'm on three months medical leave, then a psych eval. I doubt I'll ever see combat again. If they even let me stay in the military, I see a lot of filing in the next twenty meaningless years of my life."

Hitch paused. She could almost hear the wheels turning in his skull. "Where are you?" he asked.

"Orlando International," she said. "I'm going to stay with my mom for a couple of days, then decide what I'm going to do."

"Don't do that," he said. "Get on Delta 31-10 to New York. Work for me for a couple of days."

Steph imagined the conversation with her mom: she'd never liked the idea of her only daughter being in the Marines. She'd take it as a sign she'd been right, that women weren't cut out for military service. She wouldn't mean anything by it, but she wouldn't be able to stop herself.

On the other hand, it felt like a really good time to lie unmoving, eat her own bodyweight in junk, drink beer, and make a regrettable booty call to her Highschool boyfriend, none of which would happen if she worked for Hitch.

"What do you want?" Steph asked.

Hitch made a thoughtful sound. "You still know your sign language?"

That got a smile – grandpa had taught her. Grandma had been deaf, and it had turned him into an evangelist. "Sure: ASL, BSL and LSF. If they're Australian, you need to check where they're from because some of the signs come from Kouri. What is it? Close protection?"

"Pretty much," he said. "One of our artefacts guys might have gone crazy. That wouldn't be a matter of national security, but he sent a photograph of a Sumerian statuette that we thought the Nazis buried in a Swiss vault. The Israelis got wind of it and they want us to take a look, so we're sending the only expert we could find. Thing is, she's deaf and I figured it might be good to get a bodyguard who could communicate."

"And I get paid for this?" Steph asked. "Plus, you'll take care of my air fare?"

"One-hundred-percent," he said. "Look, even if your Navy days are done, wouldn't it be good to have a deposit on your own place instead of living with your mom?"

She sighed. It hadn't really been possible to sleep on the flight. The walk from arrivals to departures felt like a bigger trek than the desert.

"Fine," Steph said. "Get it while it's hot, once they declare me crazy, I doubt Homeland Security will want me on the books."

Hitch laughed. "Let's cross that bridge when we come to it. Head on up here and I'll introduce you – her name is Penelope Etrange. She's cool, I think you'll like her."

To be continued...

If you enjoyed this, new parts will be put up mid week.

 You can also take a look at my full length fiction works, especially my Urban Fantasy series, The Five Stages of Magic, which you can find in ebook here on Amazon:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Gates-Five-Stages-Magic-Book-ebook/dp/B085K1Z32V/