And Meredith was just plain beautiful. Blonde, she was the perfect complement to Hunter’s dark hair, deeply tanned skin, and coffee-brown eyes. While their oldest son Courtney was blond and blue-eyed like his mom, little Robert had the same dark eyes and hair, broad shoulders, and the cutest dimple in his cheek, just like his dad.
Then there were Eric and Shea, both dark-haired and obviously in lust and love with each other. Outright sexual tension radiated between them like a couple of horny teenagers who couldn’t wait to leave. If he wasn’t leaning a shoulder into her, she was smiling at him like they shared some deep, dark, naughty secret. Only it couldn’t be dark, not the way their eyes sparkled at each other. No, it had to be love, and nothing about love was dark. Persia knew that for sure, because she’d grown up in a house full of it.
Even Izza had a man she adored in her life. Connor would be back from Afghanistan before long, and where would that leave Persia? Alone, damn it. Always alone. Suddenly she wanted to be back in her cozy Florida bungalow, snuggled in her bed with the handsome man whose name she knew… Was. Not. Hotrod!
Those darned tears glimmering at the corners of her eyes had to stop, before she lost her mind and gave herself away. She refused to waste one more tear or another minute, thinking about that loser. He was the one who’d ditched her, remember?
At last, Alex turned to Lexie and winked. “That, kiddo, is tonight’s bedtime story, so eat all your dinner.”
“Okay!” she answered, clapping with childish delight. “I get a new baby sister and a new story!”
“Hey,” Izza muttered. “You gonna take this or not?”
Persia jerked her attention away from the sight of that grinning little girl across the table. Ah. The elegant crystal platter of boiled beef, boiled cabbage, and… were those boiled turnips? Just what she needed, flatulence on top of heartache. Cabbage, really? Who ate that stuff anymore? Only it did look good drizzled with browned butter and sprinkled with green herbs and onions. And the beef smelled divine.
“Yes, sorry. I was daydreaming. Got it,” Persia whispered back. She took a tiny helping of each, then passed the platter. What would it hurt? Pushing the food around on her plate gave her fork something to do, while she pretended to be a happy, carefree professional.
Why not take another one for her country? Seemed like that was all she ever did.
Chapter Thirteen
Walker worked his way up the African coast toward Portugal, where he spent a week lounging in the peace and quiet off the Azores. That week turned into two, then three. He was still a good thousand miles from anywhere. Communication with anyone in the States to the west, was sporadic at best.
For the first time since that night with Persia, Walker let his guard down. He left the security of his yacht behind, to roam the bustling docks of busy São Miguel, the largest island in the Azores archipelago. The last time he’d been here, he’d been with SEAL Team 18. The best in the fleet. Not that its reputation mattered now. Still...
Once upon a time, he’d been USN Lieutenant Walker Judge, and commanded the rowdiest, best, most honorable SEAL Team in the fleet. Not one of his guys had backstabbed him during his trial. How he ached to reach out to them. Just to talk, to see if they knew something he didn’t. Just to hear their voices.
Lieutenant Junior Grade Ryder Dahl, Walker’s executive officer and a damned good friend. Loyal, and built like a big, black refrigerator. Hence his handle, Black Sabbath, shortened to just plain Sabbath. But there was nothing plain about Ryder. Yes, he could make the ladies swoon when he wanted to, but the man had an uncanny talent for strategizing his team’s way out of impossible situations. Which was what Walker needed now.
Then, the three ensigns on SEAL Team 18. Both Steel Arrington, aka Frosty, due to his shock of bright white hair, and Nguyen Li, aka Trigger, second-generation Vietnamese-American, were top-notch snipers and as deadly as they came. Ensign Dallas Perkins hailed from Austin, TX., hence his handle: Tex. As the Team’s language expert, Tex had an uncanny talent with various Pashto dialects, a plus with as much time as Team 18 had spent in the Middle East. Walker never trusted the supposedly vetted local translators. Too often, those friendlies turned into assassins.
Petty Officer First Class Urban Sweeny, aka Red, because of his bright red hair and all those freckles, handled communications equipment. Petty Officer Third Class Amerigo Torres, aka Scarecrow, rounded out Walker’s team. A proud Latino and a naturalized Mexican-American citizen, Amerigo was one of those ordinary looking types who could ghost in and ghost out without being seen or caught. Or remembered. Uncanny, was what he was. He was the one who’d taught Walker how to avoid making an impression, how to avoid being seen.
Walker missed his guys. They’d been through some stuff together, everything from taking out pirates on the high seas in Indonesian waters, to the grunt work still going on in the Middle East. How he wished the US of A would get out of Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and all those other tortured places where freedom, and doing the right thing, didn’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell of surviving, much less thriving. Walker’s one take-away from the wasted years he’d spent in that part of the world, was that he couldn’t change people. Even when he’d just wanted to help. Or save them from themselves. Uh-uh. People had to want to change, and right now, that wasn’t happening. The powers in charge of those Middle East kingdoms seemed intent on turning time in their countries back to the Stone Ages.
Every other civilized country had already deserted those desert climes. But not the noble United States. Which was too bad. Too many young men and women had died for what felt like nothing more than political bullshit, oil, and strategic military positioning. It all came down to greed and power, and Walker was sick of the continual one-upmanship American politicians played at the expense of military lives.
They’d play that game differently if their sons and daughters were the ones dying in the Middle East. Only they weren’t. Elitists’ sons and daughters were forever too good, too rich, and too privileged to ever have to fight for their lives or their freedom. No. That responsibility would always fall to someone else’s children.
The plight of every good soldier was, it seemed, to die for the unthankful, unthinking masses. The power brokers who peddled their influence while others died in their stead. But for what? So they could get richer? More powerful? So they could flaunt their wealth behind ten-foot-high walls that protected them from having to see what their greed had done to America?
There seemed no end to it, no hope in sight. Yet reaching out to his guys was unthinkable. Walker wouldn’t make them accessories after the fact. Yet he wondered how they were doing now, and if they were okay. If NCIS had targeted them or claimed guilt by association.
The last thing he’d heard on American radio was that military members everywhere were looking for him. He was on the FBI’s top ten most-wanted list, which meant Interpol was looking for him, too.
But Walker was willing to bet his life that his guys weren’t hunting him. That they still believed in him. They were SEALs. His friends.
He ran a quick hand over his head, needing a cut, but not willing to risk being recognized by some nosy guy in a barbershop. His beard had grown into a thick cover that bore as much darker browns as it did gray these days. Didn’t that figure? He’d barely turned thirty-five, but he felt as weary as a ninety-year-old. Guess life was not what you made it. Not unless you’d intended it to run over you like a rogue wave, swamp your boat, drown your dreams, and wash your Trident overboard, as if it were merely another foolish trinket that stupid men lived and died for.
Christ, he was tired of life on the run.
Automatically, his fingers went to the scar on his chest, where his hard-earned Budweiser had been pounded into him by another SEAL, Adam Torrey. Now, there was a certifiable adrenaline junkie. Tall. Blond. A freak who’d once lived to dive out of perfectly good airplanes. Not Walker’s forte, but Adam had certainly excelled at high altitude,
low opening jumps.
Walker wondered where that diehard warrior had gone and what he was doing now. Was he happy? Had he settled down? Somehow, Walker doubted Adam ever married. Not in the cards for either of them. Torrey had always been one of those bigger than life, hero types. He was like Charlie Brown, aka Gregor Jorgensen, the Army Ranger who’d befriended Walker during his trial, who had, in fact, been on the jury. A jury of Walker’s peers who had actually advocated for more evidence. More transparency. More legitimacy. Instead...
Their wishes were ignored as much as Walker’s sworn testimony.
He swallowed hard at the exile he’d been forced into after the farce of his much-publicized trial. In the end, the judge hadn’t cared about evidence. It had all come down to who had the bigger dick and more clout, the as-yet unnamed person behind the scenes.
Strolling along the dock, Walker came to a gray-haired man sitting on a fold-up chair with a shaggy white dog lying at his feet. The old guy wore glasses, a tweed cap, tattered gray pants, and an equally tattered gray button-up shirt that bloused over his paunch. Bright smears of paint blotched the shirt, no doubt from the paintbrush between his teeth and the palette on his knee.
When Walker came closer, the dog barked and jumped to its feet, slapping its front paws on the boardwalk like it wanted to play. “Shhhhh,” the old guy shushed even as he tipped forward into the wooden tripod where a small canvas rested. An easel, that was what it was. Not a tripod.
The dog barked and spun around, its voice ratcheting higher.
“Rover, no. I said be still. I’m working here,” the old man groused. He looked up over his black, square-rimmed spectacles. “Are you bothering my dog, mister?” he asked around the paintbrush still in his mouth, his right hand suspended above the canvas, not a hint of friendliness in his dark eyes. A thick, gray, street-sweeper mustache covered his top lip. Longish gray hair curled over his ears. Walker put him in his high sixties, maybe low seventies.
“Just out for a stroll,” he replied easily, as he extended a hand. “Name’s Hotrod. You’re American?”
The man’s shoulders deflated, as if he’d lost the mood, or whatever it was artists needed to paint. With a sigh, he set the brush in his hand over the smear of bright blue paint on his palette, then removed the other brush from between his teeth.
“Yup, and you’re another,” he grumbled as he leaned forward and shook Walker’s hand with one, short, there-now-leave-me-alone shake.
“Yes, sir. Sorry if I disturbed you.”
By then the dog, a Labrador-sized welcoming committee, stretched to the end of the long leash tied to one foot of the man’s chair. “Mind if I pet him?” Walker asked, not taking anything—like simple, every day courtesy—for granted.
With an annoyed sigh, the painter folded both arms over his barrel chest. “His name’s Rover and he’s a stray, but he likes me and…” He lifted both shoulders. “That’s more than I can say for most people. Hotrod, huh? Your parents give you that stupid name?”
Walker had to smile. “Just a nickname from my job,” he qualified, as he knelt to stroke his new friend’s furry snout. Damned if the crazy dog didn’t close his big black eyes and groan. “But it stuck. Guess I’m a stray like Rover.”
Wasn’t that the truth?
“Name’s Brimley Scott,” the old man growled as he extended his hand again. This time his grasp was strong and sure. “Pleased to make your acquaintance, Hotrod Who-Ever-The-Hell-You-Really-Are. Marine?”
“Navy,” Walker admitted. It was always smarter to go with partial truths. Lies were too hard to keep track of. “Been out for a year now. Thought I’d sail the world while I still could.” He jerked his head back toward the dock where he’d berthed his yacht. “You know how it goes. Might as well do something exciting before I settle down.”
“Hmmpf. You even got a woman?” Brimley asked with a twinge of sarcasm. “As ugly as you are?”
Nothing said you’re home free like a dig from a fellow smart-assed warrior.
With a sigh that came from the depths of his all-American soul, Walker nodded, his heart instantly flung across the ocean to the only woman he’d ever spent a peaceful night with. “Yes,” he replied, then coughed and replied louder, “Yes, sir, I do.” At least, I wish I did.
The older guy’s lips twisted. “Good for you. See that you treat her right. Mine up and left. Guess she got tired of waiting.” His shoulders lifted again. “But I had important stuff to do, and some things can’t wait. So here I am. Me and somebody else’s dog. But Rover doesn’t give me any flack like she did. We’re good for each other. You hungry?”
That segue was abrupt. Walker lifted to his feet. “Nah. I’ve got places to go.” Too bad his stomach let out a growl that sounded like it came from Big Foot just then.
Brimley cocked his head, a spark of mischief in his dark eyes and a wrapped sandwich extended in his hand. “Want to try that again?” he asked as he glanced to the empty bench across from him. “I’m not going anywhere. Doesn’t look like you are, neither. Take a load off.”
Walker had to smile at the old guy. “Well, hell,” he admitted ruefully. “Don’t mind if I do.”
Before long, he and Brimley were eating together and chatting like two old friends. Daylight stretched into dusk. Turned out Brimley was former Army, a draftee from the Vietnam era.
“Yeah. My PTSD wore my wife out. I don’t blame her for leaving. Never could tell her what all that crap back in ’Nam did to me. Not like she would’ve understood anyway.”
“So you kept it inside?” Walker asked, his sandwich gone, the bottled water Brimley had offered him gone as well, and the bottle crunched for recycling.
“Didn’t seem much sense in telling anyone, ’specially her.” Brimley’s gaze stretched over Walker’s shoulder to the sea beyond. “She wasn’t there, was she? She never could’ve understood, and she sure as hell didn’t need to know all the details of what I did or what I had to do there. Was bad enough I had to live with it.”
Which was so damned sad. How could a simple, sweet woman ever hope to erase the horrors of war when the VA couldn’t/wouldn’t help the men and women who came home battle-scarred, unwanted, or afraid of the dark and loud noises? And to think most of those draftees had been mere eighteen-year-olds when they’d gone to war. Godawful shame was what the whole damned mess was. What it still is…
Yet Walker also knew there were good women who’d stood by their wounded warrior husbands when they’d come home, no matter what. Who’d fought their men’s VA battles for them, bathed them when they couldn’t bathe themselves, cleaned up their messes, even argued with them when those old farts wanted to give up and die. Women who’d loved those damaged guys with all of their hearts. Who’d never once thought of leaving them, just because those loved ones had done what their country had asked, and in the process, might’ve lost a limb or two—or part of their minds. Maybe equal parts of their souls...
He sucked in a deep, cleansing breath of crisp sea air. During his life, he’d learned to rely on the ocean’s remedy for relief. If you can’t fix it, set it down and let the tide take it far, far away. Let it go and tell it goodbye. Give the unforgivable and unforgettable back to God. Grief, forgiveness, and vengeance were in His bailiwick. Let Him worry about those damned loose ends.
“Your rig secure for the night?” Brimley asked. “You need some place to stay instead of that bobber you’ve got tied up at the dock?”
“You’ve seen Persia Smiles?”
“Persia who?” Brim waved Walker off. “Nah, I don’t know which fishing boat’s yours. She’s got a pretty name, though. You name her after the woman you love?”
Excellent question, one Walker didn’t yet know the answer to. And because he couldn’t define his feelings for Persia, he changed the subject. “Why? You looking for company, old man?”
Brimley’s gaze dropped down to his feet. “Guess maybe I am. Seems like you been in a few battles, too, and y
ou’re American. Sumbitch, a man gets tired of not knowing what folks around him are saying all the time. But if you’d rather not hang around with Rover and me, hell, ain’t no skin off my nose. I’ve got somewhere else to be. Rover, come on, boy, let’s git.”
The Azores attracted tourists from all over the world, especially from Europe, Portugal, and Africa, even as far north as the Netherlands and Scandinavia. Walker had noticed more Japanese and Chinese tourists this time around. Which was comforting in a way. They might watch American news, but he doubted they paid attention to something as insignificant as US Navy trials. No one in America seemed to care about the military. Why would foreign tourists? But those differing nationalities also created language barriers. Not many people cared to play charades just to order off a menu or buy a trinket.
“You and Rover are welcome aboard my rig,” he parried. “I’ve got lots of room. Spend a night on the water. Do a little fishing. Might do you and Rover some good.”
Brimley stared straight at Walker. Two warriors, eye to eye. Two men too proud to take each other up on their offers of charity. At last, Brimley’s gaze dropped to his faithful companion. “What you think, Rover? Should we trust this smart-aleck or hightail it back to our place?”
Rover’s energetic bark sealed the deal. For at least one night, Walker had company.
Chapter Fourteen
Persia smoothed one palm over her trim waistline, proud of the clean figure reflected back at her from her full-length bedroom mirror. Dressed in powder-blue today, she’d slipped into matching heels, then stepped up to make sure she looked presentable, professional, and able. She had an early meeting with her boss today, and this time, she would make a solid impression on Alex Stewart, if it was the last thing she did.
Since day one, she’d been on his bad side, and not just because she’d sir’ed him once too often. Even Mark’s assurance that Alex had her six, seemed at odds with the way he snapped when she was slow to reply, even the morning she’d had a flat tire on her way to work. That hadn’t helped.
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