Tall, Dark and Dangerous Part 1

by Suzanne Brockmann

  “Because it’s traditional,” Sarah said calmly. Nora, her baby, now three months old, smiled happily at Lucy from the backpack Sarah wore. “You look beautiful, and you know it.”

  “It’s not very traditional for the bride to be given away by her best friend and her godchild,” Lucy commented.

  Sarah gazed at her for a moment, then took out the pins that held the veil in place and tossed both pins and veil aside. “Fair enough,” she said.

  “I wish I were wearing my jeans,” Lucy said wistfully.

  Sarah shook her head. “Nope,” she said. “Nice try, but I draw the line at the veil. No way am I letting you march down that aisle in blue jeans.”

  “I just feel so…not me,” Lucy said. The dress was cut low, off her shoulders, with tiny cap sleeves, a tailored bodice and a long, full skirt, complete with a train.

  “You look incredible,” Sarah said. Nora gurgled and chewed on her mother’s hair in agreement.

  The music started, and Sarah took Lucy’s arm. “Come on.” Sarah smiled. “Wait till you see what’s waiting for you at the other end of this church.”

  Self-consciously, Lucy let Sarah lead her out into the church. And then she stopped feeling self-conscious at all. Because standing there in the front of the church was Blue. Next to him stood the six other members of Alpha Squad. All seven men were wearing white dress uniforms and the effect was nearly blinding.

  Lucy’s gaze ran across their now-familiar faces. Joe Cat’s smile was genuine and warm, but he couldn’t keep himself from glancing across the chapel to smile at his wife, Ronnie. Lucy’s first impression of Ronnie had been that she was an ice queen—until Lucy had walked into the Outback Bar to find the usually proper, English-accented woman cutting loose, dirty-dancing with her handsome husband.

  And then there was Harvard. Daryl Becker. Along with his Ivy League education, Harvard possessed a first-class sense of humor. His shaved head gleamed almost as much as the diamond he wore in his left ear.

  Cowboy, Wesley and Bob all grinned at Lucy. Cowboy winked. He was the youngest member of the squad and he did his best to live up to his reputation as a hothead.

  Lucky O’Donlon was smiling, too—and oh, my God, standing next to him was none other than Frisco. There weren’t seven men up there—there were eight. Alan Francisco was standing with the rest of Alpha Squad. Blue had taken Lucy to meet him at the rehab center several months ago, and Frisco had been in a wheelchair. It had been years since he was injured, and all the doctors had sworn he would never walk again. But today he was standing. He had a cane, but he was standing. Lucy looked around, but she didn’t see any sign of a wheelchair. Had he actually walked to the front of the church?

  And Lucky—Frisco’s best friend and swim buddy—looked happier than she’d ever seen him. The two men were almost the exact same height and build. Lucky’s hair was blond, while Frisco’s was darker, but other than that, even their faces were similar enough that they might have been brothers.

  Except Frisco couldn’t hide the lines of pain around his eyes. He may have been standing, but it was hurting him to do so.

  “Thank you so much for coming, Alan,” Lucy said to him, emotion breaking her voice.

  Frisco nodded. “I wouldn’t have missed it for anything,” he said.

  And then, suddenly they reached the front of the church. Sarah kissed her on the cheek, and then Lucy was face-to-face with Blue.

  Blue McCoy.

  He looked incredible in his white dress uniform. Lucy hadn’t seen him dressed up since Gerry’s funeral, and before that at the party at the country club. Today, like that night, she was wearing a dress that made her feel peculiar, as if she were masquerading as someone else.

  But Blue looked different, too. His shining blond hair was perfectly combed, every wave and curl in place. The rows and rows of medals he wore on his chest were overwhelming. His uniform was so clean, so starched and stiff and gleaming white. He gazed, unsmiling, into her eyes.

  Who was this stranger, this sailor she was marrying? For one heart-stopping moment, Lucy wasn’t sure she knew.

  Then she looked down and caught sight of Blue’s feet. He wasn’t wearing dress shoes like the rest of Alpha Squad. He was wearing his old, familiar leather sandals.

  He was wearing his sandals, and she was wearing her cotton underwear. It was fancier than usual, but it was cotton. She’d insisted. They both had their hair combed differently, and both of them were dressed differently, but deep down inside they knew exactly what they were getting—exactly who they were going to spend the rest of their lives with.

  Lucy smiled.

  Blue smiled, too. And then he kissed the bride.

  Frisco’s Kid

  by Suzanne Brockmann

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  1

  Frisco’s knee was on fire.

  He had to lean heavily on his cane to get from the shower to the room he shared with three other vets, and still his leg hurt like hell with every step he took.

  But pain was no big deal. Pain had been part of Navy Lt. Alan “Frisco” Francisco’s everyday life since his leg had damn near been blown off more than five years ago during a covert rescue operation. The pain he could handle.

  It was this cane that he couldn’t stand.

  It was the fact that his knee wouldn’t—couldn’t—support his full weight or fully extend that made him crazy.

  It was a warm California day, so he pulled on a pair of shorts, well aware that they wouldn’t hide the raw, ugly scars on his knee.

  His latest surgery had been attempted only a few months ago. They’d cut him open all over again, trying, like Humpty Dumpty, to put all the pieces back together. After the required hospital stay, he’d been sent here, to this physical therapy center, to build up strength in his leg, and to see if the operation had worked—to see if he had more flexibility in his injured joint.

  But his doctor had been no more successful than the legendary King’s horses and King’s men. The operation hadn’t improved Frisco’s knee. His doctor couldn’t put Frisco together again.

  There was a knock on the door, and it opened a crack.

  “Yo, Frisco, you in here?”

  It was Lt. Joe Catalanotto, the commander of SEAL Team Ten’s Alpha Squad—the squad to which, an aeon of pain and frustration and crushed hopes ago, Frisco had once belonged.

  “Where else would I be?” Frisco said.

  He saw Joe react to his bitter words, saw the bigger man’s jaw tighten as he came into the room, closing the door behind him. He could see the look in Joe’s dark eyes—a look of wary reserve. Frisco had always been the optimist of Alpha Squad. His attitude had always been upbeat and friendly. Wherever they went, Frisco had been out in the street, making friends with the locals. He’d been the first one smiling, the man who’d make jokes before a high-altitude parachute jump, relieving the tension, making everyone laugh.

  But Frisco wasn’t laughing now. He’d stopped laughing five years ago, when the doctors had walked into his hospital room and told him his leg would never be the same. He’d never walk again.

  At first he’d approached it with the same upbeat, optimistic attitude he’d always had. He’d never walk again? Wanna make a bet? He was going to do more than walk again. He was going to bring himself back to active duty as a SEAL. He was going to run and jump and dive. No question.

  It had taken years of intense focus, operations and physical therapy. He’d been bounced back and forth from hospitals to physical therapy centers to hospitals and back again. He’d fought
long and hard, and he could walk again.

  But he couldn’t run. He could do little more than limp along with his cane—and his doctors warned him against doing too much of that. His knee couldn’t support his weight, they told him. The pain that he stoically ignored was a warning signal. If he wasn’t careful, he’d lose what little use he did have of his leg.

  And that wasn’t good enough.

  Because until he could run, he couldn’t be a SEAL again.

  Five years of disappointment and frustration and failure had worn at Frisco’s optimism and upbeat attitude. Five years of itching to return to the excitement of his life as a Navy SEAL; of being placed into temporary retirement with no real, honest hope of being put back into active duty; of watching as Alpha Squad replaced him—replaced him; of shuffling along when he burned to run. All those years had worn him down. He wasn’t upbeat anymore. He was depressed. And frustrated. And angry as hell.

  Joe Catalanotto didn’t bother to answer Frisco’s question. His hawklike gaze took in Frisco’s well-muscled body, lingering for a moment on the scars on his leg. “You look good,” Joe said. “You’re keeping in shape. That’s good. That’s real good.”

  “Is this a social call?” Frisco asked bluntly.

  “Partly,” Joe said. His rugged face relaxed into a smile. “I’ve got some good news I wanted to share with you.”

  Good news. Damn, when was the last time Frisco had gotten good news?

  One of Frisco’s roommates, stretched out on his bed, glanced up from the book he was reading.

  Joe didn’t seem to mind. His smile just got broader. “Ronnie’s pregnant,” he said. “We’re going to have a kid.”

  “No way.” Frisco couldn’t help smiling. It felt odd, unnatural. It had been too long since he’d used those muscles in his face. Five years ago, he’d have been pounding Joe on the back, cracking ribald jokes about masculinity and procreation and laughing like a damn fool. But now the best he could muster up was a smile. He held out his hand and clasped Joe’s in a handshake of congratulations. “I’ll be damned. Who would’ve ever thought you’d become a family man? Are you terrified?”

  Joe grinned. “I’m actually okay about it. Ronnie’s the one who’s scared to death. She’s reading every book she can get her hands on about pregnancy and babies. I think the books are scaring her even more.”

  “God, a kid,” Frisco said again. “You going to call him Joe Cat, Junior?”

  “I want a girl,” Joe admitted. His smile softened. “A redhead, like her mother.”

  “So what’s the other part?” Frisco asked. At Joe’s blank look, he added, “You said this was partly a social call. That means it’s also partly something else. Why else are you here?”

  “Oh. Yeah. Steve Horowitz called me and asked me to come sit in while he talked to you.”

  Frisco slipped on a T-shirt, instantly wary. Steve Horowitz was his doctor. Why would his doctor want Joe around when he talked to Frisco? “What about?”

  Joe wouldn’t say, but his smile faded. “There’s an officer’s lounge at the end of the hall,” he said. “Steve said he’d meet us there.”

  A talk in the officer’s lounge. This was even more serious than Frisco had guessed. “All right,” he said evenly. It was pointless to pressure Joe. Frisco knew his former commander wouldn’t tell him a thing until Steve showed up.

  “How’s the knee?” Joe asked as they headed down the corridor. He purposely kept his pace slow and easy so that Frisco could keep up.

  Frisco felt a familiar surge of frustration. He hated the fact that he couldn’t move quickly. Damn, he used to break the sprint records during physical training.

  “It’s feeling better today,” he lied. Every step he took hurt like hell. The really stupid thing was that Joe knew damn well how much pain he was in.

  He pushed open the door to the officer’s lounge. It was a pleasant enough room, with big, overstuffed furniture and a huge picture window overlooking the gardens. The carpet was a slightly lighter shade of blue than the sky, and the green of the furniture upholstery matched the abundant life growing outside the window. The colors surprised him. Most of the time Frisco had spent in here was late at night, when he couldn’t sleep. In the shadowy darkness, the walls and furniture had looked gray.

  Steven Horowitz came into the room, a step behind them. “Good,” he said in his brisk, efficient manner. “Good, you’re here.” He nodded to Joe. “Thank you, Lieutenant, for coming by. I know your schedule’s heavy, too.”

  “Not too heavy for this, Captain,” Joe said evenly.

  “What exactly is ‘this’?” Frisco asked. He hadn’t felt this uneasy since he’d last gone out on a sneak-and-peek—an information-gathering expedition behind enemy lines.

  The doctor gestured to the couch. “Why don’t we sit down?”

  “I’ll stand, thanks.” Frisco had sat long enough during those first few years after he’d been injured. He’d spent far too much time in a wheelchair. If he had his choice, he’d never sit again.

  Joe made himself comfortable on the couch, his long legs sprawled out in front of him. The doctor perched on the edge of an armchair, his body language announcing that he wasn’t intending to stay long.

  “You’re not going to be happy about this,” Horowitz said bluntly to Frisco, “but yesterday I signed papers releasing you from this facility.”

  Frisco couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “You did what?”

  “You’re out of here,” the doctor said, not unkindly. “As of fourteen hundred hours today.”

  Frisco looked from the doctor to Joe and back. Joe’s eyes were dark with unhappiness, but he didn’t contradict the doctor’s words. “But my physical therapy sessions—”

  “Have ended,” Horowitz said. “You’ve regained sufficient use of your knee and—”

  “Sufficient for what?” Frisco asked, outraged. “For hobbling around? That’s not good enough, dammit! I need to be able to run. I need to be able to—”

  Joe sat up. “Steve told me he’s been watching your chart for weeks,” the commander of Alpha Squad told Frisco quietly. “Apparently, there’s been no improvement—”

  “So I’m in a temporary slump. It happens in this kind of—”

  “Your therapist has expressed concern that you’re overdoing it.” Horowitz interrupted him. “You’re pushing yourself too hard.”

  “Cut the crap.” Frisco’s knuckles were white as he gripped his cane. “My time is up. That’s what this is about, isn’t it?” He looked back at Joe. “Someone upstairs decided that I’ve had my share of the benefits. Someone upstairs wants my bed emptied, so that it can be filled by some other poor son of a bitch who has no real hope of a full recovery, right?”

  “Yeah, they want your bed,” Joe said, nodding. “That’s certainly part of it. There’s limited bed space in every VA facility. You know that.”

  “Your progress has begun to decline,” the doctor added. “I’ve told you this before, but you haven’t seemed to catch on. Pain is a signal from your body to your brain telling you that something is wrong. When your knee hurts, that does not mean push harder. It means back off. Sit down. Give yourself a break. If you keep abusing yourself this way, Lieutenant, you’ll be back in a wheelchair by August.”

  “I’ll never be back in a wheelchair. Sir.” Frisco said the word sir, but his tone and attitude said an entirely different, far-less-flattering word.

  “If you don’t want to spend the rest of your life sitting down, then you better stop punishing a severely injured joint,” Dr. Horowitz snapped. He sighed, taking a deep breath and lowering his voice again. “Look, Alan, I don’t want to fight with you. Why can’t you just be grateful for the fact that you can stand. You can walk. Sure, it’s with a cane, but—”

  “I’m going to run,” Frisco said. “I’m not going to give up until I can run.”

  “You can’t run,” Steven Horowitz said bluntly. “Your knee won’t support your weight—it won’t eve
n properly extend. The best you’ll manage is an awkward hop.”

  “Then I need another operation.”

  “What you need is to get on with your life.”

  “My life requires an ability to run,” Frisco said hotly. “I don’t know too many active-duty SEALs hobbling around with a cane. Do you?”

  Dr. Horowitz shook his head, looking to Joe for help.

  But Joe didn’t say a word.

  “You’ve been in and out of hospitals and PT centers for five years,” the doctor told Frisco. “You’re not a kid in your twenties anymore, Alan. The truth is, the SEALs don’t need you. They’ve got kids coming up from BUD/S training who could run circles around you even if you could run. Do you really think the top brass are going to want some old guy with a bum knee to come back?”

  Frisco carefully kept his face expressionless. “Thanks a lot, man,” he said tightly as he gazed sightlessly out of the window. “I appreciate your vote of confidence.”

  Joe shifted in his seat. “What Steve’s saying is harsh—and not entirely true,” he said. “Us ‘old guys’ in our thirties have experience that the new kids lack, and that usually makes us better SEALs. But he’s right about something—you have been out of the picture for half a decade. You’ve got more to overcome than the physical challenge—as if that weren’t enough. You’ve got to catch up with the technology, relearn changed policies….”

  “Give yourself a break,” Dr. Horowitz urged again.

  Frisco turned his head and looked directly at the doctor. “No,” he said. He looked at Joe, too. “No breaks. Not until I can walk without this cane. Not until I can run a six-minute mile again.”

  The doctor rolled his eyes in exasperation, standing up and starting for the door. “A six-minute mile? Forget it. It’s not going to happen.”