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“That’s why you pay me the big bucks.”
The bartender poured her another shot of bourbon and the two of us clinked glasses and proceeded to get drunk.
The next day, I spent the morning recovering from my night with Casey. I took a steam bath, then ate a heavy breakfast with Brandon. Finally, I sat in my office and reviewed the article on the death of Hospital Corpsman 1st Class Daniel Lewis.
It was almost a year since the accident and his death. I fully intended to courier the letters to Topsail Beach and wanted to write something to explain how the letters came to me, and so I spent the morning composing a letter that I hoped would express my gratitude for Lewis’s service, his sacrifice for his country without revealing anything classified about the operation we were on when the accident happened.
I felt incredible guilt as I read over the letters from Mira to her late husband once more. What a cruel fate. At times, I felt like going back and getting revenge for the deaths of the Marines who lost their lives trying to rescue us. Instead, I hoped to make things better for Marines who had to risk their lives for the rest of us.
I picked up a letter and read it over. In it, Miranda wrote about her work at the restaurant and how she enjoyed bartending to a different crowd than she was used to. She usually worked at her grandfather’s pub in Queens while she put herself through John Jay College of Criminal Justice. The bar catered to police and firefighters, and she was used to hearing their talk about their work. She said it made her feel closer to her father and grandfather to work at the bar, for she had a better understanding of the men who risked their lives each day for our safety.
She wanted to do something with law enforcement as well, but didn’t see herself as a cop. Instead, she wanted to work in forensic psychology, to understand what made criminals and terrorists tick. Fight them using her mind. She was too small to get into the police force, not making the height grade so policing was out of the question. She had to be a civilian member of the FBI if she were going to follow in her father’s footsteps.
I admired her. Here she was, hoping to join the FBI, her husband a bona fide war hero, giving up his own life to save others. A member of a hyper-specialized special operations team.
She was the kind of woman I would want to date. Casey would approve of her – of that there was no doubt. I struggled to write a letter to her, trying to put in words a few thoughts about her loss but it all felt inadequate. Here was a young woman just starting her life with her husband and he was taken from her less than three months after their marriage. I was responsible. He died because we were testing our prototype. The prototype was meant to save lives, not take them, but that is exactly what it did.
Ella, my admin assistant, poked her head in my office at about noon. “John’s on the line. He wants to let you know he’s coming to the retreat.”
I pulled my mind away from the Lewis family and considered a location for the retreat I had planned for my staff. We had booked a floor of rooms at a hotel in Wilmington, but now I reconsidered. The retreat was hastily organized and intended to boost my remaining staff’s morale after Graham’s death. Before Graham’s death, I had promised to host a retreat where we could do a planning session for the next year. We’d have to transition out of war tourism now that Graham was gone so there was no better time than the present to hold the retreat. I thought of Topsail Beach and wondered whether it had adequate facilities for my dozen staff.
A convention of Wall Street investors in the defense industries was being held in Wilmington and I was going to attend a few meet and greets, so holding my staff retreat during that weekend would kill two birds with one stone.
“Check out Topsail Beach and see if there are any appropriate accommodations for the retreat. The Yacht Club’s pretty nice,” I said, thinking I could invite some of the investors from the convention to our brainstorming session. “It’s pretty close to Wilmington, and a defense contract convention with some investors I know.”
“Will do.”
If I timed it right, we could run the retreat and I could finally meet Lewis’s parents and hand over the letters to them at the same time. As to Miranda, I’d confess who I was and how I got the letters and let her take it from there. Not telling her who I was the first time I was in Topsail Beach was wrong. I wouldn’t make that mistake again.
Three weeks later, I drove down to Wilmington on my bike. It was still the summer season and there were quite a few tourists around, in the shops and on the beaches. The next morning, I went into the town to the Yacht Club and checked into my room, unloaded my gear, and sent my two suits, ties and shirts to the dry cleaning service so they’d be freshly pressed for the next day. Then I drove down the street to the fitness club and checked it out. A young guy with a man-bun and horned-rimmed glasses greeted me.
“How can I help you?” he asked, eyeing me up and down.
“I’m staying at the Yacht Club and wanted to see your facilities for my staff, who will be here for four days.”
The attendant widened his eyes as if he was surprised I was staying at the club. I laughed to myself. I supposed my motorcycle jacket, helmet and boots made me look somewhat questionable, but that was his mistake. He showed me around the club, including the fitness room with row upon row of treadmills, exercise bikes, and universal gym, a classroom for fitness classes, and a larger gym with a climbing wall. There was a steam and sauna room with separate facilities for women and men.
As I was leaving the locker room, I ran into a mountain of a man whom I recognized immediately from my time at Camp Lejeune. Master Sergeant Brent Fillmore. A huge man with a boxer’s build, he was the toughest Marine drill sergeant I knew. Stationed at Lejeune, he must have retired to live in Topsail Beach.
“Master Sergeant Fillmore,” I said when I reached his side.
He turned to regard me, a frown on his face. “That’s my name. Don’t wear it out,” came his reply. As usual, gruff to the end.
I held out my hand. “McNeil,” I said, using the name he knew me by. “I was at Lejeune a few years back.”
Then he looked at me more closely. “Well, I’ll be…” He shook his head. “If it isn’t Daniel McNeil, the Cajun Viking…” He eyed me up and down as if assessing me.
“I go by Beckett now,” I said. “Daniel McNeil is my legal name, but for business, I use Beckett Tate. It’s my mother?
??s name and, well…” I shrugged. “It’s a long complicated story that has to do with divorce, the Irish American mafia and other family bullshit you really don’t want to know.”
He glanced at me like I was some kind of flake but then nodded. “All right, Beckett Tate. I thought you got out and went to Manhattan. What the hell are you doing in Topsail Beach?”
“I’m based in Manhattan,” I said. “As to why I’m here, I could ask the same of you.” We shook hands and then fist bumped. “I’m here checking out the facilities for a retreat for my staff this weekend.”
“Your staff?” he asked and we stopped in the hallway. “You an employer now?”
“I have a company that develops comms tech for the military.”
