Egan, p.8
Egan, page 8
“I’m not trying to. … Honestly it saddens me to think that it went this far.”
“Damn right,” Chef declared. “I don’t know what they might have missed because of it, but you can bet that they’ll be pissed at her about it.” And, with that, he went back to his cooking. Without another glance at her, he muttered, “Food will be about an hour.”
“Good enough,” she replied and took that as a dismissal. She got up and refilled her teacup with more hot water, then headed back to her room. She didn’t pass anyone on the way, which suited her just fine. She already felt completely ostracized.
When she opened the door to her room, her sister sat on the edge of her bed, crying her eyes out.
Cherry looked up and groaned. “What the hell are you doing here?” Cherry asked in a shriek. “Haven’t you caused enough trouble?”
“Really? This is how you want to play it? Do you realize that I’m now being ostracized because of you?” she asked in anger. “I went to the dining room, and everybody got up and walked out, just from looking at me,” she snapped. “So, thanks for that too, as if it wasn’t hard enough to live here with you already.”
Her sister stared at her in shock. “Don’t you even care what they said to me?”
“I rather imagine that they’re talking about court-martialing you,” she snapped, her voice hard. “You withheld important information, and that’ll never go down well.”
“I didn’t kill him,” she muttered, “so I didn’t think it mattered.”
“How about now?”
At that, her sister subsided and shrugged. “They seem to think it mattered quite a bit.”
“At least maybe now they have a better idea of when he died, since you should have been able to give them that much.”
“I told them what I knew, but he left while I was asleep.”
“Sure, and yet when was that, when you last saw him?”
She glared. “I don’t have to answer your questions too,” she retorted in a snippy voice.
“Maybe not, but you probably should because I don’t have anything to tell people, and right now they’re not being very friendly to me either. So I’m taking the heat for you, and I can’t say I appreciate it.” And, with that, she stormed out of the room. She stood here against the hallway wall, as she had no place to go. She wondered if there was a spare room left in the place and headed to check with Dave, the man in charge of the accommodations.
When Dave found her lingering around, as if looking for him, he immediately frowned.
She frowned right back. “Look. I get it. Everybody thinks I’m to blame, but it would be nice for people to realize that I didn’t know my sister hadn’t come forth with vital information,” she snapped. “And believe me. I’m well aware that everybody’s holding that against me too, and yet I didn’t have anything to do with it.”
He shrugged. “It’s not as if anybody will believe that.”
“I get it. Thank you very much for that piece of precious information, but I also have to deal with my sister, and right now I’m seriously hoping you have an empty room that I could have to myself.”
Dave stared at her. “Why?”
“Because my sister is pissed at me, and everybody else is too.”
“Why is she pissed at you?” he asked, staring at her.
She sighed. “Because I don’t have any sympathy for her. She lied, and I guess I’m probably the one who broke the news because of the fact that I didn’t know that she hadn’t told the truth.”
Dave nodded at that. “If you didn’t know she lied, then you shouldn’t feel guilty.”
“I don’t feel guilty, except by association. She’s my sister, and she did a shitty thing. So, yeah, of course I feel guilty.” She raised both hands in frustration. “The fact that I walked into the cafeteria and sat down, and basically everybody got up and left to get away from me says a hell of a lot.”
He nodded. “Yeah, it sure does. Nobody likes liars when people are being murdered around here.”
“Liars?” she repeated, aghast.
“Liars. Plural. Both of you,” Dave declared. “For now at least, until you redeem yourself. You have to understand how we still have several people missing, and one of them died, and your evil twin sister—who was sleeping with Yegorahn and didn’t feel anything—wasn’t ready to help find out who did it.”
“I didn’t know she lied about it,” Berry cried out.
Dave sighed. “People may believe that over time. I don’t know. And I’m going to tell you one more thing. You may be the good twin, but you are guilty of projecting your goodness on your evil twin. Just saying. Stop giving her the benefit of the doubt. This lie here? This whopper? At this military base? About a dead man she slept with? Can you look me in the eye and say that is the only lie you’ve ever caught Cherry telling?”
At Berry’s stunned silence, he nodded. “Don’t keep enabling her by failing to call her out on those repeated lies. … I do have an empty room, at least as long as nobody else comes in. If we get any more people or if we have a real need for it, you will be the first to get bumped out, do you hear me?”
She nodded, almost numb at the attack she hadn’t expected. Was he right? Had she been enabling her sister all this time? Anything she’d done had been more for peace than anything. But maybe in this case … it was the same thing? “Yes, thank you. I would really appreciate just being able to have some space from everybody right now.”
“Yeah, well a lot of other people would too,” Dave replied, “and this will just make it look as if your sister is even guiltier and being held in her room.”
“I don’t know what the end result from the questioning even was,” Berry admitted. “I really don’t. My sister is in my room, our room, and she’s crying, but I can’t be in there with her. Yet apparently wherever I go, everybody else has to leave. So, if you have another room, where I can be a prisoner, hey, that would be just fine.”
He checked his books and then looked up at her somewhat apprehensively, yet still sympathetically in his own way. “You can have the single bedroom at the back by the storeroom.” She nodded, and he warned her, “It’ll be colder than normal.”
She winced and nodded.
“There is additional bedding on the bed for that reason. Remember. It’s an extra room, so just be aware,” he stated, his voice rising with that note of warning. “If I have to reclaim it, you get dumped back with your sister.”
“Got it.” She nodded in agreement. As she walked out of the room, she turned and said, “Thank you.”
He nodded, but his gaze was piercing as he added, “I sure hope you’re right about your sister not being a killer.”
“I’m right. She’s a fool, but she’s not a murderer.”
Dave snorted. “Now all you have to do is convince the rest of the base of that.”
Her shoulders slumped, as she headed to what would now be her new room. She wanted to go back to their room and get all her gear, but she didn’t want to deal with her sister right now, and that would be the next problem.
Day 3, Dinner
When dinner was called, Berry wasn’t sure her sister would even go to the dining room. Berry waited, hanging back, only to realize that Cherry was hanging back too. As Berry walked down the hallway toward the dining room, and Cherry walked past her and headed right for the food, Berry figured her sister would probably grab something and come back to eat it in her room. Therefore, Berry took this opportunity to slip into their shared room, grabbing her personal gear and her bags, taking it to her new room.
By the time she was done and headed back to get her own plate of food, she saw no sign of her sister in the cafeteria. She looked over at Chef. “Was she here?”
He nodded. “Yep, and she got the silent treatment.”
“Of course,” Berry noted. She loaded up her plate, then looked around and decided she didn’t really need to be dealing with angry, upset people any more than she already had. Therefore, she took her plate and sat down at an empty table this time. When a shadow crossed over, she looked up to see Egan there. She gave him a lopsided smile. “What? You’ll bear the stigma and sit with me?”
He frowned at her, as he plunked down with his plate. “What does that mean?”
“I’ve been ostracized. So has my sister.”
“Ah.” Egan nodded. “In a base like this, that’s always a possibility.”
“Maybe so, but why me too?”
“Presumably they either think that you lied for her, covered up her actions, turned a blind eye, or in some way were implicated yourself.”
“And yet I wasn’t, and I didn’t,” she stated bitterly.
He didn’t say anything and then nodded. “It’ll blow over soon.”
“You think so?” she asked. “I’m not so sure. Everyone is so on edge right now.”
“I went to your room to see if you were there,” he shared, “but nobody answered.”
“That would be my sister who ignored you, particularly if she heard your voice …” Berry let the silence finish her thought.
“Yeah, I wondered. Then I came down to get food anyway and saw you here.”
“I didn’t plan to even eat here tonight, but there was an empty table. So I thought, Screw them. I’m staying. I can’t hide forever.”
He smiled. “Maybe if they see us sitting together, it might help.”
“Maybe, and maybe they’ll think that I’m also part of the enemy, especially if you’re not well regarded either.”
He laughed. “We can change that.” As Magnus and Sydney walked in, he waved at them to join them. They collected their food and came over and sat down.
She sighed. “Thank you,” she muttered to Egan. “I can’t say I was really looking forward to being completely ignored in this place.”
As Magnus sat down, Egan quickly explained the issue.
Magnus nodded. “Yeah, we’ve seen that a time or two.”
Sydney smiled over at her. “Listen. You aren’t your sister, and you aren’t responsible for her actions.”
“Now, if only other people would believe that,” Berry groaned. “It’s amazing how quickly people want to judge, even without any reason to.”
“From their point of view, there are plenty of reasons to judge,” Magnus declared, “and even that will probably blow over—for you at least—especially if we can get this solved.” He looked back over at Egan. “Unless you think Cherry is the murderer.”
He shook his head. “No, I don’t, but now we have a much better timeline than we had before.”
“Does it change anything though?” Sydney asked.
“It does in this case because there was a very short window when he was alive,” Egan noted. “Knowing the actual timeline is so valuable. Now all we have to do is map out everybody’s movements during that one-hour window.”
“Is that all it was?” Berry asked. “One hour?”
“Yes.”
Dinner after that was an enjoyable affair, with several other people stopping by to talk to them, and Berry could see that, with their concerted efforts, she might find at least some level of acceptance, maybe, in part of the base again. It wasn’t that she wanted acceptance because part of her really didn’t give a crap. However, she would be here for several more weeks, and it would be a whole lot easier on everybody if they got along.
Otherwise trust became an issue, especially when they were out on training sessions, and that was not something Berry was prepared to compromise on either. What she needed was to have everything back to the way it was. Hopefully these people’s presence at her table gave the others all some reassurance that Berry was not involved in Cherry’s shenanigans.
Day 5, Two Days Later, Early Morning
Berry hadn’t seen her sister all of the next day, and finally, early the next morning, when she got coffee, she looked over at Chef and asked, “Did you see my sister yesterday?”
He frowned at her. “Didn’t you?”
She shook her head. “No, I asked for another room because things got a little tense between us.”
He nodded. “I think she came in for dinner last night, but … I’m not sure she did.”
Berry stared at him for a moment and knew that shock and fear were surely taking over her expression.
He took stock of that and added, “Don’t panic. Just go see if your evil twin is there. Maybe open the door and check to see if she’s inside her room, before you go off half-cocked.”
She nodded and quickly turned on her heels and headed to her sister’s room. When she opened the door just a hair to peek in, she realized that both beds were empty.
She turned slowly inside the small room and realized it didn’t look as if Cherry’s bed had been slept in at all. Swallowing a rising panic, she snatched her phone from her pocket and quickly texted Egan. Have you seen my sister? Yesterday or today? When she got back his No answer, it sent her nerves into overdrive, and then her phone started to ring.
Egan quickly asked, “Where are you?”
“I’m in my sister’s room,” she whispered. “It doesn’t seem she slept here last night.”
“I’ll be there in a minute.”
Berry stared at the empty room and wondered if things had really gone so far south that now her sister was missing too.
Missing or murdered?
*
Day 5 Morning
Egan raced out of bed and ditched his morning rituals to arrive at the room as fast as he could. Berry stood outside the room, leaning against a wall, shaking. He wrapped her up in his arms. “Don’t panic. It doesn’t have to be all bad.”
“No, it doesn’t have to be,” she cried out, looking up, “But where is she?”
He hesitated before speaking. “This will sound terrible, but has she spent the night with somebody else?”
Berry winced. “I don’t know. She’s not talking to me, not anymore. I haven’t had a conversation with her since you interrogated her. She won’t talk to me at all, so I don’t know.”
He nodded. “For some women,” he replied, carefully choosing his words to not upset her, “some women need that male attention, whether it’s for protection or a sense of belonging or just to know she’s not alone.”
“And that would be my sister,” Berry confirmed. “Still, I just don’t know who she would have spent the night with.”
Almost immediately they both heard the sound of a door down the hallway. Berry turned to look, and her sister exited a room at the far end, then raced in their direction.
She stopped when she saw them standing there, and then a sneer slipped onto her face. “Of course here you are. Spying much?”
Berry shook her head. “Good God, Cherry,” she muttered. “Mom would have a heyday with your behavior.”
He watched as Cherry stiffened at that snide remark, then turned to look at her himself. “Whose room did you spend the night in?” Egan asked bluntly.
“None of your fucking business,” she snapped.
His eyebrows shot up, then he crossed his arms. “Actually it is.”
“No, it isn’t,” Cherry argued. “This has nothing to do with Yegorahn’s death. My relationship is my relationship.”
He watched as Berry tried hard to keep her own temper under control. She added, “You know it’ll just cause more trouble if you don’t answer him.”
“I don’t give a fuck, and he’s got no right to ask me questions anyway. And according to—” Then Cherry stopped, as if to prevent a slip of the tongue. “To somebody, he didn’t have any right to question me the day before yesterday either.”
“You want to take that up with the colonel then?” he asked, his voice hard. He’d already had enough of her BS. “Because that’s where you’re headed right now.”
“What? So you’ll call in an MP again? Have me hauled down there in front of everybody? You liked that, didn’t you? Big he-man, abusing the little woman?”
“You’re hardly a little woman, Cherry. A liar and a cheat? Yes,” he stated, with his own sneer. “But a helpless little woman, innocent and honest, no way,” he declared, matching her venom. “So, you will tell me where you spent the night. You were down at Richard’s room, weren’t you?”
She flushed. “What makes you say that?”
“Because that’s his room, but he was also bunking with Steve.”
She glared at him. “And?”
“And were they both there?” he asked.
“Oh, so you want to check into my sex life too?”
“Stop it,” Berry cried out. “Jesus, do you have to be so crude?”
“What? He’s the one who’s asking where I spent the night.”
“You just came out of Richard’s room,” Berry wailed. “Do you think everybody doesn’t know who stays where?”
“It’s also Steve’s room.”
“That’s right, so that’s why he’s asking because it gives more than one alibi to whether you were there or not.”
“Oh, so now I need an alibi, do I?” Cherry asked, turning on Berry with a speed that stunned Egan.
“Wow,” Egan noted, “you really hate your sister, don’t you?”
Cherry glared at him. “I don’t hate her, but she used to be on my team. So, the fact that she turned traitor and went to the enemy makes it a different story.”
“Enemy?” Berry repeated, aghast. “Is that how you view me now? As your enemy? You lied over somebody’s death, and I told the truth, not knowing that you had lied about your evening with Yegorahn. So don’t blame me that I outed you. I said something completely innocently that outed you. That doesn’t make me the enemy. That just makes you the liar.”
“Yeah, well, if you hadn’t spoken up, they wouldn’t have turned on me.” Cherry sneered.
“So how was I supposed to know what your story even was? You didn’t tell me to keep quiet about it. Maybe if you had, I would have known not to open my mouth,” she snapped. “But I didn’t even know, and so, when somebody mentioned something to me that didn’t make any sense, I told him that’s where you spent the night. Which you should have done already.” She took a deep breath which appeared to help her calm down. “Apparently you forgot to tell me that you needed me to cover for your lies,” Berry stated furiously. And, with that, she turned and stormed off toward the kitchen.
