“He mentioned it?”
“No,” she said. “But he makes it a point to know everything about the people who work with him, including the fact that they work with him. Believe me, he knows all about you and my guess is he specifically asked for you in this assignment.”
That was gratifying, even if it was only a guess. “But what is the assignment?”
“I assume you already asked around the office.”
“Nobody knows. Nobody cares.”
“That’s because he doesn’t report to anyone they know.”
“Who does he report to?”
“Well, clearly he doesn’t report to me or you.”
“Mrs. Malich, I’m drowning here. Throw me something that floats.”
She laughed. “Come out to the house. I’m a cooky-baking wife and it’s summer vacation. Chocolate chips or snickerdoodles?”
“Ma’am, anything you offer will be gratefully received.”
It was more of a house than Cole would have expected on a major’s salary, though still hardly a mansion. There were four bikes on the front l
awn, two of them tiny with training wheels, which suggested that the kids were home from some sort of expedition.
“No, I only have little John Paul here,” she said, indicating the three-year-old who was studiously drawing something with crayons at the kitchen table. There were, as promised, chocolate chip cookies on a cooling rack.
“I just thought, with the bikes on the lawn . . .”
“The kids have been told to put their bikes away. Often enough that we refuse to remind them again. They know that any bike that is stolen from the front yard will not be replaced by us. So there they sit. Reuben will mow around them before he’ll move them an inch.”
“So he does come home often enough to mow the lawn.”
She looked at him like he was crazy. “Reuben is home every night, except when he’s traveling, and he’s never gone for more than a few days. It’s really been quite nice since he got this Pentagon assignment. It’s a far cry from the days when he’d be gone sometimes a year at a time, with only a few messages.”
“That must have been hard.”
“I take it you don’t have a wife,” said Mrs. Malich. “Or you’d already know all about it.”
“I’m Special Ops, like your husband,” he said. “Not much time for dating, and I couldn’t imagine asking a woman I actually cared about to marry somebody who might be killed at any time.”
“Yes, that’s a hard thing. But husbands die of other things, not just bullets. It’s a risk everybody takes when they marry—that the other person might die. Much higher risk that they’ll cheat on you or leave you. So I chose to marry a man who will never cheat on me and never leave me. Yes, he might be killed at any time, but my odds of keeping him are still far higher than the national average. And now that he’s working at the Pentagon, he’s far less likely to come home covered with a flag. Instead he brings home whatever groceries I ask him to bring.”
“So you call him during the day.”
“Of course.”
“But the secretary said—”
“I only call DeeNee when he has his cellphone off.”
“Doesn’t she have his cellphone number?”
“Of course she does. And he checks in with her frequently.”
“But she said—she claims not to know anything about what your husband does.”
Mrs. Malich laughed. “She’s hazing you, Captain Coleman.”