by Hill, Teresa
But mostly, he was pissed at himself. He was the one who had sat on the floor of that train holding pressure on the worst of the Lt. Carson’s wounds and watching the kid bleed out. He should have gone to see Dani Carson the first moment he could, sat with her while she cried and he told her whatever she wanted to know, whatever she could stand to hear, about the last few moments of her husband’s life.
It wasn’t a pretty story, but Mace could have told it. He’d have sugar-coated it as much as she’d allowed, but she deserved to know. She deserved to look the last guy her husband saw before he died — Mace — to look that man in the eye and hear from him that Lieutenant Carson had not been alone and what it had been like when he died.
She deserved to have people checking up on her, helping her through the myriad of paperwork that came in the aftermath of losing a military spouse, knowing she wasn’t alone, having the comfort of other men and women who’d been through the same kind of loss.
But it seemed no one had done that for Dani Carson. It was a colossal failure on someone’s part, and Mace already felt like he’d failed Lieutenant Carson horribly. He wasn’t going to fail the man’s young widow any longer.
Lieutenant Carson’s mother’s attorney had told Frederick Bach that her son wasn’t married when he died, but Mace decided to see Mrs. Carson anyway. She was right here in Virginia Beach. He owed it to her, too, to pay his respects and offer to tell her anything she wanted to know about her son’s final moments. And he could try to figure out what happened to Dani.
He drove to Mrs. Carson’s house and knocked on the door, stress and guilt burning a hole in his gut. He’d lost friends in the service before. You didn’t spend fourteen years in the SEAL teams, on constant deployments without losing friends and colleagues. He’d watched people die. He’d felt responsible in some ways for other people’s deaths. He knew that when something like that happened, a thousand tiny variables haunted a guy. If only he’d done this or that differently, another guy would still be alive.
Mace knew guys in the teams thought they could do anything, and often they could. But they weren’t superhuman, no matter what they tried to believe.
They still lost friends.
The loss of Lieutenant Carson had been different. No combat zone. No training action. He’d been in civilian-land, as Mace thought of it, coming home from a vacation. He’d had no team, no weapons, none of the tactical advantage Mace always had because the SEALs’ equipment and training were the best in the world.
Mace knew the decisions he’d made that day had been the right ones. He’d tried to save as many people possible. That didn’t stop Mace from seeing Lieutenant Carson’s face as he lay bleeding on the floor of that train car, his arm extended toward Mace, mouth moving silently as he begged for help that Mace couldn’t give him for agonizing minutes without risking too many other lives.
There’d been children on that train. Babies. Mothers. Fathers. Mace, wishing like hell that he actually was Superman.
The door at Mrs. Carson’s home opened. The woman who answered the door was an employee, maybe a housekeeper, Mace guessed. He was in full service dress uniform and wearing every ribbon and medal he’d ever received, including one the Navy awarded him for his actions on the train, for acts of bravery to save lives in a non-combat situation.
He grimaced every time he had to take the thing out of its case and pin it on.
The woman at the door didn’t invite him in, merely asked what she could do for him. He said he was looking for Lieutenant Carson’s mother. She was out of town and had not indicated when she would return.
Mace took the coward’s way out and said his visit wasn’t urgent, and Mrs. Carson need not call him. He’d take the excuse to put off this condolence call a little longer.
Given the top-secret nature of Mace’s missions, he didn’t exactly put himself out there in social media, but he knew the major sites and how to search them. He looked for a Dani, Daniella, Danica and Danae, and Carson or Reed, a teacher, a college student who was an education major, for recent graduates. The world had too many people, and too many of them online. This wasn’t getting him anywhere.
He’d put off approaching Lt. Carson’s old unit, though he really should have paid a condolence call there, too. It was hard losing people with whom you served. Mace didn’t want to bring up bad memories, but it was a respect thing. They were all a part of the big military family.
You counted on your fellow service members. If you couldn’t be there for the guys in your unit when they were in trouble, you hoped someone else in the Navy would be.
No one from Lt. Carson’s unit had been on that train with him. Mace knew the men and women with whom he served would have hated that. They’d probably felt some misplaced guilt about not being there when Lieutenant Carson needed them. Mace owed them a condolence call, too.
Carson had been a logistics officer in a unit of F/A-18 Hornets and Super Hornets — fighter planes. His unit maintained a supply of parts to repair the planes and got the parts to wherever they were needed. His unit was now back in Virginia Beach.
For the first few guys Mace ran into in the office of Carson’s old unit, the wound of losing him was still fresh. Mace offered his condolences, then asked about Dani. He didn’t know what to call her. Wife? Fiancée? Girlfriend? So, he said Dani.
They said Carson was completely gone for the girl, and when Mace asked if they knew where she was or how to contact her, he learned about the pen-pal program through which a school had adopted their unit when they deployed. Dani had been doing her student teaching there. They’d all given Carson a hard time, wanting to know how he’d gotten so lucky to get the young, pretty girl as a pen pal, while they’d mostly been paired with women old enough to be their mothers. Nobody got a date out of the arrangement except Carson.
Of course, in the end, he wasn’t so lucky.
Mace told the guys in Carson’s unit the basics of what happened that day on the train, assuring them that Lieutenant Carson didn’t hesitate to put himself between the gunman and everyone else in the train car and that Mace had been by the lieutenant’s side when he died.
When Mace left, he had the name of the adopting school, two hours away, and a half-dozen e-mail addresses for people who worked at that school.
Mace wrote to them all and asked them to e-mail anyone else who might be able to tell him where Dani was.
Less than twelve hours after sending the mass e-mail, he had the name of the school where she’d started to teach the previous fall. It, too, was in the Virginia Beach area.
Now, he was getting somewhere.
He decided to go to the school in person. Arrogant as it was to say, he could usually get just about anything he wanted from women with a smile and a little sweet-talk, and he liked to think he used his powers for good as often as he used them to get laid.
The woman behind the counter in the school office was, he guessed, fifteen to twenty years older than him, but that was fine. He liked women, period.
He liked their friendly smiles, their kind eyes, the way they smelled, the sound of their laughter. He liked to spread cheer among them wherever he went, always ready with a compliment and a little glint of appreciation in his gaze.
The woman behind the counter said her name was Rose. He told her that she was as pretty as a rose. She got a little flustered but happy. But when he said he was looking for Dani Carson or Dani Reed, Rose’s smile faded.
“I’m afraid she isn’t teaching here anymore. Poor girl, she seemed to be going through a tough time when school started. We all felt bad for her, but the job seemed to be too much for her. Teaching kids that age, holding their attention all day, is not easy.”
“She was fired?”
“I think it was more that the principal gave her the option of leaving so she didn’t have to fire Dani or give her a lousy performance review at the end of her first year of teaching. She would have had a terrible time finding another job after one of those.”
Mace was furious and incapable of being charming at the moment. “You know she lost her husband or her fiancé? And he was the American sailor who was killed throwing himself in front of a gunman in the train in Germany last summer?”
“No. I had no idea. I don’t think anyone did.”
“The school could have cut her some slack. I mean, anybody would have been a mess under those circumstances.”
“Of course. Oh, my God. That poor girl.”
“I’m … a friend of the family, and I’m worried about her. Do you know where she went after she left her job here? Do you have an address? A phone number? Anything?”
“Even if I did, I don’t think I could give you that information.”
“Will you check just to see if you have it? Please?”
Rose did. She wrote down Mace’s phone number and, while Mace stood there, she called the number she had for Dani. Rose told the answering machine a friend of Aaron’s was trying to get in touch with her and to please call him. Mace wrote a quick note, saying the same thing, and Rose agreed to address it and mail it for him.
What else could he do? Hack the school’s employee records? He could probably find someone to do it, but the Navy frowned on its people breaking the law. Mace would have done the hack himself if he could, but he hated to ask a friend to buck Navy regulations for him.
He walked out of the office, thinking about his next move but sparing a glance for a young woman approaching him. She was pretty, he decided without finding her particularly appealing. She wore a classic pearl necklace and a snug cardigan, buttoned up nearly to her collarbone — total schoolteacher fantasy material, if a guy was into that sort of thing.
She stopped him in the hall. “You’re looking for Dani?”
“Yeah, I am.” This one, he thought, he could surely charm into anything with no trouble at all. If he even needed to work that hard.
“Old girlfriend?”
“No. I don’t have a girlfriend.”
“How can that be?”
“Work. The Navy. I’m gone a lot.”
“I’m not. I’m right here, all the time. Sherry Abbott.” She held out her hand to him.
“Hi, Sherry. Mace Daughtry. You know where I could find Dani?”
“Maybe. You know that sports bar, Rudy’s? Near the Naval base?”
“Yeah.” It wasn’t one he or his friends went to. The SEAL teams tended to have their own regular hang-outs.
“Someone told another teacher I know that she saw Dani there about a month ago.”
“Okay. Great.”
“I’d like to know she’s okay. We could go there together and look for her.” Sherry scribbled something on a yellow sticky note and handed it to Mace. “Give me a call.”
“Thanks. I appreciate it.” Although he didn’t think her true interest was in finding out if Dani was okay.
Mace hadn’t expected to find the woman he was searching for in a bar. Still, he went there that night.
He spotted a table with eight young, pretty women, dressed up, laughing, though it sounded strained at times, eating, drinking, trying to have a good time. Like maybe needing to try a little too hard, and he understood completely.
Normally, half the men in the room would be taking their best shot with the women, flirting, telling them jokes, buying them drinks, trying to lure them out onto the tiny dance floor and working hard for the privilege of taking one of them home and hopefully to bed.
Not these women. No one was hitting on them. That’s how you knew.
This was a group of young widows, trying painfully to have a night out with others who knew what they were going through. This was probably a regular gathering, once a month, maybe twice, where they dragged each other out of their houses, tried to cheer each other up and laugh at their problems instead of cry.
It hurt to look at them, even if you tried hard not to think about what they’d been through.
Mace made his way to the bar, ordered a beer, pulled out his debit card and told the bartender he wanted to pick up the widows’ tab. A couple of guys had already bought them rounds of drinks, but Mace bought their dinners and anything else they wanted. He nursed his beer and waited until they were done and ready to leave their table before he approached them.
Two men got in his way, one after the other, telling him he wasn’t going over there. It was like someone had built a no-man’s land around the table, lest some unknowing idiot, some half-drunk man, tried to hit on them. Mace had to assure both men that wasn’t his intent before they let him pass.
“Ladies.” He smiled in what he hoped was a friendly but not overly friendly way. “I’m looking for Dani Carson or Dani Reed.”
They shook their heads. No Dani Carson there.
“I knew her husband, or maybe he was her fiancé, Lieutenant Aaron Carson.”
“Hold on. Wasn’t our first waitress named Dani?” the pretty brunette at the head of the table asked.
Dani had left teaching to waitress in a bar?
“I think her shift ended earlier, but I saw her … There. That’s her.” Another of the ladies pointed to the tiny dance floor.
Mace saw a short girl with long, reddish-brown curls on the edge of the dance floor. Her eyes were closed, arms above her head, as she swayed absently to the music. It made her little cotton top ride up, showing a strip of skin at her belly, and her blue-jean skirt ride high on her thighs.
Scanning the room, Mace saw a lot of men’s gazes glued to her. He could understand why.
Her breasts weren’t spilling out of the neckline of her shirt. Her belly wasn’t bare. Her ass cheeks weren’t peeking out beneath her skirt. She wasn’t wearing a ton of make-up and hadn't done big, fussy things to her hair.
But she had that girl-next-door thing going on, the natural kind of pretty that guys loved, and she knew how to move her body to the music.
Two guys walked over from the bar, each carrying a beer and a shot. They sipped the beers and one-by-one, handed her the shots, which she wasted no time downing.
Then they closed in on her, one at her back, one her front, copping a feel every chance they got as she danced between them. She laughed, turned back and forth from one to the other, trailed her fingertips down their chests, their arms, moved into a sexy, little swaying bump and grind with them.
“Son of a bitch,” Mace muttered, heading back to his seat.
He tried not to judge people. Life was too damned hard. Sometimes, getting through any way you could was the best people could hope for. Burying a husband in your mid twenties had to be like that. Whatever got you through …
He’d known Lieutenant Carson for maybe an hour, but the kid had sounded like he was in love with that girl. Maybe she loved him, too. Maybe drinking too much and finding a little distraction, a little comfort, in the arms of another man for a night was all she could do right now.
Mace hated it for Lieutenant Carson.
He confirmed with the bartender, who turned out to also be the owner, that the now-off-duty waitress was indeed Dani. Not Dani Carson, Dani Reed.
“Widowed?” Mace asked.
“She’s never mentioned a husband.”
“Fiancé?”
“Not that I know of.” The bartender shrugged. “But I’ve always thought she was coming off a bad break-up, based on the things she said about men in general.”
Mace sighed. She was still dancing with the same two guys, looked like she’d let the music take her in, like she was living inside of the cloud of sound and not in a bar.
“I answered your questions. You need to answer mine,” the bartender said. “What’s your deal with her?”
“Sorry.” Mace pulled out his wallet for his military ID, which showed that he was a senior chief in the U.S. Navy. He offered the bartender his hand. “Mace Daughtry.”
“Nico Voss,” the bartender said. “What can I do for you, Chief?”
“Ten months ago, I was with a Navy lieutenant when he died. He said he’d just gotten marrie
d to a girl named Dani. I’m trying to find her, and it’s been a lot harder than it should be. Her maiden name was Dani Reed.”
“I guess she could be your girl. She’s been working here for about four months, seems sad a lot, keeps to herself. Never seen her like this, dancing, drinking, flirting with guys. She was waiting on that table of military widows, but begged one of the other waitresses to take the table, seemed upset. I cut her as early as I could, and once she was off the clock, I poured her two shots. I decided to cut her and those two guys off, but before I could tell the other bartender, Joey, I had to hurry to the kitchen to handle a problem. While I was gone, Joey served them a quick couple of rounds.”
“Those two guys gave her two shots, and she drank ’em.”
“Shit. A girl her size with four shots in her? She’s lit. I’ll make sure she doesn’t get anything else to drink and that she gets home safely.”
Nico went to the other end of the bar to serve another customer. Mace sat to figure out his next move. He couldn’t expect to have a serious conversation with her that night. Nico seemed like a good, responsible guy, but Mace wasn’t willing to bet the girl’s safety on that.
He hoped she’d get tired of dancing soon so he could make sure Nico did see that Dani got home safely. He could probably get Nico to tell him when Dani worked next or maybe get her phone number from him.
The two guys she was with tried to buy more drinks, but Nico refused. Dani came to the bar herself, smiling and batting her eyelashes at Nico. When he still refused to serve her, she pouted and trailed a finger down his bicep. It didn’t work.
She was not happy. Neither were the two guys.
She danced a little more, laughed as the guys made fools of themselves over her. They kept touching her, and she kept easing away from them. It was like she didn’t want either one of them, but for some reason, she wouldn’t walk away. So he watched as hands wandered down her arms, up her thighs, around her waist, down her back, into her hair. She laughed and kept dancing, dislodging those hands.
