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16
ZAC
It’d been nice to have last weekend off after working my first two weekends here, especially considering how I’d spent it, finally reuniting with Layla and getting the kiss of a lifetime out of the deal.
But now, it was time to leave my personal life at the door and dig into the first of three days working the weekend shift. It should have bothered me, but at least I had something to look forward toafterwork. Layla and I would have our first date—a late dinner so I could spend some time with Gray first.
“Miller, do you always look this chipper on the first day of a weekend rotation?” one of my guys, Jones, asked when I came in.
“Not always, but today, absolutely.” I set down the bag of Leatherneck Coffee on the table and began making a new pot. “Have you ever tried this stuff?”
Jones came over and picked up the bag, reading it with raised brows. “Laced with gunpowder for maximum energy?”
“If you read the fine print at the bottom, it says they’re joking,” I told him, putting water in the glass carafe. “The guy who owns the company is a Marine.”
“Huh. Sweet. Is it any good?”
I plucked the bag out of his hand. “Would I bring it in here if it wasn’t?”
Before he could reply with something equally sarcastic, one of the guys from the night shift came in. He nodded at the pot as the first drops of coffee spilled into it. “Oh, thank you. I’m gonna need that. I have so much paperwork to do before I can leave.”
“Rough night?” I asked.
“The worst. There were some funny moments though.”
“What happened?”
The dude slapped a stack of reports onto one of the tables and dropped into a chair, stretching out his legs. “So, it’s about two in the morning, and I’m patrolling over in housing. I look up and see someone climbing out of an upstairs window, and I just bust up laughing. Like, what are the odds I get to actually witness something like that out of the blue?”
Jones and I snickered, sitting down across from him.
“So, I call it in, then I pull over and hop out. I’m yelling, ‘Freeze, PMO!’ and the guy looks over at me like a deer in headlights, totally freaking out. He looks like a teenager, though, so my stomach totally bottoms out.”
Knowing it was because teenagers on base usually belonged to some of the highest-ranking people here, I pursed my lips, eager for more.
“I think he’s going to listen—these kids usually know better than to run. But no. Dude takes off sprinting down the sidewalk.”
“He didn’t.”
“Oh, he did. And that’s not even the best part,” he said, shaking his head. “He looks up at the streetlights and decides to cut through the houses to lose me in the dark. But guys, this seventeen-year-old kid is wearinglight-uprunning shoes.”
I held my hand. “Whoa, whoa, whoa. Light-up running shoes? You mean like the kind I just bought for my six-year-old?”
“Yep. I didn’t even know they made them for adults.”
We all laughed, then the coffee pot beeped, and the patrolman got up to pour a cup. “Anyway, so I chase him through the dark, totally easy pursuit thanks to his sweet kicks. And he leads me right to his own house, running through the front door and slamming it in my face.”
“Oh no,” I said, getting up to grab a cup of my own, then poured some for Jones while I was at it. “What’d you do?”
“Man, I walked up to the door and knocked. Two cars were in the driveway, so I figured the parents had to be in there. Sure enough, an E-9 opened up right away.”
“And what’d he do?” Jones asked.
“I kid you not, the kid’s dad holds out his arm, says ‘Come on in, he’s in his room.’ The mom was sitting on the couch reading a book without a care in the world. Blew my freaking mind.”
Sitting down with my coffee, I gaped at him. “That’s wild. Did you figure out what he was doing at the other house? Was he there to rob it?”
“Nope. Just sneaking out of his girlfriend’s room. The parents said it’s an ongoing issue that they’re trying to figure out, and they asked me to give him my besttalking toabout violating curfew. I told him this was his first strike and if he gets to three, his family could be evicted from base housing. He went white as a ghost. I don’t see it happening again.”
