Next To Die

by Marliss Melton

  “You’re not the only one, sweetie,” Helen replied.

  “Yeah, but you’re almost out of the woods,” said Hannah, taking in Helen’s girth. “Good lord. When is this baby coming?”

  “Yesterday. Can we not talk about the due date?”

  “These cookies are fantastic,” said Hannah obligingly.

  A thought harpooned Joe’s consciousness: Penny should be here. An image of her, her belly round with child, flashed in his mind. And with heart-stopping certainty, he realized he wanted that, too, more than anything. He expected the thought to terrify him; instead, it thrilled him like no other rush he’d ever experienced.

  “So, Joe, are you able to communicate with Penny?”

  Startled to hear Penny’s name on the heels of his epiphany, Joe met Hannah’s inquiring gaze. “We’ve sent a few e-mails back and forth,” he replied. And how many times had he wanted to write: Did you say you loved me? The terminal had been so noisy that day. What if he’d misheard her, hearing only what he’d wanted to hear? Her e-mails these last four weeks had been strictly factual, giving him no hope whatsoever that she harbored deep feelings for him.

  “Well, next time you write, tell her that Admiral Jacobs pled guilty, so there’s no need for her to stand witness at his trial.”

  “Excellent,” said Joe. “I know she wasn’t looking forward to that. But I don’t have to write her. She’s coming back tomorrow,” he added. “I’ll tell her in person.”

  Saying it out loud made his heart beat faster and his palms sweat. Having wrapped himself up in his work to forget how much he missed her, he hadn’t grasped that their time apart was almost over.

  What would it be like seeing her face-to-face after all these weeks? He sensed a monumental shift within himself—a reordering of priorities that was gaining momentum, approaching the most important moment of his life.

  He couldn’t believe it: at last, despite all odds, he’d found a love as pure and strong as his parents’. He didn’t have to avoid their expectations any longer, seeking thrills and chills to take his mind off a lifetime of loneliness. No more running. Having Penny in his life was all he needed.

  Solomon McGuire stood up off the floor. With the baby still clamped in one arm, he scooped a handful of nuts off the coffee table. “Sir, do you have a sniper in mind to take Chief McCaffrey’s position?” he asked Joe.

  “Yes, I do,” Joe admitted. He’d given it some good hard thought. “His name is Sean Harlan, goes by Harley. Best chief I’ve ever had the privilege of working with.”

  “Harley,” piped up Chief McCaffrey. “Yeah, I know ’im. Great guy. He really knows his shit—sorry,” he apologized to Sara, who elbowed him.

  “He does,” Joe agreed. The question was would Harley ever want to work for him again? He’d sent him an unofficial inquiry and heard nothing back yet.

  Solomon regarded Joe with his weird, unblinking eyes as he chomped on nuts. “I know Harley,” he volunteered.

  Something in the man’s tone trapped the air in Joe’s lungs. He and Solomon exchanged a long look, and Joe realized with a tingle of alarm that the senior chief knew that Joe was the survivor, that he’d taken Harley’s place that awful, fateful night.

  The man popped the rest of the nuts in his mouth and nodded as if to confirm Joe’s guess. “He’d be honored to work for you,” he added unexpectedly.

  An invisible weight seemed to ease from Joe’s chest, making it easier to breathe. “You think?”

  “A lot of commanders forget what it’s like to be out in the field,” Solomon added. “But you wouldn’t forget that, would you, sir?”

  “No,” Joe agreed, thickly. The senior chief’s confidence summoned his gratitude. “Thank you,” he added, wondering if the other guys knew, as well. Looking around, he found them all regarding him steadily. Not one of them seemed to judge Joe the way he’d judged himself.

  Penny was right. He, more than most leaders, knew how much he asked of his men.

  Thinking of Penny again flooded him with a feeling similar to that of jumping from a plane, only better. He was going to throw caution to the wind tomorrow and risk everything, most especially his heart.

  Epilogue

  Lugging her carry-on bag behind her, Penny followed the soldiers filing out of the C-141 Starlifter. Over the decrescendo of the jet’s dying engines, she discerned the cheers of family and friends welcoming their servicemen andwomen to the Oceana Naval Air Station.

  Penny’s heart beat faster, but she was quick to squash the hope that Joe was among those waiting. She wasn’t even supposed to be on this flight. At the last minute, she’d sought standby seating on the most direct flight home. As far as Joe was concerned, she was still arriving at Norfolk International this evening.

  Stiff-limbed in the wake of a transatlantic flight, Penny was greeted by a sizable, cheering crowd withstanding a wintry morning as they waited for their loved ones to descend to the tarmac. About a hundred people stood behind the metal barricades, waving banners, screaming out names. With her heart in her throat, she watched as husbands rushed into the arms of their wives. Mothers wept. Young fathers snatched up their children and whirled them in the air.

  At the back of the crowd, the words MARRY ME had been painted across a sheet that snapped in the breeze.

  God in heaven, it was good to be home! Despite the bite of the winter air, the sky was impossibly blue, without a cloud in it. A fresh breeze, smelling of the ocean, buffeted Penny’s uniform trench coat, but the sun felt warm on her shoulders.

  As she wended through the crowd on her way to the terminal, the joyful reunions taking place around her brought tears to her eyes. She would need to call a taxi to get home.

  A hand settled warmly on her arm. “Can I help you with that bag, ma’am?”

  “No thanks, I’ve got—” Snatching her gaze upward, she was astonished to find Joe standing there, a crooked smile on his face. He wore civilian clothing—boots and a denim jacket that made him look so virile and handsome that her head spun.

  “Joe,” she cried. “What are you doing here?”

  “Meeting someone,” he said, his green gaze cutting keenly into hers. “Someone special.”

  “Oh.” She checked the impulse to throw herself into his arms. Had he found another woman already?

  “I meant you, Penny,” he added with concern when she just stood there, stricken with doubt.

  “Me?” The tarmac seemed to shift. “But I wasn’t supposed to be on this flight.”

  He jammed his fingers into his pockets. “You weren’t trying to avoid me, were you?” he asked with an uncomfortable glance over her shoulder.

  “No, of course not. How did you find me?” Shock gave way to the sensation that she was floating off the concrete.

  “I woke up a lot of people last night,” he said, his smile reappearing.

  “Really?” She looked down to see if her feet were still on the ground.

  “You, uh, you didn’t read my sign yet, did you?” he inquired.

  “Sign?” The question had her turning to follow his gaze. There were dozens of signs, posters, and pictures bobbing in the hands of those gathered. She read the ones that she could see:

  WELCOME HOME, HARRY!

  DADDY IS MY HERO.

  WE LOVE OUR E-3.

  Behind them all was that enormous banner painted on the sheet. Looking closer, she saw that it was strung between two poles, held aloft by two very buff, stone-faced men with baseball caps pulled down over their eyes. This time she read the sign in its entirety.

  MARRY ME, PENNY?

  The blood drained from Penny’s face. Elation welled up in its stead, leaving her light-headed. “Me?” She couldn’t believe it.

  “I don’t know any other Penny,” said Joe, his smile growing forced, “or even anyone like you,” he added. “I think you said you loved me when you left?” he added self-consciously.

  “Oh, Joe,” she breathed, putting her hands to her face. Out the corner of one eye,
she realized some kid was taking her picture.

  “You didn’t need to leave to make me realize that I love you, Penny,” Joe added gruffly. “I already knew that. What I didn’t know was that I wanted you in my life, every day of my life, for the rest of my life—which is why I made the sign,” he explained, nodding toward the sheet. “Plus, Gabe and Luther owed me a favor.”

  To her amazement, he pulled a velvet-covered box from his jean jacket and sank down on one knee. In front of God and everyone, he grabbed her left hand.

  Penny tottered. A hush stole over those bystanders close enough to take note of the proposal under way. The girl with the camera grinned as she held it to her eyes.

  Joe opened the box and looked up at Penny. A cluster of diamonds glittered in the morning sun, but it was the love blazing in Joe’s eyes that made Penny’s heart stop.

  “Copper Penny,” he said, in a voice thick with emotion, “You’d make me the luckiest man alive, if you’d agree to marry me.”

  “Aaww,” sighed several women in the crowd.

  “Check out the sign he made,” pointed out a man.

  “Come on, ma’am!” shouted a petty officer who’d sat beside her on the plane. “You can’t disappoint him now.”

  “Forever?” Penny whispered.

  “Forever,” Joe confirmed as the nearby camera continued to flash at a fast pace.

  Penny’s knees jittered. Tears flooded her eyes as she leaned forward to ask, “Am I on Candid Camera?”

  “What? No, that’s Mallory, Gabe’s kid. She insisted on coming along.”

  “Oh, well, in that case,” Penny flashed Mallory a grin and then said to Joe, her voice wavering with emotion, “You had me all along, Joe. I’d be honored to marry you.”

  “What’d she say?” asked a bystander. “Did you hear her?”

  “I think she said yes.”

  “Hell, she’d better say yes, or I’ll take him home,” cackled an elderly woman.

  With a click of her camera, Mallory caught on film the world’s most perfect kiss.

  About the Author

  Marliss Melton enjoyed an exotic childhood growing up overseas where entertainment meant riding on elephants in Laos, Sunday visits to museums in Paris, and tracking tigers in northern Thailand. With the world her home, Marliss excelled in language, music, and story-telling. She has taught various aspects of language in high schools and colleges, including the College of William and Mary, her alma mater. She has written eight books since becoming published in 2002, branching into two subgenres of romance, medieval historical and romantic suspense featuring Navy SEALs. Marliss lives in Virginia with her navy veteran husband and their five children.

  Enjoy a sneak peek at

  Marliss Melton’s new novel

  of passion and suspense!

  Please turn this page

  for a preview of

  DON’T LET GO

  available in paperback in

  Spring 2008.

  Prologue

  Five Years Ago

  Despite the heat blowing out of the vents near the old Volkswagen’s floorboards, Chief Petty Officer Solomon McGuire shivered in his woolen peacoat. He’d grown up in Camden, Maine, where the winters were ruthless. The milder weather in Virginia Beach seldom troubled him, but the memories of the mission he’d just come from sat in his chest like a block of ice, freezing him from the inside out.

  Petty Officer Blaine Koontz from Kentucky had been one of those younger guys that made older SEALs feel tired and used up. He was five and half feet of boundless energy. His freckled face and grinning countenance made every deadly objective seem like kids’ play.

  Hooyah! We get to parachute with a low open into enemy territory; run four miles with sixty-pound rucksacks over the dunes; set a perimeter around the oil well guarded by Iraqi National Guards and take it. No problem! We can do it!

  And they had. Only, as they’d scurried across the open sand toward the oil well, a bullet had caught Koontz in the side of the head. It hadn’t killed him right away. He was still alive and rambling when Solomon held him still so the corpsman could tape his fractured skull.

  After sixteen years of being a SEAL, Solomon thought he’d heard and seen everything. He was wrong. The exclamations tumbling out of Koontz’s mouth had raised the hairs on the back of his neck. It seemed that Koontz hadn’t been so happy-go-lucky, after all. The twenty-two-year-old had flirted boldly with the Grim Reaper for a reason: Death couldn’t be a fate any worse than Koontz’s sadistic father.

  Koontz hadn’t died until a NightStalker dropped into hostile airspace, dodging rocket-propelled grenades to pick him up and whisk him away. Although his death had shaken Solomon, time for grief was a luxury he and his men could ill afford, so they had pressed on to finish the mission—a mission that had lasted seventy-two sleepless hours. Not only had the SEALs commandeered the oil well, but they’d had to defend it from counterattack, until the Army’s Seventh Infantry Battalion arrived to relieve them.

  Solomon, known for his relentless pursuit of an objective, was beyond exhausted. The memory of hearing Koontz’s childhood horrors abraded his frayed nerves as he increased his speed through the suburban sprawl under a cold January moon.

  The entrance to his neighborhood came abruptly into view, and he downshifted, turning the corner without touching the brakes. He ached for relief. Relief that would come the instant he scooped his infant son into his arms and gazed down at the innocent contours of his cherubic face. Relief that would be complete once he found release in his wife’s soft arms.

  His son was Silas. And he was Solomon’s joy.

  His wife was Candace. At one time, he’d fancied her the center of his universe, and his every thought had revolved around her. But that was before he came to realize that her beauty was as shallow as her conscience. She was the mother of his son, however. It had been his choice to marry her, and he stood stubbornly by his decision.

  His brick two-story home stood at the end of a cul-de-sac. Every month, the mortgage sucked away half of his paycheck, but Candace had wanted it, so he’d bought it for her. The windows were dark at this late hour, his little family sleeping. Solomon cut the engine and glided into the driveway.

  Dragging his rucksack behind him, he got out and followed the granite walkway that cut across the frost-covered lawn. With stiff fingers, he unlocked his front door, his heart beating faster to know that one-year-old Silas was upstairs, tucked into his crib. He could almost feel the warmth of the boy’s sturdy little frame against his chest, smell his sweet, baby scent.

  As he pushed his way inside, the warmth he anticipated failed to greet him. The air inside was cold and undisturbed, the silence tomblike, the smells faded.

  With a stab of fear, Solomon flicked the light switch. Glaring light confirmed what his other senses were telling him. “Candace!” His anxious voice echoed off the empty walls and high ceilings. “No!” he breathed, dropping his rucksack.

  He took the stairs three at a time, raced down the wide hall, and threw open the door to the nursery. The relentless moon displayed a room as empty as the rest of the house. There wasn’t any need to turn on the lights. The bear-on-the-rocking-chair wallpaper border was all that remained.

  “Oh, God,” he groaned, lurching back into the hallway and stalking to the master bedroom. He barreled through the double doors and stared. Gone. Everything was gone.

  With a shiver, he pivoted, going to back to the nursery. “Silas,” he moaned, feeling as if his very bowels had been ripped from him. He fell onto his knees where the baby’s crib had stood, bowed his face into his hands, and wept.

  Chapter One

  Las Amazonas, Venezuela

  The double doors of the chapel at La Misión de la Paz slammed open, startling the occupants within. The interloper raced out of the hazy sunlight, his brown limbs coated in sweat, breath coming in gasps that punctuated his announcement. “Guerillas se acercan. Hay por lo menos cincuenta y llevan armas!”

 
Guerillas are coming. There are at least fifty of them and they’re carrying weapons. Translating the message, Jordan Bliss straightened from the pupil she was instructing and looked at Father Benedict to gauge his response.

  The priest’s benign countenance paled with consternation. “You should have left two weeks ago,” he said to her, catching her eye. “Now you’ll have to hide with us.”

  “My choice, Father,” she gently reminded him, her gaze sliding toward the reason for her stay, four-year-old Miguel, who sat clutching his slate. She could not have left him, regardless of the political turmoil in Venezuela and the growing threat toward Americans.

  “Come,” urged Father Benedict, who was British and only slightly less at risk. “Bring the children. We’ll all hide in the wine cellar. Pedro, run and fetch Sister Madeline,” he added in Spanish. “Hurry.”

  Jordan gathered the children, instructing them to leave their slates beneath the pews. She scooped Miguel into her arms. Thin as a rail, he scarcely weighed her down, especially when he coiled his limbs around her.

  “This way,” indicated the priest, hurrying toward a nave that was separated from the sanctuary by a curtain. Once within, he kicked aside the worn rug that covered the stone floor. A wooden hatch was nestled in the flagging, providing access to the cellar below. He pulled it open, exposing wooden steps that disappeared into darkness and releasing a musty smell.

  Jordan’s fear of closed spaces made her balk. The children bunched up behind her, instinctively silent.

  “Take these candles,” the priest instructed, thrusting several wax pillars at her. “Matches,” he added. She stuck them into the deep pockets of her cargo shorts. Lifting a cloth off a basket, he withdrew a loaf of bread meant for services that night. “We’ll need this.”

  God knew how long they would be down there. Or whether the guerillas headed in their direction would avidly hunt them down or simply move on.

  “Go ahead,” said the priest, with a nod at the steps.