by Lori Wilde
He waited, ready, on alert, yet relaxed in his confident ability to handle whatever might arise. He was still a SEAL in his heart, if not on the government’s payroll. He was part of the darkness, at one with the silence. He waited and watched and listened. For echoes, for whispers, for quivering molecules of air.
Nothing.
Stealthily, he edged to the bedroom window. Damn, the pain was a jagged saw blade pulling back and forth against the raw flesh of his wound. He bit down on the inside of his cheek.
Fuck the pain.
He shook his head to clear it. There were footprints in the sand, but it was impossible to discern much in the darkness on such unstable ground. Already the wind had shifted the sand, blurring the edges of the footprints.
No answers here.
Who had been watching them and why?
What did Marlie know that made someone want to kill her?
He thought of her. Alone in the house. Locked in the bathroom, clutching his gun to her chest, shaken but willing to pull that trigger if she had to.
She was brave yet skittish. As if she didn’t know her true measure as a person. She greatly underestimated herself. He saw the core of steel that ran underneath that plush, soft exterior. Marlie was a paradox, and damn if he wasn’t compelled by both sides of her. When she was worried, frantic, or nervous, his lionhearted hero side wanted nothing more than to take care of her. Taking care of her made him feel good.
But then there was that other layer. That inner steely reserve. When that Marlie rose to the surface, he responded to her with pure swaggering testosterone. God, she drove him crazy and made a muddle of his brain.
Thinking about her wasn’t smart, but it was a hell of an improvement over thinking about the pain.
Even now, when she wasn’t even within close range, his body responded to the visions his mind conjured of her. Joel recalled how carefully her gentle fingers had cleaned his wound and sewn him up. He remembered how her dark hair had grazed her cheek, accentuating the cherubic quality of her rounded bone structure.
Something in the dead center of his chest tightened.
What was with these mushy feelings? He was a Navy SEAL. He didn’t indulge in emotions. He was a realist. He was an expert at blocking out unwanted feelings. He shoved them into the back drawer of his mind and locked the key. Treeni had been the same way. Both of them had the ability to stop feeling and simply act. It was the thing that had drawn them together, and that same thing had ended their marriage.
Marlie wasn’t like that at all.
She rode her feelings like an ocean wave. Joy and excitement lifted her to the crest; despair and fear plunged her to the depths. Joel was loath to admit it, but he was jealous. Of her ability to let her feelings flow freely.
Damn, he wanted her. Why was he so attracted to her? Was it her wide eyes that peeped so beguilingly from behind her glasses? Was it the tender smile that tugged at the heartstrings he’d cut so long ago? He couldn’t afford to feel anything more than sexual desire. She deserved better than a used warhorse with more baggage than an airport carousel.
It had taken every ounce of control he possessed not to make love to her back in the bedroom, and if it hadn’t been for the interruption of the intruder, he didn’t know how long he could have held out. Not when he looked into those tempting brown eyes.
A bank of marauding clouds covered the full moon, dashing the shimmering light and bathing Joel in unrepentant blackness.
A storm was coming. The wind kicked up, sent sand skittering.
He froze. Waiting. For what, he didn’t know.
He was off his game. Nowhere near as sharp as normal. His rational mind blamed the gunshot wound and the whiskey and the Vicodin, but there was a part of him that couldn’t help wondering if his attraction to Marlie was really to blame.
The clouds shifted again and the moon was back. Joel followed the footprints away from the house as they led toward the beach.
A few yards ahead of him, hung on the barb of an old fence, half covered in sand at the edge of the condo’s perimeter, something glimmered in the moon glow.
Joel reached the fence, went down on one knee in the sand, and plucked the item from the barb. Frowning, he raised it up to examine it more closely. Immediately he recognized the item. Had seen it sewn onto the sleeve of his father’s uniform.
The emblem of Admiral.
One thing was clear. The safe house had been compromised. They had to leave.
Joel had no time to form a second thought. He heard a sound behind him, saw a shadow fall across the small dune, but blood loss had slowed his reflexes. He wasn’t quick enough.
His attacker slammed something hard into the base of his skull, and Joel fell face-first into the sand.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Face the facts. Joel’s not coming back.
Marlie sat in the bathroom, holding the gun, waiting and waiting for what seemed like ten eternities. What if something bad had happened to him? She vigorously gnawed her bottom lip, fretting about what monsters lay out there in the darkness.
Go after him, Angelina said.
“But he told me to stay here.”
Where have I heard that before? He was wrong at your mother’s bungalow when he told you to stay put. Just because he’s arrogant enough to think he hung the moon doesn’t mean you have to buy into it.
“True.”
Joel did tend to take over and tell her what to do. And part of her really liked that. How easy it would be just to let him take the lead, take care of her. But another part of her balked. Joel was the kind of guy who just assumed his way was the best way, and if you didn’t challenge him on it, you never got your way.
What was her way? What did she want?
She wanted to find her mother. That’s what she wanted.
So get off your duff and go find her.
The gun felt smooth and cool in her hand. She would do this. She’d go out there and see what had happened to Joel.
Put on some clothes first.
Oh, yeah.
But the clothes in the dryer were still wet. She’d mistakenly put them on low heat. She switched the setting to high and dithered a moment about what to do. To hell with it, she’d just go out in the towel. Plucking a clothespin from the shelf above the dryer, Marlie used it to fasten her towel shut.
She slipped into her shoes and cautiously tiptoed into the foyer. She eased open the front door and stepped out. The clouds were playing tag with the moon. One minute dark, the next minute the pathway was bathed in shimmering moon glow. Joel’s Durango sat in the driveway, but there was no sign of him.
The towel, although fluffy and oversized, was still no match for the night air. The ocean breeze sent gooseflesh running up her arms. She shivered and inched toward the side of the house. Uneasiness settled low in her belly. She fought the urge to jump into the Durango and drive away. But Joel needed her.
She cocked her head and listened but heard nothing beyond the usual beachy sounds. In her head, Angelina hummed the theme to Halloween.
Shut up!
Marlie took a step.
Dupe-dupe, Angelina said ominously. Dupe, dupe, dupe, dupe, dupe.
She wanted to kick her alter ego into a dark basement and slam the door, but what if she needed Angelina again? If something had happened to Joel, Marlie couldn’t handle it on her own.
You sewed him up just fine by yourself and made out with him too, no prob.
“What? You want me to lock you in the basement?”
Depends on who you lock me in there with.
“You’re incorrigible.”
Yeah, but where would you be without me?
Marlie edged along the front of the house, gun outstretched. She was about to round the corner that would let her see the bedroom window where the man had been staring in at them.
A dizziness of dread kneaded her stomach. Who had been peeking in the window? She was almost certain it wasn’t the killer. And if it had been the police,
they would have just come to the door. She wanted to call out to Joel, but she was too scared to open her mouth.
She peeked around the corner and her blood ran cold.
There was Joel splayed out in the sand, a man stooping over him with what looked like a rock in his hand.
“You there!” Marlie said. “Freeze right where you are or I’ll shoot.”
Maybe she shouldn’t have said that about the shooting part because instead of freezing, the guy tossed the rock down and took off down the beach in a lumbering gait that told her he was either old or disabled or both.
She didn’t know whether to chase after the guy or go see about Joel, but in the end, loyalty won out. She ran to Joel.
His hand snaked out and, as quick as a striking cobra, his hand clamped around her ankle.
Before Marlie could even cry out, she was on her butt in the sand beside him.
Joel lifted his head, anger snapping in his eyes like electricity discharging off a Tesla coil. He looked very, very pissed off.
Marlie shrank back, terrified. She’d known better than to trust him. She’d just been waiting for him to turn on her.
With a titanium grip, he yanked her ankle downward, jerking her through the sand on her fanny until she was practically lying underneath him.
How embarrassing.
Both her legs were pinned on either side of him, his wrists pushing her heels into the sand. Her crotch was level with his pelvis, and he was leaning heavily against her body. Her breasts were flattened against his chest, and his eyes were staring straight into hers.
They were breathing in rough, tight syncopation.
She felt him grow hard, and every cell in her body sang. The tremendous power of this masculine man should have frightened her, but it didn’t.
Great. They were both perverted adrenaline junkies.
For a timid person with a poor track record when it came to the opposite sex, the realization that she could turn him on even under these bizarre circumstances was a heady idea.
Marlie gasped as Joel shoved his face close and pressed his nose, dusty with sand, flush against hers. When he spoke his voice was low and diabolical as he distinctly enunciated each word while simultaneously grinding his teeth.
“Why . . . the . . . hell . . . did . . . you . . . hit . . . me?”
Normally, such a show of masculine force would have cowed her. But that was before she’d been shot at, lost her mother, been locked in a burning house, almost slammed into a drawbridge, sewn up a man’s gunshot wound, and got ogled by a Peeping Tom—all in less than twenty-four hours.
“I didn’t hit you,” she snapped.
“Then who did?”
Marlie pointed at the lone figure loping up the beach, moving farther and farther away. “He did.”
Joel caught the guy and dragged him, kicking and spitting and biting, back to the condo. For an old coot, he was pretty feisty.
“Lemme go. I didn’t do nothin’.”
“You whacked me on the head,” Joel growled, strong-arming him into the condo.
Wide-eyed, Marlie trailed behind them, the oversized bath towel cinched just above her bosom with a clothespin, his big gun clutched in her petite little hand. The geezer had stopped kicking and was staring at her with interest.
“Put on some clothes,” Joel told her gruffly. He had to stop himself from punching out the old guy’s lights for ogling her.
“Oh, yeah,” she said absentmindedly, as if she’d forgotten she was half naked.
But Joel hadn’t forgotten. His body still hummed from being pressed against hers out there on the sand. She padded off toward the laundry room and Joel’s eyes went with her, following the gentle swish of her hips until she disappeared around the corner.
“Wouldn’t mind having that swing in my backyard,” the old guy said.
“Shut it.” Joel muscled him onto the living room davenport. “What’s your name?”
He flicked on the table lamp so he could see the guy better. He wasn’t as old as Joel had initially thought. Fifty-four or -five. Around Gus’s age. There was madness in his eyes, and he sprouted a scraggly gray beard, but the most arresting thing about him was the long Frankenstein scar extending across the top of his head. He’d had brain surgery and from the looks of it, he was sporting a metal plate where a portion of his skull had once been.
“Your name,” Joel repeated.
“You told me to shut it.”
“Well, now I’m telling you to open it and give me your name.”
“Seaman Third Class Ronald McDonald, serial number . . .”
“Your name isn’t really Ronald McDonald.”
“Yes, it is.”
“No, it’s not.”
“Wanna see my driver’s license?”
“Yeah.”
The old guy pulled his driver’s license out of his wallet and handed it to Joel.
“I’ll be damned. Your name is Ronald McDonald.”
“It was my name before that stupid hamburger clown ruined it.” Ronald pouted. “Spent my whole life getting into fights over it.”
Marlie reappeared dressed in his white shirt and her black track pants, looking clean and fresh. She hung back in the doorway, watching him interrogate Ronald.
“What are you doing here?” he asked.
“I work here,” Ronald McDonald said querulously.
“Work here?” He had a feeling old Ronald was missing more than a few marbles.
“I’m the caretaker.”
Had Gus hired this retired Navy seaman to keep up the place? “Why did you hit me on the head?” Joel asked.
“I thought you were him.”
“Him who?”
“The commander.”
“What commander?”
Ronald got a spacey, faraway look in his eyes. “It was his fault the ship went down. He knew what we were in for.”
“What are you talking about?”
The old man began to tremble. “Here it comes. The explosion. Everyone running, screaming.”
“Ronald, what are you talking about?”
“He’s trapped. He’s beggin’ me for help. But if I stay, I’m gonna die too.”
Clearly the old man was flashing back to some traumatic experience. Joel backed off, realizing that pushing the guy wasn’t going to get him anywhere, but Ronald kept talking.
“I left him. I deserted the ship with the rest of them. It blew. Metal fragments everywhere. Hit me on the head.” Ronald fingered the scar on his skull. “I almost died. He did die.” He shook his head. “The poor little boy.”
“What boy?”
“Ain’t never gonna see his daddy again.”
Joel could hear the sorrow in Ronald’s voice, and he felt like a shit for sending him back to the heat of the battle. He’d had a few war-related nightmares himself, and he understood.
“It’s okay. It’s over,” Joel said, trying to calm him.
Ronald’s eyes rolled wildly in his head. “No, no, you’re wrong. It’s not over. The commander’s back. The boy is here. He’s here, and he’s gonna kill us all.”
“We have to get out of here,” Joel told Marlie after he’d let crazy Ronald McDonald go free. “This place has been compromised.”
“Where are we going?”
“Don’t know, but we’ll figure it out in the car. Come on.”
She gathered up her purse, the first-aid kit, and the gun he had given her and met him at the door. Joel ushered her to the Durango, making sure she was belted in tight before he went around to the driver’s side. He didn’t know what was going down, but his encounter with Ronald had deepened his commitment to keeping Marlie safe. As soon as he got a chance, he was calling Dobbs and demanding some answers. Top secret or not, somebody better start talking.
He bumped along the beach road leading from Gus’s condo to the main highway back to Corpus Christi. Languid rumbles of thunder rolled in off the Gulf, resonant and cavernous, echoing from one tip of the island to the other.
Joel turned right onto the highway. Behind him, another car also turned onto the road, the swath of headlights cutting across his rearview mirror.
He narrowed his eyes suspiciously.
It was three o’clock in the morning, and Gus’s condo was off the beaten path. Was it coincidence that another car had come up the isolated beach road behind them? Probably just young lovers, returning from a midnight rendezvous, but he wasn’t taking any chances.
Reaching up, he adjusted his mirror. The headlights were positioned low, like those of a sports car.
He sped up.
So did the vehicle behind them.
“Hang on,” he said.
“What is it?” Marlie asked in alarm.
“Just brace yourself.”
He trod the brakes, whipping the Durango around in an insane U-turn, and flew past the other car.
It was a black Camaro.
The chase was on.
Fat raindrops splattered the windshield. Lightning flared a vivid forked-tongue pattern across the night sky. Thunder rolled.
Joel stomped the foot pedal. Marlie clung to the armrest. The black Camaro had made the same life-threatening U-turn that Joel had just made and was now coming at them like a demon from hell.
The Durango’s tires thrummed. The windshield wipers squeaked against the glass. Marlie turned her head and saw that the Camaro was gaining on them.
“He’s going to ram us,” she cried.
“I can’t go any faster.”
The Camaro crossed over into the next lane, pulled even with the back of the Durango, but then he began a deadly drift back into their lane.
“If I can’t outrun him, I’ll outmaneuver him.” Joel twisted the wheel to the right. Gravel from the shoulder flew up, pelting the car with ping-ping-ping noises.
Bam!
The Camaro hit the Durango’s rear fender well, trying to force them off the road. Marlie’s teeth smacked together at the force of the impact.
Joel turned the wheel back to the left. The Camaro and the Durango were jammed together, metal screeching, crying out like a demented patient on a psychiatric ward as they raced down the dark, rain-slicked road.
A deadly version of bumper cars.
The Camaro reduced its speed just enough for the vehicles to separate. His sudden deceleration caused Joel to rocket into the left lane.
