Friendly Fire (The Echo Platoon Series, Book 3) (4 page)

She'd seen the documentaries on TV about the grueling training program that weeded out potential candidates until a mere handful remained. Considering the slender, intellectual young man he had been, his mental toughness alone must have kept him from ringing the bell that would have signified his quitting.

A proud smile curled the corners of her mouth as she marveled over his accomplishment.

A droplet of water fell on her shoulder, and she looked up to see Sammy standing behind her sopping wet. "Mom, I'm thirsty."

The back and forth between Juliet and Tristan had shifted into a discussion on national security. At least the two seemed to be in agreement on the current administration's aggressive policy against drug cartels and terrorists.

With nothing meaningful to add, Emma excused herself to show Sammy where to find free lemonade. Taking note of how engrossed Juliet had become in conversation, and how engaged Tristan seemed, Emma felt the sharp needle of envy prick her unexpectedly. She would have enjoyed sharing a rich exchange with Jeremiah, the way they used to back on campus.

Stop it,
she scolded herself silently. Any deep dialog with Jeremiah would have surely roused the feelings of affection she still harbored for him—and frankly those feelings terrified her.

Love led to heartache, and heartache wasn't something she ever wanted to experience again. It was for the best that he had walked away.

* * *

Juliet found herself amending her initial perception of the handsome Navy SEAL.

Tristan the SEAL wasn't all looks and no brain—of course not. SEALs were known to have higher-than-average IQs. They endured way more mental and physical hardship than the average human and thrived in hostile environments. Tristan had traveled to places she'd never heard of, let alone wanted to visit, and he had articulated his position on national security with such sound reasoning, citing historical examples to bolster his argument, that she found herself admiring his point of view even if she didn't exactly agree with him.

"Hey, listen," he said, leaning an elbow on the bar and dipping his head to speak in a conspiratorial murmur while his eyes tracked her sister's progress to the snack bar. "I could use your help," he stated.

She went instantly wary. "With what?"

When he looked directly at her with his dark blue eyes fixed on hers, her insides turned warm and fuzzy. She wasn't used to that. Where men were concerned, she called all the shots. Most of them were colleagues or criminals, men whom she never got involved with.

"I happen to know my buddy, Bullfrog, is in love with your sister."

She laughed out loud at the unlikely statement. "What?"

"Seriously. All the pieces of the puzzle fell together when they ran into each other in the hallway this morning. He's always talked about this one perfect woman he loved and lost. It's her. She's the one."

His assertion intrigued her. "But he was her student," she protested.

"I know. And something happened between them. I heard her apologize to him just a second ago, saying she hoped he'd forgiven her."

"And then he got up and walked away," she recollected. Turning her head, she reconsidered her sister, who was right then handing Sammy a tall glass of lemonade.

"I think they had something going on when he was in college."

She looked sharply back at him. "Five years ago? My sister was married back then. She would never have cheated on her husband.
He
was the lowlife bastard who cheated on her," she added with heat.

"Sorry to hear that," Tristan said, looking like he meant it. But then his smile reappeared, a little crookedly, making her stomach flip. "I love how brutal you are," he admitted. "I imagine you can keep a man on his toes."

"Don't change the subject," she ordered. "I'll accept your assertion that they had something, maybe a friendship, until I learn otherwise. But what do you need help with?"

His smile faded. "I want to throw them together and see what happens." His expression grew serious. "Bullfrog is the purest human being I've ever known."

"That's a strange word to use," she said.

"If you get to know him, you'll see what I mean. He's spiritual. He's clean. For all the time that I've known him, he's kept to himself. He reads instead of going out. He meditates to keep his cool. I happen to know he came on this cruise just to make me happy, not for his own enjoyment. But if anyone deserves happiness, it's Bullfrog. And I think your sister is the key to his contentment."

Juliet sucked her lower lip between her teeth. He'd given her a lot to think about, not the least of which was the intriguing notion that Emma had gotten emotionally involved with one of her own students,
while
she was married.

Something else Tristan said caught her notice. "Why would he have felt the need to make you happy?" she demanded.

Tristan grimaced and dropped his head. "You don't miss anything, do you?"

"Not usually, no." She tapped her finger on the bar as she waited for his answer.

"All right." He raised his head to take in her reaction. "I had planned to bring my girlfriend on this cruise and propose to her, but she broke up with me two weeks ago, and Bullfrog offered to come in her place."

Something inside of Juliet sank, but she ignored it. "You had no idea she was going to bail on you?"

He blew out a breath and looked away. "Maybe I did. I thought the cruise would spark something fresh between us. Things had flat-lined," he admitted.

"How long were you together?" Whoops, that nosey, personal question slipped out before she could filter the private investigator in her.

"That's not the topic of our conversation," Tristan told her in a firm but friendly voice. "Let's talk about Bullfrog and Emma. Will you help me put them together?"

She considered his suggestion and couldn't see any reason why not. Even if it was only for the duration of the cruise, having Jeremiah Bullfrog around for her sister to play with seemed like a good idea. "Sure. How?"

"It's easy. You let me know what excursions y'all are on, when you're planning to eat or go out, and I'll tell you the same. That way we hit up the same places, and they're thrown together. If it's meant to be, Mother Nature will do the rest."

She considered his plan. "Emma is rather cynical when it comes to romance, so I doubt it'll be that easy. Eddie pretty much saw to that."

"Her ex?" he asked.

"That's the one." She sent him a hard smile.

Leaning an elbow on the table, Tristan regarded her through his gold-tipped eyelashes. "Let me guess. You don't believe in romance, either."

"That's not the topic of our conversation," she stated, repeating his earlier assertion.

Her sass pulled a laugh out of him. "Fine, then. We'll stick to the topic. So you're in?"

Juliet cast her sister a thoughtful glance. Ever since Eddie had bailed on their marriage, Emma had lived like a spinster, hiding in her condo with her daughter and their two cats. She'd stopped watching chick flicks, stopped reading romance novels. At this rate, she would be single the rest of her life.

"Let's do this," she decided. Turning back to Tristan, she held out a hand to seal their agreement.

For the second time that afternoon, his hand engulfed hers. The strength and assurance in his warm grasp conveyed a virility so palpable that her pulse skittered. She panicked and tugged her hand free.

He let it go without comment. "Let me get your next drink," he offered.

But she already had a token in her hand. "Nope. I'll get my own."

Chapter 3

Jeremiah's uneasiness mushroomed as he and Tristan participated in the safety drill.

"This is nuts," Tristan muttered, giving voice to Jeremiah's agitation as they followed fellow passengers down the hallway.

They'd all been sent to their cabins to prepare for the drill they'd been warned about that afternoon. At precisely 8 p.m., a grating alarm blared over the intercom, and they'd joined the throng of people heading toward the stairwell. Most of them appeared thoroughly inebriated. No one seemed to have a clear sense of where to go—themselves included. The clogged corridor backed up, and the line slowed to a crawl. If there'd been a fire, they would have all burned alive.

But then the Dutch-accented voice of the captain interrupted the alarm to offer verbal reassurances and directions. They were to proceed to the aft stairwell and climb two levels to exit the port side of the boat.

Where is that?
Jeremiah heard up and down the hall as people asked each other where the port side was. He found himself hunting for Emma and hoping that the drill wasn't causing her undue distress.

Without warning, the flashes of gunfire and spattered blood he'd envisioned that morning barraged his mind again. He reached for the wall, using it to keep himself grounded as the visions panned through him, spiking his adrenaline with their realistic quality. Sweat that had nothing to do with the stuffiness of the hallway breached his pores.

My imagination, he told himself again, only this time he knew that it wasn't.

At the aft stairwell, they encountered a crewmember holding up a sign that directed them to climb two floors. On deck seven, a young Malaysian steward doled out life vests. Jeremiah's fingers brushed the man's hand in the trade off, and shock broke his stride.

The man's hand felt as cold as a corpse's.

His sixth sense had never misled him. It was only a matter of time before his premonitions became reality and this man was dead. But who was going to kill him? And how could terrorists have boarded this ship when every passenger and their luggage had been put through a metal detector first? No one could have brought an AK-47 on board like the ones he was seeing in his head. Hell, he didn't even have his own weapon.

It had to be the staff then. Weapons might have been secreted on board through the service entrance, hidden under a food pallet or concealed in instruments cases. If he could find the weapons stash before the culprits opened fire, he might keep his visions from materializing.

Fresh air blew away his morbid thoughts as he stepped outside onto the deck on level seven. A gold-hued sky and calm seas reassured him that, for now, everyone was still safe. His gaze went to the lifeboats lashed to their moorings like chicks taking refuge under the wings of a stately mother swan. They hadn't been lowered—not for a simple drill.

"Put your backs against the wall," instructed a crewmember.

A curtain of auburn hair drew Jeremiah's gaze to where Emma, her daughter, and her sister all stood with their backs to the ship. Tristan had caught sight of them, as well, and headed straight in their direction. With an inward sigh, Jeremiah followed him, bracing himself for the effect Emma still had on him.

As she met his gaze, her cautious smile erased his lingering resentment. Her confession earlier had already eased the ache he'd carried around for years. She had actually looked for him!

All this time, he'd convinced himself that his intense attraction for his professor had been unreciprocated—the result of a young man's infatuation with a slightly older woman. But why would she have looked for him unless she'd felt a portion of the loss he'd experienced upon his banishment?

Squeezing into an empty space just two people down from her, he realized how hard it would be
not
to run across her while aboard the ship—especially now that Tristan seemed intent on pursuing her sister. Those two stood next to each other with smug expressions on their faces.

Sensing Emma's desire to communicate, he met her gaze again.

As it had been in the past, they seemed capable of sharing thoughts without speaking.

This drill is a joke
, her eyes said.

I agree
, he smiled back.

But then his blood turned cold at the thought of everything becoming real. The crew on the
Escapade
had probably never launched the safety boats with passengers aboard them. Only in certain ports, where the waters were calm and clear, did cruise ships actually lower and lift the lifeboats—and even then, only crewmembers were allowed to board.

Once, many years ago, he'd read that a safety boat had plummeted thirty feet from its davits, killing all five crewmembers when it flipped upside down. That was why drills never involved passengers. In reality, the crew had no idea how to get their passengers to safety in a quick, efficient manner—never mind with crazy terrorists mowing people down, as his visions suggested.