He reached over and squeezed her hand. “Not much further now. Jeanie, you must do as I say until I clear the area. If Tarpley is alive, he has nothing to lose. He’s a dangerous man. I don’t want anything to happen to you.”
She sat up straighter. “I’m here to help, and speaking of helping, aren’t you sleepy yet? What’s the time, three in the morning? I could drive. Or we could find a place to finish the night out.”
“I’m good. Besides, the night is our friend. Both the military and the police use night raids to capture bad guys. The targets are sleepy and disoriented, tipping the advantage to the good guys.”
“Laurie Ann told me you’d been in the military. What was that like?”
His thoughts jumbled. He preferred not to dwell on those last days. “It was okay.”
“Give me something. Okay doesn’t add much.”
Most of his missions were classified, but he didn’t want her to accuse him of keeping secrets. “Dusty. Thirsty. Exhausting. Hopped up on energy drinks because gunfire could come from any direction. Dirty. Missing home. Missing the sea.”
“Sounds awful. Why’d you enlist in the first place?”
He shrugged. “College had no appeal to me. Reading classic literature and setting fires in chem lab reminded me of high school. I craved physical activity and travel. The service looked promising, plus they’d pay for my education. Enlisting seemed a no-brainer.”
“Did Tarpley enlist with you?”
“He did. We shipped out together, but we had different NEC ratings because of our skills and interests.”
“What’s NEC?”
“The Navy Enlisted Classification system. Tarp was in the construction mechanics division, I started as a diver and was reassigned to a special warfare unit...something along the lines of security.”
“I should have guessed you were in protection. You seem to have a flair for it.”
Rock met her gaze briefly, working hard to suppress a grin. “You think I’m not mechanical?”
“You’re born to serve and protect. The recruiters must have been licking their chops to get you.”
“Both of us, actually. But Tarpley had trouble from the start. Rule infractions. Bending the rules. Then there was some kind of scandal, something about Tarp and the base commander’s daughter. Tarp always did like the ladies, and the ladies liked him back. He swore he was innocent, but he got a dishonorable discharge about six months into his hitch. My squad saw heavy action in Afghanistan.” He paused, the memories still too fresh for him to go there. “Even so, I’d been thinking about making a career of the military until my mother’s illness. I got an early honorable discharge to care for her, and once I was stateside again and my mother had passed, I looked Tarp up. He was the closest thing to family I had. But he’d changed.”
“How so?”
The memory flooded in like an unwelcome tide, bringing fresh waves of shock and disgust. “Harder, somehow. Rougher. And yet a little lost. I found him passed out in some rat-infested dive. He’d been drunk for days. I helped him get back on his feet.”
“Did he go to AA?”
“He wasn’t an alcoholic, he just went on the occasional bender. It happens sometimes. Happened to me after my mom passed away. Got me in trouble with the law a time or two, but it hasn’t happened since. So, having been down that road pretty recently myself, I understood where Tarp was coming from.”
“And for that he tried to kill you?”
His ear lobes heated. “I never doubted Tarp’s version of being framed. Was he capable of what happened? Who knows? But if he was, I never knew my best friend at all.”
The road to the cabin approached. Rock recognized the place from the half-dozen times he’d come fishing here with his friend. Former friend. He closed his eyes against the pain and drove past the road, then parked several hundred yards away on the shoulder. In the faint glow of the dash, Jeanie’s face lit up. She glanced around the wooded area. “We’re here?”
“Close. Stay put while I recon the area. Castor will keep you company.”
Her chin rose. “I want to come.”
“You agreed to follow my lead. You’ll be safer in the truck.” He handed her the Beretta. “You know how to use this?”
She gripped the pistol like an expert. “I’ve fired a pistol before at the range. Can’t be much different with this sweet little number. Point and shoot, right?”
“Think of the gun as a deterrent. If someone bigger than you comes after you, it gives you an edge.”
“I’m all about having an advantage,” his gun-toting spitfire said.
He gave her a quick kiss. “Stay safe. I should be back in about twenty minutes.”
She pulled him back and hugged him extra tight. “Be careful.”
His arms tightened around her. Leaving for a mission had never felt so good. And he could hardly wait for her return greeting. But he was getting ahead of himself. Duty first. He called Pollox out of the truck and gave Castor the guard command.
The thrill of the hunt coursed through his veins as he faded into the night.
Some things never changed.
Chapter 44
Twenty minutes came and went. Jeanie checked her watch again. Was Rock in trouble? What should she do? She’d find no answers inside a locked pickup truck.
Castor cocked his head at her, the white of his canine teeth gleaming in the faint starlight. She petted the dog, and he nosed her. Was he encouraging her to look for Rock?
She’d waited as agreed, but now what?
If the bad guys had Rock, did she need a weapon to rescue him?
She checked the glove box and under the seat. Another pistol. A rifle. A Bowie knife like Avery used to have. A fat pocket knife. Two flashlights. A leash. She could work with that.
She tucked the Beretta and a flashlight in her shoulder-strap purse. The pocket knife went in her jeans pocket. She tossed on a dark sweatshirt of Rock’s, then slung her purse over her shoulder like a bandito’s ammo belt. Thinking ahead, she turned her cell phone on vibrate.
The dog whined.
“Shh. I need you to find Rock. But we have to be sneaky about this so nobody hears us. Can you do sneaky?”
The dog whined again. She hoped that was a yes.
Jeanie clipped the leash on Castor’s collar and eased open the truck door. No bad guys rushed her. So far so good.
She tugged on Castor’s leash. He padded out of the truck, staying close beside her. She pushed the door closed until the latch caught. Now, how to get the dog to track his owner? “Find Rock.”
Nothing.
She waved her sleeve in front of the dog’s nose to give him Rock’s scent. “Find Rock.”
Nothing.
Some rescue squad she was. This dog was a highly trained animal. She should be able to make it do what she wanted.
Wait. Rock used a foreign language when he talked to the dogs. Why hadn’t she paid attention and learned the words? She frowned, thinking.
Rock also used hand signals. She remembered one he used to send the dogs after Palamiri in the flower shop.
She made the signal. Castor’s ears pricked up, and he lunged forward, nearly jerking the leash from her hand. She followed, stumbling through brush, vines, thorns, and all manner of vegetation. Under the trees was pitch black. Not a hint of starlight. Dare she use the flashlight?
No. Someone might see the light. Besides, she had the dog. Castor would guard her.
She wound the leash strap around her hand again. Couldn’t take her lifeline for granted. Folks went missing in the woods all the time. She did not want to be a casualty, though Rock could find her if their situations were reversed.
The air felt cold against her teeth. Uh-oh. Mouth breathing. Better keep her lips closed, or she’d eat bugs for sure. She tripped and plunged through the darkness to the ground, banging her knees into something hard and unforgiving. Something sharp sliced her cheek.
She blinked back tears. The tension on the leash ease
d. Castor licked her face. She wrapped her arms around his warm fur. She was scared, but she wouldn’t let that stop her. She had a job to do. Find Rock.
Her knees hurt.
Her right ankle throbbed.
Her face burned.
No wonder Rock didn’t want her out here in the woods. Plus, they’d probably heard her fall all the way in coastal Georgia.
Face it, Jeanie. You need a light. You need to know if you’re out of the game, or if you’re fit enough to go on.
She fumbled in her shoulder bag, found the flashlight, and switched it on. She blinked against the sudden brightness. First problem—her sneaker was untied. She fixed that. Flexed her ankle. It worked. Her knees were better, too, after a rest.
Tentatively, she traced her stinging cheek. A little blood. Not bad.
The only thing hurt here was her pride.
Too bad she couldn’t see the stars, but the canopy overhead was too thick. If she could see the stars, she could navigate anywhere, thanks to her mom.
She scrambled to her feet, avoiding the fallen log she’d tripped over. If she stayed in the woods, she had to have a light. The only way to find Rock was to follow his scent trail, and according to the dog, he’d come this way.
Jeanie rolled her ankle again. She was darn lucky it wasn’t broken. Must be the yoga classes that kept her joints supple.
What should she do? Continue searching for Rock? Head back to the truck? Call 911?
She didn’t know if she needed the cops. Worse, she had no idea where they were in North Carolina. Why hadn’t she paid better attention to the road signs?
Waiting in the truck wouldn’t help Rock if he was in trouble. She needed to press on through the woods, with the light. She transferred the flashlight to her left hand, angled it down, and signaled Castor to continue.
The light helped. She sidestepped holes and logs, avoided thickets of briars. All the while, the dog tugged at the leash, pulling her further into unknown territory. She shivered at the cold. The air seemed damper. Was she close to the lake?
She winced at the loud snap of a stick breaking beneath her shoes. Castor whined and tugged at the leash. “Shh,” she cautioned. “We have to be quiet.”
“A little late for that.”
Jeanie shrieked at the deep voice in front of her.
Though her heart thundered in her ears, she recognized the speaker. Rock Mackenzie. “You scared me half to death. Why’d you sneak up on me like that?”
“What are you doing out here?” he countered.
“Looking for you. More than twenty minutes passed and I didn’t hear a peep from you. I came to rescue you. Did you find Tarpley?”
“Sorry. I forgot to check the time. No one was in the cabin, but someone has been staying here. I got distracted looking through everything.”
“I’m glad you’re okay.”
Rock leaned in, framing her face with both hands and kissing her full on the lips. “You’re brilliant. Someone was living here until recently. There’s a case of empty beer cans in the trash. Tarpley’s brand. His cigarette butts, too. You were right. Drake Tarpley is alive.”
Certain he’d take offense to a fist pump or a happy dance squeal, Jeanie arched an eyebrow. “Yay?”
“Yay. We’re moving in the right direction, finally.” Rock brought her flashlight up to illuminate her face. “Looks like you took a hit.”
Jeanie scowled. “I tried to follow you without the light at first, but I fell down. I kept the flashlight on after my fall.”
“You’re lucky you weren’t hurt worse.”
“I got that. If we need to sneak around in the woods again, you can have that pleasure all by yourself. Stealth is not my forte. How do you move so quietly?”
“I’d like to blame the Navy, but I’ve always been good at sneaking around in the woods.”
Something clicked in her head. “You didn’t ride a desk in the war, did you?”
“I did desk stuff, but I had other roles as well.”
“Secret stuff?”
“Stuff I can’t talk about,” he said.
“Gotcha.”
“What do you say to us getting out of tick central and finding some place to sack out for the rest of the evening?”
Jeanie grinned. “I’d say you read my mind.”
Chapter 45
Rock’s heart raced as he pulled onto the empty highway, his headlights illuminating a narrow ribbon of dark asphalt. Jeanie had been in unfamiliar woods, tracking him. She could have been lost, hurt, or worse. Bears frequented this lake area.
Thank goodness she had Castor with her.
How’d she get the dog to track him?
Clearly, she was resourceful.
Independent.
Gutsy, too.
He looked forward to the challenge of keeping up with her after Drake Tarpley was found and locked up. His friend’s betrayal festered like an angry sore. How could I have been so blind about Tarp? And how did Jeanie figure it out so quickly? Was she mixed up with Tarpley? His heart said no. His brain said she was either incredibly lucky or the smartest florist he’d ever met.
He’d moved to Mossy Bog to keep an eye on Jeanie. Since then he’d had more than his eye on her, and he wasn’t sure he could be objective about her. He wanted her to be exactly what she seemed. A nice mom of two kids who seemed to like him. Dare he trust his good luck?
“Where will we search next?” Jeanie asked.
He accelerated smoothly, not wanting to jar his precious cargo. “They say you can’t go home, but I believe Tarpley went home to lick his wounds after he faked his death.”
“And home is?”
“About an hour from here.”
“That’s your hometown too?”
She must have heard the hitch in his voice. He focused on the winding road. “Yes. I’ve known Tarpley since third grade when his family moved to town.”
“Why do you call him Tarpley? Why not Drake?”
“Got in the habit of last names in the Navy. First names were for boys. We were men.”
“You call me by my first name.”
“That’s different. You’re not one of the guys.”
“Hmm.”
Had he offended her with the truth? The silence stretched out longer than he liked before she spoke again.
“Will it be hard for you?” she asked. “Going back, I mean. Because of your mom.”
“Mom wasn’t living in Mayfield when she was ill. She’d moved to Raleigh to work at the airport. She liked it there. She had friends. For a while, I thought she might be getting serious about someone, but she was very private about her personal life.”
He passed a section of boarded-up buildings, but his thoughts remained in the past, remembering the warm timbre of his mother’s laugh, the way she’d stroke his hair at bedtime when he was a child. The way he’d seen Jeanie stroke Nathaniel and Sable’s foreheads before she told them goodbye in Florida.
Beside him, Jeanie covered a yawn. “I wonder why.”
He’d lost the thread of conversation. “Why what?”
“Why she didn’t introduce you to the man she was dating?”
“We talked about it once,” Rock said. “She said there was serious, and there was serious. She said he wasn’t a forever kind of guy, but she enjoyed his company. I pressed her about him once, and she got upset, so I let it go.” At Jeanie’s penetrating stare, he justified his lack of action. “She was happy, which is more than I can say for most of our life in Mayfield. Seemed like we barely scraped by every month.”
“Did she approve of Tarpley?”
“He was in and out of our place all the time. Before I was born, his mom and my mom worked at the same place. They started out as friends, but they had a falling out.”
“Hmm. Sounds like something came between them.”
“Mom wouldn’t talk about those days. About my dad. Said we had to look forward instead of back.”
Jeanie leaned forward to catch his eye. “
That strike you as odd?”
He shrugged. “That’s how she was. She lived in the present.”
A big truck approached on the two-lane road, its headlights bright. Rock glanced at the dash to check his speed while the trucker switched to low beams and felt his mother’s words resonate in his head. With a start, he realized he’d adopted his mother’s philosophy as well. He’d lived in the moment in the Navy, in his charter business, in taking care of his mother, and in recovering from his accident. He hadn’t dwelled on tangents like Tarpley’s ongoing troubles.
In hindsight, his strategy of dealing with Tarpley had blinded him to the truth.
Jeanie settled in her seat. “Forgive me, but her philosophy seems harsh. Didn’t you want to know more about your dad?”
“At first. But as the years went by, I realized she was right. Living isn’t about who you came from, it’s about what you make of yourself.”
Jeanie didn’t answer right away. Her silence increased his edginess. Did she think poorly of his mother now?
“Sounds like your mom taught you to stand on your own two feet,” Jeanie said.
He breathed easier knowing she understood. “She rode me hard about my school work.” Pride swelled within him as he remembered. “I wanted to be outdoors all the time, but she hounded me about my assignments. She insisted I be mentally tough. Said physical toughness wasn’t enough. I gave her a hard time about book work, but she proved right.”
“So with her encouragement, you became a better student. What about Tarpley?”
Tarpley’s devil-may-care attitude at fifteen flitted through Rock’s head. “He did the minimum to skate by. Was always one for getting the most out of a situation for the least amount of effort. It worked because he was so damn charming about it.”
“I know the type. Your basic class clown.” Her fingers tapped absently on the center console. “You did better in school than Tarpley. Did that cause friction between you two?”
Rock barked out a laugh. “He heckled me all the time about my grades. You know, the way good friends joke around. He called me professor for a while in junior high. By then I had good study habits, and I liked math.”
Rough Waters Page 17