On the other end of the phone, Adm. Chip Crowley was silent. And when he finally sighed, Tom knew this was not going to be easy.
“Tell me again who this Merchant is?” Crowley asked.
Tom couldn’t keep his voice from sounding tight. “Sir. I’d appreciate it if you did not patronize me.”
“I’m not patronizing you, Tom, I’m trying to refresh my less than perfect memory. Will you please just answer my question? And I’ll tell you right now to keep it at a decibel level that won’t hurt my ears. Don’t even think about giving me some of the same verbal disrespect that you dished out to Larry Tucker last week.”
Tom sat down at Joe’s formica-topped kitchen table. “Sir. Are you telling me you support Tucker’s attempt to shut down Sixteen and the SO squad?”
“I’m telling you nothing of the kind,” Crowley said. “Son, I’m behind your Troubleshooters two hundred percent. Team Sixteen’s not going anywhere. You have my promise. What Larry tried to do was dead wrong. But what you did in response was also dead wrong. And I have to confess to being a little concerned. There are ways to deal with assholes like Larry Tucker that don’t include going off half-cocked and getting yourself strapped down for a week’s worth of psych evals. The man I chose to lead Team Sixteen a year and a half ago wouldn’t have done what you did.”
Crowley was right. Tom’s head was pounding and he rubbed his forehead with his fingers, trying to relieve the pressure. The kitchen wall was dingy, he noticed, and he looked around the room, realizing it needed fresh paint. That’s what he should be doing with this weekend, not reporting sightings of dead terrorists, not putting his career even further at risk.
“Now why don’t you do me a favor and answer my question?” Crowley said more gently. “The Merchant. He had something to do with that embassy bombing back in, what was it, 1997?”
“ ’Ninety-six,” Tom said. “And yes, sir. He’s an independent contractor—a mercenary who was the brains behind the car bomb that took out the American embassy in Paris that year. A Muslim extremist group claimed responsibility for the blast, but NAVINTEL put the Merchant there. It was definitely his work. The bomb had his cell’s signature all over it.”
“You were part of a combined French–American force brought in after these terrorists were tracked to . . . London, was it?”
“Liverpool. The SAS played a part, too.”
They’d wasted a hell of a lot of time playing politics after the Merchant and his dirty band had been tracked to a warehouse in a particularly dank part of the English town most famous for being the home of the Beatles. In fact, Tom still believed that if they’d focused more on apprehending the terrorists rather than deciding the protocol of who got to kick down the door, they might’ve had five captured Tangos rather than four former terrorists in need of body bags and one terrorist—the Merchant—still “at large,” as the Feds so aptly put it.
“We had security-camera footage of the Merchant being hit by gunfire,” Tom told the admiral. “Through video analysis, his injuries were believed to be extensive. In fact, the word fatal was used. Even though he’d escaped, it was thought chances of his surviving were slim.”
Crowley was silent again, and Tom looked at the summer flowers Joe kept in a vase on the table. As far back as Tom could remember, Joe had had fresh flowers in his kitchen all spring and summer long.
It was one of the perks of being a groundskeeper, Tom supposed. Maybe that was what he could do after Tucker forced his early retirement. He could come back to Baldwin’s Bridge and act as Joe’s apprentice. Learn about roses and lawn grubs and all those things he’d been too impatient to pay attention to when he was in high school. He could eventually take over the position of the Ashtons’ groundskeeper from Joe, and when Charles Ashton died . . . If Charles Ashton died. The old man was just ornery enough to be immortal out of spite. If Charles died, Tom could work full time for his daughter, Kelly, because she would no doubt inherit this humongous estate—the main house and grounds, and even this little cottage Joe had lived in for over fifty years.
Now there was a high school fantasy that had never died. Tom could be gorgeous Kelly Ashton’s lawn boy. It was a fantasy that ran an awful lot like a cheap porno flick, starting with Tom slick with sweat from trimming the hedges around the house. Kelly Ashton, with her sweet girl-next-door face, those eyes that were unbelievably blue, and that sinfully perfect body, would be sitting on the screened porch. She’d invite him into the coolness of the house for a glass of lemonade, and . . .
“You’re awfully quiet,” Crowley commented. “I know what you’re thinking.”
Oh, no, the admiral most certainly did not.
“You’re thinking, if the Merchant’s injuries really were that extensive, he wouldn’t have been able to evade capture in the first place,” Crowley continued.
Not even close. But it was definitely what Tom had thought, both back in ’96 and frequently over the past few years. That is, when he wasn’t thinking about doing Kelly Ashton.
Which he did too goddamned often. Being back here, across the driveway from the house in which she used to live, wasn’t going to help.
“Admiral,” Tom said, trying hard to focus, “if the man I saw was the Merchant, he’s had plastic surgery, changed his hair color. But he was the right height, had the right build. And his eyes . . . I know I’m failing to put this into words the right way, but I studied this man. Back in ’96, for months he was the focus of my full attention. I memorized every photo in the task-force file. I spent literally weeks’ worth of time staring at pictures of him, watching video footage, learning to think like him. Maybe I’m crazy but—”
“That right there is the problem, Lieutenant,” Crowley said. “Maybe you are crazy. I’ve got a file of your recent psych evaluations on my desk, citing a list of side effects you could be experiencing from that knock on the head. I’m sure I don’t need to remind you that the words feelings of paranoia are very high on that list.”
Tom ran his hand down his face. He had known this was coming. “You don’t need to remind me, sir. But I did see this man and I had to report what I saw.”
“What you thought you saw,” Crowley corrected him.
Tom wasn’t going to argue with an admiral even though he disagreed. “I guess I hoped you’d look into the matter discreetly—see if the Merchant’s been mentioned in any NAVINTEL reports or, hell, in any Agency reports. I know you’re connected, sir. I just want to find out if anyone else out there—someone who hasn’t had doctors drilling holes in his skull in the past few months,” he added dryly, “has seen this guy recently.”
“I’ll put out feelers,” Crowley promised him. “You just make damn sure you keep any other sightings of terrorists to yourself. If Larry Tucker hears about this, you’ll have medical discharge papers in your hands so fast, you won’t know what hit you.”
“I know, sir,” Tom said. “Thank you, sir.”
“Get some rest, Tom,” Crowley said, and cut the connection.
Tom dropped the receiver into the cradle and pushed himself up and out of the chair. He had to stop, supporting himself on the table until the dizziness passed. Then, cursing his weakness, he went looking for Joe, to tell him he was home for the weekend—and that his kitchen needed a coat of paint.
Two
“KELLY . . .”
Kelly froze, pulling her head out of the refrigerator to listen intently.
“Kelly . . .”
There it was again, barely audible. Her father’s voice, sounding frail and weak. That is, more frail and weak than usual.
Kelly stuffed the quarter of a watermelon she was holding into the refrigerator and headed out of the kitchen at a run. She hurried down the long hallway that led to her father’s bedroom.
The room was dim, the shades pulled down, blocking the bright early-afternoon sunshine. Kelly moved toward the bed, letting her eyes adjust, but Charles wasn’t there.
She crossed toward the bathroom and . . .
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Oh, God.
Her father was lying, facedown, on the tile floor.
Kelly knelt next to him, checking for his pulse. His skin was clammy and his eyelids fluttered at her touch, as if it were an effort to open his eyes.
“ ’Bout time you got in here,” he wheezed. “Usually check on me first thing in the morning. Figures today you’d decide to rearrange the cans of spinach in the kitchen cabinets.”
“I was putting away a few groceries,” she told him, her heart in her throat. Don’t die now. Don’t you dare die yet! She purposely made her voice sound matter of fact, knowing her upset would only annoy him. “What happened?”
“Actually,” he said, “I’m practicing for my audition for that commercial. You know—’I’ve fallen and I can’t get up’?”
Kelly lost it. “Daddy, for God’s sake, will you stop being a jerk for just thirty seconds and tell me what happened? Did you slip? Are you having chest pains? Did you hit your head when you fell? Is anything broken?” Was it a stroke? If it was, he hadn’t lost command of his speech center, that was for damn sure.
“If you must know,” Charles said almost primly, “one minute I was on the commode, minding to my business, and the next I was on the floor. I don’t think I hit my head. And it doesn’t feel as if anything’s broken—except for my pride.”
“We need to make arrangements to get a nurse to come in while I’m out,” Kelly said as she checked her father’s eyes, checked his head. “If I help you, do you think you can get up?”
“No,” Charles said. “And no nurse. And don’t you even think about calling the paramedics. If they come out here, they’ll take me to the hospital, and I’m not going to the hospital. Remember Frank Elmer? He went in for minor chest pains—and he was dead the next day.”
“That was because he had a massive stroke.”
“My point exactly. Maybe he would have been fine if he hadn’t gone to the hospital. I’ll stay right here, thank you very much.”
His head looked fine. He must’ve somehow caught himself on the way down, thank God. She checked his arms and legs, and he managed to pull away from her irritably, even though he couldn’t move far. “Stop that.”
“I’m a doctor,” she reminded him. “If you’re going to refuse to go to the hospital when something like this happens—”
“What happened?” he asked. “Big deal. I got dizzy, I still feel a little weak. That shouldn’t surprise you. I’m a billion years old and I’ve got cancer. Something tells me that the bathroom floor and I aren’t going to stay strangers.”
“If we had a nurse—”
“She would annoy me, too,” Charles finished. “Get Joe,” he ordered. “Between you, Joe, and me, we can get me back into bed.”
Kelly stood up, but she turned back to look down at him. Wasn’t he even the tiniest bit glad that she was here? The question escaped before she could stop herself. “Is that really what I do? Annoy you?”
Charles only briefly met her eyes. He opened his mouth to speak, but then stopped, shaking his head. “Just get Joe and get back here, all right?”
Kelly hesitated, but her father closed his eyes, shutting the world—and her—out. God forbid they should ever actually talk. Trying hard not to let her hurt show—that would only make him more annoyed with her—she turned and hurried out of the bedroom, down the hall, back toward the kitchen.
She pushed her way out the kitchen door, letting the screen slap shut behind her. Joe’s car was still in the driveway, thank God, and she hurried down toward the little cottage by the gate. “Joe! Are you home?”
The shadow of a man was coming around the side of the cottage, and she changed her course, heading toward him, and . . .
It wasn’t Joe.
It was Tom Paoletti, Joe’s grandnephew.
It was a big, tall, full-grown, man-size Tom Paoletti, with far less hair and far more lines on his still remarkably handsome face. His shoulders were wider beneath his T-shirt, his face broader, but his eyes hadn’t changed at all. Still hazel and still holding a hint of humor, keen intelligence, and an undercurrent of heat, his eyes belonged to the teenager she’d once known.
He stopped short at the sight of her, clearly as surprised to see her as she was to see him.
“Whoa,” he said. “Kelly Ashton.” His voice was still the same—deep and warm and smooth, with only the slightest trace of blue-collar New England.
“Tom,” she said, feeling her world slipping, tilting out from under her feet. Remembering the dim glow from the dashboard of his car, exotically lighting his face as she’d . . . She pushed the thought away. “I need to find Joe. My father’s—”
She cut herself off, aware that this had happened before, an almost identical situation, back when she was in ninth grade and Tom was a soon-to-be-graduating senior.
She’d come home from school to find her father passed out in the kitchen, completely drunk. It was rare that it happened in the middle of the day, but there he was. Her mother had been due home any minute with some of the ladies from her tennis club.
Kelly had run looking for Joe, and had found Tom. Together they’d carried Charles to his bedroom and put him safely into bed.
“I don’t know where Joe is,” Tom said now. “I was looking for him, too. What’s the problem? Can I help?”
“Yes. Thank you.” She quickly led him back to the main house. “My father fell in the bathroom,” she told him. “Even though he’s lost a lot of weight, he’s still too big for me to lift. I’ve been trying to convince him to get a nurse to come in, at least while I’m working, but he’s so stubborn.”
God, listen to her. She was babbling. For the first time in sixteen years, her visit home had lined up with one of Tom’s infrequent visits to Joe. Except she wasn’t visiting. She was here to stay. Until her father died.
Tom followed her into the kitchen, into the house. “Is your father sick?” he asked.
Kelly turned to face him, again struck by how much bigger and broader he’d become. “My father’s dying,” she told him quietly. “Didn’t Joe tell you?”
“Dying?” He was so surprised, it was obvious he hadn’t known. “Jesus, no. I mean, I haven’t spoken to Joe in a while, but . . . Kelly, I’m so sorry. Is it . . . ?”
She nodded. “Cancer. Lungs, liver, it’s in his bones, his lymph nodes. You name it, it’s metastasized there. They don’t really know where it started or even exactly where it’s all spread, but at this point it really doesn’t matter. They’re not about to do exploratory surgery on an eighty-year-old man. And chemo’s out of the question, so . . .”
She had to clear her throat. Saying the words aloud always drove home the permanence of it all. One morning in the very near future, she was going to wake up to a world that didn’t have her father in it. She wasn’t ready for that yet. It was hard to imagine she would ever be.
Kelly led the way down the long corridor to Charles’s room. “Let’s get him into bed, and let me make sure he’s comfortable.” Maybe then they could talk. Maybe then she could sit down with Tom Paoletti, the subject of most of her teenage fantasies. And a few extremely adult ones as well.
She wondered if he’d say anything to her about that night. It was possible he didn’t even remember.
“Hey, Mr. Ashton,” Tom greeted her father as he went past her and into the bathroom. “Looks like you could use a hand.”
“You remember Tom Paoletti, don’t you, Dad?” Kelly asked.
As Tom crouched next to her father, he glanced up at Kelly. “He okay to move? Nothing broken?”
“Yeah, I think he’s all right. Nothing hurts more than usual, right, Dad?”
“Of course I remember Tom Paoletti,” Charles grumped, ignoring her other question completely. “You still in the Navy?”
“Yes, sir,” Tom said. Even when he was in high school he’d been painstakingly polite. Always calling Charles Mr. Ashton and sir despite the older man’s obvious mistrust. “I’m still with the SEAL teams.�
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Back when Kelly was fifteen, she and Tom had struggled to carry Charles out of the kitchen and down the hall to his room. But in the past years, Charles had lost weight and Tom had gained muscles. He lifted her father seemingly effortlessly and carried him to the bed without her help at all.
“I’m the commanding officer of SEAL Team Sixteen.” Tom set the old man gently down.
“I know that,” Charles said. “Joe talks about you all the time, you know. He’s damn proud of you.”
“Can I get you anything?” Kelly asked her father, adjusting the sheets, trying desperately not to be jealous of Tom.
“I could use some eternal youth, if you’ve got any handy,” Charles said, at his charming, Cary Grant best for Tom’s benefit. “If not, maybe that Catherine Zeta-Jones, then. I hear she goes for older men.”
Tom laughed, clearly charmed. Apparently, since he wasn’t Charles’s son, it was easier for him to forget the decades of slit-eyed anger and the half-slurred sarcasm.
But then he leaned closer to Charles, his smile fading. “How’s Joe taking this?” he asked the old man quietly.
Charles played dumb even though he clearly knew what Tom was referring to. He lifted one elegant white eyebrow. “This?”
Kelly knew he was testing Tom, seeing if the younger man were brave enough to use the D-word in front of him.
Tom met her eyes across the bed and smiled slightly. It wasn’t even a full smile, and just like that, she was fifteen again, her heart kicking into double time. God, he was even more good-looking than he’d been in his leather bomber jacket, astride his Harley, hair down past his shoulders.
These days, he wore his hair very short, as if he didn’t give a damn about the fact that his hairline was receding. And it was thinning pretty drastically on top. But that was okay. Short hair looked good on him.
There was no doubt about it: in a few years, Tom Paoletti—the boy who’d worn a ponytail all through high school—was going to be the best-looking bald man in the world.
The Unsung Hero Page 3