It took forever to get there, to brake to a full stop, to put the car into park, to turn and face Alyssa and see the sympathy in her eyes. Oh, Jesus . . .
“This isn’t conclusive,” she said.
“You said that.”
“I wanted to make sure you understood—”
“Alyssa, tell me.”
She nodded. “Bodies have been found. A woman. And a child who looks to be about Haley’s age.”
No. “Where?”
“Just west of Sarasota,” she said. “In the trunk of a car. The car’s been burned, and the bodies are . . . well, hard to identify. As far as anyone can tell, they’ve been there somewhere between two and three weeks.”
Sam sat in silence, just looking at her.
“I’m so sorry,” she whispered.
“No,” he said. His stomach was churning. “Don’t be. Because it’s not them.”
She nodded, even forced a smile. “You’re probably right.” Yeah, she didn’t believe that for one second. “Let me drive now, okay?”
Sam nodded, opened the door, and pulled himself out, forgetting to be extra careful. Holy fucking shit, these stupid pants were too freaking tight, and they really probably only brushed against him, but that was enough, and he was on the ground, on his knees, by the back of the car, fighting nausea all over again.
Alyssa was there, her hands cool against his face. “Oh, Sam.”
She probably thought he was going to get sick because the thought of Haley burned to death in the trunk of a car was so fucking awful.
“It’s not them in that trunk,” he said through gritted teeth. “I know it’s not. I just . . . whacked myself getting out of the car. Hypersensitive today.” He forced himself to look at her. “Which is good, actually. It gives me something else to focus on.”
Alyssa laughed at that, as he’d hoped she would. “Well, shoot, I’ll be happy to kick you again, whenever you want.”
Sam laughed then, too, but allowing himself to do that was a mistake, because it opened the door to everything else he was trying not to feel. His eyes almost instantly filled with tears.
No, no, no . . .
Oh, please, don’t let her notice . . .
But he knew she did. Alyssa noticed everything. She pushed back a chunk of his hair that had fallen over his forehead, and her touch was heartbreakingly gentle.
“You do get through it, you know,” she told him quietly. “Losing someone you love. You may never get over it, but you do get through it.”
“Yeah, well, I haven’t lost Haley yet.” He forced himself to his feet. They had to get back in the car before some state trooper came to check them out. “Let’s get to Sarasota, go to that Publix, and talk to some people who might know Mary Lou.”
His use of present tense was not lost on Alyssa, who nodded. But she also touched his arm, her hand warm against his elbow. “Careful getting in the car.”
“Yeah.”
Gina called from a pay phone, giving her name and asking to speak to Max.
He picked up almost immediately. “Kenya?”
“I’m fine, thanks,” she said. “And how are you? Did you sleep at all last night?”
“No. Why Kenya?”
His voice was so cold, she almost faltered. But she’d made up her mind. The worst he could do was hang up on her.
“Because I’ve made friends with some people who are doing good things there, and I need to do something worthwhile. Look, that’s not what I called to talk about. I called because I have a favor to ask you.”
He was silent. Max was capable of the loudest silences in the world. But he’d taught her everything she knew about negotiating during all those days she’d spent on the hijacked airliner, and she ignored it. She knew it was only meant to rattle her. Of course, it was working.
“It’s a big favor,” she said, resisting the urge to ask him if he were still there. He was. She knew he was. “I have this problem. It’s about sex.”
There should have been a response here, even if it was a growl of anger or disbelieving laughter, but Max’s silence just stretched on.
“I’m all jammed up about it,” she continued. “I haven’t been with someone since, well, you know.”
“Since you were raped.” His voice was so cold. “I thought we decided to put that word back into our working vocabulary.”
“Yeah,” she said. “Thank you. We did. Since I was raped.”
“No,” Max said. “I can’t help you.”
“Maybe you should wait to hear what I’m asking.”
“I know exactly what you’re asking, and I’m telling you no.”
He only sounded so glacial because he was freaking out. She knew that. She knew that. Still, it took everything she had not to mumble an apology and run from the phone.
“Guys my age are afraid to get close to me,” she told him, and her voice only shook a little. “I completely wig them out.”
She heard him draw in a breath—ragged proof that he was human and not some relentlessly calm, cold robot. “I’m very sorry to hear that, but—”
“I’m not asking for a relationship, Max. I’m asking for one night. One.” Gina closed her eyes and prayed that he wouldn’t know she was lying, that he wouldn’t be able to hear it in her voice. In truth, she was hoping that one night would lead to another, and another and . . .
“I’m sorry—”
“I need you,” she pleaded, laying as much of it on the line as she dared. “I know you’ll make me feel safe. I trust you.”
“Which is exactly why—”
“I want that part of my life back again,” she told him.
“—I can’t.”
“I need it back! God damn it, they stole that from me!”
His silence wasn’t silent anymore. She definitely could hear him breathing, hear him sigh. And when he spoke, there was finally emotion in his voice. “I’m so sorry.”
“Please,” she whispered.
“Gina, I can’t help you. I have to take another call.”
“Okay,” she said, no longer caring whether or not he knew that she was crying. “I understand. And it’s, you know, okay. Really. I’m disappointed, but . . . I’ve got that gig tonight.” She played her last card. “I’m sure I’ll find someone in the bar who’s willing to—”
“Don’t do this.”
“Someone old enough to be gentle—”
He finally raised his voice. “Gina, for the love of God—”
“What are you going to do about it?” She wiped her face. This wasn’t over yet. “Send Jules over to arrest me? Except last I heard, picking someone up in a bar wasn’t a crime.”
“No, it’s just insanity!”
“No, Max,” Gina said. “Insanity is you saying no when we both know you want to say yes.”
She hung up the phone with a hand that was shaking. She stood there for a moment with her eyes closed, praying that this would work, that she’d see him tonight, that he’d give himself permission not just to confront her in person, but to take her home. And stay.
Alyssa’s cell phone rang while they were in the Publix supermarket.
None of the cashiers in the store knew Mary Lou well enough even to speculate on where she might have gone. The store managers were just as spectacularly lacking in information.
Apparently, while she was employed there, Mary Lou showed up, did her job, kept to herself, read a book during her breaks, and went home. She was responsible and reliable. She always showed up on time. Until the day that she didn’t show up at all.
Sam looked exhausted. He was standing and staring at a community bulletin board, at a brightly colored sign advertising a church nursery-school fun fair. It was right next to a help wanted poster for a nanny. A live-in position, the sign said. Room and board plus a generous monthly salary. Single mothers welcome to apply.
Sam interrupted the store manager midsentence. “That sign been up there for very long?”
The man blinked at him and t
hen at the poster. “I doubt it. Anything that’s been up for more than two weeks automatically gets taken down.”
“Too bad,” Sam said. “Because if I were Mary Lou . . .” He pointed to the poster.
And it was then that her phone rang.
“Thank you for your time,” Alyssa said to the manager.
Sam went from completely exhausted to completely wired in the space of a heartbeat, and all of that intense energy was suddenly focused on Alyssa and her phone.
She went out into the early evening heat and started for the car as she checked her caller ID. “It’s Jules,” she told Sam, and pressed the Talk button. “Locke.”
Sam caught her around the waist, pulling her close and lowering his head so that his ear was next to hers, so that he could hear, too.
“Yo, it’s me,” Jules said. “I’ve got thirty seconds to tell you some really bad news. I know you’re going to have questions, but I swear, I’m telling you everything I know, and I’ll call you again as soon as I hear anything else.”
Sam’s arm tightened around her waist, and Alyssa spoke for him. “Just tell, uh, me.” She’d almost said us. Sam wasn’t the only one who was exhausted.
“There’s been a car bombing in San Diego.” Jules gave it to them point blank. “Someone parked a car in Don DaCosta’s—you know, Sam’s neighbor’s—driveway, ran like hell, and the thing blew.”
“Oh, fuck,” Sam said. “Is Donny okay?”
“I’m really sorry, Alyssa, but I don’t think so, although the reports coming in are still pretty garbled.” Jules didn’t seem fazed by the sound of Sam’s voice, but his message made it clear that she shouldn’t start broadcasting the fact that the SEAL was in her company. “We’ve gotten conflicting casualty reports, although Don seems to be on both of them. Apparently he refused to leave his house, and the fire that started was too intense and . . . Okay, yeah, I’m getting something new here that . . . Thanks, George. Yeah, God damn it, it’s bad news. I’m sorry, we’ve confirmed DaCosta’s death. One of the agents and at least one firefighter died, too, trying to save him.”
Sam had his eyes closed and the muscles in his jaw were jumping. Don DaCosta had been a friend of his.
Alyssa put her arm around him, but he kept his eyes tightly shut.
But Jules wasn’t done. “That’s not all of it, I’m afraid. Kelly Paoletti and Cosmo Richter were apparently there, too, when that bomb went off.”
“What?” Alyssa said. Sam’s eyes opened. “Why? What were they doing there?”
“I don’t know. Maybe it was take tea with the town lunatic day.”
“Show a little respect for the dead,” Sam growled. “He was a good guy.”
Jules was instantly contrite. “Forgive me. That was insensitive. I didn’t realize you knew him that well—”
“I didn’t know they knew DaCosta,” Alyssa interrupted. She couldn’t figure out what Lt. Commander Tom Paoletti’s perky little blond cheerleader of a wife and Cosmo Richter, a quiet man with freaky-colored eyes and the whispered reputation on the Spec Op grapevine of being a remorseless killing machine when the need arose, were doing together, let alone with DaCosta.
“I didn’t either, but I guess they did,” Jules said. “I don’t know their status. One list has them wounded, another has them down as dead. I don’t know details. I don’t know dick. This just happened—we’re still in chaos mode. Again, I apologize for my inappropriate—”
“It’s all right,” Sam said. “I know what it’s like. It’s so fucking awful, you try to find whatever humor in the situation that you possibly can, with no disrespect intended.”
“Thank you, sweetie. That’s very generous of you to say.” Jules cleared his throat. “I’ll call, I promise, as soon as I find out anything else.”
“Any word on the bodies in the trunk?” Alyssa asked. She wasn’t sure whether to hope that there was or that there wasn’t. The news they’d just received was bad enough. And yet not knowing whether his ex-wife and daughter were dead was taking its toll on Sam.
“I’m not expecting the preliminary forensics report until the morning,” Jules told her. “But, unofficially, I have to tell you that it doesn’t look good. Cause of death is gunshot, not burning. Both bodies have a bullet in the back of their heads.”
Just like Mary Lou’s sister. Alyssa didn’t dare glance at Sam.
“I’ll call you later—I’ve got to go,” Jules told her. And he was gone.
Sam was, too. He was already getting into the car. “Let’s hit the library,” he said. “See if anyone there knew Mary Lou. At the same time we can get the information we need about the AA meetings in this area. Actually, maybe we should do that first, since most meetings are in the evening—they’ll be starting pretty soon. We can always talk to the librarians in the morning and—”
“Sam.”
He wouldn’t look up at her, instead flipping through the pad of notes they’d made during the drive down from Gainesville. “I’d also like to pay a visit to Haley’s day care provider.”
“Sam.”
He glanced at her, but only briefly. He was terribly upset by the news they’d just received. Alyssa crouched next to the open car door.
“Maybe we should take a break,” she said as gently as she could. “We’re both tired, and you’ve just found out that some good friends are dead.”
“We don’t know that Kelly and Cosmo are—”
“You’re right,” she said. “We don’t. But even if it’s just Donny, that’s bad enough. Why don’t we find a motel so we can sleep for a few hours and . . .”
And be more prepared, at least physically if not emotionally, to receive the bad news that was surely coming from that forensics report in the morning.
But Sam was shaking his head. “If Mary Lou and Haley are still alive—” He broke off, and the expression on his face made her want to cry. “I can’t believe I said if.”
Alyssa took his hand. “Maybe that’s a good thing. You know, to be prepared for the worst case scenario.”
“No.” He shook his head, tightly gripping her hand. “There’s no preparing for that. Jules is going to call, and you’re going to say oh, no, and then you’re going to have to look me in the eye and tell me that my daughter was murdered by some fuck who I’m then going to find and kill.” He finally looked at her, finally held her gaze, and she knew he wasn’t kidding. If someone had killed Haley, Sam was going to rip him to pieces.
“But until then, I’m not going to live in the land of if,” he continued. “I can’t do that, Lys. Haley’s alive until she’s dead—no if, no maybe. And since I haven’t heard you say she’s dead, I’m going with she’s alive. And since she’s alive, the same people who killed Janine and Donny DaCosta and maybe Cosmo and Kelly—Jesus God! Tom must be going nuts! You think that was a coincidence she was at Donny’s when that bomb went off? Think about it. She and Don both knew Ihbraham Rahman—who also knew Mary Lou. This son of a bitch and the rest of his cell are cleaning up after themselves. This guy is removing anyone who can ID him from the playing field, and if—” He caught himself. “Since Mary Lou and Haley are still alive, he’s going to be coming after them next. I have to find them first.”
Alyssa nodded. “Okay. Let’s hit some of those AA meetings. But you know it’s a long shot, right? Everywhere else she goes, Mary Lou keeps to herself. And if she was paying attention to what you told her about changing habits to stay hidden . . .”
“I know,” Sam said. “But we’ve got to try.”
She understood. “After that, we’re going to have some down time.” Alyssa told him this. She didn’t ask. “I mean, unless we get an obvious lead.” She didn’t think that was going to happen. She thought Mary Lou and Haley were in the forensics lab right now, having autopsies done on their dead bodies. “I know we’ll both be able to think a little more clearly if we get some sleep. If you don’t want to get a room, we can park somewhere and just shut our eyes for a few hours.”
“A
room?” Sam asked, but it was obvious that he had to try very hard to be his usual obnoxious self.
“Yeah.” She tried hard to pretend, too, that this was business as usual between them. “As in you get a room and I get a room.”
He drew her hand up to his mouth and kissed her fingers. “Rats. And here I thought my luck was going to change.” He smiled at her, but it was clear that his heart wasn’t in it.
Because he had to know that luck didn’t play a part in whether or not those bodies belonged to his ex-wife and daughter. It had to do with Mary Lou getting involved, more than six months ago, in something deadly with someone dangerous who she never should have trusted. And it was already too late for luck to play any part in that.
Tom was making tremendously slow progress through the first of a stack of books about the judicial process when someone actually knocked on his door.
“Come in,” he called.
The door swung open to reveal a squad of SEALs from Team Sixteen. Nearly all of them were wearing BDUs—battle dress uniforms—which was nothing new. It was the way they dressed most of their time on base.
There was nothing unusual about them at all—except for the fact that Duke Jefferson and Izzy Zanella were down on the deck, just finishing tying knots in the ropes that bound the wrists and ankles of the two guards who’d been posted in front of Tom’s door.
“Oh, come on,” Tom said. This couldn’t happen.
Jay Lopez and Billy Silverman helped Duke and Izzy carry the guards into Tom’s room, as Ensigns MacInnough and Collins—both resplendent in summer whites—shouldered the former guards’ weapons and took their places at the door.
“Time to go, sir,” Chief Karmody told Tom. Figures Karmody—also known as WildCard—would be part of something like this.
Tom sighed as Lopez, who was carrying his medical kit, put several syringes in a container marked “Sharps—Biohazard,” and removed a pair of latex gloves from his hands with a snap.
Whatever Lopez had given the guards—and Tom really didn’t want to know—had knocked them out.
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