Over the Edge

by Suzanne Brockmann

  There was a delightful teasing light in her eyes, but Stan found himself hypnotized by her mouth, by the perfect, graceful shape of her lips, by the thought of those lips . . .

  Oh, freaking perfect. He yanked his gaze away and waited for Jazz’s inevitable summons. But it didn’t come.

  She’d just called him a softy.

  The irony was unbelievably intense, and Stan couldn’t keep himself from laughing. He heard himself make a sound that was remarkably close to a giggle, and that just pushed him even further over the edge.

  Ah, dignity. It was overrated anyway.

  Teri was laughing, too, clearly pleased with herself for making him crack up so completely, even though she didn’t really understand what was making him laugh.

  “I want to sit with you guys and have some of whatever it is you’re drinking,” WildCard said as he passed by on his way to the head at the back of the plane.

  Stan finally caught his breath. “Lieutenant, believe me, I enjoy your company very much. I’m glad we’re friends.”

  “Me, too, Senior Chief.” She looked out the window again, as if she suddenly didn’t want to meet his gaze.

  Shit. What had he just said that had embarrassed her?

  “So what did Lenny do when he found out you wanted to fly?” Stan asked, hoping he was misreading her body language. He hated the distance she’d put between them with the set of her shoulders. “How old were you, anyway?”

  “I was eight when he moved in,” she told him. “Twelve when he left.”

  Ouch. “That must’ve sucked,” Stan said. She was looking at him again, thank God.

  “He had his reasons,” Teri said. “Of course, I didn’t know them at the time. Still, without a doubt, he was the most important person in my life. Ever.”

  And she’d had him for only four years. Stan had thought losing his mother at eighteen was bad. Damn.

  “I’m sorry he left,” he said quietly.

  “When he found out that I wanted to fly more than just about anything,” she continued, “he hooked me up with the local CAP—you know, Civil Air Patrol. A friend of his was a member—Archie. He used to take us up in this little Cessna.” She smiled, lost in the past, her eyes distant. “He used to let me take the controls. On my twelfth birthday, Lenny talked him into letting me make the landing, probably breaking every rule in the book.”

  “So where’s Lenny now?” Stan asked.

  “He died,” she told him. “When I was fifteen, I got this letter from a lawyer’s office, telling me that I’d inherited a quarter of a million dollars from someone named Leonard Jackson.”

  “Holy shit—pardon my French, but did you say . . . ?”

  “A quarter,” she said again. “Of a million. Yes. That was my reaction, too. He’d put it into a trust for me, so Audrey—my mother—couldn’t touch it. You know, I never even knew Lenny’s last name—I didn’t realize at first that this Leonard Jackson was my Lenny. And when I did . . . I didn’t want the money, Senior Chief. I wanted him. I’d always planned to go find him someday, because he was my real dad. He loved me even when I didn’t get an A plus in school, you know?”

  Stan nodded. He knew.

  “Then to make things even worse,” she continued, “I found out that he’d left back when I was twelve because he was diagnosed with cancer. My mother couldn’t handle the fact that he was dying, so he just . . . left. He didn’t tell me why he was going because he didn’t want to make her look bad. So he died in a hospice, all alone.” She looked bleak, as if she were reliving her loss all over again. “And I could have had his love for another three years.”

  Touching her was a stupid idea. Touching her in public was even stupider. But Stan did it anyway. He touched the softness of her hair, touched her cheek before sanity intervened and he pulled his hand away.

  “You did have it,” he told her gently. “You just didn’t know it until later.”

  She gazed at him. “I never thought of it that way before.”

  “Well, there you go,” he said, wishing . . . No, he wasn’t going there. Not right now. Not ever. He had to look away.

  “He wrote me a note,” Teri told him. “He said, ‘College first. Then, be all that you can be.’ ” She smiled. “He included the name and phone number of a friend who was a Navy recruiter.”

  Stan laughed at that. “So it’s Lenny we have to thank, huh? Without him, we might’ve lost you to the Air Force.”

  “Without him, I wouldn’t have made it into the sky at all,” she confessed. “As soon as I was old enough, I used my inheritance to learn to fly—everything from Cessnas to small jets. I didn’t tell my mother. She would’ve had a cow.”

  Wait a minute. “So you came into Navy flight school already knowing how to fly a jet?”

  She nodded.

  “And yet you chose to become a helo pilot?” Stan didn’t quite get it.

  “I wanted to work with the SEALs.”

  “Ah.” God bless Lenny and the stories he’d told her.

  “Excuse me, Senior Chief.” Sam Starrett was in the aisle, looking curiously from Stan to Teri. “XO could use you in a minute or two. He asked me to wake you, but apparently you don’t need waking.” He smiled at Teri. “Hey, Lieutenant.”

  Instant tension. It was amazing the way Teri just tightened up. She nodded at Starrett, but her shoulders were practically up around her ears.

  What was that about?

  “How’re you doing?” Starrett asked her.

  “Fine, thanks.” She met his eyes only briefly, looking away as if she were embarrassed.

  It was a weird dynamic. If they’d been lovers and Starrett had ditched her, ending their relationship with his usual lack of grace and finesse, he would’ve been the one who was uncomfortable around her.

  Unless she’d ditched Starrett . . . ? No, that didn’t sit right, either.

  Stan excused himself and stood up, grateful that enough time had passed so that he could do it without embarrassing himself.

  Teri picked up her book, holding it like a shield against Sam Starrett. It was almost as if . . .

  “Starrett, you got a sec?” Stan asked.

  “Sure, Senior.” The lanky lieutenant followed him toward the front of the plane.

  And sure enough, Teri visibly relaxed.

  “What’s up?” Starrett drawled.

  Stan didn’t mince words. “Keep your fucking hands off Teri Howe.”

  “My hands? Whoa, wait a second, it was Admiral Tucker who was—” Starrett broke off at the look Stan knew must’ve been on his face. “I just told you something you didn’t know, didn’t I, Senior? Shit.”

  “When was this?” Stan kept his voice quietly calm. Deadly calm. Starrett wasn’t fooled.

  “Hell, I don’t know.” He scratched his head. “A year ago maybe? Maybe more? Teri was doing two weeks of Reserve training, and three of the regular helo pilots got food poisoning and— I shouldn’t be telling you this.”

  “Oh, yes, you should,” Stan said.

  Starrett cast an uneasy glance back toward Teri. Lowered his voice. “She was filling in, chauffeuring top brass in one of the puddle jumpers. She took Tucker back to the base after some dinner thing, but he’d had a few drinks too many, and she was intending to drive him home, too. She was helping him to her car in the parking lot—you know, seriously helping the man walk? Arm around him? He was pretty severely alcohol challenged and I guess he got the wrong idea.”

  “Christ,” Stan said. Was this kind of thing so commonplace in Teri Howe’s life that she simply hadn’t bothered to tell Stan about an admiral’s inappropriate behavior?

  “That’s when I made the scene,” Starrett continued, his voice still low. “Tucker had his hands all over her, and—it was the funniest thing, Senior—I was sure he was going to have a permanent handprint of her palm on his face, but she froze. I had to pull him off her, and as soon as I did, she ran.

  “I loaded Tucker into my truck, drove him home, and then went over to
Teri’s house. I got her address from the phone book—I knew she lived in San Diego and I had to make sure she was okay. I couldn’t get her face out of my head, you know? That look in her eyes—like the world was coming to an end. The weirdest part of it was that while she was upset, she wasn’t half as upset as I would’ve expected,” Starrett told Stan. “I mean, she was way more resigned about it than I would’ve been. She didn’t want to tell anyone, didn’t want to do anything—she just wanted to forget about it. She seemed convinced Tucker wouldn’t remember any of it in the morning anyway, so . . .”

  Stan was mad as hell at Admiral Tucker, at Teri, at Starrett, too. “And it didn’t occur to you to come to me, Lieutenant?”

  “No shit, Senior, I swear to God, I wanted to, but she asked me not to report the incident.”

  Stan looked back across the plane, at Teri. Who wasn’t reading. She was watching him. She quickly looked down at her book as if he’d caught her being bad.

  What the hell had made her freeze that way? Both with Hogan and with Tucker. She should have kicked both of them in the balls so hard their eyes would’ve been permanently crossed.

  How had she made it so far in a world where women had to be twice as strong as their male counterparts to succeed?

  Except she hadn’t made it that far, had she? She was only a lieutenant junior grade after joining the Navy at age nineteen. And she’d gotten out of the regular Navy and into the Reserves. Running from something he didn’t yet know about, perhaps? Christ.

  And yet Teri Howe, the pilot, didn’t run from anything when she was in her helo. She flew without hesitation. She was decisive, courageous, and a consistently excellent junior officer. She gave her opinion when asked and followed orders without question when she wasn’t.

  Stan turned back to Starrett. “I apologize for jumping to conclusions, sir.”

  “Don’t sweat it, Stan. If I were hanging out with her, I’d be pretty possessive, too.”

  “No, we’re just friends.”

  Starrett didn’t wink, but it was there in his voice. “Sure thing, Senior.”

  Christ, what was wrong with everyone? Both Tom and Starrett thought he had something going on with Teri Howe. They must think he really was some kind of miracle worker.

  He made a mental note to himself not to sit with her again. Not without Muldoon or one of the other guys, anyway. She didn’t need rumors about her and him being spread around.

  He headed toward Jacquette, psyching himself up so that he’d be prepared for anything thrown at him, and when he glanced back at Teri, he caught her watching him again.

  She smiled, and he was instantly there.

  Ready for anything.

  King of the world.

  Six

  The chartered flight to Kazbekistan wouldn’t land for several hours.

  Helga Rosen Shuler sat, wondering what he looked like.

  Stanley Wolchonok. Marte’s son.

  In all likelihood, she wouldn’t be able to meet him right away. He was going to be in K-stan as part of the team of men who would launch an assault on the hijacked plane, gain entry, and kill the terrorists before they had time to kill any of the innocents on board.

  Yes, he was going to be very busy. But after it was over, she would request some time with him.

  Did he look like Marte, with light brown hair and blue-green eyes? Or did he take after the elder Gunvald sister, Annebet?

  Annebet had been a goddess. Tall and blond and voluptuous, she took after her Viking ancestors, with flashing blue eyes and a strong hatred of the occupying Germans.

  Like Helga’s brother, Hershel, she had been studying to become a doctor before the Nazis came to Denmark.

  She’d still kept studying, like Hershel, but it was harder to do with her frequent trips home to check on her family. Hershel was home more often, too.

  Helga often went with Marte after school. Although the Gunvalds’house was much smaller, it was a far happier place, particularly after three years of Nazi occupation.

  Marte’s mother, Inger, would give them bread and butter as a snack, and they’d take it into the yard to eat.

  And sooner or later Wilhelm Gruber, in his German army uniform, would show up as they played there. Mooning over Annebet, waiting for her to come home, hoping for a glimpse of her.

  Helga closed her eyes, remembering the day he’d brought them Swiss chocolate. It was late in the spring of 1943, she had just turned ten, and Marte was twelve. Tensions were rising, food was scarce, and Annebet had moved back home from Copenhagen for good.

  “How do we know it’s not poisoned?” Marte had asked suspiciously, giving the German soldier on the other side of the fence her darkest scowl and most deadly evil eye.

  “I’m in love with your sister,” Gruber proclaimed. “What good would it do me to upset her by poisoning you?”

  He really wasn’t that bad looking a fellow, Helga had to admit. A little stout from too much of that chocolate he always had in such quantities, he had a broad, friendly face, with blue eyes that were made larger by his wire-rimmed glasses.

  From the terrible stories she’d heard of Nazis tearing Jewish babies in two, she’d expected him to have horns and a tail.

  “Come on,” Gruber encouraged with a smile, holding out the chocolate to the two girls. “What harm can it do to take it?”

  Helga never would have considered taking anything from a German. She always ran to the other side of her own yard when German troops marched past. But Marte was Marte, afraid of no one and nothing. And her poppi didn’t have extra money to buy things like sweets. For her, Gruber’s chocolate was tempting.

  Marte looked at Helga. And reached for it.

  “What are you doing?” Annebet descended upon them from inside the house like an avenging angel. But it was Gruber she was angry at, not Marte and Helga. “Stay away from my sister, Nazi! Stay away from my house! I will never go out with you. I’m not a collaborator—I’d never fraternize with the enemy!”

  She grabbed Marte with one hand and Helga with the other, and dragged them with her toward the barn.

  “I’m not the enemy,” Gruber protested, following them along the outside of the fence. “This occupation is a friendly one. Your king Christian still sits on his throne. The Danish government still meets. There was no fighting when we arrived.”

  “There was, too,” Annebet spun back to fire at him. “Lars Johansen was killed defending the king’s palace!”

  Marte looked at Helga and rolled her eyes. This was an argument Annebet and Gruber had had many times before. Now he would make a crack about Lars having been killed by the faulty backfire of his own inferior Danish gun.

  But he didn’t this time. He just sighed. “Sooner or later, Annebet, you will understand that the Germans and the Danes are friends. You are one of us—you have many freedoms here that you take for granted, that you would not have if you were our enemy. Even your Jews are not required to wear the yellow star—”

  “Oh, yes, Herr Gruber,” Annebet interrupted. “Let’s discuss what you Germans—you Germans, not we Danes, and no, we are not one of you—” She said the word as if she were saying pig shit. “Let’s talk about what you are doing to your citizens who happen to be Jewish. Have you heard of the death camps your Herr Himmler has built? I have. I’ve heard stories from people who were there, who saw it with their own eyes. Railroad cars of people—women and children—being gassed, simply because they are not Aryan.”

  Gruber tried to smile. “But you are. You Danes don’t have to worry about—”

  Annebet thrust both Marte and Helga in front of her. “One of these two little Danish girls is Jewish. Which one?”

  Helga stared up at Gruber, up at the complete surprise on his face, and tried not to be terrified. She was too big to tear in two. Wasn’t she? Marte reached for her hand.

  “You can’t tell from looking, can you? So what will you do, try to take them both?” Annebet pushed the two girls behind her. “I would die before I
let you take either of these two children. You would have to shoot me right there, right in the street, like a dog.”

  Gruber was shaking his head. “Look, I don’t know, I’m not a Nazi. I’m simply a good German. And lucky to be serving my country here instead of Russia.”

  “Your good German leaders are murderers and thieves.”

  Helga tugged on Annebet’s arm, trying to pull her the rest of the way to the barn. This conversation was getting much too dangerous, and Gruber was starting to get angry.

  “It’s treasonous words like that that will force us to take away some of the freedoms you Danes enjoy. If you don’t watch out . . .”

  “What will you do?” Annebet’s voice was suddenly very soft. But it was filled with an intensity that made Helga want to cry. “Will you round up all our Jews? Will you take away the rest of our communists? I know—maybe this time you’ll arrest all of us who’ve ever had a single communistic thought. You’d have to take me, Herr Gruber. I still work one day a week at the free medical clinic in Copenhagen for no pay. Quick, call the Gestapo.”

  A vein stood out on his forehead. “Don’t make jokes about that!”

  “I’m not joking, Nazi. I don’t joke about a Reich that wants to rule the world by oppression.”

  She was magnificent, standing there like that, all but shaking her fist at Gruber, but Helga was terrified that he would take his gun and shoot her. Shoot them all.

  “Too bad, because it’s our world now,” he taunted.

  “Yes,” she said. “That is too bad.”

  With a regal sweep of her skirt, she turned and followed Helga and Marte into the relative safety of the barn.

  She closed the door behind them and instantly turned to Marte. “If I ever catch you talking to him again . . . !”

  “He comes to the gate and calls to me,” Marte defended herself. “Am I supposed to ignore him?”

  “Yes.”

  “No.” They all looked up in surprise. Helga’s brother stood just inside the door. “There’s no point in making him angry.”

  Annebet straightened up, her eyes flashing. “I suppose you’ll next recommend I have dinner with him.”