The Unsung Hero

by Suzanne Brockmann

  Fucking easy as pie.

  Except this was Mary Lou he was dealing with. Yes, she was the one who’d filed for this divorce. Yes, she’d been compliant right up to this point. But Sam wouldn’t put it past her to change her mind at the zero hour.

  And it was, indeed, the zero hour.

  And, true to form, Mary Lou was surely messing with him.

  Had to be.

  Why else wouldn’t she have sent the papers back to the attorney after receiving them four weeks ago? Why else wouldn’t she return Sam’s phone calls? Why else would she not pick up the phone even when he called at oh dark hundred, when he knew she had to be there because the baby was surely sleeping?

  Sam reached for the stick to downshift as he took the exit ramp for Bee Ridge Road, and came into contact with the stupidass automatic transmission.

  Six months ago, this entire suckfest scenario would have made him bullshit. Everything sucked. This car sucked, the fact that he had to come all this way for something that should have cost the price of a first-class postage stamp sucked, and knowing that Haley was going to look at him as if he were some stranger really sucked.

  But along with that weird feeling of relief came a sense of readiness. Maybe this wasn’t going to be easy, but that was okay. He was ready for it. He was ready for anything.

  Like, Haley was probably going to cry when he tried to hold her. So he wouldn’t hold her at first. He’d take it slow.

  And Mary Lou, well, she was probably going to ask him to get back together. He was ready for that, too.

  “Honey, you know as well as I do that it just wasn’t working.” He tried the words aloud, glancing at himself in the rear view mirror, checking to see if he looked apologetic enough.

  But, shit, he looked like roadkill. His eyes were bloodshot behind his sunglasses, and the flight out of Atlanta had been weather delayed for so damn long that he desperately needed a shower.

  And he definitely shouldn’t start out by calling her honey. She had a name, and it was Mary Lou. Honey—and every other term of endearment he’d ever used like sugar, darling, sweetheart, sweet thing—was demeaning.

  He could practically hear Alyssa Locke’s voice telling him so. And God knows Alyssa Locke was the Queen of Right.

  She’d hated it something fierce when he’d called her sweet thing. So he’d called her Alyssa, drawing the S’s out as he whispered her name in her perfect ear as they’d had sex that should’ve been listed in the World Record Books. Best Sex of All Time—Sam Starrett and Alyssa Locke, Champions of the Simultaneous Orgasm.

  Ah, God.

  What was Alyssa going to think, when she heard about his divorce?

  Sooner or later the news was going to get out. Up to this point, his commanding officer, Lieutenant Commander Tom Paoletti and the SEAL team’s XO, Lieutenant Jazz Jaquette, were the only ones who knew that Sam and Mary Lou were finally calling it quits. He hadn’t told Nils and WildCard yet—his best friends in Team Sixteen. Shit, he hadn’t told his sister, Elaine. Or even Noah and Claire.

  And he sure as hell hadn’t told Alyssa Locke.

  Who was probably going to think, “Thank God I’m in a committed relationship with Max so Roger Starrett doesn’t come sniffing around my door looking for some play.” Max. The fucker. Even after all this time, Sam was still insanely jealous of Max Bhagat. Despite his new sense of relief and hope, he was feeling neither when it came to thoughts of Alyssa and Max.

  “How could you fuck your boss?” he asked.

  Alyssa, of course, because she wasn’t in the car, didn’t answer him.

  It wasn’t too tough of a question. Sam could come up with plenty of answers without Alyssa’s help. Because Max was handsome, powerful, brilliant and, yes, probably great in bed.

  Yeah, and who was he kidding with that probably? Max was no doubt definitely great in bed. Sam knew Alyssa, and she wasn’t about to spend over a year of her life with someone who couldn’t keep up with her sexually.

  And as far as the fact that the man was her boss . . .

  She and Max were incredibly discreet. In fact, they were so discreet, there were some people in the Spec Ops community who refused to believe that they actually had an intimate relationship.

  But Sam knew better. He’d gone knocking on Alyssa’s hotel room door about six months ago. And yeah, it was a stupidass thing to do. He and Mary Lou hadn’t even separated back then. He had no business knocking on anyone’s door.

  But an FBI agent matching Alyssa’s description—a woman of color, in her late twenties—had been killed that day, and until the news came down that Alyssa wasn’t on the casualty list, Sam kind of lost it.

  Except who had opened that hotel room door that he’d knocked on? Well, gee, hiya Max. Sorry, I woke you, man.

  And that was it. Game over. It was looking into Max’s eyes that did it. The fucker cared deeply about Alyssa—that was more than clear.

  And every day since then, Sam tried—he really honestly tried—to be happy for her.

  And as for his own elusive happiness . . .

  Well, he was done feeling sorry for himself. And he was done letting this divorce take place on Mary Lou’s timetable, with Mary Lou running this freak show.

  Sam and his expensive new lawyer had worked out a schedule of visits—dates and times that he could see Haley. He wasn’t looking for joint custody—that would be crazy. As a SEAL he went out of the country at the drop of a hat, sometimes for weeks or even months at a time.

  He just wanted to be able to see his kid a couple of times a week whenever he was Stateside. Surely Mary Lou would agree to that.

  To make it a no-brainer for her, Sam was prepared to give her the deed to their house back in San Diego—free and clear. He’d take care of the mortgage and continue to pay the taxes. Now that Mary Lou’s sister Janine had split up with her husband, Sam’s plan was to talk all three of them—Mary Lou, Janine and Haley—into moving back to California.

  Where he would be able to see Haley every other weekend and once a week on Wednesday nights—instead of some pathetic twice a year bullshit.

  So, yeah, Sam was hopeful that he and Mary Lou were going to be able to work this out.

  Traffic in the city was light at this time of the morning. He was literally four minutes from Mary Lou’s door.

  Please be home.

  Sam had tried calling his soon-to-be ex-wife from a pay phone at the airport, right after his flight had gotten in. It had occurred to him that she was screening her calls, and that maybe she’d pick up if her caller ID gave her a number other than that of his cell phone.

  Not a chance.

  He didn’t leave a message on her machine. He was just going to head over to the house and wait. Sooner or later Mary Lou or Janine would scoop up Haley from day care and come home.

  And then he’d do whatever he had to do to get Mary Lou to sign those papers and move back to San Diego.

  Hell, if she didn’t want to live in that same house they’d once shared, they could sell it and she could buy another. It didn’t matter to him as long as she lived in the San Diego area. He was going to move into the BOQ on base either way.

  Sure, the bachelor officers quarters were tiny and there was no privacy to speak of. But since it was highly unlikely that he was ever going to have sex again, privacy wasn’t something that he needed.

  Sam laughed at himself. That really sounded pathetic—never having sex again—like he was such a loser that no woman would want him.

  Truth was, women went for him in a major way.

  In fact, the girl at the car rental counter couldn’t have been more obvious about her interest if she’d used semaphore flags.

  “Where are you staying?”

  “Are you in town alone?”

  “If you’re looking for a good hangout, you might want to try Barnaby’s, down by the dock. I go there all the time after work.”

  Hint, hint.

  She was hot, too. A strawberry blonde with a lithe, athleti
c body and a cute little ass. But hot wasn’t enough for him anymore. No, thank you.

  Sam was finished with casual sex. He was keeping his pants zipped, which actually wasn’t as hard as it seemed, even after he’d gone for well over nine months without getting laid.

  It sounded like a really pansy thing to say, but he wanted more from life than a fast fuck with an empty-headed stranger.

  He wanted sex to mean something. He wanted to be fucked for more than his blue eyes and his muscles and the fact that he was a lieutenant with the U.S. Navy SEALs.

  Unless, of course, Alyssa Locke called him up and begged him to come over, get naked, and light her world on fire.

  If that ever happened, all bets were off.

  Alyssa was neither empty-headed nor a stranger, but during the few nights they’d spent together way back before Sam married Mary Lou, she’d definitely thought of him as only a temporary plaything, which still stung.

  Sam leaned over to look at the numbers on the houses as he turned onto Mary Lou’s street. 458. 460. 462.

  Bingo.

  462 Camilia Street was a tiny little single story Florida-style house with a carport that sat empty. There wasn’t a car in the driveway either, nor one parked out in front.

  A tired looking palm tree provided the only shade out front. The door was tightly shut behind the torn screen, and the dark shades on the windows were pulled all the way down and—

  What the fuck . . . ?

  Sam turned off the engine and got out into the sweltering heat, staring across the roof of the rental car.

  Were his eyes playing tricks on him, making those window shades seem to shift and move, or . . . ?

  He moved closer to the house.

  Holy Lord Jesus Christ Almighty, those weren’t dark shades, those were flies. There were so many of them, they almost seemed to cover the windows.

  Oh, fuck! That many flies inside a house could mean only one thing.

  Whoever was in there was dead.

  Sam went around the back of the house, looking for the kitchen door and praying that he was wrong, praying that Janine, Mary Lou and Haley had gone to visit Mary Lou’s mother in Northern Florida, and that an animal—a raccoon or a skunk—had gotten into the house and, trapped there, had died.

  But Jesus, there were flies covering every window, even in the back of the house. Especially in the back. Whatever was dead in there was bigger than a skunk.

  Sam knew he shouldn’t touch the doorknob in case there were fingerprints on it. He had to call the authorities.

  Except, he didn’t know for sure that anyone was dead.

  Yet the fact that Mary Lou hadn’t returned his call for three weeks—three long weeks—suddenly seemed telling. He’d assumed that she wasn’t calling him back—not that she couldn’t.

  Please God, don’t let her be dead.

  He lifted the clay flowerpot that sat on the back steps—Mary Lou’s favorite hiding place—and sure enough, there was a key beneath it.

  The lock on the kitchen door was right on the knob, and he knew he could unlatch the door by inserting and then carefully turning the key. He didn’t need to touch the knob and therefore wouldn’t add to or subtract from any fingerprints that might be there.

  The lock clicked as it unlatched, and he gagged. Jesus. Even just the inch or two that he’d opened the door was enough to make his eyes water from the unmistakable stench of death. Sam quickly pulled the collar of his T-shirt up and over his nose and mouth and swung the door open.

  Oh God, no.

  Mary Lou lay face down on the linoleum floor—although, Christ, she’d been lying there so long in this heat, she probably didn’t have much of a face left.

  Sam couldn’t bring himself to look more closely.

  He saw all he needed to see. She was undeniably dead, her brown hair matted with blood and brains and, shit, maggots. She’d taken what looked like a shotgun slug to the back of her head, probably while she was running away from whoever had come to the kitchen door.

  Sam stumbled outside and puked up his lunch into the dusty grass.

  FBI Agent Alyssa Locke answered the phone in her partner’s office. “Jules Cassidy’s desk.”

  There was a pause before a voice that sounded remarkably like Sam Starrett’s asked, “Where’s Jules?’

  No, it didn’t sound remarkably like Sam. It sounded pathetically like him.

  Because she was decidedly pathetic.

  What in God’s name did she have to do to get that man out from under her skin for once and for all? She saw and heard him everywhere. She couldn’t so much as see a blue jeans ad in a magazine without thinking about his long legs and . . .

  “Who’s calling please?” she said, scrambling to find a piece of paper and a pen on Jules’s black hole of a desk. Her fault for coming in here in search of a file, her fault for picking up the phone instead of letting Jules’s voice mail take the message.

  There was the sound of air being exhaled, hard, then, “Alyssa, it’s Sam. Starrett. Can you please put Jules on the phone? Right now?”

  Holy God, this time it really was Sam.

  “Oh,” she said, temporarily startled into silence. Why on earth was Sam calling Jules?

  “Look,” he said in that Texas drawl that she’d always found either infuriating or sexy as hell, depending on her state of mind. “I’m sorry if this sounds rude, but I’ve got a fucking bad situation here and I need to talk to Jules right fucking now. So put him on the fucking phone. Please.”

  Whoa. A triple fucking. Even in the best of situations, Sam had a sewer mouth, but something definitely had him rattled to make him that profane.

  “He’s not here,” Alyssa told him. “He’s out of the office and he won’t be back until Friday.”

  “Fuck!”

  “What’s happening?” she asked, sitting down behind Jules’s desk. Aha, there was a brand new legal pad buried among his junk. She pulled it free. “Is this call business or . . . ?”

  She uncapped a pen as Sam laughed. It was the laughter of a man who didn’t find anything particularly funny right now. “God damn it. Yes, it’s business.”

  “Where are you?” And no, she refused to let her heart beat harder at the thought that he was here in DC. That was just indigestion from drinking too much coffee on an empty stomach.

  “Sarasota,” he said.

  “Florida.”

  “Yeah. I’m at Mary Lou’s sister’s house. Alyssa, I’m really sorry, but I need your help. I need you to call someone in the Sarasota Bureau and have them get over here as quickly as possible.”

  “What’s going on?”

  Another loud exhale. “Mary Lou’s dead.”

  It was a good thing she was sitting down. As it was, she had to hang onto the desk. “Oh, my God. Sam! How?”

  “A shotgun slug to the head.”

  Oh, dear Lord. Oh, Sam, no. Alyssa had suspected that things weren’t particularly good between Sam and his wife, but . . . “Was anyone else hurt?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I came outside to . . . Well, shit, you know me well enough . . . I got sick. Big surprise. But I . . . I have to go back in there to look for Haley and . . . “ His voice broke. “Jesus, Lys. I’m pretty sure Haley’s in there.”

  “Whoa,” Alyssa said. She leapt to her feet, pulling the phone as far as it would go as she went to the office door. “Wait. Just wait a second, okay, Sam? Don’t move.”

  Laronda was in the hall. Alyssa covered the mouthpiece of the telephone. “Has Max left for lunch?”

  “About an hour ago. He should be back in about fifteen minutes.”

  “Shit.” Fifteen minutes wasn’t good enough. “Is Peggy in her office?”

  “She’s gone, too.” Laronda was eyeing her with curiosity. “Everyone’s out but George. You want George Faulkner?”

  George was still new to the team and had even less experience in this type of situation than Alyssa did. She shook her head. It was up to her to talk Sam down from wha
tever emotional ledge he was on. “Get me the head of the Florida office in Sarasota.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Alyssa went back to Jules’s desk, speaking into the phone. “Sam, are you still with me?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Good,” she said. “Don’t go anywhere. Don’t go back inside. Just . . . Just sit down, okay? Are you sitting down?”

  “Yeah,” he said.

  “Where’s the shotgun?” she asked.

  “I don’t know. It was so bad in there, I didn’t think to look—”

  “Sam, I’m going to call and get you help, all right? But you cannot go back into that house. Do you hear what I’m saying?”

  “Yeah, I do, but—”

  “No buts. You sit still and you talk to me. I need you to make sure that you are nowhere near that weapon when the authorities arrive. Is that clear?”

  On the other end of the phone, Sam was silent.

  “Sam?”

  Nothing. Oh, God, please don’t let him have put down the phone.

  The intercom buzzed. “Manuel Conseco from Sarasota on line two,” Laronda’s voice said.

  “Sam, you’re going to need to give me the street address.”

  Sam laughed. “You think I killed her,” he said. “That’s really nice, Alyssa. Jesus.”

  “Are you saying you didn’t . . . ?”

  “Fuck, no. What kind of asshole do you take me for?” He laughed again in disgust. “Apparently the kind who would shoot his soon-to-be ex-wife and leave her dead in the kitchen. Thank you so very much.”

  Soon-to-be ex-wife . . . ? “I thought it was an accident . . . “

  “With a fucking shotgun?”

  “Well, I’m sorry, but you said—”

  “462 Camilia Street,” Sam said flatly. “Sara-fucking-sota. Mary Lou didn’t return my phone calls for three weeks so I finally came out to see her—to finalize our divorce. I’m pretty sure she’s been dead all that time, and I haven’t searched the rest of the house, so I haven’t found Haley’s body yet. Call whoever you need to call so that the feds get here first. I don’t want the local police fucking up the investigation.”