Everyday, Average Jones

by Suzanne Brockmann

  Jones was barefoot at this very moment. Barefoot and somewhere on that air base with God only knows how many terrorists—

  "Where are you from, Miss Melody Evans?" Harvard's rich voice interrupted her grim thoughts.

  "Massachusetts," she told him.

  "Oh yeah? Me, too. Where exactly?"

  "Appleton. It's west of Boston. West and a little north."

  "I grew up in Hingham," Harvard told her. "South shore. My family's still there." He smiled. "Actually, there's not much of my family left. Everyone's gone off to college, with the exception of my littlest sister. And even she heads out this September."

  "I don't even know your real name," Melody admitted.

  "Becker," he told her. "Senior Chief Daryl Becker."

  "Did you really go to Harvard?"

  He nodded. "Yes, I did. How about you? Where'd you go to school?"

  Melody shook her head. "This isn't working. I know you're trying to distract me, but I'm sorry, it's just not working."

  Harvard's brown eyes were sympathetic. "You want me to be quiet?"

  "I want Jones to come back."

  Silence. It surrounded her, suffocated her, made her want to jump out of her skin.

  "Please don't stop talking," she finally blurted.

  "First time I worked with the junior Harlan Jones was during a hostage rescue," Harvard told her, "back, oh, I don't know, about six years ago."

  Melody nearly choked. "You've been doing this sort of thing for six years?"

  "More than that."

  She gazed into his eyes searchingly, looking for an explanation. Why? "Risking your life for a living this way is not normal."

  Harvard laughed. "Well, none of us ever claimed to be that."

  "Are you married?" she asked. "How does your wife stand it?"

  "I'm not," he told her. "But some of the guys are. Joe Cat is. And Blue McCoy."

  "They're somewhere out in the countryside tonight, hiding from the terrorists, the way we are," she realized. "Their wives must love that."

  "Their wives don't know where they are."

  Melody snorted. "Even better."

  "It takes a strong man to become a SEAL," Harvard told her quietly. "And it takes an even stronger woman to love that man."

  Love. Who said anything about love?

  "Does SEAL stand for something, or is it just supposed to be cute?" she asked, trying to get the subject back to safer ground.

  "It stands for Sea, Air and Land. We learn to operate effectively in all of those environments." He laughed. "Cute's not a word that comes to mind when I think about the SEAL units."

  "Sea, air and land," she repeated. "It sounds kind of like the military equivalent of a triathlon."

  Harvard's head went up and he held out a hand, motioning for her to be silent.

  In a matter of an instant, he had changed from a man casually sitting in the basement entrance of a burned-out building to a warrior, every cell in his body on alert, every muscle tensed to fight. He held his gun aimed at the door, raising it slightly as the door was pushed open and...

  It was Jones.

  Melody forced herself not to move toward him. She forced herself to sit precisely where she was, forced herself not to say a word. But she couldn't keep her relief from showing in her eyes.

  "Let's move," he said to Harvard.

  There was blood on his robe—even Harvard noticed it. "Are you all right?" he asked.

  Jones nodded dismissively. "I'm fine. Let's do it. Let's get the hell out of here."

  Melody didn't want to think about whose blood that was on his robe. She didn't want to think about what he'd been through, what he'd had to do tonight to guarantee her safety.

  There was blood on his bare feet, too.

  "Are we going to do this by stealth or by force?" Harvard asked.

  "By stealth," Jones answered. His smile was long gone. "Unless they see us. Then we'll use force. And we'll send 'em straight to hell."

  He looked directly at her, and in the moonlight his eyes looked tired and old. "Come on, Melody. I want to take you home."

  They were halfway to the plane before they were spotted.

  Cowboy knew it was really only a question of when—not if—they were seen. It had to happen sooner or later. There was no way they could take a plane from an airfield without someone noticing.

  He'd just hoped they wouldn't be noticed until they were taxiing down the runway.

  But nothing else had gone right tonight, starting with his surprising four terrorists in the hangar. He'd had some luck, though—only one of them had had an automatic weapon, and it had jammed. If it hadn't, he wouldn't be running toward the plane now. He wouldn't be doing much of anything. Instead, he was racing across the sun-cracked concrete. He was both pulling Melody Evans along and trying to shield her with his body from the bullets he knew were sure to accompany the distant cries to halt.

  He'd dispatched the four men in the hangar efficiently and silently. As a SEAL, he was good at many things, and taking out the enemy was something he never shied from. But he didn't like it. He'd never liked it.

  "You want to clue me in as to where we're going?" Harvard shouted.

  "Twelve o'clock," Cowboy responded. And then there it was—a tiny Cessna, a mere mosquito compared to the bigger planes on the field.

  Harvard's voice went up an octave. "Junior, what the hell...? I thought you were going to swipe us the biggest, meanest, fastest-"

  "Did you want to take the 727?" Cowboy asked as he grabbed for the handle of the door, swung it open and gave Melody a boost inside. "It was this or the 727, and I sure as hell didn't want to be a sitting duck out on the runway, waiting for those jet engines to warm up."

  He'd run the checklist when he'd been out here earlier, so he merely pulled the blocks and started the engine. "This way, I figured we'd be a smaller target in the air, too, in case the tangos want to give their antiaircraft toys a test run."

  But Harvard wasn't listening. He was standing, legs spread, feet braced against the ground, firing his AK-47 in a sweeping pattern, keeping the wolves at bay.

  "Do you know how to fly a plane?" Melody shouted over the din.

  "Between me and H., there's nothing we can't pilot." Cowboy reached back behind him, pushing her head down as a bullet broke the back window. "Stay down!"

  He gunned the engine, using the flaps to swing the plane in a tight, quick circle so that the passenger door was within Harvard's grasp.

  He took off before H. even had the door fully open, let alone had climbed in. They headed down toward the edge of the field at a speed much too fast to make the necessary U-turn to get onto the main runway.

  "I assume you've got another plan in mind," Harvard said, fastening his seat belt. He was a stickler for things like personal safety. It seemed almost absurd. Forty men were shooting at them, and H. was making sure his seat belt was on correctly.

  "We're not using the runway," Cowboy shouted, pushing the engine harder, faster. "We're going to take off...right...now!"

  He pulled back the stick and the engine screamed as they climbed at an impossibly steep angle to avoid hitting the rooftops of nearby buildings.

  Cowboy heard Harvard shout, and then, by God, they were up. They were in the air.

  He couldn't contain his own whoops of excitement and success. "Melody, honey, I told you we were going to get you home!"

  Melody cautiously raised her head. "Can I sit up now?"

  "No, it's not over yet." Harvard was much too grim as he looked over his shoulder, back at the rapidly disappearing airfield. "They're going to send someone after us—try to force us down."

  "No, they're not," Cowboy said, turning to grin at him. God, for the first time in hours, he could smile again.

  They were flying without lights, heading due east. This godforsaken country was so tiny that at this rate of speed, with the wind behind them, they'd be in friendly airspace in a matter of minutes. It was true they'd covered a great deal of the
distance last night. But this was by far the easiest way of crossing the border.

  "Aren't we flying awfully low?" Melody asked.

  "We're underneath their radar," Cowboy told her. "As soon as we're across the border, I'll bring 'er up to a higher altitude."

  Harvard was still watching their six, waiting for another plane to appear behind them. "I don't know how you can be so convinced they're not going to follow, Jones."

  "I am convinced," Cowboy told him. "What do you think took me so long earlier tonight? I didn't stop for a sandwich in the food commissary, that's for damn sure."

  Harvard's eyes narrowed. "Did you...?"

  "I did."

  Harvard started to laugh.

  "What?" Melody asked. "What did you do?"

  "How many were there?" Harvard asked.

  Cowboy grinned. "About a dozen. Including the 727."

  Melody turned to Harvard. "What did he do?"

  He swung around in his seat to face her. "Junior here disabled every other plane on that field. Including the 727. There are a whole bunch of grounded tangos down there right now, hopping mad."

  Cowboy glanced back into the shadows, hoping to see her smile. But as far as he could tell, her expression was serious, her eyes subdued.

  "We are crossing the border," Harvard announced. "Boys and girls, it looks as if we are nearly home!"

  Ensign Harlan Cowboy Junior Kid Jones landed the little airplane much more smoothly and easily than he'd taken off.

  Melody could see the array of ambulances and Red Cross trucks zooming out across the runways to meet them in the early dawn light. Within moments, they would taxi to a stop and climb out of the plane.

  She wanted four tall glasses of water, no ice, lined up in front of her so that she could drink her fill without stopping. She wanted a shower in a hotel with room service. She wanted the fresh linens and soft pillows of a king-size bed. She wanted clean clothes and a hairdresser to make some sense out of the ragged near scalping she'd given herself.

  But before she had any of that, she wanted to hold Harlan Jones in her arms. She wanted to hold him tightly, to thank him with the silence of her embrace for all that he had done for her.

  He'd done so much for her. He'd given her so much. His kindness. His comforting arms. His morale-bolstering smiles. His encouraging words. His sandals.

  And oh yeah. He'd killed for her, to keep her safe, to deliver her to freedom.

  She'd seen the blood on his robe, seen the look in his eyes, on his face. He'd run into trouble out alone on the air base and he'd been forced to take enemy lives. And the key word there was not enemy. It was lives.

  Melody was long familiar with the expression "All's fair in love and war." And this was a war. The legal government had been overthrown and the country had been invaded by terrorist forces. They'd threatened American lives. She knew full well that it was a clear-cut case of "them" or "us."

  What shook her up the most was that this was what Cowboy Jones did. This was what he did, day in, day out. He'd done it for the past six years and he'd continue to do it until he retired. Or was killed.

  Melody thought about that blood on Jones's robe, thought about the fact that it just as easily could have been his own blood.

  All was fair in love and war.

  But what were the rules if you were unlucky enough to fall in love with a warrior?

  Jones cut the engine, then pushed the door open with his bare feet. But instead of climbing out, he turned around to face Melody, giving her his hand for support as she moved up through the cramped cabin and toward the door.

  He slid down out of the plane, then looked up at her.

  He'd taken off his blood-streaked robe, but he still wore that black vest with its array of velcroed pockets. It hung open over a black T-shirt that only barely disguised his sweat and grime. His face was streaked with dirt and dust, his hair matted against his head. There was shoe polish underneath his chin and on his neck-from where she'd burrowed against him, stealing strength and comfort from his arms.

  But despite his fatigue, his eyes were as green as ever. He smiled at her. "Do I look as...ready for a bath as you do?"

  She had to smile. "Tactfully put. Yes, you certainly do. And as for me—I think I'm more than ready to be a blonde again and wash this stuff out of my hair."

  "But before you do, maybe I could send my shoes over to your hotel room for a touch-up...?"

  Melody laughed. Until she looked down at his feet. They were still bare. They looked red and sore.

  "You and Harvard saved my life," she whispered, her smile fading.

  "I don't know about H.," Jones told her, gazing up into her eyes, "but as far as I'm concerned, Miss Evans, it was purely my pleasure."

  Melody had to look away. His eyes were hypnotizing. If she didn't look away, she'd do something stupid like leap into his arms and kiss him. She glanced out at the line of cars approaching them. Was it possible that Jones had cut the engine and stopped the plane so far away from the terminal in order to let them have these few moments of privacy?

  He reached for her, taking her hands to help her down from the plane.

  "What's going to happen next?" she asked.

  He pulled just a little too hard, and she fell forward, directly into his arms. He held her close, pressing her against his wide chest, and she held him just as tightly, encircling his waist with her arms and holding on as if she weren't ever going to let go. His arms engulfed her, and she could feel him rest his cheek against the top of her head.

  "Jones, will I see you again?" she asked. She needed to know. "Or will they take you away to be debriefed and then send you back to wherever it was you came from?"

  She lifted her head to look up at him. The trucks were skidding to a stop. She was going to have to get into one of those trucks, and they would take her someplace, away from Harlan Jones, maybe forever....

  Her heart was pounding so hard she could barely hear herself think. She could feel his heart, too, beating at an accelerated rate.

  "I'll tell you what's going to happen," he said, gazing into her eyes unsmilingly. "Second thing that's going to happen is that they're going to put you in one ambulance and me and H. in another. They'll take us to the hospital, make sure we're all tight Then we'll go into a short debriefing—probably separately. After that's done, you'll be taken to whatever hotel they're keeping the top brass in these days, and I'll go into a more detailed debriefing. After we both get cleaned up, I'll meet you back at the hotel for dinner—how's that sound?"

  Melody nodded. That sounded very good.

  "But the first thing that's going to happen," he told her, his mouth curving up into that now familiar smile, "is this."

  He lowered his head and kissed her.

  It was an amazing kiss, a powerful kiss, a no-holds-barred kind of kiss. It amplified all of the heat she'd seen in Harlan Jones's bedroom eyes over the past forty-eight hours. God, had it only been forty-eight hours? She felt as if she'd known this man for at least a lifetime. She felt, too, as if she'd wanted him for every single second of that time.

  He kissed her even harder, deeper, sweeping his tongue into her mouth. It was a kiss that was filled with a promise of ecstasy, of lovemaking the likes of which she'd never known. The entire earth dropped out from under her feet, and she clung to him, giddy and dizzy and happier than she'd ever been in her entire life, returning his kisses with equal abandon. He wanted her. This incredible man honestly, truly wanted her.

  His lips were warm, his mouth almost hot. He tasted sweet, like one of those energy bars he'd shared with her. Melody realized that she was laughing, and when she pulled back to look at him, he was smiling, too.

  And then, just as he'd said, she was tugged gently away from him toward one of the ambulances as he was led toward another.

  He kept watching her, though, and she held his gaze right up until the moment that she was helped into the back of the emergency vehicle. But before she went in, she glanced at him one las
t time. He was still watching her, still smiling. And he mouthed a single word. "Tonight."

  Melody couldn't wait.

  Chapter 3

  Seven months later

  Melody couldn't wait.

  She had to get home, and she had to get home now.

  She looked both ways, then ran the red light at the intersection of Route 119 and Hollow Road. But even then, she knew she wasn't going to make that last mile and a half up Potter's Field Road.

  Melody pulled over to the side and lost her lunch on the shoulder of the road, about half a mile south of the Webers' mailbox.

  This wasn't supposed to be happening anymore. She was supposed to be done with this part of it. The next few months were supposed to be filled with glowing skin and a renewed sense of peace, and yeah, okay, maybe an occasional backache or twinge of a sciatic nerve.

  The morning sickness was supposed to have stopped four months ago. Morning sickness. Hah! She didn't have morning sickness—she had every-single-moment-of-the-day sickness.

  She pulled herself back into her car and, after only stalling twice, slowly drove the rest of the way home. When she got there, she almost didn't pull into the driveway. She almost turned around and headed back toward town.

  There was a Glenzen Bros, truck parked out in front of the house. And Harry Glenzen—one of the original Glenzen brothers' great-great-grandsons—was there with Barney Kingman. Together the two men were affixing a large piece of plywood to the dining-room window. Or rather to the frame of what used to be the dining-room window.

  Melody had to push her seat all the way back to manoeuvre her girth out from behind the steering wheel.

  From inside the house, she could hear the unmistakable roar of the vacuum cleaner. Andy Marshall, she thought. Had to be. Brittany was going to be mad as a hornet.

  "Hiya, Mel," Harry called cheerfully. "How about this heat wave we're having, huh? We've got a real Indian summer this year. If it keeps up, the kids'll be able to go trick-or-treating without their jackets on."

  "Hey, Harry." Melody tried not to sound unenthusiastic, but this heat was killing her. She'd suffered all the way through July and August and the first part of September. But it was October now, and October in New England was supposed to be filled with crisp autumn days. There was nothing about today that could be called even remotely crisp.