Greer fell silent, stroking his long beard. “The question, of course, is where did Martínez go. Did Alicia have any ideas about that?”
“Not that she told me.”
“And what do you think?”
“I think finding the Twelve is going to be more complicated than we planned on.”
He waited, watching Greer’s face. When the major made no reply, he said, “My offer still stands. We could really use you.”
“You overestimate me, Peter. I was always just along for the ride.”
“Not to me. Alicia would say the same thing. All of us would.”
“And I accept the compliment. But it doesn’t change a thing. What’s done is done.”
“It still doesn’t seem right that you’re in here.”
Greer shrugged carelessly. “Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t. Believe me, I’ve brooded plenty on the subject. The Expeditionary was my whole life, and I miss it. But I did what I thought was right in the moment. In the end, that’s all a man has to measure his life, and it’s plenty.” His eyes narrowed on Peter. “Which isn’t something I need to tell you, is it?”
The major had him dead to rights. “I suppose not.”
“You’re a good soldier, Peter. You always have been, and I wasn’t lying about that uniform. It does suit you. The question is, do you suit it?”
The question wasn’t accusing—if anything, the opposite. “Some days I wonder,” Peter confessed.
“Everybody does. The military is what it is. You can hardly take a trip to the latrine without filling out a form in triplicate. But in your case, I’d say the question runs deeper. The man I met hanging upside down in that spinner—he wasn’t following anybody’s orders but his own. I don’t think he would have even known how. Now here you are, five years later, informing me that Command wants to give up the hunt. Tell me, are they right?”
“Of course not.”
“And can you make them understand that? Make them change their minds?”
“I’m just a junior officer. They’re not going to listen to me.”
Greer nodded. “And I agree. So there we are.”
A silence followed. Then Greer said, “Maybe this will help. Do you remember what I said to you that night in Arizona?”
“There were lots of nights, Lucius. A lot of things got said.”
“So there were. But this one in particular—I’m not sure where we were exactly. A couple of days out from the Farmstead, anyway. We were sheltering underneath a bridge. Crazy-looking rocks everywhere. I remember that part because of the way the light hit them at sunset, like they were lit from the inside. The two of us got to talking. It was the night I asked you what you intended to do with the vials Lacey gave you.”
It was all coming back. The red rocks, the deep silence of the landscape, the easy flow of conversation as the two of them sat by the fire. It was as if the memory had been floating in Peter’s mind for five years, never quite touching the surface until now. “I remember.”
Greer nodded. “I thought you might. And let me just say, when you volunteered to be injected with the virus, that was, hands down, the ballsiest thing I’d ever seen, and I’ve seen some ballsy things. It was nothing I ever could have done myself. I had a lot of respect for you before that, but after …” He paused. “That night, I said something to you. ‘Everything that’s happened, it feels like more than chance.’ I was really just talking to myself at the time, trying to put something into words I couldn’t quite figure out, but I’ve given the matter a lot of thought. You finding Amy, me finding you, Lacey, Babcock, everything that happened on that mountain. Events can seem random while you’re living them, but when you look back, what do you see? A chain of coincidences? Plain old luck? Or something more? I’ll tell you what I see, Peter. A clear path. More than that. A true path. What are the chances these things would have just happened on their own? Each piece falling into place exactly when we needed it? There’s a power at work here, something beyond our understanding. You can call it what you like. It doesn’t need a name, because it knows yours, my friend. So you wonder what it is I do all day in here, and the answer is very simple. I’m waiting to see what happens next. Trusting in God’s plan.” He gave Peter an enigmatic smile; the