Troubleshooters 03 Over The Edge

by Suzanne Brockmann

  She nodded. Yes.

  “So it wasn’t just three or four months,” Stan said. “It was more like six. Six months this fucker terrorized you. Excuse me.”

  She laughed shakily. “It’s okay with me if you call him that. You know, the night I left for camp, he tried to . . .” She still couldn’t say it. “He came into my room and told me that I had to . . .” She had to clear her throat. “Kiss him good-bye.”

  Stan knew what she meant and he was horrified. She could feel tension in his arms again. “But you said that he didn’t—”

  “He didn’t,” she said quickly. “He didn’t get close enough because I, well, I threw up. On myself, on my bed. And he told me he’d see me when I got back from camp, and he left my room.”

  She was talking now simply because she wanted to stay here like this for as long as possible, with his arms around her. She knew when she stopped talking, Stan would be that much closer to leaving her room. And despite what she’d said to him earlier, she didn’t want him to go.

  “I made friends with Penny Stolz, one of the twelve-year-olds at camp, and I found out, well, if not all about sex, at least certainly more than the nothing I’d known. I didn’t tell her about him, but I think she knew. Because she set up a trade between me and Stacy Juliani—my radio for the switchblade Stacy stole from her brother.”

  “You came home from camp with a switchblade knife?” Stan made a noise that sounded a lot like laughter. “Ah, Teri, I think I love you.”

  He didn’t mean it. Not the way she wanted him to mean it.

  “I don’t know if I would’ve had the guts to use it,” she told him, near tears all over again. Dammit, she wanted him to mean it. “I was lucky—I didn’t ever have to find out. Because when I went inside my house, he wasn’t there.” It was a new man, a giant stranger who’d walked out of the kitchen at her mother’s request. Darling, come say hello. . . . “He’d moved out and Lenny had moved in.”

  Lenny, who had loved her the way an eight-year-old was supposed to be loved.

  Lenny, who’d taken the time and made the effort to gain her trust. Lenny, without whose gentle help she might not have healed enough to have ever had a normal sexual relationship with any man. Lenny, who’d given her back her self-confidence—at least enough of it so that she wasn’t a total basket case.

  Without Lenny, she wouldn’t be a helo pilot. She wouldn’t be in the Navy. She wouldn’t be even half as strong as she was.

  She’d still be hiding somewhere, probably under her bedcovers, all the time. Still afraid to come out and face the world.

  “I think you’re amazing,” Stan told her. “To have lived through all that.”

  “I still sleep with the light on,” she told him.

  “I sometimes sleep with the light on myself,” he admitted.

  Teri lifted her head to look at him. “You do not.”

  “You’d be surprised how often I do.” He touched her still wet cheek, brushing it dry with his thumb.

  Now was the time to say it, while she was gazing at him, while he was looking back at her with such soft kindness in his beautiful eyes. I kissed you, Stan. I didn’t tell you to stop because I didn’t want you to stop.

  But she couldn’t form the words. They were wedged too tightly in her throat. Part of her was still hiding in her bed, too scared to move.

  And then the phone rang, breaking the spell.

  “That’s probably Mike Muldoon,” Stan said, shifting away from her. “Wondering if you’re ready to go to dinner.”

  Teri shivered, suddenly cold without his warmth.

  “Come on,” he said, pushing himself to his feet, then reaching down and hauling her up beside him. “Take a quick shower. I’ll run to my room and do the same. Then I’ll come back here and walk you down to the restaurant.”

  God, she was exhausted. “I don’t know. . . .”

  “I’m not going to take no for an answer,” he told her. “I’ll be back in ten minutes. Be ready to go. And don’t forget your jacket.”

  --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

  Fourteen

  Sam Starrett was not going to be the first to leave the pool.

  He was hungry, he was tired, but until Alyssa Locke walked her perfect ass out of there, he was staying right where he was.

  If he worked really hard at it, he could pretend that it had nothing to do with the fact that she was wearing a bathing suit or his realization that this was the closest to her being naked that he was going to get, probably for the rest of his life.

  Damn, she was gorgeous.

  And she was going to dinner tonight with Rob Pierce. The British motherfucker.

  Alyssa came out of the pool, adjusting her bathing suit in a way that made him want to scream. Sam let himself watch her from his lounge chair, wishing he weren’t so goddamn tired. He was too tired to be angry with her, too tired to feel much but sorry for himself for being the pathetic loser she’d had sex with and then rejected.

  “Congratulations on being sent out here as an observer,” Sam told her as she dried her face on her towel.

  She looked at him suspiciously, as if waiting for him to add a but and an insult.

  “That’s all,” he said. “Just congratulations.”

  “Yeah,” she said, “it’s been kind of obvious that you’re thrilled for me.”

  He deserved that one. “Actually, I am. Your career’s going great. I’m . . . I am thrilled for you. I just wish I could be thrilled for you while you observed someone else’s takedown of a plane in some other country.”

  She sat down on the edge of the chair next to his, where she’d tossed her sweats and sunglasses. “Word in my office is that this observation thing is the precursor to a permanent transfer to Max Bhagat’s A-team.”

  Sam knew what she was telling him. The SEALs in Team Sixteen’s Troubleshooters Squad worked with Bhagat’s top team all the time. “Gee,” he said. “Maybe we should just go steady. I mean, since we’re going to be seeing each other so often . . .”

  “Right.” She stood up. “Excuse me for thinking you were capable of carrying on a serious conversation.”

  Sam stood up, too. “How am I supposed to react to that news, Alyssa?” God, he’d thought it was bad when he didn’t see her—he thought he’d go crazy from missing her so fucking much. But it turned out that was nothing—nothing—compared to being around her and not being able to touch her, not being able to talk to her, to make her laugh, to make love to her. Another few days of this and they’d have to cart him off in a straitjacket. “Are you going to be happy about working with me around most of the time? Can you really be around me and not—”

  Want me. He stopped himself from saying it, aware of how egotistical it sounded. But he didn’t mean it that way.

  She didn’t answer. Instead she jumped him.

  It was the dead last thing he’d ever expected. He was completely unprepared, and she hit him, hard, in a way that pushed him back and down, as if she’d meant to tackle him instead of leaping into his arms.

  It was as he hit the concrete, with Alyssa Locke on top of him, that he realized she had meant to tackle him. She was shouting. “Get down!”

  Something hit right where they’d been standing, the force of the explosion throwing them even farther back as flames erupted, igniting his towel and her sweats.

  It was some kind of Molotov cocktail, tossed down from one of the windows in the building above them.

  Alyssa Locke didn’t want to jump his bones. She just wanted to save his life. He almost wished she’d just let him die.

  He rolled back with her, moving away from the flames and a second explosion. She dragged him back, too, behind a low concrete wall beneath the overhang, until they were sheltered from further attack.

  Holy shit, that had been close.

  Sam felt more than heard pounding feet as the Marines ran out from the lobby to investigate. Through the ringing in his ears, he heard an
order to put out the fire, another sending squads of men up into each of the towers of the hotel to search for whoever might’ve thrown those makeshift bombs.

  Good. Someone else was going to play Superman. He didn’t have to move. He could just lie here for a minute, waiting for his head to clear.

  Alyssa made a sound that pretty much summed up the way he felt. “Sam. Sam!” She shook his shoulder. “Oh, God, please don’t be dead.”

  Sam. Now he was Sam, not Roger. “I’m alive,” he managed.

  “Thank God!”

  He lifted his head and looked down at her, suddenly intensely aware that he was on top of her. Their bare legs were intertwined. His thigh was pressed tight between hers and her body was soft and warm beneath his.

  Beneath his very, very undead body.

  “Are you all right?” he asked.

  She nodded as she looked up at him, something unreadable in her eyes. “Yes. Get off me.”

  If she’d said please, he might’ve done it. But probably not. Her face was mere inches from his and he found himself staring at the softness of her mouth. All he’d have to do to kiss her was lean forward.

  “I don’t know,” Sam said, trying to look as regretful and in pain as he possibly could. “I think I might have some kind of serious back injury and it’s probably imperative that I don’t move at all.”

  “You are such an asshole,” she said, but she laughed as she said it, and something inside of him snapped.

  “God, I missed you, Lys,” he breathed, and then, Jesus, he was kissing her.

  He’d meant to kiss her sweetly. Gently. Carefully. But like every interaction with this woman, he couldn’t do it without completely combusting. And touching his lips with hers just wasn’t enough. He had to taste her, so he swept his tongue into her mouth.

  And it was all over. Instant meltdown.

  He couldn’t have stopped kissing her if someone had held a gun to his head. Her mouth was hot and sweetly spicy. She tasted faintly of cinnamon gum and the cola they’d all been practically shotgunning all day, both for the caffeine and to replenish fluids lost out in the hot sun.

  She tasted like hope and laughter and a future in which he didn’t wake up from his dreams of her drenched with sweat—heart pounding and desperately alone.

  Because she was kissing him back, just as fiercely as he was kissing her.

  She. Was kissing. Him. Back.

  Holy God.

  Her hands were in his hair, her legs tight around his thigh as she kissed him as if she’d missed him as much as he’d missed her.

  Jesus, he was a fool for having waited so long to see her again. He shouldn’t have listened to her when she’d told him they had to pretend that nothing had happened between them. He should have gone after her. He should have dogged her every hour of every day.

  But that didn’t matter now. Because she was kissing him.

  She was kissing him in the shadows of the overhang by the swimming pool in the hotel’s center courtyard—which was now crawling with Marines. It was only a matter of time before someone saw them. And he knew it mattered to her that she not be seen kissing him, at least not in public like this.

  So he lifted his head. “Lys, please, let’s go to my room.”

  She looked dazed—far more than she had right after that bomb had nearly killed them both. “I can’t.”

  “We can go up separately if you want. I’m in 812 and—”

  “No.” She struggled to get out from underneath him, pushing at him as if she were suddenly panicked, and he let her up.

  She’d scraped her shoulder and one of her knees, and he couldn’t believe she was just going to kiss him like that and then run away. “Lys—”

  But she was. She was backing away from him as if he were a dangerous rabid animal that she shouldn’t turn her back on.

  “I can’t do this again,” she told him, and her voice actually shook. “I can’t. I don’t even like you. So just stay the hell away from me!” And with that, she turned and ran.

  “Fuck!” If there were a wall nearby to punch, Sam would’ve put his fist through it. But there was only that low concrete divider that would’ve broken his foot if he tried to kick it.

  And there was WildCard Karmody, too, standing silently about twelve feet away, even farther in the shadows, watching him. Jesus, how much of that had he seen?

  “Lys as in Alyssa, huh?” WildCard said as Sam met his dark scowl. “As in Alyssa Locke.”

  “Aw, fuck,” Sam said again, sitting down on the concrete divider, utterly defeated.

  WildCard came closer. “So you were just never going to tell me that you scored with Alyssa Locke, were you, Lieutenant? When was it? In DC probably, right? That was six months ago.”

  “Fuck,” Sam whispered. How could things have gone from so perfect to so completely fucked in a matter of minutes? Two minutes ago, he was euphoric. Two minutes ago, he’d been all but deciding who to invite to his wedding. Two minutes ago, he knew—knew—that he was going to spend the entire rest of the afternoon and evening making love to Alyssa, and that from now on, he was going to do it right. He was going to treat her so good, she was never going to leave him again.

  But two minutes later, the truth emerged—kind of like the sewage that floated up and out into the streets of this stinking city whenever there was a heavy rain.

  Alyssa didn’t even like him.

  And to make things worse, WildCard had seen Sam kissing her. Within hours, the entire team would know. And when the news got back to her, Alyssa would never believe that Sam hadn’t been the one to tell.

  “Six months,” WildCard said again, with that self-righteous indignation that only he could do so fucking well. “It’s eye-opening, sir, to realize that you thought so little of our friendship six months ago that you didn’t bother to tell me that you’d shagged the Ice Bitch.”

  Sam exploded. He launched up off the concrete wall and hit WildCard at a dead run. He pushed him back, slamming him against the bricks of the hotel.

  “Don’t you fucking talk about her like that! Don’t you fucking dare! I’ll fucking kill you!” He was ready to pound the shit out of the asshole, ready to make someone bleed.

  “Whoa,” WildCard said, holding his hands in front of him in a gesture of surrender. “Whoa, whoa, Starrett. I didn’t know! Time-out here! Time-out! You used to talk about her like that yourself.”

  He was seconds from throttling Karmody. “You breathe a word of what you saw to anyone and I will fucking kill you! Do you understand me?”

  WildCard stared at Sam, realization and a deep perception in his dark eyes. “Jesus, man, I had no idea you’re in love with her! This is what’s been making you act like a lunatic, isn’t it? You’re freaking out because she’s here, but she doesn’t want you. And the shit I’ve been giving you—that’s just making it worse. God, I’m sorry, buddy. Where you’re at right now, I’ve been there, done that, and it wasn’t fun, that’s for damn sure.”

  Sam stared back at his friend. You’re in love with her. Oh, Holy Christ, WildCard was right. He was completely in love with Alyssa Locke. That’s what these feelings were, this achingly awful sense of misery. The nearly bipolar mood swings to joy when Alyssa so much as smiled at him.

  “What do I do?” he asked, barely able to believe he was asking WildCard Karmody for romantic advice. “Do I follow her? Should I—”

  “Shit, no, Sammy,” WildCard told him, the afternoon’s altercation by the plane totally forgiven and forgotten. “You stay the hell away from her before she completely breaks your heart.”

  Helga made it into the hotel dining room just in time to hear the tail end of Stanley’s song.

  He actually did it. He got up on the makeshift stage, took the microphone in hand, and sang.

  His voice was better than merely good, his intonation uncommonly accurate, but it was his choice of song that made Helga laugh aloud. “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman.”

  He sang the words with a comp
letely straight face, really delivering the soulful melody and tender words. Your love’s the key to my peace of mind . . .

  The pretty helo pilot was there, sitting at a table, but she wasn’t alone. She was with a glaringly handsome young officer. What was that about? The young man was grinning, as were most of the other SEALs—and the room was packed with them. They’d turned out en masse to see their senior chief make good on the bet he’d made.

  The bet Helga had made a note of on the pad that she’d glanced at as she approached the restaurant. She was having a Swiss cheese night. Lots of holes, lots of confusion. She’d be lost without her notepad.