Harvard hadn’t stopped watching her, but at least now when she caught him gazing in her direction, there was a glint of something different in his eyes. It may not quite have been approval, but it was certainly awareness of some kind. She was doing significantly better than Farber, Schneider and Greene without Harvard’s help, and he knew it. He’d nod, acknowledging her, never embarrassed that she caught him staring.
She liked seeing that awareness. She liked it a lot. She liked it too damn much.
“Oh, man, Richards, don’t wimp out on me now.”
P.J. opened her eyes to see Harvard standing next to her bed. He looked impossibly tall. “How did you get in here?” she asked, instantly alert, sitting up and clutching her blanket to her.
“I walked in.”
“That door was locked!”
Harvard chuckled. “Allegedly. Come on, we got a card game to go to. Bring your wallet. Me and the guys aim to take your paycheck off your hands tonight.”
A card game. She pushed her hair out of her face. To her relief, she was still mostly dressed. She’d fallen asleep in her shorts and T-shirt. “Poker?”
“Yeah. You play?”
“Gambling’s illegal in this state, and I’m a FInCOM agent.”
“Great. You can arrest us all—but only after we get to Joe Cat’s. Let’s get there quickly, shall we?” He started toward the door.
“First I’m going to arrest you for breaking and entering,” P.J. grumbled. She didn’t want to go out. She wanted to curl up in the king-size bed. She would have, too, if Harvard hadn’t been there. But sinking back into bed with him watching was like playing with fire. He’d get that hungry look in his eyes—that look that made her feel as if everything she did, every move she made, was personal and intimate. That look that she liked too much.
P.J. pushed herself off the bed. It would probably be best to get as far away from the bed as possible with Harvard in the room.
“Those electronic locks are ridiculously easy to override. Getting past ’em doesn’t really count as breaking.” He looked at the ceiling, squinting suddenly. “Damn, I can feel it. They’re starting without us.”
“How does the captain’s poor wife feel about being dropped in on at this time of night?”
“Veronica loves poker. She’d be playing, too, except she’s in New York on business. Come on, Richards.” He clapped his hands, two sharp bursts of sound. “Put on your sneakers. Let’s get to the car—double time!”
“I’ve got to get dressed.”
“You are dressed.”
“No, I’m not.”
“You’re wearing shorts and a T-shirt. Not exactly elegant, but certainly practical in this heat. Come on, girl, get your kicks on your feet and—”
“I can’t go out wearing this.”
“What, do you want to change into your Wonder Woman uniform?” Harvard asked.
“Very funny.”
He grinned. “Yeah, thanks. I thought it was, too. Sometimes I’m so funny, I crack myself up.”
“I don’t want to look too—”
“Relaxed?” he interrupted. “Approachable? Human? Yeah, you know, right now you actually look almost human, P.J. You’re perfectly dressed for hanging out and playing cards with friends.” He was still smiling, but his eyes were dead serious. “This was what you wanted, remember? A little platonic friendship.”
Approachable. Human. God knows in her job she couldn’t afford to be too much of either. But she also knew she had a tendency to go too far to the other extreme.
As she looked into Harvard’s eyes, she knew he’d set this game of cards up for her. He was going to go into Joe Cat’s house tonight and show the rest of Alpha Squad that it was okay to be friends with a fink. With this fink in particular.
P.J. wasn’t certain the Senior Chief truly liked her. She knew for a fact that even though she’d proved she could keep up, he still only tolerated her presence. Barely tolerated.
But despite that, he’d clearly gone out of his way for her tonight.
She nodded. “I thank you for inviting me. Just let me grab a sweatshirt and we can go.”
This wasn’t a date.
It sure as hell felt like a date, but it wasn’t one.
Harvard glanced at P.J., sitting way, way over on the other side of the big bench seat of his pickup truck.
“You did well today,” he said, breaking the silence.
She’d totally rocked during an exercise this afternoon. The FInCOM team had been given Intel information pinpointing the location of an alleged terrorist camp which was—also allegedly—the site of a munitions storage facility.
P.J. smiled at him. Damn, she was pretty when she smiled. “Thanks.”
She had used the computer skillfully to access all kinds of information on this particular group of tangos. She’d dug deeper than the other agents and found that the terrorists rarely kept their munitions supplies in one place for more than a week. And she’d recognized from the satellite pictures that the Ts were getting ready to mobilize.
All three of the other finks had recommended sitting tight for another week or so to await further reconnaissance from regular satellite flybys.
P.J. had written up priority orders for a combined SEAL/FInCOM team to conduct covert, on-site intelligence. Her orders had the team carrying enough explosives to flatten the munitions site if it proved to be there. She’d also put in a special request to the National Reconnaissance Office to reposition a special KeyHole Satellite to monitor and record any movement of the weapons pile.
There was only one thing Harvard would have done differently. He wouldn’t have bothered with the CSF team. He would have sent the SEALs in alone.
But if Joe Cat’s plan worked, by the time P. J. Richards completed this eight-week counterterrorist training session, she would realize that adding FInCOM agents to the Alpha Squad would be like throwing a monkey wrench into the SEALs’ already perfectly oiled machine.
Harvard hoped that was the case. He didn’t like working with incompetents like Farber. And Lord knows, even though he’d been trying, he couldn’t get past the fact that P.J. was a woman. She was smart, she was tough, but she was a woman. And God help him if he ever had to use her as part of his team. Somebody would probably end up getting killed—and it would probably be him.
Harvard glanced at P.J. as he pulled up in front of Joe Cat’s rented house.
“Do you guys play poker often?” she asked.
“Nah, we usually prefer statue tag.”
She tried not to smile, but she couldn’t help it as she pictured the men of Alpha Squad running around on Joe Cat’s lawn, striking statuesque poses. “You’re a regular stand-up comic tonight.”
“Can’t be a Senior Chief without a sense of humor,” he told her, putting the truck in Park and turning off the engine. “It’s a prerequisite for the rank.”
“Why a chief?” she asked. “Why not a lieutenant? How come you didn’t take the officer route? I mean, if you really went to Harvard…”
“I really went to Harvard,” he told her. “Why a chief? Because I wanted to. I’m right where I want to be.”
There was a story behind his decision, and Harvard could see from the questions in P.J.’s eyes that she wanted to know why. But as much as he liked the idea of sitting here and talking with her in the quiet darkness of the night, with his truck’s engine clicking softly as it cooled, his job was to bring her into Joe’s house and add to the shaky foundation of friendship they’d started building nearly a week ago.
Friends played cards.
Lovers sat in the dark and shared secrets.
Harvard opened the door, and bright light flooded the truck’s cab. “Let’s get in there.”
“So do you guys play often?” P.J. asked as they walked up the path to the front door.
“No, not really,” Harvard admitted. “We don’t have much extra time for games.”
“So this game tonight—this is for my benefit, huh?” she asked
perceptively.
He gazed into her eyes. Damn, she was pretty. “I think it’s for all of our benefit,” he told her honestly. He smiled. “You should be honored. You’re the first fink we’ve ever set up a poker party for.”
“I hate it when you call me that,” she said, her voice resigned to the fact that he wasn’t going to stop. “And this isn’t really any kind of honor. This is calculated bonding, isn’t it? For some reason, you’ve decided you need me as a part of the team.” Her eyes narrowed speculatively. “It’s in Alpha Squad’s best interest to gain me as an ally. But why?”
She was pretty, but she wasn’t half as pretty as she was smart.
Harvard opened Joe’s front door and stepped inside. “You’ve been doing that spooky agent voodoo for too many years. This is just a friendly poker game. No more, no less.”
She snorted. “Yeah, sure, whatever you say, Senior Chief.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
P.J. WAS LATE.
A truck had jackknifed on the main road leading to the base, and she’d had to go well out of her way to get there at all.
She grabbed her gym bag from the back of her rental car and bolted for the field where SEALs and FInCOM agents met to start their day with an eye-opening run.
They were all waiting for her.
Farber, Schneider and Greene had left the hotel minutes before she had. She’d seen them getting into Farber’s car and pulling out of the parking lot as she’d ridden down from her room in the glass-walled elevator. They must’ve made it through moments before the road had been closed.
“Sorry I’m late,” she said breathlessly. “There was an accident that shut down route—”
“Forget it. It doesn’t matter,” Harvard said shortly, barely meeting her eyes. “We ready to go? Let’s do it.”
P.J. stared in surprise as he turned away from her, as he broke into a run, leading the group toward the river.
To Harvard, tardiness was the original sin. There was no excuse for it. She’d fully expected him to lambaste her good-naturedly, to use her as yet another example to get his point about preparedness across. She’d expected him to point out in his usual effusive manner that she should have planned ahead, should have given herself enough time, should have factored in the possibility of Mr. Murphy throwing a jackknifed truck into her path.
She’d even expected him to imply that a man wouldn’t have been late.
But he hadn’t.
What was up with him?
In the few days since the poker game, P.J. had enjoyed the slightly off-color, teasing friendship of the men she’d played cards with. Crash had been there, although she suspected he was as much a stranger to the other men as she was. And the quiet blond lieutenant called Blue. The team’s version of Laurel and Hardy had anted up, as well—Bobby and Wes. And the captain himself, with his angelic-looking baby son asleep in a room down the hall, had filled the seventh seat at the table.
P.J. had scored big. As the dealer, she’d chosen to play a game called Tennessee. The high-risk, high-penalty, high-reward nature of the game appealed to the SEALs, and they’d played it several times that evening.
P.J. had won each time.
Now she tossed her bag on the ground and followed as Joe Cat hung back to wait for her. The other men were already out of sight.
“I’m really sorry I was late,” she said again.
“I pulled in about forty-five seconds before you.” The captain pulled his thick, dark hair into a ponytail as they headed down the trail. “I guess H. figured he couldn’t shout at you after he didn’t shout at me, huh?”
They were moving at a decent clip. Fast but not too fast—just enough so that P.J. had to pay attention to her breathing. She didn’t want to be gasping for air and unable to talk when they reached their destination. “Does the Senior Chief shout at you?” she asked.
“Sometimes.” Joe smiled. “But never in public, of course.”
They ran in silence for a while. The gravel crunching under their feet was the only sound.
“Is his father all right?” P.J. finally asked. “I didn’t see Harvard at all yesterday, and today he seems so preoccupied. Is anything wrong?” She tried to sound casual, as if she were just making conversation, as if she hadn’t spent a good hour in bed last night thinking about the man, wondering why he hadn’t been at dinner.
They’d only gone about a mile, but she was already soaked with perspiration. It was ridiculously humid today. The air clung to her, pressing against her skin like a damp blanket.
“His father’s doing well,” Joe told her. He gave her a long, appraising look. “H. has got some other personal stuff going on, though.”
P.J. quickly backpedaled. “I didn’t mean to pry.”
“No, your question was valid. He was uncharacteristically monosyllabic this morning,” he said. “Probably because it’s moving day.”
She tried not to ask, but she couldn’t stop herself. “Moving day?”
“H.’s parents are moving. I don’t want to put words in his mouth, but I think he feels bad that he’s not up there helping out. Not to mention that he’s pretty thrown by the fact that they’re leaving Massachusetts. For years his family lived in this really great old house overlooking the ocean near Boston. I went home with him a few times before his sisters started getting married and moving out. He has a really nice family—really warm, friendly people. He grew up in that house—it’s gotta hold a lot of memories for him.”
“He lived in one house almost his entire life? God, I moved five times in one year. And that was just the year I turned twelve.”
“I know what you mean. My mother and I were pros at filling out post office change of address cards, too. But H. lived in one place from the time he was a little kid until he left for college. Wild, huh?”
“And on top of that his parents are both still alive and together.” P.J. shook her head. “Doesn’t he know how lucky he is? Unless he’s got some deep, dark, dysfunctional secret that I don’t know about.”
“I don’t think so, but I’m not exactly qualified to answer that one. I think it’s probably best if Harvard got into those specifics with you himself, you know?”
“Of course,” she said quickly. “I wasn’t looking to put you on the spot.”
“Yeah, I know that,” he said easily. “And I didn’t mean to make it sound as if I was telling you to mind your own business. Because I wasn’t.”
P.J. had to laugh. “Whew—I’m glad we got that settled.”
“It’s just… I’m speculating here. I don’t want to mislead you in any way.”
“I know—and you’re not.” As he glanced at her again, P.J. felt compelled to add, “The Senior Chief and I are just friends.”
Joe Catalanotto just smiled.
“I’ve known H. almost as long as I’ve known Blue,” he told her after they’d run another mile or so in silence.
“Yeah, you told me you and Blue—Lieutenant McCoy—went through BUD/S together, right?” P.J. asked.
“Yeah, we were swim buddies.”
Swim buddies. That meant Joe Cat and Blue had been assigned to work together as they’d trained to become SEALs. From what P.J. knew of the rigorous special operations training, they’d had to become closer than blood brothers, relying on one man’s strengths to counter the other’s weaknesses, and vice versa. It was no wonder that after all those years of working side by side, the two men could communicate extensively with a single look.
“H. was in our graduating class,” Joe told her. “In fact, he was part of our boat team during Hell Week. A vital part.”
Funny, they were talking about Harvard again. Not that P.J. particularly minded.
“Who was his swim buddy?”
“Harvard’s swim buddy rang out—he quit—right before it was our turn to land our IBS on the rocks outside the Hotel Del Coronado.”
“IBS?”
“Inflatable Boat, Small.” Joe smiled. “And the word small is relative. It weighs
about two hundred and fifty pounds and carries seven men. The boat team carries it everywhere throughout Hell Week. By the time we did the rock portage, we were down to only four men—all enlisted—and that thing was damn heavy. But we all made it through to the end.”
Enlisted? “You and Blue didn’t start out as officers?”
Joe picked up the pace. “Nope. We were both enlisted. Worked our way up from the mail room, so to speak.”
“Any idea why Harvard didn’t take that route?” she asked. She quickly added, “I’m just curious.”
The captain nodded but couldn’t hide his smile. “I guess he didn’t want to be an officer. I mean, he really didn’t want to. He was approached by OCS—the Officer’s Candidate School—so often, it got to be kind of a joke. In fact, during BUD/S, he was paired with a lieutenant, I think in an attempt to make him realize he was prime officer material.”
“But the lieutenant quit.”
“Yeah. Harvard took that pretty hard. He thought he should’ve been able to keep his swim buddy—Matt, I think his name was—from quitting. But it was more than clear to all of us that H. had been carrying this guy right from the start. Matt would’ve been out weeks earlier if he hadn’t been teamed up with H.”
“I guess even back then, Harvard was a team player,” P.J. mused. The entire front of her T-shirt was drenched with sweat, and her legs and lungs were starting to burn, but the captain showed no sign of slowing down.
“Exactly.” Joe wasn’t even slightly winded. “He hated feeling like he was letting Matt down. Except the truth was, Matt had been doing nothing but letting H. down from day one. Swim buddies have to balance out their strengths and weaknesses. It doesn’t work if one guy does all the giving and the other does nothing but take. You know, even though Harvard saw Matt’s ringing out as a personal failure, the rest of us recognized it for the blessing it was. God knows it’s hard enough to get through BUD/S. But it’s damn near impossible to do it with a drowning man strapped to your back.”
Tall, Dark and Dangerous Vol 1: Tall, Dark and FearlessTall, Dark and Devastating Page 108