Page 22 of PSYCHOlogical

Chapter Eight

Doctor Rhoades

Three sides of Quantico, Virginia are surrounded by one of the largest U.S. Marine Corps bases in existence. The base houses the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, United States Army Criminal Investigation Command, Air Force Office of Special Investigations, US Marines Officer Candidate School, United States Drug Enforcement Administration's training academy, FBI’s training academy, the FBI Laboratory, and the FBI headquarters.

Despite the amount of people on the base, the town of Quantico was home to less than 500 people. I chose to live ten minutes away, in the town of Triangle, Virginia, which had a population of roughly ten thousand.

One of those occupants was my best friend and neighbor, Jordan. She worked off-base and was the first girl I met after moving to the Washington, D.C. area. She knew nothing of what I really did for a living and could care less about what happened on the military base.

Our relationship wasn’t filled with questions I couldn’t answer. As far as she was concerned, I had an on-base job doing something I couldn’t discuss with anyone else, and she respected that. Her husband, Jack, on the other hand, didn’t. He asked questions if for no other reason than to antagonize me. It was something he seemed to enjoy.

The three of us sat in their living room, watching the movie Jack Reacher and drinking away our frustrations from the work week.

“How many FBI agent’s minds did you un-fuck today?” Jack asked.

“I’ve told you over and over, I don’t work with the FBI.”

He took a drink of beer, tilted his head back, and belched. “Who do you work with, again?”

“It’s classified.”

“When you have a classified job, is it okay to lie to people and tell them you do something that you don’t do, like, I don’t know, say, ‘I’m a whale watcher. I count whales and track them with sonar fin tags on my hand-held GPS device as they travel throughout the Atlantic Ocean?’ Or, are you supposed to just say, ‘it’s classified,’ and say nothing else?”

“I prefer the it’s classified and say nothing else option,” I said. “But that doesn’t satisfy one hundred percent of the people one hundred percent of the time.”

He stroked his unruly beard. “Me being one of those people?”

I offered a complacent smile. “Exactly.”

He stretched his massive arms into the air and yawned. He wasn’t what I would describe as muscular, but most who met him gawked at his size. He was naturally big from head to toe, and tall enough he had to duck beneath low-hanging light fixtures. Jordan was the opposite. She was blond, short, petite, and quiet.

They had been together since high school, attended college together, and married immediately following graduation.

Jack’s degree was in interior architecture. He worked from home as a freelance architect, redesigning the interior of century-old homes to be more user friendly.

Jordan had a degree in law, but never took the bar exam. Instead, she worked from home as a graphics designer, receiving most of her work from internet sites like Fiverr. Jack liked it that way, because she was always available when he felt the sudden urge to have sex. According to Jordan, it happened every time he was stumped with design ideas, which was quite often.

According to him, she was his inspiration.

Jordan loved Jack with all her heart, but she’d learned to dismiss most of what he said as being nothing more than gibberish and nonsense. Nearly immune to his incessant jabbering, she tuned him out while he constantly pestered me.

I envied her, her relationship, and her friendship with Jack. I wanted a similar relationship but knew having it would require me to make career changes I wasn’t prepared to make. At least not yet.

“I don’t think you can say you’re doing what’s in the public’s best interest if the facts need to be guarded,” Jack stated. “If an agency’s actions need to be kept secret, more than likely it’s controversial. If it’s controversial, it may be in someone’s best interest, but it’s not in everyone’s best interest. I’ll never be satisfied with secrets.”

“Leave her alone, Jack,” Jordan deadpanned.

He shifted his eyes from me to Jordan. “I don’t know how many times we’ve talked about this. Secrets kill a relationship. Agreed?”

“You never stop talking,” she said, rolling her eyes jokingly. “We’ve talked about everything. I can’t remember everything—”

“Secrets!” he barked. “In a relationship. They kill it. Right?”

“Yes. But Val’s not talking about a relation—”

“I have a relationship with our government,” he argued. “Them keeping secrets from me causes me to lose trust in them, no differently than if they were a woman keeping secrets from me in a conventional relationship.”

“I’d agree with that,” I said.