But he wasn’t that kind of man.
“No comment. But Gunny, it’s all about Armando now.”
They arranged a meeting at a local beer pub for later that evening.
Kyle checked Armando’s stash of guns in the concealed weapons box he’d built under the floorboards of his bedroom, hidden by the carpeting. Everything looked untouched, as Armando would have left it. The guns were oiled, with hardly a speck of dust anywhere. Clips and rounds were separated from the weapons. Kyle would have to deal with them if Armando didn’t turn up soon. Besides, unless entirely necessary, it would be best not to enrage the locals by carrying weapons in his vehicle, other than his own in his vehicle. It wasn’t protocol to carry a big stash unless a Team guy was on his way to ship out, but everyone did it anyway.
He found Christy’s nametag still on the dining table where he’d tossed it three long days ago. Kyle picked it up again and traced over the indented letters that represented the woman he couldn’t get out of his mind.
He released a sigh and put the plastic tag back. He surveyed the dirty kitchen sink and ruled it unacceptable. Adding hot water and soap, he rinsed off the crusty dishes and loaded them into the dishwasher, then turned it on.
Cleaning always helped him center his thoughts. Armando had a vacuum in the storage closet, and Kyle lost himself in the dull buzz of the machine while he removed a week’s worth of dust and dirt. He wiped down the countertops, then looked at the damp rag and wet formica surface, wondering if he’d just removed evidence.
Not likely.
If Armando had been taken against his will, there’d be holes in the wall, missing windows, and a few large carving knives stuck into cabinet doors. And there’d be blood. Lots of it. No question.
No. Armando had left in a hurry, but he’d left on his own.
Kyle went back to the table and looked at the yellow tablet he remembered seeing the day he’d been waiting at Armando’s. There were scribbles on the top and a folded street map tucked under several sheets. He hadn’t noticed the deep grooves where something important had been pressed into a sheet that had been removed. He recognized it as Armando’s writing. He became annoyed he’d missed this obvious clue two days ago when he first came to the house.
Rubbing the No. 2 pencil over the surface, he found a phone number with the area code of an adjacent county. He picked up Armando’s landline, holding it with a towel, and hit redial. The same number came up.
“Hola? Armando?” said a panicked voice on the other line.
“No,” Kyle said. “¿Está Armando allí?”
“No, Armando is not here.” He did not recognize the voice.
“Kyle? Kyle is that you? Armando is not with you?”
“Ah, Mama Guzman. Didn’t recognize the number.”
“Si. I’m at my daughter’s. Where is Armando? Please, you will tell me now he is with you and he scares his mama for no good reason?”
“No. Sorry. I’m looking for him too. I’m sure he’ll turn up.” Kyle wondered if she believed the lie.
Probably not.
“Kyle. I am worried. He is coming to my house, but he never come. I am sick with worry.”
“When was this?”
“Five, six days ago. Mia, you know Mia, Armando’s sister?”
“Yes.” Kyle assumed the stories of Mia’s poor choice in men and lifestyles were true.
“Mia is in some trouble again,” her voice started out calm, but her strength collapsed at the end, like a row of dominoes. Through ragged catches of breath, the creaking sound of the phone in Kyle’s ear told him she was pacing anxiously, beside herself.
“So what happened? Did you call him?”
“Yes. I told him Mia is gone. And now Armando. I am here at Mia’s apartment. I have no choice but to go to the police next. But they will laugh at me. And I don’t want to tell them about Armando and the Navy.”
“No. You did the right thing. We can handle this.”
“You think so? He was mad, very, very mad when I told him.”
“Mama, what? What did you tell him?”
“Mia is pregnant. She got pregnant with that bastard Caesar. She went off to tell him the good news.” She mumbled something in Spanish Kyle didn’t understand. “And I think Armando is thinking Caesar didn’t take it very well. He has girls all over, but no, Mia loved him, she says. She says he will be different with her, with the baby when it comes.”
Not fucking likely.
Kyle knew exactly what Armando had done. Gone dark. But why hadn’t he told his mother? This question niggled and worried him. So that was what all the texting was about. Kyle didn’t like it either.
“Mama, you need to get back to your own house. What if he’s tried to call you there?”
“Yes. Yes, I will do that now. Nothing here for me. I just came to see if they were…here…” her voice trailed off again. Kyle knew Mama Guzman had thought she’d find them in a bloody pile.
“Anything look out of order?” He had to ask it, the picture in his head was too strong.
“No. Looks just like she went to work.”
“Best get out of there. I’m not sure it’s safe. You need to get home.”
“Yes. Yes I will.”
“Bring her key, okay? I might need it.”
“Si.”
“You have a cell phone?”
Kyle heard a streak of swear words he thankfully couldn’t understand.
“I’ll give you my home number. I don’t want to get the ear cancer.”
“Mia have one?”
“Yes, of course.”
Kyle wrote both numbers down. “I’m going to get some friends, and we’re going to go find them. You stay by the phone, okay, Mama?” He gave her his personal cell number, not his overseas phone. “You won’t get me, but leave a message there.”
He could hear her chicken scratches, mumbling the numbers in translation to herself.
“When I call you, it won’t look like a regular number. So, pick up anything that looks strange. Don’t want you screening out my call. Leave me a message. I’ll get back to you when I can.”
“Yes. No caller ID, like Armando.”
“Right.”
He hung up, and then programmed her home number and Mia’s with a quiet code ring and ran to Armando’s bedroom to change into some gear and dark clothes. On his way out the door, he checked the phone calls and messages, leaving them just in case the police got dragged in. He noticed the last call out was five days ago, Mia’s number. He wrote down the two previous numbers as well and the date and times they were made. He saw the calls from Mrs. Guzman and two blocked calls incoming earlier in the day.
He thought about Armando’s stash of guns under the corner in the bedroom and decided against taking them in case his buddy made it back and needed the firepower. He grabbed his black duffel bag that contained everything he’d brought and slung it over his shoulder, then headed to the door.
Kyle looked around to say goodbye to Armando’s home.
He might not ever return here. That same thought was always on his mind each time he deployed.
He flipped the lock and almost shut the door, but then remembered Christy’s nametag. In three long strides, he reached the table. He grabbed the little badge and placed it in his left breast pocket and closed the Velcro flap.
After leaving the house, he hung out under the darkened overhang to see if anyone watched the house. The quiet street held only a couple of parked cars that dotted the curb, but none of them were close. He made it across the street to his beast and drove away. He had to check in with Timmons back on base.
Kyle swore under his breath when he saw Petty Officer IIIrd Carlisle Channing, decked out with his usual asshole attitude, manning the front gate like he guarded the Alamo.
“Well, here he is, the second coming. How many times you jerk off in the bathroom today, sailor? Or do you just whip it out and show all the girls—”
“Shut the fuck up, Car-LILE.”
<
br /> “Need to see your ID, you prick.”
Kyle dug out his military issue card. Before Channing could put his well-manicured paws on it, Kyle let it slip through his fingers to the ground.
“Oops. I’m sorry about that,” Kyle said sarcastically as he opened the door of his Hummer, catching Petty Officer IIIrd Channing in the groin.
That made the guard hop around. “I’m going to write you up for that,” he said as he held himself with both hands.
Kyle knew the Naval police would add the infraction to the other forty they had. Really important ones, like not showing respect to the regular Navy guys. Kyle couldn’t hold anything against someone who tried one day of BUD/S. Took balls to even consider going through the hell of becoming a SEAL. So, the ones who thought they’d drawn some kind of cushy police job, trying to hold the real warriors back as if they were a danger to the general public, well, he carried no respect for those assholes.
He’d gotten a dozen slips for riding a bicycle without a helmet after he’d taken his Hummer into the shop for an alteration and it was getting fixed. One slip for scuffed shoes. One for stopping just over the line at the gate. These guys just itched to bust him. Carlisle had a whole six-pack of associate flunkies he terrorized on a regular basis. Like monkeys at the zoo. Kyle felt sorry for the whole lot of them.
“Make sure you write that I hit you in the crotch. My reputation is at stake.”
“One of these days, sailor, you’re gonna need a friend and I’ll be sitting back, watching you squirm, on my way over to screw your woman,” Carlisle said as he handed Kyle back his ID.
“Geez, Carlisle, I’d have to wear Kevlar if I had a friend like you.” Kyle slipped his card inside the pocket that held Christy’s nametag. “And as for the girls, well, I thought you knew I like guys. But in your case, I’d share. All you had to do was ask.”
He puckered his lips and blew a kiss at Carlyle, revved the motor, and tore off through the parking lot before he got a dent in his door.
I’ll have to tone it down a bit soon. This one is a war without winners. Kyle knew well enough what a man would do if pushed too far, and Carlisle looked just like one of those guys with no control. But he was a comrade, a member of the same Navy Kyle served. And that was worth something, after all.
Another set of amends I need to make. But not today. Today was still all about Armando and getting his ass safely back on base. Kyle marched down the buffed vinyl floor tiles leading to Timmons’s office.
Timmons frowned down at a half-inch report, his thick glasses perched atop his shiny forehead, which told Kyle he wasn’t reading a thing. Timmons mumbled and tapped his pencil.
“Sir?” Kyle said as he rapped on the open door.
“Lansdowne. You got anything good for me today?”
“Sir? I was hoping you had the last cell coordinates.”
“We got some of the best equipment known to man, and we still have to wait on the fuckin’ phone company.”
“Coop’s friend said the signal’s dead.”
“Dammit, Kyle. I told you not to involve the locals or the Feds.”
“It was off the record.”
“Sure it was. Nothing is off the record, son. So what good news do you have?”
“Wish I did, Mister. I got another number for you to check, though. This one belongs to Mia, Armando’s sister. No news at all. Just a big fucking mystery, getting worse.”
Timmons nodded his partially bald head, the shiny nut-brown skin of his scalp all too visible and getting more so by the day. Kyle noticed he looked a little pudgy too.
“Why are we tracking the sister?” Timmons asked, staring at the piece of paper like it was a dead cockroach.
“His sister’s gone missing. Talked to his mom. She’s major freaked.”
“So this is some kind of stinking foul play. What—”
“No sir, it wasn’t Armando’s doing. I’d stake my career on it. He’s gone after his sister. Nothing’s disturbed at his place and the same for hers, according to his mom. It’s like they just walked into the sunset together.”
“Except that never happens.”
“I understand, sir.”
“I don’t want to get the local cops involved. Or the regulars either, if we can help it.”
“Completely agree, sir.”
“How could two people disappear without any clues?”
“Disappearing is what we’re trained to do. When we don’t want to be found, we aren’t found.”
Timmons nodded again, then gazed back at his report and pulled down his glasses. Then he yanked them off, leaned back in his chair, and nibbled on a well-chewed plastic temple. “One problem with that fuckin’ theory, son.”
“What’s that, sir?”
“When Armando didn’t check in, that’s like painting a great big fucking red SOS sign on a destroyer.” He leaned forward, his forearms on the desk, and stared at Kyle. “He wanted to be found from the day he left.”
Chapter 9
Christy tore into cleaning her condo with complete abandon. She’d washed three loads of laundry, including the sheets full of the scent of him. She added five lavender-scented dryer sheets just in case a trace of the man remained.
On her hands and knees, she scoured the bathroom floor. She removed almost everything from her refrigerator and cleaned her glass shelves with hot, soapy water. Searching through her closet, she filled a garbage bag full of clothes she would give away to the women’s shelter. Purging her bathroom vanity drawers, she gathered up little bottles of shampoo and soap from her hotel stays and threw them into the giveaway bag.
Damn him. How dare he come waltzing in here, disrupting my life? Everything had been just f—
But no. Everything hadn’t been fine. Her eyes, already sore from crying, painfully filled with tears again. She felt cheap, furious with herself for allowing a romp in the hay without commitment.
What were you thinking?
After checking her phone at the office for messages, she forwarded calls to her cell. She went online and answered several emails that had piled up over the last two days.
Kyle Lansdowne lacked for nothing, of course—the asshole had screwed her good and plenty and then had left. No way she’d let him treat her this way. Her insides still smoldered, but she’d landed on her feet.
God damn you. Who gave you the right? How could I have felt as if something wonderful were happening?
The option of giving up and going back to San Francisco to nurse her wounds was out of the question. He’d left a rather stern message this afternoon. She needed another cup of coffee to dredge up the guts to return his call. No doubt that Realtor they’d run into at the model had told a compelling story and had probably even embellished it.
Well, she had to just suck it up and deal. They’d all be surprised. She’d throw herself into her work even more than before. Be the best goddamned salesperson in the whole office, if given a second chance. After all, she’d had lots of training selling upscale bras and panties that cost as much as most people’s car payments.
She would make it her mission to go looking for someone else to wipe the memory of Kyle out of her mind, someone else to kiss her all over and make her shudder with pleasure. Couldn’t be that hard to do.
Working for Madame M in San Francisco had exposed her to a clientele of wealthy older men who would often ask her to dinner or the theater. One had even asked her on a cruise. But the answer had always been the same. She’d done her share of flirting, part of her customer service, and Madame M had showed her how the clients liked it. Happy clients bought more things. But Christy never took their interest seriously. She knew they were seeking a replacement to a loss in their lives as the result of either widowhood or divorce. Madame M had called them the “real DDs.”
Christy didn’t mind being the familiar face associated with happier times when they bought lingerie for their wives or long-term companions. But she didn’t want to be a step anything, wanting to have her o
wn family someday with someone who hadn’t made that choice before. Christy wanted to be someone’s only.
She sank into her leather couch and leaned back. A cobweb she had missed dangled in the corner, almost winking at her. Christy jumped up and threw a rag at it, then collapsed back into the couch and had a good cry. Although she’d tried, despite all the scrubbing, cleaning and purging, only one man’s face popped up on her radar screen—the one with the three-toed tattoo tracks running up his arm.
Get a grip, Christy. Life moves on. Apparently he has too.
But she could have sworn he’d felt something.
She jumped up, stormed into the kitchen, and threw her rag into the suds in the kitchen sink, which sent a splash of gray water all over her countertop and onto the floor.
Maybe another Team guy could fill the bill, someone Kyle even knew. That would get him. And it would serve him fucking right. Let him imagine her screwing the other guy senseless every time Kyle had to look at the guy. Every time they had to go on a training mission.
See how it feels to be discarded.
First things first. She dialed her manager’s office.
“Christy. Thanks for calling back. I was a little worried. I hadn’t seen or heard from you in a couple of days. You okay?”
“Yes. Been working, but out of the house,” she lied.
“Good. That’s good. Say, I got this very disturbing call yesterday afternoon from Connie at the Infinity sales office,” Simms said.
“Yeah, I thought maybe she would call.” Christy sucked it up and just decided to tell the truth. If she lost her job over it, well, she hated hanging around Wayne and the way he stared through her clothes, anyway.
“Mr. Simms.” She surprised herself how confident she sounded. So she turned it up a notch and continued, “I owe you an apology.”
“Oh? How’s that?”
Christy heard doubt in his voice, and continued. “I was so relieved when that SEAL turned out to be…he had a legitimate reason for being at the house. I was the one in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
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