“So what were you reading?” she asked again. “Some treatise on doom and gloom? A horror story where everyone dies at the hand of the brutal killer?”
“Actually,” he said, “I was reading a book that, um, Tony recommended. An autobiography by a guy whose parents sent him to one of those, um, you know, ex-gay ministries?”
He’d surprised her. Completely.
“I’m not gay,” he said, which was stupid, because if she didn’t know that by now …
“I know, I just …” She started over. “I didn’t know if you knew that Tony was. Gay. Don’t ask, don’t tell … ?”
“That bullshit doesn’t work,” Dan said.
Jenn laughed. “Wow, I had no idea you were so advanced in your thinking.”
“Should I be insulted?” he asked.
“Yes, actually.” She surprised him by agreeing. “That was insulting, wasn’t it? I’m sorry.”
He’d pulled her back onto the bed with him and kissed her. “I’ll let you make it up to me.”
She smiled into his eyes. “I bet you will. But okay. Let me mentally rearrange what I thought I knew about Dan Gillman. He’s a member of Tony Vlachic’s gay book club—you know, I didn’t even get the impression that you were friends with him, let alone—”
“I’m not,” Dan admitted. “Not really. Friends with him. And yeah, okay, before I knew about Tony, I was in the don’t ask, don’t tell, don’t want to know school, so then when I did know, it was … Weird. I had no idea, and suddenly … But he’s a good teammate. He always has been, and like Lopez says, nothing’s changed. He’s still a SEAL. There’s nothing that kid can’t do, and do well—except maybe have sex with my sister, the way that that motherfucker Zanella did.”
Jenn laughed at that. But the words she spoke were serious. “Is that really what’s behind the animosity between you and Izzy? You know, I thought you were going to kill him last night.”
“I don’t know when it started,” Dan said. “But it was definitely a problem even before he slept with Eden. We’ve always clashed. It’s a personality thing. I think he’s an asshole, and he doesn’t think he’s an asshole so …”
She was watching him, as if she expected him to continue, so he did.
“It was bad enough,” he said, “that he slept with her. But he let me think that he knocked her up, and then he went and freaking married her, like, what the hell … ? Why would he do that? She doesn’t even know who the baby’s father was. She’s always been a mess.”
“Maybe he fell in love with her,” Jenn suggested. “People fall in love and do crazy things. And I’m not just talking about the people”—she motioned toward her bookshelves—“in romance novels.”
“I think he did it to piss me off,” Dan said, even though the words sounded ridiculous, even to his own ears.
“That seems drastic,” Jenn said mildly. “But I understand why it’s upsetting to you. This man you don’t like marries your sister, and suddenly, he’s part of your family—with a fifty-percent chance of him being in your life forever. Except, she’s already left him. And last night, while you’re reading, he can’t sleep, he comes out of the conference room, sees that you’re still up, and says …” She looked at him expectantly.
But Dan shook his head. “I got nothing,” he said. “It’s blank. I remember reading this scene where the author gets thrown into solitary, for, like, a whole week, and then I remember Zanella putting me in a headlock.”
And then he remembered Jenn staring at him, like he was some kind of loser freak.
“What happened to the book?” she asked.
And wasn’t that a good question? “I don’t know,” he said. He got out of bed and dug through his bag, but it wasn’t in there. “I must’ve left it at the hotel.”
“So why are you reading that book?” Jenn asked.
“My brother,” he said. “Half brother, really. Ben. He’s, like, thirteen. And he’s always been … Well. He’s just Ben, you know? Only, about a month ago, I get this e-mail from my mother saying can I send more money because there’s this special camp that my dick of a stepfather wants to send Ben to this summer.”
“Oh, no,” Jenn said.
“Oh, yeah,” Dan told her. “She tells me that Ben’s gone goth, you know, black fingernail polish?”
“That doesn’t mean he’s gay.”
“But if he is…” Dan shook his head again. “I’m reading this bullshit about what they do to kids in these places and … So I send her an e-mail to tell her no, I won’t give her the money to do that, but she e-mails me back, going that’s okay, he got a scholarship from the church. Jesus Christ.”
“What are you going to do?” Jenn asked, propping her head up on one hand, supported by her elbow.
“I don’t know,” he admitted, unable to keep himself from touching her, even just to push her hair back behind her ear with one finger. She had nice ears—just the right size, although she thought they were too big. “I’ve been trying to call my sister, Sandy, but she’s not answering her phone, which isn’t a good sign.”
She winced. “I’m sorry,” she said.
“And yeah, I know, I said she was doing better, and she was,” Dan admitted. “Until she dropped off the map again, which is a classic signal that the shit’s about to hit the fan. How many times has it happened now? Fifteen? Twenty? And I still gloss it over. I still, you know, pretend there’re flowers growing, when all there is is the same old bullshit.”
He rolled onto his back to stare at the ceiling. He had to look away from the sympathy in her eyes.
Sympathy—and understanding. She knew, exactly, what he was talking about. And maybe that was why he kept talking.
“I think I kind of snapped,” he said, “when I saw Eden starting down the same screwed-up path. She was fourteen, and she was getting drunk. And then she got drunk and slept with this total asshole.” He looked at Jenn. “Not Zanella, some earlier asshole. She definitely gravitates toward the same type of loser, though, that’s for sure. But I came home for some holiday—I was in the Navy at that point—and all this scumbag could talk about was how he took her cherry.” He turned to look at Jenn. “She was fourteen.”
“That must’ve been hard for her,” she said. “To trust someone that much and then have him betray her that way.”
Dan looked at her. “She didn’t give a shit. She was walking around in these clothes that made her look like she was selling it on the street, with this hardcore fuck you attitude—”
“If you found it embarrassing and awful, imagine how she felt, regardless of whatever facade she was hiding behind,” Jenn continued. “You were only there for a few days. She had to live there.”
“It felt like Sandy, all over again,” Dan said. “I couldn’t survive that a second time. I don’t think I came home for another two years. Jesus, maybe longer. Not until after Katrina, which was a total nightmare. I still don’t know what happened to Eden in the Super Dome, and it makes me sick … Why am I telling you this? You don’t want to hear this.”
“When I was six,” Jenn told him, “my father punched a hole in the wall. He was angry about something relatively small, like the cable went out during an electrical storm, and he couldn’t watch the football game on TV. I was in bed, and I heard all the noise, and I came out to find him and my mother sitting on the floor beneath this big, gaping hole, just crying, and that scared me more than it did when he yelled, you know?”
Dan closed his eyes. “Jesus, did we have the same father, or what?”
She laughed. “Okay, that’s an icky thought.”
“No,” he said. “I didn’t mean … Ew. I meant, you know, cast from the same mold.”
“Phew, that’s better,” she said, smiling down at him. “I thought you were going to sister me. Which would’ve been one for the record books, let me tell you …”
He tugged her close and kissed her, but let her go to ask, “How can you tell me that about your father, and still smile and make jokes
like that? Why aren’t you crying, LeMay?”
“It happened a long time ago,” she told him, leaning in to kiss him again. Her lips were so soft. “I’ve worked hard to put it behind me. When’s the last time you went to a meeting, Gillman?”
“Al-Anon?” he said, even though he knew exactly what she meant by meeting. Al-Anon was a support group for family members of alcoholics. “It’s been awhile.” He’d started going post-Katrina, when Sandy had finally gone into rehab. It had helped to hear stories that were so like his own, coming from total strangers.
But he’d never stood up and told his own story. And then he’d gone overseas again and … He hadn’t gone back.
“Maybe you should think about going again.” Jenn must’ve seen the trepidation in his eyes, because she added, “Or not. We could have our own meetings, right here. Naked meetings. Close with the serenity prayer, and maybe a little extra bonus serenity-inducing activity. …”
“Like yoga?” Dan teased. “Or maybe basket weaving. Isn’t basket weaving supposed to be soothing?”
“I love it when you smile and mean it,” Jenn told him.
Love. Jesus. Okay, keep it light. “Do I really ever smile and not mean it?” he asked.
“You do,” she said. “At least I think you do.” She kissed him again and reached over and closed her laptop with her foot. “What do you say we go get breakfast? There’s this diner over near the hotel that makes the best pancakes. If you want, we could stop and pick up your book. Since I’ve still got some work to do today … That way, you won’t be sitting around. Or reading one of my not-doom-and-gloomy-enough-for-you romance novels.”
“Yeah,” he said, as she began packing up her computer, “because I already know how they end. And they lived happily ever after. Although the book I’m reading has a happy ending, too. The author tries to kill himself.”
Jenn looked at him. “Oh, big yay … ?”
Danny laughed. “No, it was good because he ended up in the psych ward of a hospital where the doctors actually followed scientific guidelines. He started to learn that it was okay to be, you know, gay.” He sighed. Jesus. “I have no idea what I’m going to do about Ben.”
Jenn handed him his pants. “We’ll figure something out.”
The autopsy reports on Maggie Thorndyke and the homeless man known as Winston came in via e-mail, about an hour after Alyssa and Jules left the hotel.
They’d gone to Maria’s office, to check out a framed letter that the assemblywoman said was hanging on the wall. It was from her brother, Frank, and it was—she believed—all anyone would need to fake his handwriting. Provided they had time and patience, of course.
The skills of a master forger wouldn’t hurt, either.
Still, Sam remembered seeing it there, in a simple metal frame. Maria had caught him reading it and had told him that that letter was the reason she’d begun her political career.
So Alyssa and Jules had gone out to look at it, while Sam lounged in bed until he couldn’t stand it anymore.
He’d just gotten dressed and was about to emerge into the suite’s living room to see how on earth Robin was keeping Ash so damn quiet, when he saw the e-mail alert on Alyssa’s laptop.
He downloaded the various reports, carrying her computer out to the more comfortable couch. It wasn’t exactly breakfast reading, but he plowed through it all, checking first to see what exactly, besides blood, old Winston had had flowing through his veins before he died.
Valium was mixed in with an outrageously high amount of alcohol. And yeah, the docs all agreed with Sam that no way had this man slit his own wrists.
Identification of the homeless man was as of yet incomplete. His teeth were in such poor condition—there were several dense pages on them, focusing on vitamin deficiencies and dental hygiene, comma, lack thereof—so they couldn’t consider the results from a dental match to be conclusive. Instead, they were waiting on a DNA test.
With that said, it was highly likely that the dead man would be identified as John Winston Jones, born 1945 in Harlem, served in Vietnam from 1967 to 1970, winner of a whole fuckload of medals, honors, and distinctions—the list went on and on and on. The man was an American hero. No way should he have been living in the street, cold and alone, with his teeth rotting out of his head.
His teeth …
The hair stood up on the back of Sam’s neck, and he scrolled back a few pages to the info that he’d barely skimmed.
About the man’s teeth …
And there it was.
The victim had recently lost a tooth, quite possibly earlier in the day or the evening that he was killed, or even shortly before he died.
The medical examiner was aware that both police and hospital reports noted that he’d fallen, suffering a blow to his head. It was entirely possible he’d lost the tooth at that time.
But Sam flipped to the report on Maggie Thorndyke, using the computer search function, typing in teeth.
Victim’s mouth was badly damaged, as if struck by a blunt object, many of her front teeth broken or missing, one of her molars curiously extracted …
“Holy fuck.”
“Uh-oh,” Robin said. “Daddy said a bad word. Ning-a-nang, Daddy.”
Sam looked up to see Ash, holding tightly to Robin’s hands as they walked toward him, all smiles and drool and sheer innocent pleasure.
Not so much drool from Robin, though.
“Ready to blow Daddy’s mind, punkin?” Robin asked the little boy. “Daddy needs to be ready, too. Laptop to the side please, so we can demonstrate what we’ve been hard at work on all morning. We were going to master crawling, but Ash had something else in mind.”
Sam shook his head, but then nearly tossed the computer onto the couch, because here came Ashton, on his own steam, taking two or three drunken, staggering solo steps before starting to accelerate into a nosedive.
But Sam was there to catch him, lifting him up before he fell. If his side hurt, he didn’t feel it.
“That was amazing,” he told his son, who was giving himself a round of applause, which was pretty damn funny. “I gotta call your mama.”
But he wasn’t quite sure what to tell her first—that their baby boy was walking, or that Sam was more convinced than ever that his instincts had been right.
Alyssa was the real target.
And if he was right? The man who’d killed both Maggie and Winston was just getting warmed up.
Izzy went into Maria’s kitchen, looking for coffee.
He’d volunteered for the first watch last night, sitting out in the hall as Lopez and Vlachic crashed in Maria’s second bedroom.
It was crazy. He knew he was being crazy. Just because the woman had cried on his shoulder didn’t mean she was going to try to jump him.
Except he couldn’t shake the feeling that she was going to try to jump him.
Maria Bonavita was, hands down, one of the ten most beautiful women he’d ever seen in his life—and that included women he’d seen in movies and on TV. She had a lot going on behind her eyes, which—okay, yes—he found enormously attractive.
But she wasn’t Eden.
The coffeepot was nearly empty, and he poured what was left into his mug. The swallow and a half provided just enough energy for him to search for another filter and the ground coffee, and he stood there, leaning against the counter as the new pot slowly brewed.
“Good morning.”
Izzy jumped, which made Maria laugh and add, “Sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you.”
“No,” he said, “I was just… Um …”
She was wearing jeans today, and a long-sleeved T-shirt that hugged her curves, and okay, yes, the woman was stacked. She was also smiling, and even an idiot could tell she was not only used to rendering men speechless, but that she liked doing it—and particularly so to him.
And maybe that was his giant ego talking—the same Jupiter-sized beast that had pushed him out into the hall last night to avoid any awkward invitations.
As if.
“I thought we were moving back to the hotel this morning,” Maria said, as she reached up to get a mug from the cabinet, as he tried not to look at her ass.
“Yeah,” he said, suddenly aware that he’d crawled in here straight from bed. His hair was probably sticking up in odd clumps, like Wolverine having a bad hair day. Once it got that way, only a shower would tame it so there was no use attempting to flatten it down. He’d just look like a flipping moron if he tried. “No. We, um, got a call from Lt. Starrett—Sam. He asked us to hold up. He also asked Tony to go over there. Lopez is still here, though. And we’ve got a team of FBI agents standing guard in the hall. So …”
Thank God we’re not alone, he refrained from screaming at her.
She’d taken a position directly opposite him, on the other side of that coffeepot. Like him, she was watching it and waiting for it to fill. But she glanced up. “What’s going on?”
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “Sam was in commanding officer mode, so … He said to stay put, not let anyone in. When you’re in the Navy, when your CO gives an order, you say Sir, yes, Sir! Not so much with the What up, dawg?”
She smiled. “My father and both brothers were military. Not Navy, though. Two Marines, one Army infantry. But it’s pretty much the same. My dad was a sergeant and my mother used to get in his face—I am not one of your grunts, Victor Bonavita, I am your wife. …
“The flip side,” Izzy said, “is that those of us who’re enlisted—the grunts? We follow orders really well. Honey, will you take out the trash? Ma’am, yes, Ma’am!”
Her smile broadened. “Why do I get the feeling that following orders isn’t exactly instinctive for you?”
“Actually, it is,” he said. “I was the youngest in a big family. My survival pretty much depended on my doing what I was told. Not that I always did it.”
“You never thought about being an officer?” she asked. “I was talking to Jay Lopez, and he said there was a program in which a qualified enlisted man could make the jump to officer.”
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