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He leaned back, excited that the ugly piece of furniture had a high headrest. As he leaned further back, a footrest rose beneath his calves. The chair was a recliner. Pulling the blanket over his arms and shoulders, he settled in, determined to get some sleep.
Just not yet.
Jenna spread the blanket on the window seat and sat on the edge, kicking off her shoes. She glanced across at him. “Good. I’m glad that you’ll be able to stretch out.”
“I’m not sure I’d call it stretching out, but it beats a foxhole full of rainwater.”
Jenna laid on her side, her head on the pillow, and draped the blanket over her arms and shoulders.
The dim lighting in the room made it hard for Cliff to determine if her eyes were open or closed.
“What about you?” she said softly.
“What about me?”
“Do you have a family?”
He started toward her dark figure, wishing he could see her eyes and read her expression and body language. Whispered words in the darkness seemed ungrounded and impersonal without context.
“No family. My folks were older when they had me. They lived long enough to see me graduate from BUD/S to become a SEAL.”
Cliff’s father had been so proud. His mother had been, too, but her pride had been tempered. She’d understood the danger he’d face and feared for his life every time he deployed. Sadly, or thankfully, she’d passed before the Syrian mission that had killed others on his team and had so nearly killed him.
“Do you have a wife somewhere? Children?” Jenna asked. “You don’t have to answer if I’m getting too personal. I mean, you did kiss my forehead. Although, you could just as easily kiss a child’s forehead, and it wouldn’t mean anything more than a mild affection.” She stopped abruptly. “Sorry. I should let you sleep. We’ll be busy in the morning.”
He smiled in the darkness. “It’s okay. I didn’t see the point. No woman should have to put up with the uncertainty of a spouse who’s married to the Navy. So many of the women my teammates married ultimately divorced them and found men who didn’t deploy at a moment’s notice to top-secret locations they weren’t allowed to disclose. They chose men who worked nine-to-five jobs and came home to them every night.”
“Sad,” she said. “But I get it. My father was in the Marine Corps until I was twelve. Up until my father retired, my mother raised Brittany and me. My father was never around. Although, I think it was almost the opposite for my mother. She liked it when he was gone. She had full control of the household. When my father returned, it was always a power play between my mother and father.”
“I heard other members of my team talk about similar struggles in their home lives,” Cliff said.
“When my step-father retired from active duty, the arguments increased. They managed to stay together until my little sister graduated high school, and I was in my last semester of college. They’d met with an attorney one afternoon to discuss their divorce. On their way home, they were involved in a head-on collision with a drunk driver. Our parents died instantly. The drunk driver walked away with minor injuries.”
“I’m sorry about your parents,” he said. “I bet it was hard for your sister.”
“I don’t know. From what my mother told me, Brittany was tired of taking orders from her Marine Corps father and eager to get out on her own. She knew all the buttons to push to stir our parents up.” Jenna snorted softly. “She pushed them often, hung out with the wrong crowd and probably dabbled in drugs. I’m almost certain her teenage shenanigans were the straw that broke the camel’s back on our parents’ marriage. They were both strong individuals with different ideas on parenting and discipline.”
“She was eighteen when they passed?” he asked.
“Yeah. Dad wanted her to join the military and get a little discipline. Mom got her accepted into college here in Bozeman. She moved into my apartment with me the summer after I graduated college. It was rough. I wasn’t ready to play mother to a rebellious teen.”
“Let me guess,” Cliff said. “You were the rule-follower.”
She sighed in the dark. “Yeah. It rubbed Brittany wrong in so many ways. I was accepted into the Montana Law Enforcement Academy. I only had time to help her move into her dorm and then left for my twelve-week training program. We weren’t allowed much contact with folks back home. In retrospect, I should’ve delayed my entry to give Brittany time to adjust to college life and the loss of our parents. Although, I’m not sure I’d have been much influence on her choices. She dropped out halfway through the semester and moved with her boyfriend to Seattle. Since then, she’s been pretty much on her own, except for the occasional help I’ve given her when she needed money to start over after a breakup.”
Cliff felt a pang of guilt talking about the woman sleeping in the room, who’d just given birth and been brutalized.
“What about you?” he asked, wanting to know more about the older sister. “You went to Montana’s police academy. How did you end up in the FBI?”
“It was always my goal to join the FBI. I majored in Criminal Justice with a minor in Forensic Science. The FBI wants applicants to have a degree and a couple of years of experience. While I was in college, I interned with the Bozeman Police Department. It helped me get into the police academy, although they would’ve taken me without it. I graduated with a 4.0.”
“An internship, a major and a minor, and you came out with a 4.0 grade-point average?” He shook his head. “I’m impressed.”
“That’s what happens when you don’t have much of a social life. I had a plan. I didn’t deviate from that plan.”
“No frat parties? Dating?” He couldn’t imagine a woman as attractive as Jenna going through college without a date.
“I had a couple of study dates with guys from some of my classes, but they weren’t as serious about learning the test information as I was. They were more into making out. They didn’t call for a second date. I was glad. Besides, I wasn’t very…experienced.”
