Way of the Warrior

by Suzanne Brockmann

  CHAPTER 3

  Lopez

  Jay Lopez was having a bad week. His injured knee had forced him to remain in San Diego while the rest of his SEAL Team went wheels up.

  He worked hard to keep the word hate out of his vocabulary, but he had to admit that he vehemently disliked being left behind at times like these. And it didn’t help his mood this morning when the doctor told him he’d need to keep this brace in place for a few more days, after which We’ll see. In the medical world, We’ll see was code for Yep, you’re going to need surgery, which was disheartening to say the least.

  So when Jay walked into the fifth-grade classroom of the daughter of the SEAL known as HoboMofo, and was greeted by a teacher who could’ve played an elf princess in LOTR, he was ready for his luck to change.

  “You must be Chief Lopez,” she said, with a warm, wide grin that worked astonishingly well with her elfin features. Pointy chin, freckle-adorned nose, hazel eyes with long, dark lashes… She was alone in a brightly decorated room that was filled with desks.

  His first thought was that he was going to be in town for quite a while—a month and a half, maybe two. Surgery, recovery, physical therapy… It was the perfect time to begin a relationship.

  “I am,” he told the pretty teacher with his warmest smile, balancing on his crutches so he could hold out his hand to shake. “Although the uniform is probably a pretty large clue.”

  Her eyes sparkled. “I’m Carol Redmond.” Her hand was cool and slender, with short-trimmed nails, and just like that, with that otherwise unremarkable skin-to-skin connection, Jay fell completely in love. “Thank you so much for filling in for Hugh today. I can’t tell you how much it means to Brianna to have you here to talk about her dad’s work. What can I get you? Would you like to sit down? Hugh told me you blew out your knee—that sounds terrible.”

  Jay winced. It did sound terrible, when put in those words. Especially since a blown-out knee generally required surgery. “No, I’m okay, thanks. It’s easier to stay standing.” His big question, however, had to do with all of those Hughs.

  The puzzlement must’ve shown on his face, because she laughed again, even as she gently pulled her hand free. “Hugh told me he had a rather complicated Navy SEAL nickname.” Her eyes actually danced. “But for some reason, he wouldn’t tell me what it is.”

  “Bert,” Jay managed. “I’m sorry, but his name is Bert Bickles.” Wasn’t it? “I am in the right place, aren’t I?”

  “You are. His full name is Hubert,” she corrected him. “He told me he prefers Hugh.”

  “I didn’t know that,” Jay admitted. “I mean, I haven’t worked with him all that much. And even then, we mostly call him…” He stopped himself.

  But now Carol’s eyes were lit up in anticipation.

  “He really didn’t tell you?” Jay asked.

  “He’s a little shy,” the teacher said.

  Shy? Mohf? Shy. Huh. “And you couldn’t get it out of Brianna?”

  Carol shook her head. “I’m pretty sure she doesn’t know. When I asked, she said she thought it had something to do with…Motown?”

  Jay laughed. “That’s, um…correct.”

  The elf princess didn’t buy it. But she looked around to make sure the coast was clear and lowered her voice before leaning in to ask, “Mofo?”

  Jay lifted both hands in surrender. “You’ve seen him. You really want me to risk his wrath?”

  Her smile was genuinely amused. “He’s a marshmallow.”

  “Yeah, now I know I’m in the wrong classroom.”

  The very lovely Carol Redmond once again laughed, but then a bell rang. “You ready for this?” she asked. “They’re coming in from gym, so there’ll be a lot of extra energy, combined with the fact that it’s the very end of the day. If you want, I can give ’em a spelling test, or maybe a pop quiz on this morning’s math lesson. That’ll put ’em in a stupor…”

  She was kidding. “I got this,” Jay said.

  “I believe that you do.” Her smile was warm and held promises of many wonderful candlelit dinners over the next few months.

  Jay felt his phone buzz as a text message came in, but he ignored it—preferring to smile back into Carol’s eyes as the first wave of fifth graders came storming into the room.

  CHAPTER 4

  Izzy

  Something weird was up with Jenn.

  Or at least that was what Danny had just stated as an irrevocable truth. Dude believed it, too. While his body language was all slouchy and playing-it-cool as he sat beside Izzy in the hard plastic airport chairs, Dan couldn’t disguise the fact that he was wearing his trying-not-to-freak face.

  Izzy sighed, because, Jesus. Jenn’s ninth and please-gods-final month of baby-cooking was going to be one long, trying endurance test for all of them.

  Danny being Danny, Izzy’s tiny little barely-there exhale pissed him off. “Look, I was talking to her,” Dan said, heavy on the affronted. “And something was definitely up. She just suddenly had to go. And she hasn’t called me back.”

  “Maybe she had to pee,” Izzy suggested, while across the waiting area Senior Chief Wolchonok turned to scan the group of SEALs as if he were counting heads. His patience was much like that of a kindergarten teacher or a den mother, only he was far more world-weary and grim. He saw that Izzy was looking at him and as their eyes met, Izzy realized the senior was holding his phone to his ear.

  Izzy was just about to leap to his feet and say, You need sump’n, Senior…? But Wolchonok’s gaze shifted to Gillman, and then back, and then the man shook his head, just a little, like a pitcher shaking off a signal from his catcher. Hmmm. So instead, Izzy kept his convo with Dan-bo going—what were they talking about? Ah, yes. Urination. “Pregnant women frequently have to—”

  “She would’ve told me.” Dan cut him off, completely oblivious to Izzy’s and the senior’s little charades game. “I have to pee. Or she would’ve just taken her phone with her into the bathroom.”

  “Maybe it was number two,” Izzy said as he watched the senior chief pull the phone from his ear and gave it his best death glare, after which he pointed at Jenkins and made a come here gesture. Jenk snapped to it. “Women can definitely be all private and weird about doing number two while on the phone and—”

  “I’m pretty sure she’s with Eden,” Dan interrupted again. “First Jenn goes Oh, my God, and then someone else—Eden—goes Oh, my God, and suddenly Jenn has to hang up.”

  Yeah, something was definitely up. Across the room, Senior and Marky-Mark were in a deep discussion, and now Mark had his phone out, too. Right in front of the senior.

  Even though they weren’t supposed to bring personal cells on a mission, the SEALs nearly almost all did it anyway, carrying international phones with SIM cards—because they subscribed to the Navy SEAL adage “Two is one and one is none.”

  As Izzy watched, their XXL CO joined them, and then he got his phone out, as well.

  But Danny hadn’t noticed—he was in his own oblivious, miserable world.

  “Oh, my God is an appropriate exclamation,” Izzy pointed out, “for everything from an apocalyptic mega-earthquake to finding an awesome deal on a newborn-sized Star Trek uniform onesie. With Ben coming home from school with an A on his latest English paper somewhere in the middle there.”

  Dan and Eden’s younger brother Ben was still in high school. Izzy and Eden shared custody of the kid with Danny and Jenn. It worked out nicely, with Ben bouncing between their two apartments, and Eden, Jenn, and Ben hanging together for extra home-fires-burning support when the SEALs were out in the world, doing their sea-air-and-land thing.

  “And there has not been an earthquake,” Izzy quickly continued as he realized he’d put a bad idea into Dan’s already too-noisy head. “At least not the Big One. We would’ve heard about it by now—it’d be all over Twitter. Seriously, bro, wha
t’s the absolute worst that this weirdness could be? That Jenn’s gone into labor, right? Oh, my God, I’m having this massively giant Gillbaby, right—aaahhh!—now—uuuhhh! Well, if that’s the case, then good news! Someone’s with her. It’s definitely not Eden, though. I got an email, said she’s driving out to the desert today, to some wannabe resort town called something appropriately silly like Idiot Springs, to check out some potential wedding reception site for Tracy and Deck. And frankly? I should be the one yowling about weirdness. Whatever’s up with Jennilyn, at least she’s not doing the bridesmaid thing for one of your exes.”

  Long before Izzy had met Eden, he’d briefly collided with the somewhat ditzy but surprisingly tough-as-nails Tracy, who had finally found a forever home with former SEAL chief Larry Decker. They were planning a big wedding, and Tracy had asked Eden to be a bridesmaid.

  “That is weird,” Mark Jenkins agreed, sitting down on the other side of Danny. Somehow he’d made it across the room without Izzy noticing. But, yup. The senior and the CO were still leaning against the far wall, still working their phones. And the tadpole, Tony Vlachic, had just joined them, his phone out, too.

  Curiouser and curiouser.

  Izzy turned his attention to Mark, who was purposely mimicking Dan’s faux-whatever body language. He looked equally loose and relaxed. And barely legal, with his golly-gee freckles, boyish face, compact frame, and lean build. One of these days, dude was gonna Ron-Howard. He’d pull off his hat, be balding underneath, and suddenly look his age. But until that day, probably well into his forties, Mark Jenkins would continue to get carded.

  “Senior wants you, Zanella,” Mark told Izzy, managing to keep his tenor sounding calm and matter-of-fact. But he opened his eyes, just a millimeter wider, shooting Izzy a message-filled look while Dan’s head was down.

  Ruh-roh.

  Izzy answered with a questioning narrowing of his own eyes, to which Mark responded with a tip of his not-quite-red head, complete with a pointed look at the senior, as if to say, All your questions will be answered, douchebag, if you simply stand up and cross the room.

  So Izzy stood up and crossed the room, leaving Marky-Mark to distract Danny with some scintillating pregnancy-related topic. “Lindsey’s having these crazy erratic swings regarding food,” he heard Mark say as if he really gave half a shat. “She gets these cravings, but in the time it takes me to cook dinner, the thing she was craving now completely grosses her out.”

  “Take her out to eat,” Izzy heard Dan recommend. “Or get to-go and order two very different meals. Then be ready to give her yours when the food comes. Switch plates again, halfway through. Works like a charm.”

  Meanwhile, the muscle was jumping in Senior Chief Wolchonok’s very square jaw. In true senior chief manner, he cut through the bullshit and got to the point. “I got a phone call from Eden,” the senior said, and Izzy swallowed the surprised urge to say My Eden? Because really, it wasn’t as if they knew a dozen different Edens. His wife’s name was relatively unique.

  Instead, as Izzy instantly did the math and realized that Danny was probably right and Eden was with Jenn, the senior chief confirmed that.

  “She’s with Jennilyn Gillman. Her car broke down, they’re out of town somewhere in the desert, they’re having some kind of weird heat wave, and Jenn’s gone into labor.”

  Izzy turned inappropriate surprised laughter into a cough that didn’t fool Wolchonok.

  “Before your wife could tell me where they are,” the senior grimly continued, “the signal broke up. I haven’t been able to resume contact with her. I’m hoping you can help.”

  “Eden told me she was going out to Obsidian Springs,” Izzy said. “But with Tracy, not Jenn. FYI, it’s a Palm Springs wannabe, not far from Borrego Springs, and even less successful.” At his words, the rest of the telethon team sprang into action, including the senior. They all started barking orders into their phones.

  Izzy got out his own phone and speed-dialed Eden. “Come on, come on, come on,” he said as the thing first searched for a signal, and then went straight to his wife’s voice mail.

  CHAPTER 5

  Lopez

  “Every member of a SEAL Team has a specific job,” Jay told the roomful of wide-eyed ten- and eleven-year-olds, and one very attractive twentysomething—after he’d explained to them exactly how he’d gotten injured. He knew they wouldn’t be able to focus until he got that story out of the way, and it had eaten into much of his time. He now had maybe twenty minutes left before school ended for the day.

  But that was great. He’d leave ’em wanting more—especially the twentysomething.

  “Every SEAL has a specific area of expertise,” he continued, “in addition to being able to handle explosives, fire weapons, swim, run, jump out of planes—these are skills that all SEALs have, right? But we each also have a few talents that are unique, that we bring to the team, that make the team stronger. And when our COs—commanding officers—and our senior chiefs are deciding who to send on a mission, they take that into account. For example, I’m a hospital corpsman. Who knows what that means?”

  Carol Redmond was smiling—she clearly knew what it meant. It was, to be honest, Jay’s deal-closer. He knew exactly what he looked like. With his dark hair, brown eyes, handsome face, and trim physique, he knew he had the ability to catch a pretty woman’s eye. His being a SEAL helped out in that department, too. But women liked men who saved lives, and it was the fact that he was a hospital corpsman that got him the non-hesitating yes when he asked a woman out to dinner.

  But that was a question for later.

  Right now, several hands shot up around the room, but Jay called on HoboMofo’s daughter, Brianna, who looked almost shockingly like her gigantic father, with the same thick blond hair and wide blue eyes. With her redwood-tree-like build, Bree already towered over her teacher. Although unlike her dad’s angry ogre affect, the girl’s default expression was a charming, quicksilver smile that transformed her completely. She was pure strapping milkmaid—with an easygoing manner that was sweet and friendly.

  “A hospital corpsman is like a paramedic.” Brianna turned to speak to the entire class. “You know, when you call an ambulance, paramedics are the ones who show up and perform first aid and save everyone’s life.”

  “That’s right,” Jay said. “And why do you think Hobo…Bert!” He cleared his throat. “Excuse me, Hubert, Brianna’s dad, and I—why do you think we rarely serve together on the same team?”

  “Because you’re both hospital corpsmen,” Brianna answered triumphantly.

  “That’s right,” Jay said, smiling back at the girl, aware that her teacher was watching and smiling, too. Yes, he was very good with kids, thanks. “And most seven or eight men SEAL Teams need only one. Because they also need a radio man, an explosives expert, a point man—he’s the guy who goes first when you go into dark and scary places—that’s an important job.” He ticked them off on his fingers. “A sniper, a commanding officer—can’t forget him, he’s in charge.” The classroom door opened, and an older woman poked her head in. As Jay kept talking, he watched Carol cross toward her. “And depending on the mission, we might need a languages expert, or a computer expert, or a variety of other types of experts.”

  Brianna raised her hand, and Jay called on her again as, heads together, the two women spoke. “I can think of an op where the CO would want an entire SEAL Team of hospital corpsmen,” she said. “If there was an earthquake, and a hospital got destroyed…?”

  “For humanitarian efforts, yes. Good one.” From the corner of his eyes, Jay saw both Carol and the other woman turn and look directly at him.

  Something was definitely up. “I’m guessing I shouldn’t have set my phone on silent,” he said as he balanced on his crutches to pull it out of his pocket. He flicked it on and…

  Holy crap. Twenty missed calls, and a whole slew of texts that said…Danny’s
wife Jenn had gone into labor, where?

  “I’m sorry,” he said, already hobbling his way toward the door. “I have to run.”

  But the look on little Brianna’s face made him realize that he’d frightened her. She’d leapt to the conclusion that if a SEAL with an injured knee was being called in, something terrible had happened to the SEALs—like her father—who were already out in the world.

  “Everything’s fine,” he told her, told the whole class. “But a bunch of my friends are overseas on an op with Bree’s dad, and another of my friends is going to have a baby—right now. And I need to go help her, because her car broke down out in the desert, about an hour outside of town.”

  As the words left his lips, Jay realized that he didn’t actually have any way to help Jenn. Because of his knee, he wasn’t driving his car. He’d gotten dropped off at the school by his teammate Tony V’s fiancé, Adam, who was an actor. Adam was currently filming an indie movie down by the Del, on the beach in Coronado, and he wasn’t going to be able to swing by to pick Jay up until after four. At the earliest. Jay’s plan had been to hang at the nearby library until Adam returned.

  Now, Jay looked at Carol Redmond. “I don’t suppose you have a car that I can borrow. Maybe…?” His teammate Izzy Zanella had a song for every occasion, and the irreverent SEAL’s voice echoed in Jay’s head. Hey, I just met you. And this is crazy…

  Carol laughed her surprise. “Can you even drive? I mean, with the…” She gestured to his brace.

  He nodded. “I’ll take it off.”

  “Won’t that hurt?”

  Yes, but at least he’d be able to help Jenn. “I’ll be fine. I’m sorry to ask, I know you don’t really know me, but—”

  “No, it’s okay.” Carol hurried to the big desk positioned at the front of the room, pulling an enormous, slouchy bag from the bottom drawer. She put it over her shoulder as she began sifting through it, hopefully searching for her car keys.