Authors: Sandra Brown
She’d come off active duty broken. She’d thought she’d hardened her heart and put the war behind her, but around every corner she saw the dead and dying. Until Ted smiled at her the morning of May 3—three years and three months ago—when she had the gun in her pocket, a fraction of a second from putting it to her chin and pulling the trigger.
“You look like you lost your best friend,” he had said. Then he smiled. His smile melted her heart.
“It’s been a rough couple months.” The gun weighed heavy in her grip.
“I’m Ted Odell. I started working at Boston College last week.”
“You’re a teacher?”
He laughed, and that’s when she fell in love. “I’m an accountant.”
“Patty Glover—I don’t know what I’m doing.”
“Maybe you just need someone to talk it through. How about coffee?”
That day, Ted saved her life.
She’d clung to Ted ever since, knowing when he was drifting away, knowing her need was driving him away. And then he left…but she couldn’t let him go. The thought of another woman having Ted’s heart, his smile, his optimism—it killed Patty deep inside.
Did they actually think she’d fall for their trick? Did they actually think she was that
stupid?
She’d survived three tours of duty in Iraq, alternating periods of intense boredom with intense action. Her best friend died in her arms. Her commander had his head blown off only inches from hers. She could still taste his blood. It could have been her.
She blinked, and for a split second she forgot where she was. She looked around, her hand in her pocket, clutching the gun.
Cape Cod. Ted. Deceiving her, again.
The lights were off in the bed-and-breakfast, had been for some time, but Patty waited another few minutes before she rose from the bench and disappeared into the house.
She was dead without Ted, and so he would be, as well.
* * *
On the short drive to their bed-and-breakfast, Lucy called the local police. She hung up. “I don’t know if they took me seriously after I told them no lights, no sirens. They estimate five to seven minutes.”
Sean stopped the rental car around the corner, checked his gun and holstered it. “We can’t wait,” Sean said.
Sean led the way through the shadows toward the B and B, Lucy right behind him. They unlocked the front door and quietly went upstairs to where their room was located in the back. He motioned for Lucy to turn the knob while he trained his gun on the door.
It was unlocked. On three, she pushed open the door.
Sean came in high while Lucy moved aside. He scanned the room, saw no immediate threat. A body lay motionless on the floor. Wendy.
Sean turned on the lights and searched the room while Lucy checked Wendy’s pulse and injuries. “She’s alive,” Lucy said. “She hit her head—there’s some blood, but her pulse is strong and steady.”
“Coldcocked, most likely. Glover probably threatened to kill her if Ted didn’t go with her.” Standard tactic since Wendy wasn’t Patty’s primary target.
Lucy gently shook Wendy. “Wendy, it’s Lucy Kincaid. Wake up.”
Wendy stirred, moaning.
“Wendy,” Lucy said, “where did Patty take Ted?”
“I—I don’t know.”
Lucy helped her into a chair and asked, “Did Patty say anything?”
“It happened so fast!” Wendy began to shake and Sean tossed Lucy a blanket, which she wrapped around the traumatized woman. “She had a gun! Please, don’t let her kill him.”
Sean glanced around. “Where’s Lucy’s phone?”
Wendy blinked. “I—I don’t know.”
Sean pulled out his cell phone and thumbed in his code. “Got her, the bitch.” The phone was only two blocks away, near the harbor. He woke the B and B owner and told him to call for an ambulance and tell the police where they were headed, then he and Lucy left.
It was faster to run to the beach than backtrack to the car. When they arrived, Patty was maneuvering a small motorboat away from the harbor. Very quickly she disappeared with Ted into the moonless night.
Sean made a beeline to a speedboat docked at the end. “I’m just going to borrow it,” he told Lucy as he hot-wired the boat in half a minute, pleased he hadn’t lost his touch. “I can get to her in three minutes, but she’ll hear us.” He turned on the radar and adjusted his course to follow.
“I don’t see how we have a choice.”
“Luce, I’ll admit—I’m at a loss. If she’s suicidal, threats aren’t going to stop her.”
“We’re going to have to wing it.”
“There’s a spotlight on the front of the boat.” He pointed to the switch on the dash. “She’ll be momentarily blinded when I flip it on.”
“She’s an army private you said, right?”
“You have a plan?”
“I think we can momentarily confuse her. Soldiers are used to taking orders. Can you be Sergeant Rogan for five minutes?”
“I know what you want.” Sean gripped her hand. “A distraction.”
“Exactly. As soon as you’re close enough, I’ll slip into the water. Turn on the light and talk to her. I’ll swim over to the boat and—”
Sean shook his head. “Hell, no. I’ll swim—”
“She’ll be more inclined to take orders from a male officer, and I’m a better swimmer than you.” The latter was true, but Sean didn’t relish the idea of Lucy in the middle of the bay with a psycho stalker ready to commit murder-suicide. “The waters are calm tonight,” she continued. “And I’ll have a life vest.” She was already pulling it on. “When I get to the boat, if her back is to Ted I’ll signal him to jump.”
“And if it’s not?”
“Plan B.”
“Which is?”
“I’ll figure it out when I get there.”
Sean hated the idea, but he didn’t have a better one, and they were out of time. “Don’t die on me tonight, princess.” He kissed her.
“Not tonight.”
He glanced at the radar; the other boat was slowing down. When he was thirty feet away, he slowed the speedboat and nodded to Lucy. She slipped silently into the dark water.
He turned the spotlight on at its brightest setting and picked up the microphone.
“Private Glover!” he commanded in an authoritarian voice. He’d learned well from his brothers.
Patty was sitting in the chair at the wheel. Ted was handcuffed at the stern. They both turned toward the light. Patty held one hand to her eyes and raised her gun hand.
“Glover!” Sean said, the mic making his voice even more powerful. “Stand down, soldier! That’s an order!”
Lucy swam just outside the glow of the spotlight. Sean hoped Patty couldn’t see her.
“Go away!” Glover shouted, her voice small across the distance. Sean was inching closer; the other boat was at a full stop.
“You don’t want to hurt a civilian,” Sean said.
Glover raised her gun and fired at the spotlight; the shot dinged the metal framing. She fired again and the light went out.
Now Sean was in the dark. He couldn’t see Lucy or the other boat.
Glover yelled at Ted, her voice alternately angry and desperate. “Why did you leave me? You saved my life! I need you. It hurts so much—I need you.”
“Patty—I’m sorry,” Ted said, his voice cracking. “I’m so sorry.”
Frantic to find another distraction, Sean searched the captain’s box and picked up a flashlight—not as strong as the spotlight, but it would have to suffice.
He waited just a few seconds until he thought Lucy would be in position.
He turned on the flashlight. He was much closer now, only fifteen feet away, and was pretty certain Glover could see him. He had the flashlight in his left fist so he could steady his gun hand on his wrist. He shined the light directly into Glover’s eyes. She put her arm up and aimed at him, but before she fired Ted turned his head to the starboard side. She followed his gaze. Sean couldn’t see Lucy, but when Glover turned her gun rapidly toward the water and pressed the trigger, Sean fired three times in rapid succession.
Glover only got off that one shot. Her body jerked as each bullet hit. She stumbled backward, then slumped to the floor.
Sean steered his boat to the edge of the smaller craft. “Lucy!” he called. He couldn’t tell if Glover’s bullet had gone wild or been spot-on. He didn’t see Lucy.
Fear warred with rage. Losing Lucy was not an option. He wouldn’t survive it. She was everything to him.
Pushing back his rising panic, he shone the flashlight in the water next to Glover’s boat. At first, he didn’t see anything. Then Lucy broke the surface, taking in a deep breath. Relief flooded his body.
“Clear!” he called to her. Lucy pulled herself up into the other boat. She kicked Glover’s gun away, then checked for a pulse. She shook her head and covered the body with a tarp.
Sean tethered the boats together, then boarded and assessed Ted. He was bleeding from his nose and mouth, but otherwise appeared unharmed.
“Oh, God, Wendy?” Ted’s eyes were frantic.
Sean picked the lock on the handcuffs. “Wendy’s okay. Can you get yourself into the other boat?”
Ted nodded. “Thank you so much.”
Sean grabbed Lucy and held her close. Her skin was ice-cold.
“Lucy—”
“You didn’t have a choice.”
“When she turned her gun toward you…”
“I’m okay.”
He helped her back to his boat, wrapped her in a blanket and in his arms, holding her. His heart still raced from the single minute he’d thought she’d been shot.
“I love you, Luce.” He didn’t have anything else to say.
She kissed him, then burrowed against his body heat. “I love you, Sean. But I’m ready for a hot bath.”
“If I’m in that bath with you, you’re reading my mind.”
She smiled. “You are.”
I HEARD A ROMANTIC STORY
Lee Child
One paragraph, one voice, one story by Lee Child. Enough said. ~SB
I heard a romantic story. It was while I was waiting to kill a guy. And not just a guy, by the way. They were calling this guy a prince, and I guess he was. A lot of those guys over there are princes. Not just one or two a country. Families have princes. All kinds of families. They have princes of their own. There are hundreds of them. They have so many that some of them are twenty-five-year-old assholes. That kind of prince. And he was the target. This young asshole. He was going to show up in a large Mercedes sedan. He was going to get out of the backseat and walk about ten steps to the porch of the house. The porch was supposed to be like they have at a Marriott hotel, but smaller. Where you get out of the shuttle bus. Only they made it too small for cars. I guess it was supposed to keep the sun off people. Maybe animals. Because, by the way, this was India. It was the middle of the day and everything was scorching hot and too bright to look at. But this guy was going to walk to this porch. And the porch was kind of walled in partly. And as soon as I was sure he was moving at a consistent pace, I had to time it right so that I actually pushed the button first, and then he got to the walled part of the porch second, and of course the wall was where the bomb was. So it was just a button job. Easy enough for one guy to do. Except of course, they sent two guys. But then, they always do. No guy is ever alone. You go to the movies and you see the guy all on his own? Obviously he’s not all on his own, because there’s a cameraman right in his face. Otherwise you wouldn’t be seeing him. There would be no movie. That’s a minimum of two guys right there. And that’s how it was for us. Two guys. If I was a sniper, you’d have to call this other guy the spotter. Except I wasn’t a sniper. This was a button job. I didn’t need a spotter. But he was there. Probably a CIA guy. He was talking to me. It was like he had to validate the hit and give his permission. Maybe they didn’t want any radio snafus. So they put the guy right next to me. Right in my ear. And presumably he knows this Mercedes sedan is some distance away, and therefore some time away, and therefore his validation was not going to be required until some future period. And we could see the road, anyway. Certainly we could see the last hundred yards of it. After the turn. And we’d have seen dust clouds miles away. And we weren’t seeing any, which gave this guy time to talk. And he talked about how we’d gotten as far as we had, with this prince. He laid the whole thing out. He told me how it was done, basically. Which was not complicated, by the way. It was just a number of fairly simple things. They all had to work together, and we’d get a positive result. And obviously one of the strands was the old thing with the girl, and that part was working fine. Which is what this other guy was telling me. Because he seemed to be in charge of the whole girl part of the program. He was the chief. He sent the girl. Which was obviously a matter of selection. It’s about judging the task and sending the right girl. Which this guy did. I don’t think there was a lack of self-confidence in his choice. The problem was the best girl for the job in his professional judgment was also the same girl he was in love with, which obviously placed him in a predicament. He had to send the girl he loved into battle. And not battle with guns and bombs. The weapons his girlfriend was going to use were considerably more personal. It was that sort of game. And the guy knew it, obviously. He was the chief. I’m not saying he invented it, by the way. I’m saying he was currently the world’s leading exponent. He was the big dog. It’s not a question of second-guessing the guy. He did the right thing. He was a professional. He put his country first. The girl went. And did a fine job obviously. Within two weeks the guy was heading to this house in his Mercedes. That’s diligence, right there. Two weeks is a pretty short time. To get a positive result in two weeks is extraordinary. Positive in the sense that I still had to push the button. I was a strand, too. I was the final strand. All I had to do was push the button. If the guy showed up. Which he did, because of this other guy’s girlfriend. She must have done all sorts of things. The guy knew that. This is what these girls do. But he’s kind of denying it. That’s what he’s saying to me. He’s making it different for her. Maybe she didn’t do all these things. Or maybe she did. The guy didn’t make it entirely clear to me. But if she did, it was because she was doing it for the mission, of which he was the chief. She knew he knew it was mission critical. So she did it. She delivered the guy, and I’m waiting to push my button, which is on a cell phone, by the way. Cell phones are what we use now. They built a whole network just for us to blow things up. Private capital. Providers who take complaints. With radios you couldn’t complain. If something went wrong you shrugged your shoulders and you tried again the next day. But if some guy gets his call dropped, he complains. He complains real loud. Maybe it was some big deal he was doing. So the cell companies keep things working. The only drawback being the time lag. You dial a call, it’s a long time before it rings. There are all kinds of towers and computers in the way. All kind of technical management. The delay can be eight whole seconds, which was why it was all about timing. I had to judge his pace so I could push the button eight whole seconds before he got where he was going. After he arrived in the car. Which wasn’t happening yet, which gave the guy time to talk, which he did, mostly about this girl. She was living with him. Obviously not for the two weeks she was with the prince, which was the point of the whole conversation, which was actually a monologue on his part in that he was attempting to convince me he was okay with it. And that she was okay with him being okay with it. It was a minefield. But allegedly both of them were okay with it. This is what the guy was trying to persuade me about. While we waited. Which turned out to be for an hour, by the way. For one hour. We were in position one hour early. Which proves the guy planned to use the time talking, because he was the one who drew up the schedule and he was the one who was doing the talking. About this girl. This girl was an angel. Which I was prepared to believe. This was a hard guy to tolerate. But he told me all the stuff they did together and I couldn’t help but believe they had several happy years behind them. They weren’t doing new-relationship stuff anymore, but they weren’t doing old-relationship stuff yet, either. They were doing normal things, happy, maybe still a little experimental, same as some people do for a long time. I was convinced. It was a convincing description. At the time I was sure it was true. Which it was, obviously. Eventually a lot of people saw it for themselves. But it was possible to see it way back. I believed the guy. He sent the girl to the prince. They’ve both had a great time the weekend before. They’re cool with it. He’s okay with it, and she’s okay with everything. So they do it. Monday morning, off she goes. And that should be it. He’s the chief, she’s a girl in the field, there should be no contact between them. None at all. Organizationally she’s lost to him now. She’s gone. She might not be coming back. Because some of them don’t. There have been fatalities. Hence the protocols. No personal involvement. Which they’ve been faking so far, but now they’re going to have to do it for real. Except they don’t. They sneak visits. Which is a huge off-the-charts no-no professionally. It’s going to screw everything up forever. It’s a double whammy. She’s no longer deniable, and his cover is blown. But they did it. And not just once. They met five times. In two weeks. Five out of fourteen. That’s a pretty decent fraction. Not far from one half. Which is a long time to be away. Her performance was miraculous. She got the job done in two weeks, half of which was spent back with her original boyfriend. Who was telling me all about these visits. Which was another breach of discipline right there. I mean, what was I? He should have asked for ID. But he didn’t, which means he thought I was just some dumb guy who didn’t matter. Which was ironic, because I was just the same as him. In fact I was exactly the same as him. I was a government operator, too. His equal in every way. Except I didn’t have a girl. He was the one with the girl. And he was visiting her. The first time she was fine. She’d only just met the prince. They were still in the formal stages. The second time, not so much. They’d moved beyond the formal stages. Twenty-four lousy hours, and the prince was already doing stuff. That was totally clear. But we’re talking national security here. The best kind. You blow someone up in India, you save a lot of problems later. Maybe you save the world. Obviously people like this guy and his girl have to believe this stuff. Or maybe they already believe this stuff before they join. Maybe that’s why they seek out those jobs. Because they believe certain things. They believe there is something bigger than themselves. That’s why the girl goes back to the prince, even after that second visit. We can guess what she’s doing, because she’s in a bad state when the third visit rolls around. The prince is not hitting her. This is not a physical problem. The prince might not be doing anything at all. He could be totally naive and inexperienced. He could be undemanding. There was a range of possibilities. But she had to supply his needs in a very submissive manner. Whatever they were. She had to smile and curtsey like she was the happiest girl in the world. Which is a strain, psychologically. She was not having a good time. But she went back. She was determined to complete the mission. That’s the kind of person she was. Which put the chief in a permanent circular argument, of course. He couldn’t stop the girl he loved because if he could he wouldn’t have loved her. She would have insisted she go. He would have insisted she go. National security is a very important thing. These people believe that. They have to. So she went. And she kept on going back. She seemed stronger at the fourth visit. Better still at the fifth. She was in control now. She was doing it. She was like a boxer who just won the belt. Sure he hurts, but not much. She was like that. She was going to deliver him. She was the undisputed champion of the world. She was nearly done. She was coming home. Except maybe that boxer’s hurting worse than he lets on. Maybe she was. Maybe she’s tired, but she’s close. So she fakes it with you. She’s okay to go back. So she goes back. But part of faking was exaggerating. She’s going to deliver him, but it’s not going to be easy. Not like she’s making out. She’s going to have to offer incentives. Which she hasn’t mentioned to you. Because she’s exaggerating. She’s telling you it’s better than it is. She’s in control, but not all the way. And she conceals it, so you don’t know. And then you see the dust cloud miles away, and you wait, and then the Mercedes comes around the turn, the last hundred yards; it’s an expensive car, but dusty, and it parks right where it should and the guy gets out of the backseat. And like a prick he leaves the door wide open behind him and just walks away, like he’s the king of the world, and I’m already timing him. He’s doing that kind of fit-guy hustle, which is actually slower than it looks, but I’m on it and I know exactly when I’m going to push the button. Then the girl bounds out of the car behind him, like she had dropped her pocketbook or something and was delayed for a moment, which is exactly what I think she did, because she’s doing a kind of apologetic thing with the body language, a kind of I’m-an-idiot look, and then she catches up to the prince and she takes his arm in a kind of affectionate way. Almost an excited way, to be truthful, and you realize she got him there by promising him something special. In one of the rooms, perhaps. Maybe something he’s never done before. They’re giggling like schoolkids. They’re bounding ahead. They’re right there at the point where you have to hit the button. And by now the validation process is seriously screwed up. We’re just babbling to each other. But we know one thing. National security is very important. It’s bigger than either of us. We believe that stuff. I have to. So I hit the button. My timing was good. No reason why it wouldn’t be. I had no lack of self-confidence in my estimate of speed and direction. Eight seconds. They were perfectly level with the wall when it went up. Both of them. And that was the end of the romantic story.