She nodded. “I guess so.”
She avoided making eye contact with me. Maybe she didn’t want to look into the eyes that had looked into the eyes of a demon.
“Why are you out of uniform?” I asked.
“I’m leaving.”
“To hunt for Mike?”
She shook her head. “No, I’m leaving the Company. I’ve turned in my resignation, Alfred.”
“Really?” I was shocked. “Can you do that? Just quit like that?”
“There’s no rule against it. But it’s frowned upon.”
“How do they keep you spilling all their secrets?”
“They know where I live.”
“You’re kidding.”
“And where my family lives.”
“You’re giving me the creeps, Ashley. For months I’ve been trying to convince myself that OIPEP is one of the good guys, then you tell me something like this.”
She shrugged. Most people don’t look good when they shrug. Shrugging makes their necks disappear, and nobody looks good without a neck—look at pro football players. But Ashley looked terrific when she shrugged. The blond hair bounced, one side of her mouth turned down, and a cute little line developed between her eyebrows.
“Sometimes good people have to do bad things,” she said.
“But isn’t that how you separate bad people from good? Bad people do bad things, good people do good things?”
“It’s probably a little more complicated than that.”
“Most things are. I can’t figure out if I just want things to be more simple or things seem more simple to me because I am.”
“Because you’re what?”
“Simple.”
She smiled. “You’re anything but simple, Alfred.”
I took that as a compliment, which I’m more likely to do when talking to a pretty girl.
“Why did you quit?”
She looked away. I said, “You quit because of what happened out there with the demons.”
She didn’t give a direct answer. She said, “I just . . . Sometimes you . . . sometimes things happen and you realize you’ve got your priorities all screwed up. I haven’t seen my family in over two years, not since the Company recruited me out of college. I miss them. I miss my old life. I don’t know if I can just pick it up after . . . after all that’s happened, but I’m going to try. That’s what they demand from you, Alfred: your life. And I’m not sure I can give it to them.”
“The First Protocol,” I said. She gave me a funny look. “That’s the First Protocol, isn’t it? Pledging to sacrifice your life for the greater good or something like that?”
She nodded. “Something like that, yes.”
“Well, all I can say is I thought you did a great job out there, Ashley. Really. And, you know, I’m sorry about what happened under the tarp . . .”
“The tarp?”
“You know, grabbing you and everything.”