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name it.”
    Katherine nodded again, handing him a plate.
“Okay.”
    “Will you stop saying that?” he pleaded,
catching her hand, making her look at him at last. “Mom, I love
her.”
    She studied him for a long, quiet moment. “I
can see that.”
    “I love being with her. I love talking to
her. I love listening to her. You always say I should find a
partner I enjoy being with, who I can talk to.”
    “Is that what you see her being?” Katherine
had asked. “A partner for you? You’re that serious about this
woman?”
    He’d nodded, eyes round and earnest. “Yes,
Mom.”
    She’d reached up, touching his face, her hand
still damp. “What I think of Lila doesn’t matter, Andrew. It’s what you think that counts because you’re the one who’s involved
with her.” With a gentle smile, she added, “And it’s obvious to me
that you think the world of her, that what the two of you have
makes you happy. And that makes me happy.”
    He’d smiled back, then hugged her, drawing
her onto her tiptoes. “Thanks, Mom.”
    She stepped back, brushing his hair back from
his brow. “If she breaks your heart, I’ll break her kneecaps.”
    He’d laughed. “She won’t, Mom.”
    ****
    “Meals are served in the dee-fack at
oh-six-thirty, twelve hundred and seventeen hundred sharp,”
Corporal O’Malley said as Andrew trailed him across the main lobby
toward the adjoining barracks annex.
    “The what?” Andrew asked.
    O’Malley glanced over his shoulder. “That’s
what we call the dining facility. The dee-fack . The mess
hall. There are snack and soda machines in the rec room. There’s
also a canteen, too, with toiletries, cigarettes, magazines.”
    “Nice,” Andrew remarked dryly.
    “It beats Fallujah,” O’Malley said. He led
Andrew up a flight of concrete steps in a narrow stairwell to the
second floor of the barracks.
    “You were in Iraq?”
    O’Malley nodded. “Served fifteen months. Just
got back in December. You ever been enlisted?”
    “Me? No.” Andrew managed a laugh.
    “Something funny about serving your country?”
O’Malley stopped in his tracks, arching his brow, clearly not
sharing Andrew’s amusement.
    “Uh, no.” Andrew shook his head. “Not at all.
It’s just…” He sputtered for a moment, trying to figure out how to
get the proverbial foot out of his mouth before O’Malley planted
his up Andrew’s ass—non-proverbially. “I’ve never really thought of
myself as military material.”
    O’Malley cut him a head-to-toe glance, then
offered a concurring snort. “Yeah,” he said. Then, continuing with
his tour, “Anyway, DARPA just finished building all of this a
couple of months before we arrived. Before that, this was all a
federal reserve forest, inaccessible to the general public. Like
the Major said, you can use any of the public areas, the downstairs
facilities. Just don’t leave the grounds or go near Dr. Moore’s
residence again. Or the house of pain.”
    Andrew blinked. “The what?”
    “Dr. Moore’s lab. The building in the back of
the compound.” He walked again, stopping next at the end of a
corridor, outside a closed door. “Each person at this compound has
their own unique security pin number. That way we can control who
has access to restricted areas. Yours will be four-two-eight-zero.”
As he said this, he punched it into a key pad beside the door, and
Andrew watched the red light on the panel change to green.
    Inside, the room looked like any standard
full-size hotel accommodations, with nondescript furnishings—desk,
bed, bureau, nightstand—and adjacent bathroom with shower stall. As
with a hotel, the room had been stripped of any sign of previous
occupancy; of the absent Lieutenant Carter, nothing remained.
Andrew thought O’Malley might say something about the former
occupant, what had happened to Lieutenant Carter and why his room
was now conspicuously vacant, but he did not.
    “I’ll have someone run you up some clean
towels.” O’Malley