Time to Run

by Marliss Melton

PO2 Teddy Brewbaker, who was designated scout, sat out on the hotel balcony, keeping one eye on the drug lord’s hideout while dozing in the oppressive heat, subject to car pollution and tantalizing aromas of exotic food. When Prajuk stepped out of his building alone, Teddy fell out of the chair he was sitting in. “Chief!” he exclaimed. And Chase, who had just stepped inside to consume a sandwich delivered by room service, snatched up his Remington to join the black man on the balcony.

  Prajuk had obviously given his bodyguards the slip, because he was striking out on his own, thinking that a pair of sunglasses and a baseball cap would keep him from being recognized. Chase raised his long-range rifle to target the man, but the street below was crammed with people. He couldn’t risk killing a civilian.

  “Let’s get him,” he said, tossing the rifle aside. He wore his SIG in a holster under his flowered shirt and a camera around his neck. He and Teddy sprinted down the emergency exit and out of the hotel, hoping to catch their quarry.

  Pursuing a hostile in broad daylight wasn’t their first choice, but coming on the heels of the last messy encounter, it fit the mold.

  Not fifty meters out of the building Chase lost Teddy in the crowd—fuck! But he could still see Prajuk’s orange baseball cap over the heads of the shorter, Asian population. He decided to pursue him, alone. As long as Prajuk remained alive, the mission was at a standstill.

  Chase was dressed as a tourist, right down to his Bermuda shorts and sandals. Even if Prajuk caught sight of him, he wouldn’t guess that he was being pursued by an assassin.

  Chase followed the man into a crooked alleyway, taking precautions to slow his pursuit. He picked his way around the stagnant puddles, drying in the aftermath of the rainy season. Lifting the camera to his eyes, he pretended to photograph the harsher aspects of reality while keeping at a healthy distance from his target.

  He hoped to God this wasn’t a trap. The heroin king couldn’t know that Navy SEALs were working with the CIA to cripple his operation, could he? He turned his camera on a forlorn child sitting on an overturned banana crate. Out of the corner of his eye, he watched Prajuk push through a door into the rear entrance of a cinder-block building. Chase tossed the boy a coin and pursued the drug lord.

  He found himself in a deserted stairwell. Sounds overhead had him slipping the SIG out from under his shirt. As he ascended the stairs on rubber soles, a cold sweat cooled a spot between his shoulder blades. He never used to perspire.

  But then again, he’d never missed a target until his last kill. It’d taken him three shots to take down the Nigerian arms dealer when the SEALs surprised his yacht at sea.

  At the top of the steps, he slipped through a door that gave access to a dimly lit corridor. It was lined with doors draped with beaded curtains. Those and the humid air, perfumed with incense, told him that he’d entered one of Bangkok’s infamous massage parlors via the back door.

  Where was Prajuk?

  It was early afternoon, and the parlor was still quiet. Chase peered through the curtains, finding only empty alcoves. A whispered conversation drew him toward the last room on the right. With his back to the wall, he peeked around the doorframe and found Prajuk disrobing a woman.

  Oh, joy. Chase was going to have to wait for the drug lord to fuck his girlfriend. And then he could kill him, providing Prajuk left the same way that he’d entered.

  Taking a second look, Chase realized that the woman was pregnant. Startled, he glanced up at her face.

  It was the wrong thing to do. Her gentle smile reminded him of Sara.

  Focus, Chase commanded himself. He had a job to protect the interests of his country. Prajuk’s cartel was a threat to world peace. It was that simple.

  He turned to leave, but not before the woman’s words reached his ears. “Did you feel that, love? The baby moved.”

  There were times when Chase wished his hearing wasn’t so good. He slipped into the stairwell, refusing to picture Prajuk with a baby in his arms.

  He tucked himself into the space under the second run of stairs, behind a pile of boxes. The stairwell was an oven. Chase waited, wishing Teddy was with him.

  Finally, the door upstairs swung open. Someone, presumably Prajuk, came down the steps, whistling contentedly. Chase’s heart thundered. He readied his gun in a slippery hand and waited. The man stepped into view, heading for the door and—bang! The force of the bullet slung him against the wall, which he slid down, leaving a trail of bright red blood and little flecks of brain.

  Chase tucked his gun out of sight and moved swiftly toward the exit. He hadn’t taken three steps into the humid sunshine when he ran into the boy he’d given money to. The kid had bought dried, sugar-covered plums, and he wanted to share.

  With a shake of his head, Chase pushed past him, lurching down the alley as swiftly and casually as possible, considering the buzzing in his head.

  He wasn’t supposed to go into shock. Where was the detachment he was famous for? Racked with shivers, in danger of losing his lunch, he hastened toward the hotel, casting glances over his shoulder.

  Still no sign of Teddy. Good, he didn’t want the junior SEAL seeing him this way—again. He’d been a nut job after the Nigerian disaster.

  He pushed into the hotel lobby, craving its air-conditioning. Luther, the officer in charge, would want to debrief him, but he wasn’t up for that. He needed a beer to steady his nerves.

  To his relief, the bar was empty. He ordered a tall can of Australian beer, found a booth to hide in, and drank.

  What was wrong with him? Where was the apathy, the self-approbation that came from getting the job done? Not here. How could he feel good about killing the father of an unborn baby? Oh, fuck. He hoped the kid with the sugared plums wouldn’t find the body.

  A waitress sidled up to his booth, and he ordered another beer. He wondered what Sara was doing. He spent a lot of time thinking about that, wondering whether Dean Cannard had made his move yet.

  He reached into the pocket of his shorts and pulled out Kendal’s turtle, putting it on the table in front of him.

  What is with that thing? Teddy had asked him a few days back.

  Makes me think of home, Chase had admitted, earning him a pitying look.

  “There you are.”

  Chase gave a start as Luther, the OIC, cast his enormous shadow over the table. Teddy Brewbaker was right behind him. “We’ve been looking for you.”

  “I lost you on the street, Chief,” Teddy added. “You’re as slippery as a wide receiver.”

  Luther gestured for Teddy to join Chase on the opposite side of the booth, before cramming his football-player-sized frame in alongside him. “What happened?” he asked quietly. “Did you catch him?”

  Chase met Luther’s serious, navy blue gaze. “Yes, sir,” he said, smothering a burp. “He’s out of the picture.” With his superlative hearing, Teddy’s sigh of relief did not escape him.

  “Why didn’t you tell us?” the black man asked. “I been searchin’ alleyways for your body,” he added under his breath.

  “Sorry,” said Chase. “Just needed a moment.”

  He didn’t miss the significant look that passed between the two.

  “Are you okay, Chief?” Luther finally asked him.

  Chase considered the question. “Nope,” he said.

  Silence descended weightily upon the table. His two companions glanced at his half-empty beer. He knew what they were wondering—just how much had he drunk?

  “What’s wrong?” Luther prompted.

  “I’ve hit a wall,” Chase said. “Can’t do this anymore.” Hearing himself talk was like listening to someone else. At the same time, the words couldn’t be more true.

  “Happens to all snipers,” Luther comforted. “You’ve lasted longer than most.”

  Chase snatched up his beer and saluted them. “Thirty-eight kills,” he said, with a twist of his mouth and a burning in his belly.

  “So we’ll rotate you out of sniper duty and put you somewhere else o
n the team,” the lieutenant suggested.

  “Right.” Chase took another swig.

  “What do you really want?” Luther asked him.

  “Maybe I could get a bad psych eval and be discharged,” Chase suggested, half-seriously.

  “Oh, come on,” Teddy protested. “You ain’t crazy, Chief.”

  “I think he’s crazy in love,” Luther suggested.

  Chase scowled at him. “You’ve been talking to Hannah,” he accused.

  “She is my wife. Do you deny it?”

  “Hell, no,” said Chase. And since he was being honest with himself he added, “I told her not to wait for me. What the hell was I thinkin’?”

  “I don’t know,” said Luther. “What were you thinking?”

  “You sound like my shrink when you talk that way.”

  “Sorry, but from Hannah’s description of her, Sara sounds pretty amazing.”

  Amazing. Chase felt his eyes sting. Shit, maybe he was drunk. “I don’t how it happened,” he admitted, hoarsely. It wasn’t like he’d been hit with a bolt of lightning. She’d crept into him so subtly, it was more like she’d been there all along.

  Teddy offered a sympathetic wag of his head.

  “We still have an objective to complete,” Luther reminded them.

  Chase filled his lungs, trying to clear his head. “Yeah,” he agreed. “I’m with you,” he ground out.

  “In a couple of weeks, we’ll be home,” Luther added. “I’ll talk to the XO. He and Commander Montgomery are pretty tight. Maybe they can find you something cushy that’ll get you to retirement.”

  “Right.” Chase nodded. He wasn’t going to count on it. The only thing that would get him through the next four years was if Sara said yes to the question he wanted to ask her, in person.

  With her arms folded against the December chill, Sara watched bemusedly as Dean Cannard backed his cruiser toward her porch steps. It was obvious he was delivering the live Christmas tree that stuck out of the half-closed truck. This wasn’t his first attempt to win her with unexpected gifts.

  She really ought to tell him he was wasting his time, but he killed the engine and popped out of the driver’s seat with such an eager smile that the gentle rebuke never made it past her lips.

  On Christmas Eve, she and Kendal planned to join her mother, who was still recuperating from a fractured hip and two broken ribs. Sara’d bought an artificial tree to take to Dallas with them. It was stowed in its box in the bed of the truck.

  “You can’t have Christmas without a proper tree,” Dean enthused, tugging at the rope that kept his trunk half-closed. Dainty snowflakes settled on his police jacket and glinted in his black hair as he threw the trunk open and put his arms around the strapped boughs.

  He hefted the tree out and propped it up against the porch rail, going back to his trunk. “Figured you didn’t own a tree stand, so I bought that, too.” He hefted a bright red metal stand and showed it to her.

  “Thank you,” Sara said, dredging up a smile for him. “Why don’t you bring it in?” she offered.

  “Wish I could.” He shot her a regretful look. “But I gotta run to the office. There’s a grand larceny case that needs my attention right now.” He left the stand on the porch and reached into his pocket. “I’ll come back this evening and set her up for you,” he promised. “Meanwhile, I’ve got just enough time for this.”

  With a twinkle in his eyes, he produced a sprig of mistletoe. “You can thank me now,” he invited.

  Sara hesitated. With a constricting heart, she remembered Chase’s intoxicating kisses. Nothing would ever compare, and yet Chase had told her not to wait for him. Dean, on the other hand, was determined to woo her. And it wasn’t as if she was betraying Chase, who’d never hinted at a future for them.

  In two months, she’d heard nothing from him. Was she really so foolish as to hold out hope that that would change?

  Dangling the mistletoe over his head, Dean waited, eager for a glimpse of passion. Sara hid her eyes to keep from disappointing him. Putting her hands lightly on his shoulders, she tipped her chin up and kissed him, half-hoping for a spark.

  It’d be so much easier to love a man like Dean.

  His lips felt cool and firm, but the kiss didn’t move her. It was merely a comfort to touch another human being, to feel less adrift. With a sigh, she dropped to her heels and opened her eyes, masking her disappointment.

  “I have to go,” he said with regret.

  “Yes.” She stepped away. “Thank you for the tree.”

  “You’re welcome. I’ll be back this evening. Oh, I almost forgot.” He fished inside the inner pocket of his jacket. “I brought your mail up.”

  “Thank you.” She’d been looking forward to a walk to the end of the driveway to fetch the mail, but okay.

  “Well, see you tonight.” With a wave of his hand, he jumped into his cruiser and roared away.

  Sara flipped idly through the stack, which was mostly junk mail. A letter-sized envelope caught her eye, and she pulled it out, recognizing the name of the sender with a gasp. Hannah Lindstrom! Why would Hannah be writing her unless something had happened to Chase!

  With her heart in her throat, Sara tore open the seal. She shook open the letter inside and two paper tickets floated out. Airplane tickets, she realized, as she leaned over to snatch them off the snow-dusted grass: one ticket each, for her and Kendal, to fly from Tulsa to Norfolk.

  Sara turned to the letter for an explanation.

  I have it on the best authority that Chase loves you! Come and welcome him home. I’ll pick you up at the airport. Yours truly, Hannah.

  Sara stood there, unmoving for nearly twenty minutes. Chase loved her? How could Hannah be so certain? Yet, apparently, she was, enough to spend gobs of money on airfare.

  Tears of hope and fear and relief rushed from Sara’s eyes to sting her cheeks. Was she going to do it? Could she bear the risk of rejection for a second time if Chase didn’t really want her?

  Turning in a semicircle, her gaze settled over the headstones of his family members, a visible reminder that life was short. Rachel would be the first to insist that she give love another chance.

  With a shriek of excitement, Sara made up her mind and raced inside to tell Kendal of their plans.

  Poor Dean would find only a note tonight when he came by to assemble her tree.

  Chapter Nineteen

  “The CO wants to talk to you,” Luther informed Chase, putting away his cell phone. The four-man SEAL squad and their pilot had just exited a C-17 Globemaster transport plane and were crossing the tarmac at Oceana’s airfield. They’d just touched down from a sixteen-hour flight, routed through Bonham Air Force Base in Germany, when Luther’s cell phone rang. It was quarter to midnight, and Chase was running on fumes.

  “Now, sir?” Chase asked, savoring the bite of cold air after two weeks in the tropics.

  “Yes. I’m coming with you.”

  Peering up at the taller man’s profile, Chase tried to guess whether an impromptu meeting with the powers that be was a good thing or whether he was going to get his ass chewed for the poorly executed Nigerian job. Couldn’t this wait until after Christmas?

  “Isn’t it Christmas Eve?” he asked, consulting his mental calendar.

  “It will be in, like, fifteen minutes,” Luther confirmed. “You’re still on Pacific time.”

  Oh. Well, that sort of explained why the CO was still at the office at this time of night. The man worked obsessive hours, perhaps to mitigate rumors of his Playboy lifestyle— a lifestyle that had ended abruptly in a disfiguring accident.

  “You want a ride?” Luther asked Chase, heading toward his Ford F150 pickup truck.

  “I got my motorcycle,” Chase replied.

  “You’re going to freeze,” Luther warned him. “It’s supposed to snow tonight.”

  “It’ll wake me up,” Chase assured him. From his evaluation of Commander Montgomery, he had better be incredibly coherent, or the man would
show him no respect.

  By the time Chase swept through the gates of Dam Neck Naval Annex on his Harley, his face felt frostbitten, his ears ached, but his brain was wide-awake. Shucking his biker’s gloves, he strode toward the halogen light that glared over the entrance to Spec Ops. Luther, who was waiting on the other side of the door, pushed it open for him.

  His face, which had stared off the cover of Sports Illustrated more than once when he played professional football, betrayed not a hint of what Chase was walking into: a dressing down or a rally for moral support.

  “They’re waiting,” Luther said.

  They? Who was they, exactly? With butterflies in his stomach, Chase followed Luther down the hallway into the CO’s office.

  Both the CO and the XO were in the room. Commander Montgomery sat behind his desk. The lamplight cast an unkind light on the scarred portion of his face. Chase didn’t know him well enough to read his stone-faced expression, but his hazel eyes struck Chase as guarded.

  Hadn’t he been the driver in that accident that had killed two much younger women? Obviously, he hadn’t been to blame or he wouldn’t be in command of Team Twelve today.

  Lieutenant Renault, aka Jaguar, was standing behind the CO looking like the cat that ate the canary. Chase knew the man like a brother, and seeing contentment in the man’s gold-green eyes, he heaved a silent sigh of relief. “Sirs,” Chase greeted them, snapping both men a smart salute.

  “At ease, Chief, Lieutenant.” The CO waved them both into armchairs. “You must be crusty as hell after all that travel.”

  Chase was way past crusty. Right now, the only thing that kept him going was the hope of getting to the ranch in time for Christmas.

  Lieutenant Renault crossed to the window to draw the blinds against the night sky, and Chase’s curiosity went through the roof. This had all the earmarks of an under-the-table job.

  Drumming big-knuckled fingers on the surface of his desk, Montgomery frowned at the paperwork before him. From where Chase sat, he couldn’t make out what the man was looking at. Was that his personnel file?

  “You’ve been a sniper for what, fifteen years?” the CO queried. Greenish brown eyes assessed Chase impassively.