But to try to change herself more drastically to… what? To become more like a man…?
No. She—and the over fifty percent of the world’s population who were women and girls—didn’t need to change.
The rest of the world did.
“Good luck, Lieutenant,” she said, and this time, when she turned, he let her walk away.
* * *
Jim—the Lieutenant—was on her flight.
So not only did Ashley have to sit near him at the gate in Tampa, she had to sit near him for the layover at the gate in Atlanta, too.
He was, thank God for small favors, completely respectful. But she was aware of him.
She was aware that his knees were hurting. On the flight to Atlanta—a relatively short hop from Tampa—he’d somehow squeezed himself into the dread middle seat in coach, several rows up from her. He’d spent much of the time on his feet, in the aisle, which was probably only marginally less painful than sitting without proper legroom.
On the flight to San Diego, she had an aisle seat and she was ready to trade with him, but the flight wasn’t full, and all it took was a quiet word to the flight attendant: “The very tall man in row 18 is an active duty Navy SEAL, dealing with a knee injury. Is there anyway you could move him into first class, so he’ll be more comfortable?”
As the flight attendant approached him and moved him up to the front of the plane, he glanced back at Ashley, well aware of what she’d done.
In fact, he sent her a drink—a plastic cup of red wine.
She drank it with the sandwich she’d picked up at the kiosk in Atlanta, then closed her eyes and tried to sleep.
* * *
At the gate in San Diego, Jim waited for Ashley to get off the plane.
She looked neither happy nor surprised to see him standing there.
“Thanks,” he said. “For, you know…”
“You really need to learn to stand up for yourself,” she told him, half tongue-in-cheek. “People want to help. Like, right now. You could ask for a wheelchair.”
“Yeah, that’s not gonna happen,” he said.
She nodded. “Right. Well.” She looked around as if to get her bearings.
“Baggage claim is this way,” he said, leading her in that direction.
“I didn’t check a bag,” she said.
“Ground transportation’s in the same place.”
“Ah, yes,” she said. “I made arrangements for a car…”
God, this was awkward.
She cleared her throat. “I’d offer to give you a lift, but Coronado’s in the opposite direction from San Felipe.”
“You’re going home?” He asked it as a question, and she looked at him like the idiot that he was.
“Yes, because… I live there…?”
“Right. Of course. I just… should’ve told Taylor and Skelly to change the locks,” Jim said. “Your intruder’s still at large.”
Ashley stopped. “You’re not responsible for me,” she said. “You never were, and you certainly never will be.”
Jim nodded, setting his duffel down at his feet. “I get that. I just… I care. About you. Your safety is important to me.”
“Really?” she said. “You want me to be safe. Said the man who tried to goad me into getting angry, who accused me of, I don’t know what—being weak because I chose not to throw down with Bull and Todd, when I was alone with them in a dark hallway, in the middle of the night…? What the hell do you think I was doing? I was making damn sure that I stayed safe! What planet do you come from, that you think my getting angry with men like Bull and Todd would do anything other than make me very, very unsafe? Together, they’re three times my weight! How do you live to be as old as you are and not know what most women have learned by the time they’re ten years old: That there’s potential danger in any—any—disagreement with a man. So we de-escalate. By default. As quickly as we possibly can. To stay safe! You know, I came out of the bathroom and Bull and Todd were standing there, using their very large bodies to trap me in the hall. And you seriously thought I should’ve shouted at them for disrespecting me? I’m sorry, but no. I’m going to do what I did. I’m going to be polite. I’m going to use the only weapon I have to stay safe—words and logic and the norms of society—although those so-called social norms have decayed drastically over the past year and a half, thanks to the motherfucking pussy-grabber-in-chief!”
“God, I really do love it when you’re angry.” It was not the right thing to say—not by a mile—but he couldn’t stop himself, because it was true.
“Fuck you, Lieutenant! Because you look at me and you think I’m never angry, but you are so wrong. If you want to know the truth—if that word means anything to you, lying liar that you are—I’m always—always—a little bit afraid. And that means I’m also always angry. It’s hard not to be. I just don’t have the luxury, like you do, of showing it!”
“Excuse me, ma’am, is everything okay over here?”
The airport security guard was a woman, and she was looking at Jim as if she was sizing up the fastest way to take him down. Her dark brown eyes lingered on his knee braces, and he knew that wasn’t by accident. Her message was clear: If you think your knees hurt now, wait’ll you wrangle with me.
“Everything’s fine,” he said, but she ignored him, instead waiting for Ashley to answer.
“My friend is an asshole,” she told the guard as her own eyes filled with tears. “But I know he’d never hurt me—not that way, not physically.” She turned to Jim even as her tears escaped down her cheeks. “Oh, the irony of finally finding a man I can be honest with, to unleash myself like that and truly not be afraid…”
“Ash, I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I’m so sorry. Please—”
He reached for her, but she stepped back, and the guard stepped forward.
“I have to go,” Ashley said. “Don’t follow me, Jim. I really don’t want to see you again. Not just tonight, not… ever.”
She hurried away from him then, the wheels of her bag clattering on the airport floor.
Jim must’ve made a move—purely involuntary, total SEAL brain-stem, gotta follow, gotta fix, gotta have, gotta win… But the guard stepped in front of him. “Sir, I’m gonna have to ask you to wait. Just for a few minutes.”
“I am, I will, I’m… sorry. And thanks. Really. For making sure she was safe.” Because that’s why the guard had stopped. She’d seen Ashley getting angry at Jim, and recognized, just as Ashley had said, that doing so might put her in danger.
The woman nodded, and then dug in her pockets and handed him a little packet of tissues. “Keep ’em,” she said, and walked away.
It was only then Jim realized that he was crying, too.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Jim picked up his truck from the lot on base, and headed out to grab a burger and a beer for his second dinner.
He was exhausted—it was barely 1830, but that was 2130 in Florida, and he’d been on Eastern Time long enough to feel it. He also hadn’t gotten much sleep last night. Still, he knew the best way to combat jetlag was to move as quickly as possible into the biorhythms of the new time zone, so instead of driving home and crashing into his bed, he was gonna eat another meal and force himself to stay awake, at least until the sun was fully down.
He wasn’t up to socializing with any SEAL teammates, so he headed back over the bridge to his favorite mom and pop place called Werewulf’s. He’d just sat down at the bar and caught the owner’s eye—a woman named Greykell Perks who tended bar while her three kids cooked—when his phone buzzed with an incoming text.
Meals-at-the-bar at Werewulf’s weren’t meant to be eaten while staring at your phone. No, the burger experience came with sci-fi movie gems playing on the bar TV—tonight was Escape from New York, which deserved his full attention. Still, he pulled his phone partly out of his pocket just to see who he was going to ignore. He was betting it was Thomas King, checking in on him.
But the name on his ph
one’s screen was Ashley, and Jim’s heart actually pounded with hope as he broke his rule and took his phone out to read her text.
But then her words make his heart pound for completely different reason as he read them: Sweetie, sorry to cancel last minute, can’t do dinner tonight, must reschedule, maybe tomorrow?
Sweetie? Jesus… He looked at his watch and did the math. Her trip to San Felipe from the airport would’ve brought her home to her condo right about…
Now.
This was an SOS message if he’d ever seen one.
It didn’t take much to imagine what had happened. She’d gotten home, and whoever had broken in was there, waiting for her. She’d given her attacker some made up some story about her “boyfriend” coming over for dinner, and having to send him a text to cancel—in hopes that upon reading that text, Jim would realize that something was very wrong.
“What can I get you, Jim?” Greykell asked, but Jim was already on his feet and heading for the door.
“Sorry, Grey, gotta run.”
As he fast-walked, he searched his phone for the security app that was attached to the hidden cameras that Bobby Taylor and Wes Skelly had installed at Ashley’s condo. He’d signed out last night, and when he tried to sign in now, the password failed. Of course it did. A stickler for internet security, the first thing Chief Taylor would do was change the password.
So now Jim full-on ran for his truck on knees that burned, threw himself inside and started the engine with a roar. Fastest way to San Felipe would be via back roads at this time of evening, so he headed roughly north and east as fast he could, even as he called Taylor through his Bluetooth.
The Chief picked up on the first ring, cheerful as always. “Hey, LT. You’re on speaker! I’m in the car with Colleen. Rumor has it you came back early.”
“Chief, I need Ashley DeWitt’s home address.”
“Uhhh…”
Colleen’s voice came in. “Hi, Jim, how are you?”
“Kinda desperately needing Ashley’s address. She just t—”
“She sent me an email this morning,” Colleen spoke over him. “She didn’t say what happened, other than that something happened with you, and that it was over. I’m sorry to hear that.”
Bobby cut in. “With all due respect, sir, I’m gonna ask you to get that address directly from Ashley…? I mean, if she wants you to have it—”
“She just texted me,” Jim said. “She’s in trouble. Bob, I need you to check the security feed. She called me sweetie, and said she had to cancel plans for dinner tonight—”
“Hang on, I’m pulling into a parking lot so I can check the app,” Bobby said, even as Colleen misunderstood.
“Jim,” she said, “whatever plans you had with her, it’s not… well, if I’m reading that email right, it’s likely that she never intended to meet you in the first place.”
“We didn’t have plans for dinner,” Jim said as clearly as he could. “She told me she didn’t want to see me anymore. She made it very clear. That’s what I’m trying to tell you, because suddenly I get a text where she’s canceling the dinner that we weren’t going to have unless pigs started flying…”
Bobby swore pungently. “You’re right, LT. Recorded video footage shows her being accosted outside of her front door by a man with a handgun.”
Jim drove faster. “I need her address.”
“Oh, my God,” Colleen said, “let me see…”
“Interior camera currently shows…” Bobby said. “Yeah, she’s okay, I don’t think he hurt her, but he’s in her condo with her. She’s put some distance between them, she’s a few feet away from him now. She appears to be talking to him, doing something on her computer as he looks over her shoulder. He’s got…” He swore again. “It’s a Glock, LT. Nine millimeter.”
Colleen rattled off an address that Jim quickly input into his GPS. “I’m ten minutes away,” he reported.
“We’re about twenty,” Bobby said. “Wait for us, Jim! Colleen, call Wes. And Senior Chief Becker.”
“I’m on it,” she said.
“Colleen,” Jim asked, his heart in his throat. “The gunman. Is it Brad?”
“No,” she told him. “I don’t know who it is, but it’s definitely not Brad.”
* * *
Greg Ramsey wanted to know where the hell Betsy, his soon-to-be ex-wife, was.
It was funny—not funny-ha-ha but a little bit interesting-funny—at first, anyway, because Ashley honestly couldn’t place him as he came stomping down the outdoor corridor as she was attempting to unlock the front door to her condo.
She knew she’d seen him before, but she simply couldn’t remember from where. And then it stopped being any kind of funny when he brandished that deadly looking gun and demanded that she tell him where Betsy was hiding.
And everything clicked into place.
The break-in. The search of her apartment—including the pockets of her clothes. Greg had been looking for information, for files, for records, for hand-scribbled notes, for anything that would tell him his soon-to-be ex-wife’s whereabouts.
“I honestly don’t know where Betsy is,” Ash had said, and Greg had shoved that gun up right beneath her chin, slamming her head and shoulders against the wall beside her front door. She hit so hard that she saw stars.
“She’s in a shelter,” Ashley said quickly, aware that one jerk of his finger on the trigger would end her life. God, she didn’t want to die. “I honestly don’t know which one, but just give me a chance, and I can find out.”
That wasn’t really a lie. She could find out. She probably even would find out. But there was no way in hell she was going to let this man get anywhere near the woman he’d already spent years abusing. She’d die first.
But as he roughly grabbed her keys from her hands, unlocking the door and pushing her and her bag inside, she looked up toward where she knew those cameras had been recently installed.
Was anyone watching? She honestly didn’t know. And no way was she simply going to passively wait to find that out.
Instead, as Greg had dug into her handbag to take possession of her phone so she couldn’t call 9-1-1, she’d told him, “I’ll need my computer to access the file. But first, you need to know that I made plans to meet Jim, my Navy SEAL boyfriend, here for dinner. At 7:30. If I don’t text him, to tell him that something’s come up, he’s going to knock on that door. And when I don’t answer, he’s going to kick it down, and you’ll probably kill him, but not before he kills you, too, so please let’s not do that.”
Greg had backed away and set down his gun—he was not as comfortable holding it as he pretended to be—as he looked at Ashley’s phone. She gave him the code to unlock it, and spelled out Slade as she prayed he wouldn’t notice that the only texts she and Jim had exchanged were from the hospital, waiting for Kenneth to get out of surgery.
I found a treasure trove of vending machines and got us tiny bags of corn chips and pretzels. Do you want anything to drink?
Hoo-yah, thanks, I’d love something with caffeine. :-)
Not exactly romantic.
But Greg wasn’t exactly romantic, either, and he’d typed in the text message to Jim that she’d dictated, starting with the bright red flag of Sweetie.
Jim was on his way. He had to be, even though he hadn’t yet texted her back. But he was smart, he was sharp, he was everything Ashley had ever wanted—except for the flaming asshole part of him.
Still, she knew without a doubt that he was on his way.
* * *
Bobby and Colleen were still ten minutes out as Jim pulled into Ashley’s condo parking lot.
Guest parking was clearly marked, so he pulled into an empty slot even as he quickly looked around, finding the door to her second floor apartment, as well as the stairs that would get him there.
The new password for the surveillance camera app was CJCregg—apparently Ash was a big West Wing fan so Bobby had picked something she’d remember—and Jim quickly signed in
to get a visual of her living room.
Both she and the gunman were exactly where Bobby had last described them.
Ashley’s tiny dining table was in the camera’s wide-lens frame, and Jim knew it was no accident that she’d set up her computer there. She sat behind it, frowning as she looked at the screen, while the gunman paced behind her.
He wasn’t an operator, that much was clear. Whoever he was, he had little to no firearms training—which potentially made him that much more dangerous in terms of things like accidental discharge.
But something about the way he moved was disconcerting. He was twitchy and sweating. Like he couldn’t stay still. Like he was jacked up on cocaine or some type of amphetamine.
Jim zoomed in to look more closely at the room. Ashley’s phone was out on a little table near the front door—about fifteen feet away from where she was sitting.
As he impatiently waited for Bobby to arrive, he got out of his truck and quietly closed the door behind him—no need to make Mr. Jumpy jumpier.
It occurred to him that the gunman probably drove there, and one of those other cars parked in that row marked Guests probably belonged to the man.
So Jim turned on his phone’s flashlight and used it to look inside of each of the vehicles—checking to see if the door was unlocked, or if there was something inside that could help identify who the hell the man was.
Of course, one possible way to take the gunman down was to use his car alarm as a diversion. Set it off in hopes that he’d open the front door to look out to see WTF. But it would help if Jim could figured out which car was his…
It was then that he saw it.
Half covered by a blanket on the backseat of an expensive and shiny new sedan.
An AR-15 assault rifle, with a fucking bump-stock attached.
As Jim looked back at the gunman’s twitchy movement and sweaty face in the surveillance feed, he knew with a flash of fear exactly where he’d seen that before. This motherfucker was gonna suicide. Whatever information he was trying to get from Ashley, he was gonna use it to kill as many people as he could before he took his own pathetic life, via suicide-by-SWAT-team.
SEAL Camp Page 17
