Read Online In the Grey by Claudia Hall Christian - Free Book Online Page A

room.
Alex wasn’t there. Neither was Joseph. Matthew wouldn’t meet his
eye. He looked at White Boy, who nodded to him in a kind of “time
to face the music” way. He looked back at Sergeant
Dusty.
    “ Let’s go,” Sergeant Dusty
said.
    Troy got up from his seat
and followed the sergeant down the hall.
    “ I feel like I’ve been
called to the principal’s office,” Troy said.
    “ You have,” Sergeant Dusty
said.
    The sergeant patted Troy’s
back and opened the door to Alex’s office. Alex was sitting behind
her big mahogany desk. Joseph was standing just to her left and her
father, General Patrick Hargreaves, was standing to her right. Troy
glanced at Alex. Her solemn face made him swallow hard.
    “ What did I do?” Troy
asked.
    Sergeant Dusty closed the
door.
    “ If this is about what I
did in SF training, I’ve apologized
and . . . ,” Troy started.
    “ Please come in and sit
down,” Patrick said.
    Troy had never been afraid
of the man until this moment. Alex’s fun-loving dad looked every
bit the severe, tough-assed general everyone said he was. At least
people said he was fair. Troy shuffled to the chair in front of her
desk and sat down.
    “ What do you know about
this?” Alex set the plastic container with the nanodrone near the
edge of her desk.
    “ It’s a drone, a
nanodrone. You found it at JFCOM,” Troy said. “I found the plans on
Hector’s computer. I helped you find someone to manufacture one
from the specs. It didn’t work.”
    Troy looked at her still
face.
    “ Um,” Troy
said.
    Alex glanced at Joseph and
he nodded. She looked at Patrick.
    “ What’s a fairy?” Patrick
asked.
    “ Seriously?” Troy
asked.
    “ Answer the question,”
Patrick said.
    “ Listen, I get that I did
something that was bad. But I’d really rather you tell me what’s
going on. We can talk it through,” Troy said. “I don’t have a great
capacity for this high pressure stuff anymore. It makes me want to
kill myself and . . . I have two little boys who
need me to be their everything.”
    Patrick raised a scary
eyebrow and glanced at Alex.
    “ You don’t need to break
me down; I’m already broken,” Troy said.
    Troy tried to catch Alex’s
eyes, but she was lost in thought. She picked up the plastic
container, looked at it, and set it under her desk lamp.
    “ This morning, Hector
James told me a number of things about this drone,” Alex said. “I
was on the phone and he picked it up
and . . .”
    “ If he broke something, he
knows better than to . . .” Troy started.
    “ No, son,” Patrick said.
Troy looked up at Patrick, and the kind man he’d always known had
reappeared on the General’s face. “The child hasn’t done anything
wrong.”
    “ He actually fixed it with
my nail file,” Alex’s eyes finally lifted up to look at him. Troy’s
heart lifted with her glance. He couldn’t help but give a little
smile. “Hector James said that you designed the fairy for
Dahlia.”
    “ I did?” Troy’s hand went
instinctively to his chest.
    “ He called this a
‘fairy,’” Alex said. “He said you gave the plans to Dahlia and that
she built them at their kitchen table. She used to keep track of
how many on the refrigerator. He said she made ‘maybe a thousand,’
but it’s hard to know exactly how many.”
    Troy shook his head in
disbelief.
    “ He said you could tell it
was hers by the blue dot on the bottom of the drone,” Alex said.
“As you know, we’ve researched every detail of this drone. Every
drone we’ve found so far has a tiny blue dot on it.”
    “ We had it analyzed,”
Joseph said.
    “ It’s nail polish,” Troy
said. “Yes, I was copied on that report.”
    “ Hector James said this
drone doesn’t do anything,” Alex said. “Doesn’t transmit photos and
isn’t carrying a weapon, but he asked me not to tell Hermes,
because he thinks the drones transmit his image to
Dahlia.”
    Troy looked absolutely
dumbfounded.
    “ I didn’t press