"Waiting room," Lana said as she pulled open the curtains, brightening up the room. "He fell asleep while he was out there—while I was putting you under. He looked so completely wiped out, I couldn't bring myself to wake him."
"It's been a tough couple of days," Syd told the doctor.
"I heard another woman was attacked last night."
"It's been frustrating," Syd admitted. "Particularly for Luke. We haven't had a whole lot of clues to go on. There's not much to do besides wait for this guy to screw up. I think if Luke had the manpower, he'd put every woman in both of these cities in protective custody. I keep expecting him to start driving around with a bullhorn warning women to leave town."
"Quinn's in DC this week," Lana said. "He's worried, too. He actually asked Wes Skelly to check up on me. I left for work earlier than usual this morning, and Wes was sitting in his truck in front of my house. It's crazy."
"Luke keeps trying to get me to stay overnight at the base," Syd told her, "and for the first time in his life, it's for platonic reasons."
Lana laughed as she opened the door to the waiting room. "I'm sorry to have to kick you out so soon, but I've got another patient."
"No problem. Dark, old-model sedan," Syd repeated. ''Thanks again."
"Sorry I couldn't be of more help."
Syd went into the waiting room, where a painfully thin woman sat as far away as possible from Luke, who lay sprawled on the couch, still fast asleep.
He was adorable when he slept—completely, utterly, disgustingly adorable.
The skinny woman went into Lana's office, closing the door tightly behind her as Syd approached Luke.
"Time to go," she announced briskly.
No response.
"O'Donlon."
He didn't even twitch. His eyes remained shut, his lashes about a mile long, thick and dark against his perfect, tanned cheeks.
No way was she going to touch him. She'd read far too many books where professional soldiers nearly killed the hapless fool who tried to shake them awake.
She clapped her hands, and still he slept on. “Damn it, Luke, wake up."
Nothing. Not that she blamed him. She was exhausted, too.
All right. She wasn't going to touch him, but she was going to poke him from a safe distance. She took the copy of Psychology Today that was on the end table, rolled it up and, trying to stay as far back from him as possible, jabbed him in the ribs.
It happened so fast, she wasn't completely sure she even saw him move. One moment, his eyes were closed, the next he had her pinned to the waiting-room floor, one hand holding both of her wrists above her head, his other forearm heavy against her throat.
The eyes that gazed into hers were those of an animal— soulless and fierce. The face those eyes belonged to was hard and severe and completely deadly, his mouth a taut line, his teeth slightly bared.
But then he blinked and turned back into Luke O'Donlon, aka Lucky, aka her own living Navy Ken.
"Jeez." He lifted his arm from her throat so that she could breathe again. "What the hell were you trying to do?"
"Not this," Syd said, clearing her throat, her head starting to throb from where it had made hard contact with the floor. "In fact, I was trying to do the exact opposite of this, But I couldn't wake you up."
"Oh, man, I must've..." He shook his head, still groggy. "Usually I can take a combat nap and wake up at the least little noise."
"Not this time."
"Sometimes, if I'm really tired, and if I know I'm in a safe place, my body takes over and I go into a deep sleep and—" his eyes narrowed slightly. "You're supposed to be hypnotized," he remembered. "How come you're not hypnotized?"
As Syd stared up into the perfect blueness of his eyes, she wasn't sure she wasn't hypnotized. Why else would she just lie here on the floor with the full weight of his body pressing down on top of her without protesting even a little?
Maybe she'd gotten a concussion.
Maybe that was what had rendered her so completely stupid.
But maybe not. Her head hurt, but not that much. Maybe her stupidity was from more natural causes.
"Dark, old-model sedan," she told him. "Lana didn't want to wake you, and it's just as well. I'm an idiot when it comes to cars. That and calling it ugly was the best I could do."
Was he never going to get off her ever again? She could feel the muscular tautness of his thigh pressed between her legs. She could feel... Oh, God.
"Are you okay?" he asked, rolling away from her. "Last time you were hypnotized it was something of an emotional roller coaster. I'm sorry I fell asleep. I really wanted to be there, in case..." He laughed sheepishly, giving her what she thought of as his best Harrison Ford self-deprecating smile. It was as charming on Luke as it was on Harrison. ''Well, this sounds really presumptuous, but I wanted to be there in case you needed me."
She would have found his words impossibly sweet—if she were the type to be swayed by sweet words. And she would've missed the warmth of his body if she were the type to long for strong arms to hold her. And if she were the type to wish he'd pull her close again and kiss her and kiss her and kiss her...
But she wasn't. She wasn't.
Having a man around was nice, but not a necessity.
Besides, she never took matters of the heart and all of their physical, sexual trappings lightly. Sex was a serious thing, and Luke, with his completely unplastic, extremely warm body, didn't do serious. He'd told her that himself.
"I was okay," she said, desperately trying to bring them back to a familiar place she could handle—that irreverent place of friendly insults and challenges, “until you hit me with a World Wrestling Federation-quality body slam, Earthquake McGoon."
"Ho," he said, almost as if he were relieved to be done with the dangerously sweet words and their accompanying illusion of intimacy himself, as if he were as eager to follow her back to the outlined safety of their completely platonic friendship. "You're a fine one to complain, genius, considering you woke me up by sticking a gun barrel into my ribs."
"A gun barrel!" She laughed her disbelief. "Get real!"
"What the hell was that, anyway?"
Syd picked up the magazine and tightly rolled it, showing him.
"It felt like a gun barrel." He pulled himself to his feet and held out his hand to help Syd up. “Next time you want to wake me, and calling my name won't do it," he said, "think Sleeping Beauty. A kiss'll do the trick every time."
Yeah, right. Like she'd ever try to kiss Luke O'Donlon awake. He'd probably grab her and throw her down and...
And kiss her until the room spun, until she surrendered her clothes, her pride, her identity, her very soul. And probably her heart, as well.
"Maybe we shouldn't leave," she said tartly, as she fol lowed Luke out the door. "It seems to me that the safest place for a Navy SEAL who fantasizes that he's Sleeping Beauty is right here, in a psychologist's waiting room." "Ha," Luke said, "ha."
"What's on the schedule for this afternoon?" Syd asked as Luke pulled his truck into the parking lot by the administration building.
"I'm going to start hanging out in bars," Luke told her. "The seedier the better."
She turned to look at him. "Well, that's productive. Drinking yourself into oblivion while the rest of us sweat away in the office?"
He turned off the engine but didn't move to get out of the truck. "You know as well as I do that I have no intention of partying."
"You think you'll single-handedly find this guy by going to bar after bar?" she asked. "You don't even know what he looks like."
He ran his hands through his hair in frustration. "Syd, I've got to do something before he hurts someone else."
"His pattern is four to seven days between attacks."
Luke snorted. "That's supposed to make me feel better?" He swore, hitting the steering wheel with the heel of his hand. "I feel like I'm sitting on a time bomb. What if this guy goes after Veronica Catalanotto next? She's ho
me all alone, with only a toddler in her house. Melody Jones is out of town with her baby, thank God." He ticked them off on his fingers—the wives of his teammates in Alpha Squad. "Nell Hawken lives over in San Diego. She's safe—at least until this bastard decides to widen his target area. PJ Becker works for FInCOM. Both she and Lucy are best qualified to deal with this. They're both tough but, hell, no one's invincible. And there's you."
He turned to look at her again. "You live alone. Doesn't that scare you, even a little bit?"
Syd thought about last night. About that noise she thought she'd heard as she was brushing her teeth. She'd locked herself in the bathroom, and if she'd had the cell phone with her, she would have called Luke in a complete panic.
But she hadn't had her phone—in hindsight she could say thank God—and she'd sat, silently, fear coursing through her veins, for nearly thirty minutes, barely breathing as she waited, listening to hear that noise outside the bathroom door again.
Fight or submit.
She'd thought about little else for all thirty of those minutes.
And fight pretty much won.
There was nothing in the bathroom that could be used as a weapon except for the heavy ceramic lid to the back of the toilet. She'd brandished it high over her head as she'd finally emerged from the bathroom to find she was, indeed, alone in her apartment. But she'd turned on every lamp in the place, checked all the window locks twice, and slept—badly—with the lights blazing.
"Nah," she said now. "I'm just not the type that scares easily."
He smiled as if he knew she was lying. "What, did you get spooked and sleep with all the lights on last night?" he asked.
"Me?" She tried to sound affronted. "No way."
"That's funny," he said. "Because when I drove past your place at about : a.m. it sure looked as if you had about four million watts of electricity working."
She was taken aback. "You drove past my apartment...?"
He realized he'd given himself away. "Well, yeah...I was in the neighborhood...."
"How many nights have you been spending your time cruising the streets of San Felipe instead of sleeping?" she asked.
He looked away, and she realized she'd collided with the truth. "No wonder you nearly fainted last night," she said. No wonder he'd looked as if he hadn't been pulled from bed.
"I wasn't going to faint," he protested.
"You were so going to faint."
"No way. I was just a little dizzy."
She glared at him. "How on earth do you expect to catch this guy if you don't take care of yourself—if you don't get a good night's sleep?"
"How on earth can I get a good night's sleep," he said through gritted teeth, "until I catch this guy?"
He was serious. He was completely serious. "My God," Syd said slowly. "It's the real you."
"The real me?" he repeated, obviously not understanding. Or at least pretending that he didn't understand.
"The insensitive macho thing's just an act," she accused him. She was certain of that now. "Mr. Aren't-I-Wonderful? in a gleaming uniform—a little bit dumb, but with too many other enticements to care. Most people can't see beyond that, can they?"
"Well," he said modestly, "I don't have that much to offer...."
The truth was, he was a superhero for the new millenium. "You're a great guy—a really intriguing mix of alpha male and sensitive beta. Why do you feel that you have to hide that?"
"I'm not sure," he said, "but I think you're insulting me."
"Cut the crap," she commanded. "Because I also know you've got a beta's IQ, smart boy."
"Smart boy," he mused. "Much better than Ken, huh, Midge?"
Syd tried not to blush. How many times had she slipped and actually addressed him as Ken? Too many, obviously. “What can I say? You had me fooled with the ultraplastic veneer."
"As long as we're doing the Invasion of the Body-Snatchers thing and pointing fingers at the non-pod people, I'd like to do the same to you." He extended his arm so that his index finger nearly touched her face, and let out an awful-sounding squawk.
Syd raised one eyebrow as she gazed silently at him.
"There," he said, triumphantly. "That look. That disdained dismay. You hide behind that all the time."
"Right," she said. "And what exactly is it that I'm bothering to hide from you?"
"I think you're hiding," he paused dramatically, "the fact that you cry at movies."
She gave him her best "you must be crazy" look. "I do not."
"Or maybe I should just say you cry. You pretend to be so tough. So...unmovable. Methodically going about trying to find a connection between the rape victims, as if it's all just a giant puzzle to be solved, another step in the road to success which starts with you writing an exclusive story about the capture of the San Felipe Rapist. As if the human part of the story—these poor, traumatized women—doesn't make you want to cry."
She couldn't meet his gaze. "Even if I were the type of person who cried, there's no time," she said as briskly as she possibly could. She didn't want him to know she'd cried buckets for Gina and all of the other victims in the safety and privacy of her shower.
"I think you're secretly a softy," he continued. "I think you can't resist giving to every charity that sends you a piece of junk mail. But I also think someone once told you that you'll be bulldozed over for being too nice, so you try to be tough, when in truth you're a pushover."
Syd rolled her eyes. "If you really need to think that about me, go right a—"
"So what are you doing this afternoon?"
Syd opened the door to the cab, ready to end this conversation. How had it gotten so out of hand? "Nothing. Working. Learning all there is to know about serial rapists. Trying to figure out what it is I'm missing that ties the victims together."
“Frisco told me you asked his permission to bring Gina Sokoloski onto the base."
Busted. Syd shrugged, trying to downplay it. “I need to talk to her, get more information. Find out if there's anyone connecting her to the Navy—anyone we might have missed."
"You could have done that over the phone."
Syd climbed out of the truck, slamming the door behind her. Luke followed. "Yeah, well, I thought it would be a good idea if Gina actually left her mother's house. It's nearly been two weeks, and she still won't open her bedroom curtains. I may not even be able to convince her to come with me."
"See?" he said. "You're nice. In fact, that's not just regular nice, that's gooey nice. It's prize-winning nice. It's—"
She turned toward him, ready to gag him if necessary. "All right! Enough! I'm nice. Thank you!"
"Sweet," he said. "You're sweet."
"Grrrr," said Syd.
But he just laughed, clearly unafraid.
Lucky stood on the beach, about a dozen yards behind the blanket Syd had spread on the sand. She'd brought wide-brimmed hats—one for Gina and one for herself, no
doubt to shade the younger woman's still-battered face
from the hot afternoon sun. Syd had bought sunglasses, too.
Big ones that helped hide Gina's bruised eyes. Together
Gina clutched her soda tightly, her legs pulled in to her chest, her arms wrapped around them, her head down. It was as close to a fetal position as she could get. She was a picture of tension and fear.
But Syd was undaunted. She sprawled on her stomach, elbows propping up her chin, keeping up a nearly continuous stream of chatter.
Down on the beach, the phase-one SEAL candidates were doing a teamwork exercise with telephone poles. And, just for kicks, during a so-called break, Wes and Aztec and the other instructors had them do a set of sugar-cookie drills—running into the surf to get soaked, and then rolling over and over so that the white powdery sand stuck to every available inch of them, faces included. Faces in particular. Then it was back to the telephone poles.
Syd gestured toward the hard-working, sand-covered men with her cola can, and Lucky knew she was telling Gina
about BUD/S. About Hell Week. About the willpower the men needed to get through the relentless discomfort and physical pain day after day after day after day, with only four blessed hours of sleep the whole week long.
Perseverance. If you had enough of that mysterious quality that made you persevere, you'd survive. You'd make it through.
You'd be wet, you'd be cold, you'd be shaking with fatigue, muscles cramping and aching, blisters not just on your feet, but in places you didn't ever imagine you could get blisters, and you'd break it all down into the tiniest segments possible. Life became not a day or an hour or even a minute.
It became a footstep. Right foot. Then left. Then right again.
It became a heartbeat, a lungful of air, a nanosecond of existence to be endured and triumphed over.
Lucky knew what Syd was telling Gina, because she'd asked him—and Bobby, and Rio, Thomas and Michael— countless questions about BUD/S, and about Hell Week in particular.
As he watched, whatever precisely Syd was saying caught Gina's attention. As he watched, the younger woman lifted her head and seemed to focus on the men on the beach. As he watched, Syd, with her gentle magic, helped Gina take the first shaky steps back to life.
Gina, like the SEAL candidates in BUD/S, needed to persevere. Yeah, being assaulted sucked. Life had given her a completely unfair, losing hand to play—a deal that was about as bad as it could get. But she needed to keep going, to move forward, to work through it one painful step at a time, instead of ringing out and quitting life.
And Syd, sweet, kind Syd, was trying to help her do just that.
Lucky leaned against Syd's ridiculous excuse for a car, knowing he should get back to work, but wanting nothing more than to spend a few more minutes here in the warm sun. Wishing he were on that blanket with Syd, wishing she had brought a soda for him, wishing he could lose himself in the fabulously textured richness of her eyes, wishing she would lean toward him and lift her mouth and...
Ooo-kay.
It was definitely time to go. Definitely time to...
Over on the blanket, Syd leapt to her feet. As Lucky watched, she danced in a circle around Gina, spinning and jumping. Miracle of miracles, Gina was actually laughing at her.
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