by Cindy Dees
“Great. So once she relaxes, I’m going to have to evade armed killers with a screaming kid in tow? Jesus. It’s an operator’s nightmare.”
“Stop. Swearing,” Chas said firmly.
“I don’t know if I can. Every third word the guys I work with use is obscene.”
“Well, you’re going to have to clean up your act as long as you’re around Poppy.”
“You sound like a mama bear.”
Chas’s eyes narrowed. “Just because you have the parental instincts of a single-celled organism doesn’t mean I’m the same as you. I teach kids every day. Over the course of a school year, they all become my kids. And until we find Poppy’s parents, she’s my kid.”
Gunner threw up his hands in surrender. “You’ll get no argument from me. You deal with the kid, I’ll deal with the tangoes.”
“Tangoes?”
“Tango for the letter T. T for terrorists.”
“You think the shooters are terrorists?” Chas squawked.
“I have no idea who they are. I think it’s more likely they’re child traffickers or something criminal along those lines.”
Chas looked down at Poppy in shock. “As in, she was stolen from her family and is being sold to someone here in America? That’s barbaric!”
“It’s just a guess. I’ve never heard of an op where a kid was the primary package.”
“She’s not a package, Gunner. She’s a human being. With feelings and needs. And right now she needs breakfast. And a diaper.”
“All right, already. Let’s go shopping.”
They found a superstore nearby and went inside. Chas put Poppy into the child seat of a grocery cart and gestured for Gunner to push it. Gunner scowled and took command of the cart. Poppy commenced pulling at his fingers, and Gunner fished a plastic comb out of his pocket and handed it to her. Chas watched in amusement as it immediately headed for Poppy’s mouth and Gunner had to make a quick grab to save it from slobberdom.
Poppy, however, took umbrage at the maneuver and let out a high-pitched squeal. Gunner jumped about a foot in the air, and Chas laughed aloud.
“She sounds like a velociraptor,” Gunner muttered in distress. “Make it stop. Everyone in the store will look and take notice of us.”
“Honey, nobody will stare at a toddler screaming. It’s what they do.”
“Still. Make her shut up, will you?”
“If only magic spells were real, eh? You could swish and flick a silence spell at her,” Chas commented, amused out of all proportion at Gunner’s freak-out.
They turned a corner into the baby section, and Chas grabbed a stuffed toy off a shelf and passed it to Poppy. She hugged the plush blue elephant close and quieted.
Gunner let out an audible sigh of relief.
“Don’t get too comfortable, buddy. That’ll keep her quiet for about sixty seconds, and then she’ll be wanting something new to entertain her.”
“Sixty seconds?” The horror in Gunner’s voice was palpable.
Chas laughed aloud. “Oh man. Breaking you into parenthood is gonna be fun.”
“You can fuck all the way off,” Gunner muttered.
“Language,” Chas said mildly, his attention on the shelves beside them. “Diapers. Let’s see. Do we go for the twelve-to-eighteen-months size or the eighteen-to-twenty-four months size?”
“Just get them both,” Gunner grumbled, clearly disgruntled at Chas’s amusement.
“I think the smaller size. She’s actually fairly petite. Bottles, pacifier—I don’t know if she uses one, but it could help keep her quiet in a pinch—baby wipes, lotion, bib, sippy cup, bowl, spoon, baby bag.”
“Why do we need one of those bags?” Gunner demanded.
“Have you seen all the gear we’re buying?” Chas argued. When Gunner continued to look skeptical of the pink polka-dotted bag in the grocery cart, he added, “Think of all the guns you can hide inside it.”
Gunner looked mollified at that.
Chas pulled out his cell phone and did a quick internet search.
“What are you looking up?” Gunner asked suspiciously.
“What foods kids this age eat.” He read from a list. “Finger foods. Avoid added sugar and salt. No artificial colors or preservatives. Oh, interesting. She should still drink milk or toddler formula. See if you can find that, Gunner.”
“What the hell does that look like?”
“Amateur. It’ll be a container of dried powder. Bigger than a soup can and smaller than a coffee can.”
“Here’s infant formula,” Gunner announced.
“Great. Now look for a picture of a kid about Poppy’s age on one of those containers.”
“I’m not a complete moron.”
Chas grinned. “Had me fooled there for a minute.” As Gunner opened his mouth, he added, “And you don’t have to tell me to fuck off again. I already got that memo.”
A mother with a little boy about Poppy’s age was passing by and threw him a dirty look. “Sorry,” he mumbled guiltily.
Gunner grinned. “Hah. Busted.”
Chas glared at Gunner. “I’m picking out the girliest clothes for her I can find so you’ll have to carry around a kid decked out in pink lace and bows.”
“Hey. I have nothing against girls.”
“Yeah, except sleeping with them,” Chas added under his breath.
“I’ve slept with plenty of women, thank you very much,” Gunner declared.
The mom with the kid was passing by again and threw Gunner the dirty look this time. Chas slapped a hand over his mouth to hold back the laughter as Gunner glared at him.
“How many outfits, do you think?” Chas asked Gunner.
“Not many. I’m getting rid of her at the first opportunity.”
“Six, maybe?” Chas picked out a couple of dresses, some rompers, matching stretch pants and shirts, a one-piece winter snowsuit, and an adorable pink pajama onesie with a hood, bunny ears, and a fluff-ball tail on the butt.
Gunner eyed the armload of clothes. “That looks like serious overkill.”
“She may go through several outfits a day. Little kids make messes all the time.”
“Oh God.”
“I don’t know about you, but I left home with the clothes on my back. I could use a coat and some clothes of my own. Maybe a change of underwear? Oh, and a phone charger. I’m just lucky I had my wallet in my pocket.”
Gunner rolled his eyes. “I’d kill for a field kit right about now.”
“What’s a field kit?”
“It’s a prepacked bag with everything I’d need to survive in the field for several months.”
“Does it include weapons?”
“You do know what my job is, right?” Gunner asked dryly.
“Yes, dear. I’m aware of what you do,” he answered in his best television-mother voice.
“Fu—”
“Don’t do it. That mom with the death-ray stare is at the other end of this aisle.”
“Fuck her too,” Gunner breathed.
Chas chuckled under his breath.
Their cart was shockingly full by the time they were ready to check out.
“Oops. Forgot one important thing,” Chas added.
“What’s that?”
“Car seat.”
“Come again?”
“Poppy needs a car seat.”
Gunner rolled his eyes so hard, Chas wondered how they didn’t pop out of his head. They duly returned to the baby section, grabbed a car seat, and returned to the checkout line.
“This kid is costing a fortune,” Gunner complained when he saw the rung-up total. He pulled several hundred-dollar bills out of his wallet.
“Let me charge it to my credit card, then—”
“No,” Gunner said sharply. The clerk looked up, startled.
When they left the store, Chas held out the long receipt. “Here. Charge the US government for it if you’re so freaked about me not charging it.”
“This isn’t an official operation.”
“Fine. Send me a bill. I’ll pay you back.”
“I can afford it,” Gunner snapped. “It’s not like I ever take any time off to spend my salary.”
“Really? You never take vacations?”
“Where would I go?”
“Home? To visit friends? Someplace pretty and relaxing, perchance?”
“I don’t speak to my parents, I work with my only friends, and I don’t do ‘relaxing.’”
“Dude. You have to get a life.”
They reached the car, and Gunner tore open the cardboard box with the car seat in it.
Chas said drolly, “Because I know you pride yourself on being a lone wolf, I’m gonna let you figure that out and install it while I load everything else in the trunk and put a diaper on Poppy.”
He laid the toddler down in the front seat and dressed her from the skin out in a proper diaper, new outfit, and a cute pair of tiny running shoes. By the time he put her arms into the windbreaker he’d bought for warmish fall days like today, Gunner was swearing freely in the back seat.
“How’s parenthood going back there?” Chas called.
“Don’t. Even.”
“Need some help?”
“No. I need decent instructions in actual English.”
“I’ll just go put the cart in the cart corral. C’mon, Poppy. Let’s let Daddy Number Two have a little tantrum in private while he defeats the big, bad car seat.”
“If I figure this out. And I’m totally Daddy Number One,” Gunner called after him.
Chas let his laughter float back over his shoulder toward Gunner. By the time he and Poppy returned to the car, however, Gunner stood triumphantly beside it and gestured with a flourish for Chas to put Poppy into the seat, which was duly installed and secured.
“Congratulations. I guess you can be Daddy Number One… for now.” Chas passed Poppy a plastic toy that was inset with colorful rubber pieces that popped back and forth with a smacking sound. She went to town on it in the back seat as they pulled out of the parking lot.
Chas noticed Gunner spending a lot of time watching his rearview mirror, and he asked in alarm, “We’re not being followed, are we?”
“Not that I can see. But I’m playing this cautious, not letting my guard down because we’re on American soil and appear to be in the clear. I’d like to put some more miles between us and Misty Falls, to be honest.”
“Why did you freak out back there when I tried to use my credit card?”
“Credit cards are trackable. If our bad guys have connections to even a semi decent hacker, we can be tracked through your credit cards.”
“What about yours? You used one last night to pay for the motel room.”
“I have sanitized cards in fake names.”
“Fake names? Seriously?”
“Sometimes SEALs have to live off the local economy, but we can’t afford to leave trails.”
“Nice.”
Gunner pointed the car south but turned onto a winding two-lane road instead of the major highway only a few miles away.
“Umm, I hate to be a buzzkill, but I have to teach school on Monday. I can’t exactly go on a road trip with you for grins and giggles.”
“What if the shooters are hanging around Misty Falls, waiting for you to show back up with the kid?”
Chas stared at Gunner in dismay. “What am I supposed to do?”
“Go on a road trip with me for grins and giggles until we figure out who the shooters are and what they want. And then we eliminate them.”
“Eliminate, as in kill them?” he squeaked.
Gunner shrugged. “Whatever works.”
“What about my job?”
“Call in sick. Tell them you’re suffering post-traumatic stress after your house got shot up and your neighbor died on your porch. You might want to ask your boss to call the police and let them know you’ll be back in town in a few days and will make an official statement to them then.”
“The police?” Chas blurted, alarmed.
“They surely found your neighbor on your porch, and they know you’re missing. They may have the cavalry out looking for you already.”
“Great. Just what we need.”
“What we need is some time to figure out what the hell happened and who the kid is.”
“That’s no lie,” he muttered. He called the phone number teachers reported sick to and left a message that he would be out for a few days, recovering from the events of Friday night. Then he used bottled water to make formula for Poppy. She drank it hungrily from one of her sippy cups as they rolled down the road. Next, he put dry Cheerios, strawberries he sliced with a pocketknife Gunner passed him in silence, and banana pieces into a plastic bowl and passed those to her.
“She acts like she hasn’t eaten in a week,” Gunner commented.
“I know the feeling,” Chas replied. He dug out granola bars and bananas and passed one of each to Gunner.
“What? I have to eat like a baby too?”
Chas shrugged. “Unless you have a cooked steak in the grocery bags that I didn’t notice, you get no-cook snack food too, until you want to stop at a restaurant or somewhere we can cook real food.”
Gunner said nothing but went back to staring at the rearview mirror.
“Why aren’t we getting on Highway 91? We’d make better time.”
“Because I’m going to turn west at some point, and we’re a whole lot harder to track if we stay off major highways.”
“Track how?”
“There are traffic cameras at intervals along major highways. And where there are cameras, there are hackable feeds.”
“Paranoid much, are we?”
“Not in the least. I’ve used those feeds in my work. And if the SEALs can use them, so can hostiles.”
Chas quieted, more alarmed by the idea of being surveilled on American soil than he wanted to let on.
About midmorning, Gunner’s phone rang, and he put it to his ear. He listened intently for a long time and then said merely, “Got it.”
“Well?” Chas demanded when the call ended.
“Well what?” Gunner asked blandly.
“You’re just teasing me now. Getting even for the car seat, are you?”
“Might be,” Gunner said cryptically.
“C’mon. This isn’t funny. What’s up with Poppy, and what happened in Misty Falls? Who were those guys?”
Chapter Four
SPENCER NEWMAN stepped into the guard shack at Norfolk Naval Air Station. It felt weird as hell to be signing in as a civilian visitor. His companion, Drago Thorpe, murmured as they headed back to the car, “You okay?”
“No, actually. I don’t like being back here one bit.”
“I’m sorry, man. Just remember, I’ve got your back.”
Spencer flashed an intimate smile at his best friend and brand-new husband. “Let’s just get this over with.”
“Then up to DC?”
“Yeah. I don’t think we’re going to get anything out of your old contacts unless we speak with them in person.”
A shadow passed over Dray’s handsome face. He, too, had recently lost his job at the CIA. They’d killed possibly the most dangerous terrorist on earth a few months back, but it hadn’t been a sanctioned mission, and Uncle Sam had sacked them both. It was a shitty deal, but those were the rules. At least neither of them had ended up in jail over the incident.
Spencer drove to a nondescript building that housed the largest intelligence unit on base and parked in a visitor’s space. It had been his decision to sacrifice his career. No use being bitter over it. And hey, he’d gained Dray out of the deal.
They went inside, and the clerk at the front desk started in recognition. “Lieutenant Newman. It’s been a while.”
“It’s Mr. Newman now. Is Penelope Walker in the office today?”
“Yes, sir. Uh, yes.”
“Can you ring her up? Let her know I’m here to see her?”
It took only a few minutes for
the civilian intelligence analyst, a smoking-hot redhead in her early thirties, to come down to the lobby. She handed Spencer and Dray visitor’s passes, which they clipped to their collars, and then led them to an office barely large enough to fit her desk and two chairs.
When Spencer and Dray sat down, she asked, “What can I do for you, gentlemen?”
“Did you happen to hear about a shooting in New Hampshire last night? And an Asian toddler who may be involved?”
“Oh. I thought you were here to check on Gunner Vance. He worked for you, didn’t he?”
“Yeah. Number two in one of my platoons. What are you talking about?”
“He was put in the hospital the day before yesterday. Low altitude parachute jump went bad. He went into some trees and got banged up pretty bad. The Navy’s investigating it, but it looks like a communication breakdown. Winds went out of limits and nobody relayed that information to the jumpmaster.”
“How bad is he hurt?” Spencer asked, concerned.
Penelope winced. “The way I hear it, he messed up his back pretty seriously. The paperwork is already filed to retire him out of the SEALs.”
“That’s freaking fast. Who signed the papers?” Spencer exclaimed.
“Admiral McCarthy. He has temporarily replaced Admiral Klausen.”
“McCarthy’s not an operator. What’s he doing deciding for a SEAL when his career is over?” Spencer ground out.
Penelope shrugged. “Above my pay grade to answer that one.”
Spencer leaned forward and pinned her with a hard stare. “Gunner’s a fine operator. Even with a busted-up back, he’s the kind of guy I’d want to work with. Any chance you can pull some strings and land him a training job, or maybe a supervisory job in an ops center?”
She nodded, her expression grim. “I can put in a good word for him with a few people.”
Spencer leaned back hard. “Thanks. I owe you one.””
A short silence fell in the small office. When Spencer had regained enough cool not to put his fist through a wall, he asked her, “New Hampshire? Shooting spree? Young Asian child in the middle of it?”
“How did you hear about that?” she countered. “The shooting hasn’t hit the news yet. The blackout on journalists doesn’t lift for a few more hours.”
“Why’s there a news blackout?” Spencer asked, surprised.
