SEAL's Promise - Bad Boys of SEAL Team 3, Book 01

by Sharon Hamilton

  They did look a little uncomfortable. They answered questions, but didn’t volunteer anything. She knew they’d done this many times before. The questions were probably the same, How did he die? Did he suffer? Was he alone when he died? Who was with him?

  The answer to that last one was like a slap across the face.

  “We understand your husband’s best friend, Special Operator T.J. Talbot, was with him when he died.”

  “I’m sorry, but I’m Frankie’s best friend. No one loves him as much as I do.” She wasn’t going to start using the past tense until she had to.

  “Yes, ma’am,” the gentleman said. “We understand that. However, SO Talbot was with him at the end. He did not die alone, ma’am.”

  The baby started kicking again, and she worried that her emotions had pumped adrenaline into her daughter’s system. She took a long drink of water and closed her eyes, willing calm. If she weren’t pregnant she’d be moaning and huddled in a heap on the ground, pouring her heart out. But with little Courtney in her belly, she wasn’t going to take that chance. Somehow, it wasn’t what she wanted to do, anyway. Her daughter was a strong reminder that life went on. It sucked, but it went on.

  Just not with Frankie.

  They rose to go when the conversation dwindled off into nowhere, and she began paying more attention to the pink nail polish on her toes. She was wearing pink every day now. Pink pajamas, the ones she could still wear, pink bed sheets (until Frankie came home), pink nail polish, and she even managed to put a hot pink extension in the side of her hair as if a little bit of Courtney was coming through.

  The woman gave her a card to the Navy counseling group. Shannon already knew she’d go see Libby’s dad, who had helped a lot of the SEALs with their emotional issues, not to mention the marital strains they experienced. And death. They’d all lost someone they loved. There wasn’t anyone in the community who didn’t know someone who hadn’t come home. Today it was her turn.

  “Mom. He’s gone,” she said into the phone before the Navy messengers of death had pulled from the curb outside, escaping to do another mission.

  “What do you mean gone? I thought he was—Oh, my God, Shannon. No!” her mother said in a voice strained and brittle.

  “Yes. They just left.”

  “I’ll be on the next plane.”

  “No thanks, Mom. Give me a day or two, please. I’ve got friends here who can help. You come out soon, though. Give me time to be alone, but please don’t think I don’t appreciate what you want to do. I do. I need to do this first part alone and with a few of the other wives here. You have Dad.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. It’s what a mother does. I’m still coming.”

  “No. Really. I need to be alone.”

  SHANNON KNEW HER mother was a little hurt, but would recover. Next she called Frankie’s parents, who were out. She left a message without saying it was bad news. Only that she needed to talk to them right away. Important. Involving Frankie. It was the last phone call she had to make.

  She put the glasses—the ice cubes hadn’t melted yet—into the dishwasher, added soap and turned it on. The paint towels she tossed into the washing machine. She rinsed out the brush roller, the paint in the sink looking like the strawberry-flavored milk she’d loved so much as a child. She tapped the lid onto the paint can. Arched back to give herself a good reverse stretch and looked at the pink glow in the room, the walls she would finish soon, but probably not tomorrow.

  Tomorrow she’d go get that white crib she liked with the dust ruffle in pink camo. She’d put up pictures of animals and buy fuzzy teddy bears and maybe a frilly dress or two. A headband with a bow on it. Some pink ruffled socks and Mary Janes.

  The phone rang in the late afternoon, waking her. Gloria, Frankie’s mom, was calling.

  “We’ve been notified as well. I’m so sorry, Shannon. I can only imagine what you must be feeling.”

  “Oh, Gloria. He was your boy. I can’t imagine how it must feel to lose the boy you raised, the boy who turned out to be a fine and loving man.” She wiped the tears from her eyes, giving Gloria time to compose herself.

  “We’ll get through this, Shannon. We’ll do it together. Your baby will want for nothing, sweetheart. Of that you can be sure.”

  “I know it, Mom.” Using the term “Mom” must have touched Gloria, and she sobbed, handing the phone over to Shannon’s father-in-law.

  “Hey, sweetheart. Only thing I’m thinking about is that Frankie was doing what he always wanted to do. And doing it with the guys he loved so much, his brothers, Shannon. God help me, I’d rather go out that way. Not stuck in a nursing home that smells of piss or alone in a hospital ward. They told us T.J. held him at the very end.”

  There was T.J. again, inserting himself in her life. Her second thought was more compassionate as she realized he was grieving, too. How would he show his grief? How would he deal with it? He had no family, at least no one who wanted him, anyhow. Which was one of the things Frankie could never understand. How anyone could throw away a little boy’s life like that?

  T.J. was hard as nails because he’d had to leave behind his childhood before he was old enough to know how else to deal with it. She had to admit she felt a tinge of sorrow for him. A carefully guarded tinge, wrapped in camo duct tape. Something private, dark and never to be revealed to anyone.

  They said their good-byes and she returned to face the house again, where she and Frankie had been so happy. There was still so much to look forward to, but all those bright sunny days now seemed like a burden. Everything she’d planned for her and Frankie was suddenly over. Why hadn’t she thought about that before? It just never occurred to her that he wouldn’t come home. Things like that always happened to other people, not to her.

  It still felt like Frankie would walk in any minute, telling her it had been a joke, T.J.’s idea of funny. But no, even T.J. wouldn’t play this trick on her. The walls were bare and unfinished. The room smelled of paint, but had a nice warm feel to it, although empty.

  But her belly, unlike her heart, was full of life.

  It wasn’t fair. But that was the way it was.

  Chapter Five

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  T.J. PROCESSED OUT Frankie’s things and signed the paperwork, taking ownership of his buddy’s personal property. Part of him was angry with Frankie for leaving him with all his shit to have to deal with. He cursed under his breath at what an asshole he was to have even that thought.

  Wasn’t like Frankie had rejected him, like had happened to him so many times over the years. Frankie had touched a part of him that had been vacant and hollow and had filled it with admiration, respect, and trust.

  He remembered those days in the group homes when a couple would come by to look at the “older” orphans, and they were made to shower and dress up in the one set of pants and shirt and tight black shoes handed down from some more fortunate boarder at the home. He’d stand in line like all the other boys, looking at them. Probably smirking. Which is why he was never chosen. He saw the other boys react, trying to look sweet and adoptable. And even though a tiny part of him felt the same way, he knew he showed that he didn’t care, because that’s what he told himself.

  Screw them all. If your own parents didn’t want you, who cared about anyone else?

  Nah, it wasn’t fair to blame Frankie for that, but T.J.’s anger still wasn’t satisfied. Besides, Frankie made the request he was forced to honor, giving him such a fuckin’ impossible task, to bring these things that had been important to Frankie, and hand them over to Shannon, who hated the ground T.J. walked on. Might even blame him for being the one who came back. Like T.J. had used up the quota of survivors for the day, thus abandoning his friend.

  And he knew exactly how she felt. He felt the same way. He blamed himself for living, blamed himself for causing so much worry on the part of Frankie’s widow. He blamed himself for not trusting his sixth sense over there—that funny feeling he got that said things were all fucked up.
He’d kept that knowledge to himself this time. Why? Usually he told his LPO about situations he thought were extra dangerous.

  But it was as if he had that force of will, he could make sure it wasn’t their time. Like so many other close calls, they would always somehow emerge unscathed.

  Except on that last deployment he knew deep down it wasn’t the truth. They’d been one step behind. Perhaps trying to do a job the Marines should have been doing, not the SEALs. Not that the Marines were expendable, but the SEALs were supposed to do surgical strikes with good intel. He hoped some asshole’s head rolled over that one. He hoped never to have to face the man who was responsible for the decision to go in on the third day and not have them pull out. None of them had liked it one bit.

  So maybe that’s why he didn’t say anything now. Why none of them did. The other side had figured out how to kill more SEALs, and now was using that knowledge as a strategy. You wanted to go in confident when it came to high-risk missions. With enough practice and training, things could go wrong and they would still work out. But this one had seemed from the get-go like the wrong fuckin’ TV program on the wrong fuckin’ channel. Nothing had been right about it. And a man—Frankie Benson—his best friend, and a man who had everything in the world to live for, was gone.

  It wasn’t fair, but then death was indiscriminate. He knew that, but it didn’t make it any easier to take. Frankie was the one who’d gotten the pretty girl, the good grades, made his parents proud, dutifully knocked up his wife right away, which was the way it was supposed to be done.

  T.J., on the other hand, had broken a lot of hearts—foster parents and girls he’d known, teachers who’d believed in him, employers, coaches whose teams he’d had to walk off of because he had to work, or because his grades made him ineligible—he broke everyone’s heart, and more than once too. He wasn’t any better at the second chances than he was at the first. He was the one who should have bought the farm. Not fuckin’ Frankie.

  Everything fit into his buddy’s duffel and one shoebox. That box had a collection of letters from Shannon. Frankie had read some of them to the guys. God, the lady could write damned sexy things, and everyone got revved up whenever Frankie got a love letter. He’d sit down as soon as those letters came, glued to the paper, that silly, shit-eating grin on his face, pink cheeks like the bottom of the daughter he’d never see, half embarrassed, but incredibly grateful for his life. That was the thing that separated them. Frankie was grateful for his life. T.J. was out to grab as much of it as he could before the bell rang.

  T.J. had stitches in his thigh, on his forearm, and a couple of stitches on his left butt cheek he wasn’t sure he really needed but was given anyway by an overzealous corpsman. That was the part that itched like hell, and he was halfway of a mind to rip them out with surgical scissors. They were damned annoying, and he hoped they didn’t leave a scar he’d forever have to explain.

  He swung the duffel over his right shoulder, cradling the shoebox in his left hand while he made his way to the pickup. He tossed the duffel in the second seat of the 4-door truck, and set the shoebox beside him on the bench seat in front.

  Looking down, he pretended Frankie was inside that box, maybe done up in miniature like that movie he’d seen as a kid about the guy named Tom Thumb.

  “You’re gonna have to help me here, Frankie. Shannon doesn’t want to see the likes of me. I can’t just show up without calling first, but I did sign a paper saying I’d return your stuff to her, so send me a sign, would you? I’m in need of assistance.”

  He pretended Frankie said something nasty, which he most certainly would have, if the man had been alive.

  Fuck! He punched his steering wheel and then pressed his forehead to the top of it, gently banging it against the black leather padding.

  This is totally messed up.

  In the silence of the truck cab, he thought he heard Frankie laughing at him. Big, tough SEAL, afraid to talk to a woman. But she was Frankie’s woman, and she was six months pregnant. The facts were stacked against him. She was fragile, so he couldn’t tell her off if she took it out on him, which he was sure she would. She’d lost her husband, so she didn’t deserve to be treated in any way other than like the lady she most certainly was, so why did he have to be the one to take Frankie’s stuff to her? She hated T.J. with everything in her soul because of all the shit he had caused her and her dead husband.

  Maybe he should get Lansdowne to have one of the other Team guys return Frankie’s belongings. Would it have been any easier to give it to Frankie’s parents? That he could probably have done without any trouble at all, but Shannon? Shannon didn’t deserve this.

  He dialed her number and hoped like hell she wasn’t home.

  But he wasn’t that lucky.

  “Hey, Shannon. How’re you holding up?” His voice was raspy, and it cracked like a boy of seventeen.

  “How do you suppose I’m holding up, T.J.? You calling to say you’re sorry or to give me a hard time?”

  Her abruptness was her method of keeping her distance from everyone. He’d heard the other wives talk about how they had trouble getting close to her.

  “No, even I wouldn’t do that.”

  “Well, the day is young. Give it time. I’m sure you’ll figure out a way to be an asshole before you go to bed.”

  That unfair statement pulled the plug on his anger. It was like the girls in grammar school who would call him names because they knew he wasn’t allowed to push them back. Why was it okay for a girl to use verbal violence, but he wasn’t allowed to protect himself by making them hurt in return? Some therapist’s idea of the right order of the world. Probably a jerk who didn’t know his ass from an anthill.

  “You’re entitled to your opinion. I might add that Frankie didn’t share that opinion of me, not that it should make a fuck’s difference to you.” He was satisfied he’d delivered a slap and not a full-on blow to the chops.

  “It doesn’t mean shit to me, T.J.” She breathed heavily into the phone. “Okay, look, I’m not at my best, so what is it you called about? You must have something in mind.”

  “I have a box of his things, and the Navy wants me to deliver it to you.”

  “I’ll be gone tomorrow afternoon. Why don’t you drop it by the house then, any time after twelve. It should be safe on the porch for a couple of hours until I get home.”

  “I could meet you where you’re going.”

  “Seriously, T.J. I don’t want you anywhere near my OB. I don’t want to be reminded that all my husband’s things are being handed over to me for their safekeeping or whatever. I’d like not to burst into tears in front of a waiting room filled with a bunch of emotional mothers-to-be and their husbands.”

  “I get your drift.”

  “You can leave it on the rocking chair on the front porch.”

  “I’ll do that, then.”

  “Okay, we’re done?”

  “I think so.”

  “Good. Thanks for dropping the stuff off. Should I leave anything for you? Anything in there you want for yourself?”

  “God, Shannon, I haven’t even looked at anything much. I know about a few letters of yours in there. That’s about it.”

  “No selfies in there?”

  “Um, Frankie never took pictures of himself.”

  “No, asshole. I sent him a few naked selfies. I want those back.”

  Oh, those. He’d completely forgotten what fun they’d had with Shannon’s selfies. Truth was, some of the guys would sneak them from under Frankie’s bed and pass them around quarters while he was taking a shower. The last round had happened so fast, and then they were traveling, so T.J. still had the picture of Shannon in his shaving kit and hadn’t had the heart to tell Frankie.

  He certainly wasn’t going to tell Shannon now.

  THE NEXT DAY, the streets of San Diego were as charming as they always were, sunny, filled with light peach and white houses, green gardens and palm trees reaching up into a bright blue, cloudle
ss sky. He usually reveled in the gentle weather, but today he felt almost resentful about it, as if it wasn’t right there were so many happy people living in such a happy place when Frankie was dead.

  Frankie and Shannon’s house was small, which wasn’t unusual, since it was an expensive neighborhood. Even a little one was ungodly expensive. They were able to buy it with the deployment bonus he earned, saying he doubted they’d be able to buy anything larger until they moved to the East Coast.

  They’d lived here only a few months, but already the colors were crisper, brighter. Maybe someone had painted the outside. The front steps looked like they’d been painted red so recently he was worried that maybe he shouldn’t walk on them yet.

  As Shannon had told him, there was a white wicker rocker on the little concrete porch, obscured by a delicate metal handrail with boxwood bushes planted in a row in front. The trimmed hedge also bracketed the walkway to the porch.

  He swung the duffel bag down on the far side of the chair, so it wouldn’t be seen from the street, and placed the box on the seat. He looked inside at the living room through the small glass window embedded in the massive Craftsman-style front door and was satisfied no one was home.

  Walking back to his truck, he checked his cell phone for the time. It was one o’clock. He told himself she’d be along anytime now, and he should get going, but he couldn’t leave Frankie up there in that box alone and unable to defend himself should a complete stranger decide they wanted the worthless contents of the box.

  He sat back and waited. As usually happened, when he thought about Frankie and Shannon, he remembered their wedding day. It had been a pretty incredible day, certainly memorable. As weddings went, he thought it was perfect. It was so much better when things didn’t run on time, and all the unexpected things in life showed up at the wrong moments. He lived for those times.

  And Shannon had been all tousled and white, delicate and sweet, like the buttery vanilla frosting on the wedding cake. After the ceremony, Frankie had been on serious probation, so was careful when he placed the cake in her mouth, but she still got a blob of frosting on the right corner of her lips. Frankie had kissed it off. The guy was enraptured. It had been good to see. It had been a good day, despite what Shannon might think. His buddy had the sendoff he deserved and the beginnings of a life he’d earned because he was such a good guy. One of the good guys.