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“Kids these days,” Jones said, causing me to raise a brow at him.
Jones looked like he’d joined right after high school. And since he was only a lance corporal, that put him at anywhere from eighteen to twenty years old. Shaking my head, I sipped my coffee without comment.
“All right,” the patrolman said, raising his coffee to us in salute. “Time for the changeover brief. Then I’m gonna bust through these reports so I can go home and sleep.”
Jones and I followed him out of the break room and into the bullpen where the night shift would brief us on anything that happened during their shift that might come up during ours. As funny as it was, the patrolman’s story likely wouldn’t qualify.
When I looked up to find Beau at the front desk, I frowned, heading over to him. “Hey, man.”
“Miller, hey.” His shoulders shook as he let out a long exhalation, looking way beyond tired, eyes red from lack of sleep. “It’s my roommate. Max.”
“What’s going on?”
He looked around, eyes wary. “Is there somewhere private we can go to talk?”
“Sure.” I motioned for him to follow me into an office and closed the door behind us. I gestured to one of the chairs across from the desk, and when we were both settled, I braced myself to hear whatever had him looking so wigged out. “So, what’s up?”
“Our higher-ups lost their minds on him after the whole uniform thing,” he said, rubbing his hands together with his elbows resting on his knees. “He’s been having a really hard time ever since. I was up all night with him while he went on and on about how worthless he was.”
My heart went out to the guy, it really did. I could tell he cared about his roommate’s well-being, and this clearly weighed heavily on him. But I didn’t get why he was here. He should be reaching out to someone in the mental health office or bringing it up his chain of command.
“I can’t find him, Miller.”
I sat forward in my chair. “What do you mean you can’t find him?”
“I must have fallen asleep. I tried not to, but I’d worked on the range all day—we’re with the Weapons and Field Training Battalion, so we teach the recruits how to shoot—and I was beat. When I woke up, he was gone.”
“Was he supposed to report for duty this morning?” Failure to report was a serious crime, and I hated the idea of busting Max again when he was obviously in a fragile mental state.
He shook his head. “No, he’s not technically AWOL. Yet. He took a few days of leave to get his head on straight.”
“Are you sure there’s a reason to be concerned? Maybe he’s just off clearing his head.”
Beau looked up at me with an alarming amount of intensity in his eyes. “What if he’s not?”
I swallowed, a dozen scary scenarios playing out in my mind. “All right, well, we’ll find him,” I said, taking out my notepad and pen. “You notified your command, I assume?”
“Yeah. I went to the senior officer on duty at the barracks first, and he told me he’d take care of everything on the command’s side, then told me to come here and notify you guys.”
“Okay, take this and write down whatever you can remember about what he was wearing, what kind of car he drives, if he left his phone or wallet at home, and anywhere on base you think he’d go. I’ll go notify my supervisors and get some patrol cars on it.”
“Thanks. And he doesn’t have a car, but he has a bike.”
“A motorcycle?”
He shook his head. “No, a Schwinn.”
“Got it. Write that down and include the color. We’ll find him.”
Beau nodded and got to work on his part while I did mine. After thanking him for looking out for his friend, I headed out with a few other MPs, and we started our search of the base.
If Max had gone AWOL and left the base, we’d need to notify the civilian police in the area to help with the search. But we’d cross that bridge once we got there.
* * *
Two hours later, I pulled down a wooded drive that led to a training area in the swampy forest. Recruits trained at Parris Island were constantly out here getting wrecked in these woods, and there was a lot of ground for us to cover if we wanted to find someone out here.
While at work, there weren’t many times I was truly afraid. Sure, I’d been through some hairy situations, especially when dealing with angry, drunk Marines on a power trip because they outranked me. But when I felt fear—actual, honest-to-goodness fear—it was usually because I was worried about someone other than myself.
