Seemingly knowing where his mind was going, the voicemail continued, “I know you blame yourself for what happened, but, like I said before, we all went into this with eyes open. James was a big boy, and he wouldn’t thank you for one second for implying that he needed you to protect him.” Neal smiled at this, James would, indeed, have kicked his ass for presuming that this scientist should have saved the mighty naval secret agent.

“That said, you have been a rock these last few days, and … well … I just can’t imagine what I would have done without you.” Neal could hear her tears through the line, and now that she wasn’t here to see them, his own trickled down his cheek as he felt her pain throb inside him.

He would not call her back, despite a pang in his heart to comfort her, she had already said more than she should. No, once he had booked his onward ticket to meet her in Florida, he would check in at the Array, maybe even head down there. He had to wrap-up things there, and maybe see if he could stop himself from being fired from the thesis program. He was sure that having access to the facilities like the Array would be more than a little useful as they tried to figure out exactly what had happened in the Indian Ocean, and what it all meant.

* * *

The colonel was surprised when his aide, Lieutenant Diorio, told him that Danielson had called the office. He had asked to be notified if Neal tried to contact the facility. Diorio had assumed it was because the scientist had apparently run off without notice, leaving his place on the roster empty.

But the colonel was not concerned with such things. He had rarely thought of the civilian team at the Array as much more than a nuisance. In fact, in his years running the complex facility he had only ever once had cause to fully admit the importance of its civilian arm at all, and that was when he had started working with Neal.

There was no doubt in Barrett’s mind that someone like Neal would have been chewed up and spit out by any military force that would have had him in the first place. He was simply too lackadaisical to survive the kind of routine or discipline the colonel had come to find so reassuring.

But it was the very untamable nature of Neal’s mind that had made him see the rarity of the atmospheric incident and to keep pushing for further analysis, an incident that had been viewed as nothing more than a liability to everyone else.