If You Fall (Brimstone #1)

by S. E. Lund

  Except you can’t completely protect yourself against random acts of violence done in the name of some extremist religious sect, as Graham found out in Malaysia. Or from poisonous fish that looked like innocent stones. All you could do was wear lots of body armor and stay the fuck out of Dodge.

  “I have lots of girl friends,” I said as we moved to some machines for cardio. “They give me what I want and I give them what they want. Fair exchange. Besides, I don’t have time for a real relationship.”

  “You don’t have time to waste, Beckett.” Casey tilted her head and gave me the evil eye. “You of all people should know how short life is and how unpredictable Fate can be. I mean a real relationship with someone who’s your equal.”

  “You’re a lesbian,” I said and grinned widely.

  She laughed at that, but I meant it. She was a software engineer and the smartest woman I ever met. Luckily, the subject was soon forgotten as we both ran for twenty minutes on the treadmills that lined the weight room. I needed to build up a good sweat, get some of the toxins out of me. As I ran, I remembered the blonde from the previous night, the stinky restroom at the bar, the grimy floor and graffiti-scrawled stall.

  Such a difference from meeting Miranda…

  Maybe Casey was right. It had been so long since I met a real woman, as Casey described it, that I frankly didn’t know where to start.

  Miranda lived in North Carolina. I had no idea where I could ever find someone else like her. I worked with men all day at the corporation – former military types who acted as consultants, fellow software engineers who worked on prototypes. Besides lifting, and ratting on my thug of an uncle, I really didn’t do anything else but work. Running the business took up all my time.

  “So, how am I supposed to meet these real women?” I said when we finished our workout. “Should I sign up for classes at the community college? Take a singles cooking class?” I asked sarcastically.

  I wiped my face with a towel and watched her response to my half-serious suggestions.

  She eyed me for a moment. “Hun, if you don’t know how to meet girls at your age, I’m afraid there’s no hope for you.”

  I made a face. “I can meet women fine, sha. But the ones I meet aren’t really the bring her home to momma types. And you’re not really the best source of new material…”

  She punched my arm, not so lightly. “I know a lot of straight people. You, for instance. You should stop going to bars to meet women or at least don’t fuck them on the first date. Get real with a woman and you’ll find someone.”

  “I could find someone any night of the week,” I replied sourly. “besides, I met a very pretty lady at a bar only the other night.”

  “And why wasn’t she with you at Blanc last night?” She wagged her eyebrows.

  I didn’t say more. I didn’t want her to know the whole backstory about Miranda.

  “You need to meet someone real,” she replied and punched me on the shoulder again. I punched her back lightly, and we sparred briefly, ducking each other’s punches before separating to our appropriate changing rooms. Before I entered the Men’s, Casey stopped at the door to the Women’s and looked at me, a serious expression on her pretty face, her eyes bright.

  “I’m serious, Beckett. You need to find something real with someone real. Both men and women are only truly happy when they have someone to love.”

  For once, I bit back the snide retort and nodded.

  Somewhere in the back of my mind, I knew she was right, but I fought acknowledging it, like to do so would be the end of the new Beckett. The one who emerged after Sue died. The Beckett that all the single ladies knew and loved but none of them could have.

  Sure, I’d struck out with perhaps the prettiest woman I’d met in a long time – Miranda Parker. But that was because I hadn’t really turned on the charm.

  I’d rectify that lapse if I had the chance and I aimed to make sure I did.

  Later that night after I’d had a warm bath and was lying on my bed, watching late night news, I picked up the package I had intended to drop off during my stay in Topsail Beach. I lay back on my bed, propped up with several pillows, and opened the envelope once more.

  I sorted through the letters, organizing them by date to see what Miranda had written, laying out the photos that went along with the letters. I felt incredible guilt that I was reading them when I should have returned them that night I met Miranda, but something made me keep them. I wanted to do it right. I wanted to meet Mr. and Mrs. Lewis, thank them for their son’s sacrifice, and return the letters properly. I wanted to take Miranda out for dinner or a drink and talk to her about her life, see how far I could take it with her.

  She was the kind of woman Casey would approve of. I had no doubt about it.

  I fell asleep with the letters and pictures of Miranda on the bed beside me, the television still on, talking heads on the news network droning on and lulling me to sleep.

  I spent the next week trying to get up to speed with Graham’s work, sitting in his chair, working on his computer, and it didn’t make me feel nostalgic. It made me angry. As soon as I could find another partner or some interim funding to tide Brimstone over, I’d be shutting down the war tourism part of the business.

  It got Graham and a civilian killed so as lucrative as it was, I intended to close that part of the business down permanently.

  My week was full of meetings with various clients, providing them with my hastily written proposals – work that Graham started but never got the chance to finish. He was the expert in war tourism, not me. He had all the contacts with people in war-torn areas of the globe where business men who had too much time on their hands and not enough adrenaline wanted to go for their ‘vacation’.

  Rich boys who wanted to play at being a warrior, or at least see a few dead bodies while they rode from Western hotel to Western hotel in HUMVEES, drank their hundred-dollar bottles of wine and talked about the stock market. It wasn’t my idea of a noble pursuit, so as soon as I could, I’d wrap up that side of the business and send Graham’s contacts to one of our competitors. It wasn’t as if I could just find another partner like Graham. Men like him were few and far between.

  No, I decided to find someone who was not into the war tourism business. I wanted someone who could augment my own field of military communications tech, or maybe someone with both military experiences – preferably in special operations forces – and a Masters or PhD in economics or political science who could advise clients on the political situation in various parts of the world where they wanted to located their off-shore factories.

  I had to start over again now that Graham was gone.

  I met with Casey later that night for a drink and then dinner. I needed a sounding board and wanted to talk to her about my company.

  “So, what’s up with your finances?” she asked as we sat at the bar in her neighborhood. “You gonna be able to make things work?”

  I nodded. “I think so. I’m going to sell the old brownstone I own near here. It needs a lot of work, but it should bring me a nice sum that should tide the business over.”

  “Good,” she said and held up her glass of bourbon. “That’ll take some of the stress off. You look terrible, by the way.”

  “Thanks,” I said with a sardonic laugh. “Always nice to hear. I haven’t been sleeping well for the past couple of weeks.”

  “You need to get laid,” Casey said.

  “Tell me about it,” I said, although I didn’t mean it. Some men lost themselves in pussy. Others, me included, focused on business instead. “I have an interesting little intrigue going on.”

  She raised her eyebrows. “Oh? Do tell…”

  I told her about the letters that I found when I went to the brownstone. I didn’t tell her about my little trip to Topsail Beach to return the letters and the fact I didn’t when I had the chance. I felt guilty enough on my own without having Casey hound me.

  Casey nodded. “You think your stuff got mixed up
?”

  I shrugged. “My legal name is Daniel. The letters were addressed to Dan and there was no name on the letters from the woman. All she had as a signature was Love, me. They probably thought they were my letters.”

  Casey downed her drink. “That’s tough, man. Was he in the accident, too?”

  “Yes,” I said and nodded for Casey knew about my accident, although she didn’t know any details except that it was classified. “He was one of the men killed when the chopper we were in went down in a storm.”

  “That sucks,” she said, nodding her head in understanding. “It’s hard to lose people. Something you never really get used to.”

  We sat in somber silence for a few moments, and I examined the glass of bourbon in front of me. I’d lost too many people. Some were fellow Marines who were out on missions with me when I was in the service. Others, like Graham and Sue, were close friends or lovers. The man who stood side by side with me in battle. The woman I thought I would marry.

  I exhaled heavily, my breath ragged. I was more tired than I realized.

  “You really should come to group grief counseling with me, Beckett. You sound like you need it.”

  I shook my head. “I need to sell the brownstone and get a new partner. Then, I’ll be fine.”

  “Stubborn bastard,” she muttered.

  I nodded. Stubbornness was a fault of mine. I drank down the rest of my bourbon and knocked the glass down on the bar. The bartender came right over and poured me another one. Tonight felt like a night to get drunk.

  “Get drunk with me?” I turned to Casey, whose large brown eyes were all sympathetic.

  “That’s why you pay me the big bucks.”

  The bartender poured her another shot of bourbon and the two of us clinked glasses and proceeded to get drunk.

  The next day, I spent the morning recovering from my night with Casey. I took a steam bath, then ate a heavy breakfast with Brandon. Finally, I sat in my office and reviewed the article on the death of Hospital Corpsman 1st Class Daniel Lewis.

  It was almost a year since the accident and his death. I fully intended to courier the letters to Topsail Beach and wanted to write something to explain how the letters came to me, and so I spent the morning composing a letter that I hoped would express my gratitude for Lewis’s service, his sacrifice for his country without revealing anything classified about the operation we were on when the accident happened.

  I felt incredible guilt as I read over the letters from Mira to her late husband once more. What a cruel fate. At times, I felt like going back and getting revenge for the deaths of the Marines who lost their lives trying to rescue us. Instead, I hoped to make things better for Marines who had to risk their lives for the rest of us.

  I picked up a letter and read it over. In it, Miranda wrote about her work at the restaurant and how she enjoyed bartending to a different crowd than she was used to. She usually worked at her grandfather’s pub in Queens while she put herself through John Jay College of Criminal Justice. The bar catered to police and firefighters, and she was used to hearing their talk about their work. She said it made her feel closer to her father and grandfather to work at the bar, for she had a better understanding of the men who risked their lives each day for our safety.

  She wanted to do something with law enforcement as well, but didn’t see herself as a cop. Instead, she wanted to work in forensic psychology, to understand what made criminals and terrorists tick. Fight them using her mind. She was too small to get into the police force, not making the height grade so policing was out of the question. She had to be a civilian member of the FBI if she were going to follow in her father’s footsteps.

  I admired her. Here she was, hoping to join the FBI, her husband a bona fide war hero, giving up his own life to save others. A member of a hyper-specialized special operations team.

  She was the kind of woman I would want to date. Casey would approve of her – of that there was no doubt. I struggled to write a letter to her, trying to put in words a few thoughts about her loss but it all felt inadequate. Here was a young woman just starting her life with her husband and he was taken from her less than three months after their marriage. I was responsible. He died because we were testing our prototype. The prototype was meant to save lives, not take them, but that is exactly what it did.

  Ella, my admin assistant, poked her head in my office at about noon. “John’s on the line. He wants to let you know he’s coming to the retreat.”

  I pulled my mind away from the Lewis family and considered a location for the retreat I had planned for my staff. We had booked a floor of rooms at a hotel in Wilmington, but now I reconsidered. The retreat was hastily organized and intended to boost my remaining staff’s morale after Graham’s death. Before Graham’s death, I had promised to host a retreat where we could do a planning session for the next year. We’d have to transition out of war tourism now that Graham was gone so there was no better time than the present to hold the retreat. I thought of Topsail Beach and wondered whether it had adequate facilities for my dozen staff.

  A convention of Wall Street investors in the defense industries was being held in Wilmington and I was going to attend a few meet and greets, so holding my staff retreat during that weekend would kill two birds with one stone.

  “Check out Topsail Beach and see if there are any appropriate accommodations for the retreat. The Yacht Club’s pretty nice,” I said, thinking I could invite some of the investors from the convention to our brainstorming session. “It’s pretty close to Wilmington, and a defense contract convention with some investors I know.”

  “Will do.”

  If I timed it right, we could run the retreat and I could finally meet Lewis’s parents and hand over the letters to them at the same time. As to Miranda, I’d confess who I was and how I got the letters and let her take it from there. Not telling her who I was the first time I was in Topsail Beach was wrong. I wouldn’t make that mistake again.

  Three weeks later, I drove down to Wilmington on my bike. It was still the summer season and there were quite a few tourists around, in the shops and on the beaches. The next morning, I went into the town to the Yacht Club and checked into my room, unloaded my gear, and sent my two suits, ties and shirts to the dry cleaning service so they’d be freshly pressed for the next day. Then I drove down the street to the fitness club and checked it out. A young guy with a man-bun and horned-rimmed glasses greeted me.

  “How can I help you?” he asked, eyeing me up and down.

  “I’m staying at the Yacht Club and wanted to see your facilities for my staff, who will be here for four days.”

  The attendant widened his eyes as if he was surprised I was staying at the club. I laughed to myself. I supposed my motorcycle jacket, helmet and boots made me look somewhat questionable, but that was his mistake. He showed me around the club, including the fitness room with row upon row of treadmills, exercise bikes, and universal gym, a classroom for fitness classes, and a larger gym with a climbing wall. There was a steam and sauna room with separate facilities for women and men.

  As I was leaving the locker room, I ran into a mountain of a man whom I recognized immediately from my time at Camp Lejeune. Master Sergeant Brent Fillmore. A huge man with a boxer’s build, he was the toughest Marine drill sergeant I knew. Stationed at Lejeune, he must have retired to live in Topsail Beach.

  “Master Sergeant Fillmore,” I said when I reached his side.

  He turned to regard me, a frown on his face. “That’s my name. Don’t wear it out,” came his reply. As usual, gruff to the end.

  I held out my hand. “McNeil,” I said, using the name he knew me by. “I was at Lejeune a few years back.”

  Then he looked at me more closely. “Well, I’ll be…” He shook his head. “If it isn’t Daniel McNeil, the Cajun Viking…” He eyed me up and down as if assessing me.

  “I go by Beckett now,” I said. “Daniel McNeil is my legal name, but for business, I use Beckett Tate. It’s my mother�
��s name and, well…” I shrugged. “It’s a long complicated story that has to do with divorce, the Irish American mafia and other family bullshit you really don’t want to know.”

  He glanced at me like I was some kind of flake but then nodded. “All right, Beckett Tate. I thought you got out and went to Manhattan. What the hell are you doing in Topsail Beach?”

  “I’m based in Manhattan,” I said. “As to why I’m here, I could ask the same of you.” We shook hands and then fist bumped. “I’m here checking out the facilities for a retreat for my staff this weekend.”

  “Your staff?” he asked and we stopped in the hallway. “You an employer now?”

  “I have a company that develops comms tech for the military.”

  “No shit. I thought you went Special Operations Forces.”

  I nodded. “I did. Did a tour of duty in Afghanistan before I got out and started my company.”

  “I’ll bet the money’s better,” Fillmore said with a laugh.

  “What are you doing, Master Sergeant?” I asked as we stopped outside a classroom “Teaching fitness?”

  He pointed to a sign on the door beside us. MCMAP Fitness Class. “I’m retired but I try to keep in shape and do personal training on the side. Wife runs a touristy clothing shop on the strip.”

  I nodded. “We’ll be staying at the Yacht Club for a few days. I’ll make sure to bring my staff to one of your fitness classes. You can whip their asses into shape.”

  He grinned. “Hell, you can help me run the class. See if you remember your stuff. Didn’t you used to do yoga or some other such Buddhist shit?”

  I laughed and he walked me out of the club to my bike in the parking lot. It was good to see him again and I was surprised and a little chuffed that he remembered me.