I hope to be married—someday soon—in that very church.
With all my love,
Dot
April 17, 1945
Dear Dot,
Word has come down the chain of command that the Russians are closing in on Berlin. The Reich’s days are numbered. I pray each day that this war moves even more swiftly to its end.
I have before me your letter, dated March 18th. You’ve written hundreds before it and at least three others after that I’ve already received.
I must confess that of all the letters you’ve sent, I’ve read this one, this very shortest of them all, so many times that the paper is starting to tear.
At times, your message seems so clear. At others, I’m sure you’re only making a joke, as you are prone to do.
And yet I remember my visit to you in the hospital.
I remember your eyes.
You and I have been friends for years. I know you loved Mae nearly as much as I did. I know you miss her as much as I do. You have been there for us, for Mae, for Jolee, for me, right from the start.
My love for you, dearest friend, has grown deeper over time. And I carry your love for me in my heart. At all times you are with me, and because of that I am a better man.
But my love for you is a curse as well as a blessing.
Much has happened since the hospital. Mae has passed on. We have both known hardship and pain and much sacrifice. I have seen the atrocities that we humans wreak upon ourselves, and I am forever changed.
Yes, much has changed, but in truth, nothing’s really changed at all.
Because just as it was then, this cannot be.
We cannot be.
The reasons seem different. There’s no longer a danger of betraying someone we both love. Mae lives on inside me, and I hear her voice, rich with affection, calling me a fool and urging me to follow my heart.
Oh, how I burn to do just that.
But Texas is far from Germany. You know as well as I that your family would not welcome me with the same joy and celebration that Hilde Gruen’s parents greeted my Captain Johnson.
I remember the day we met, and how you moved to the colored bench so we both could sit as we waited for the bus.
I cannot ask you to make such a move permanent. I am outraged that I must sit there. I am incensed that Jolee must sit there. And I will be damned if you—you who do not have to—will be forced to sit there, too.
This cannot be.
Please, I beg you, let us never mention this again.
Forever and always your friend,
Walter
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
THURSDAy, JUNE 19, 2003
“So there we are,” Sam said, “me and Nos, in Walt’s car, and we realize the only way we know how to get to the hospital is via the interstate. I’d done some unauthorized neighborhood driving before—when my father was out of town and while my mother was . . . sleeping—but I’d never gone onto the freeway. But I figure what the hell. There’s a first time for everything, right?”
He was touching Alyssa, sliding his hand from her shoulder down past the curve of her waist to her hip and back up again as she lay against him, her head on his shoulder, his arm around her, their legs intertwined.
It felt impossibly good, and she tried not to worry about the future’s harsh reality—the forensics report that was probably going to tell them that Mary Lou and Haley were dead, the call she was going to have to make to her doctor about last night’s incredibly stupid broken condom. What was she going to do if she couldn’t get a prescription for a morning-after pill? And what was she going to do if it didn’t work?
That wasn’t even taking into consideration the other dangers of unprotected sex. If Mary Lou had been sleeping around on Sam, that put him at risk.
“We had boys like you in our school,” she told him now. “Wild boys who pushed the edge of every envelope they could find. I stayed far away from them.”
Sam laughed. “Yeah, most of the girls in my school stayed away from me, too. At least the ones I was interested in.”
Alyssa lifted her head. “Really?” She’d always pictured him with women falling all over him from about the time he’d turned twelve.
“Really.” He smiled at her. “Even back then I liked girls like you. Smart, bossy girls who knew better than to mess around with someone like me.”
“Someone like you—an arrogant, egotistical male chauvinist—or someone like you—a kid whose father kicked the hell out of him on a regular basis?”
Something shifted in his eyes. “That’s not what defines me anymore,” he said, all teasing gone.
“I know,” she said, serious, too. “But it’s still where you came from, Roger.” She used his real name on purpose, and he knew it. “You can’t really make it go away.”
He kissed her, and she closed her eyes and kissed him back, wishing that this night would never end, that they could simply stay here forever.
His hand wandered between her legs, and she shifted out of reach. “Hey. Aren’t you going to tell me the rest of this story?”
“We made it to the hospital without getting arrested, the end,” he said, pulling her back to him and kissing her again.
“The end.” She moved away from him and, holding his hands, kept him at arm’s length. “Except your aunt had had a stroke.”
“Yeah,” Sam said. “That sucked. It was pretty massive. She never walked again, although not because she didn’t try. That was hard for her—hard for Walt, too.”
“And that was when they moved here to Sarasota?” she asked.
“Yeah. Walt heard about this doctor who was getting really good results with stroke patients. He sold the company—the airfield, the crop dusters, everything. He claimed he was retiring, although it wasn’t six months after he was down here that he opened a new flight school. He just couldn’t not do it, you know? Teach kids to fly. Although at that point, I think all of the proceeds from the school went toward scholarships for underprivileged students. Noah still struggles to keep the business afloat.” He laughed. “Or maybe I should say aloft.”
“But you didn’t go with them,” Alyssa said.
“Nah.” He shook his head. “They wanted me to. It was hard watching them leave, but . . .”
Alyssa looked into his eyes, knowing why he’d stayed in Fort Worth when the people he’d considered his true family had moved south. “Your mother,” she said.
“I don’t like it when you’re so far away from me,” he said.
“I know,” she said. “Believe me, I know all the tricks. This way you can’t avoid eye contact by kissing me.”
“That’s not why I want to kiss you.”
“Am I right?” Alyssa asked. “You stayed behind because you knew if you weren’t there, your father would start using your mother as his personal punching bag?”
Sam was actually embarrassed. “It wasn’t that big a deal. I knew Lainey would be home in the summer. She had a job teaching at a private school, and she needed someplace to live from June to the end of August. As long as one of us was there, Pop seemed to keep it under control, so . . .” He shrugged. “I came down here each summer.”
“And went back each fall.” Alyssa wanted to shake him. “You gave up a chance to live with people who loved you in order to take care of someone who’d never been able to protect or take care of you?”
“Yeah,” Sam said. “She had a name—it was Mom.”
“Sam—”
“I’m a fucking hero.” He clearly didn’t believe that at all. “Come here and kiss me.”
Alyssa did.
And her phone finally rang.
Whitney read Amanda and Haley another chapter in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland while Mary Lou got their breakfast.
It was bizarre. It was amazing. It was a miracle of sorts. Without Mrs. Downs and her father around to torment, Whitney was actually capable of being a helpful, contributing human being.
Mary Lou yawned as she
added an extra scoop of grounds to the coffee. Lord, she hadn’t slept at all last night.
And she was suffering—badly—from light of day syndrome. By the time Whitney had gone to sleep after hanging out in Mary Lou’s living room all evening, watching Moulin Rouge nearly twice in a row—Ewan McGregor was a God, but come on—all of Mary Lou’s demons had returned. They’d whispered their urgent warnings in her ear and made her unwilling to return the arsenal of weapons she’d taken from King Frank’s office.
In fact, she’d locked her bedroom door and taken a closer look at one of the rifles, trying to get a sense of where she was supposed to put in the bullets.
She still wasn’t exactly sure.
This morning, with the dawn, her fears had subsided enough to make her feel foolish for not returning the guns to their proper locked place while she’d had the chance.
“What are your plans for today?” she asked Whitney.
“I thought I’d hang around here. What are you guys doing?”
“We’re cleaning out my refrigerator this morning,” Mary Lou said, even though that wasn’t the case.
The look on Whitney’s face was comical. “Oh.” And here came the excuses. Except, “Can I, um, help?” the girl asked.
Curiouser and curiouser.
“I was kidding,” Mary Lou said. “We’re just going to stay inside, because it’s so hot out.” And because she was spooked, even in the light of day, about being a potential sniper target. “Maybe do some puzzles, play some games. I think it’s Amanda’s choice this morning. You’re always welcome, of course, to join us.”
Whitney smiled, all sweetness and light. “Thank you. I will.”
Alyssa untangled herself from Sam and opened her phone. “It’s Jules,” she reported and hit Talk. “Any news?”
“Nothing from forensics yet,” Jules said.
“Nothing from forensics yet,” Alyssa repeated for Sam.
“Oh, my God,” Jules said. “He’s in your room at this hour of the morning?”
“Who is?” Alyssa closed her eyes, wincing. Shit. She definitely gave that one away. Sam rolled out of bed and went into the bathroom, closing the door behind him.
“Right,” Jules said. “Right. No one is in your room with you, and you are such a fool. But take heart—you’re not the only fool, sweetie. Apparently last night was International Fuck the Wrong Person Night—for everyone on earth but those of us too pathetic to leave the office before dawn.”
What was he talking about? “Jules, will you please translate that into something I can understand?”
“I’m calling to see if you’ve heard from Max in the past, oh, eight to twelve hours.”
And Alyssa understood. Holy God. “Max didn’t call in all night?”
“That might be exactly what I just said, girlfriend. He’s not in his room, and he’s not answering his cell.”
Alyssa couldn’t believe it. But then she could believe it.
“Peggy thinks he’s dead, and she wants to call the President and put out an alert,” Jules continued. “But she doesn’t know about—”
“Gina,” Alyssa said in unison with him. Oh, Max . . .
“What do I do?” Jules asked. “If Max hasn’t told Peggy or the rest of the team anything about this girl, I sure as hell don’t want to be the one to do it. And yet Peg’s genuinely worried.”
“Be vague,” Alyssa recommended. “Tell her you have reason to believe he’s fine, that he’s got a female friend here in town. No names, okay? Just tell her she needs to stand down, to give him a few more hours to extract himself from, uh . . . Wow. I never thought he’d actually—”
“Have you met her?” Jules asked.
“No.” Alyssa had been placed on the roof in a sniper position during the takedown of the hijacked plane where Gina had been held captive. As the SEALs stormed the plane, she and Chief Wayne Jefferson had used sniper rifles to take out the two terrorists in the cockpit. They’d fired through the aircraft’s windshield, putting bullets into the heads of the men who’d raped Gina and killed the airliner’s pilot.
But when Gina had asked to meet the team of SEALs and FBI agents who had saved her life, Alyssa had managed to be out of town.
It was just too hard. Alyssa had taken out a target, eliminated a terrorist. She knew that her target had lost the right to his identity and his life when he’d stepped onto that plane with his intention of killing everyone on board.
But meeting Gina, putting a face to her name, shaking her hand, looking into her eyes and letting her become a real, living person, meant that the hijackers who hurt her were real, too. And real people had mothers and families to mourn them. No, it was just too hard.
“Max never stood a chance.” Jules laughed. “Although it is possible he spent the night parked outside of her motel room, again, in his car.”
“Again?” she asked. Oh, Max . . .
“Jealous?” Jules said.
“Not even a little. Call the second you get that forensics report.”
“I will,” he promised. “Hey, you know those bikers who jumped Ihbraham Rahman in Coronado? In their initial report, they said that some guy told them to keep an eye on Rahman because he was supposedly acting suspiciously. This guy said he was going back to the gate to get help from the Secret Service, but they never saw him again. Their conversation went down well before the shooting started—which seems noteworthy, huh? Anyway, we sent someone over to talk to them again, to try to get a description of this mystery guy. And guess what?”
“Blond hair?”
“Give the woman a prize. Oh, wait, she already got hers last night—”
“No need to be a jerk, sweetie.”
“We showed our biker dudes that nifty little photo taken of our suspect with Mary Lou Starrett in the San Diego library parking lot, and we got ourselves another positive ID. It’s definitely our man. Dudes one through three have been moved into protective custody. Tell Sam—when you see him that is, cough, snort—that his theory about the gardener also being a target of the terrorists sure seems to be a good one. However, there’s still no sign of Rahman—either dead or alive.”
“Any word on Kelly Paoletti and Cosmo Richter?” Alyssa asked, as Sam came back out of the bathroom.
“Mrs. Paoletti’s still in ICU. Say a prayer when you get a minute. Richter got some broken bones, but he’s going to be fine,” Jules reported. “Whoops, Laronda’s waving at me. Peggy’s on the line two. I’ve got to go tell her—without really telling her—that Max isn’t dead, just really, really happy.”
An odd, persistent buzzing woke Gina from a sound sleep.
Her first thought, upon opening her eyes, was that she must still be sleeping. But then she knew she wasn’t, because she never in a million years would have even dreamed that Max would still be here this morning, boneless and unconscious in her bed.
The buzzing was Max’s cell phone, set on vibrate. It was actually rattling against whatever was in the pocket of his suit, on the floor where they’d thrown it last night.
Last night . . .
Max looked exhausted—she hoped whoever was calling had given up.
But it began rattling again, and his eyes opened and he looked directly at her.
“Someone wants you,” Gina told him as it kept on shaking.
He stared at her, and she watched last night play in super fast-forward in his eyes as he remembered where he was and what he was doing there.
“Do you want me to find your phone for you?” she asked.
He swallowed, lifting his head and wiping his mouth, grimacing as he realized he’d been so totally unconscious that he’d actually been drooling. “No. Thanks.” He flipped the pillow over as he cleared his throat. “What time is it?”
His phone stopped its dance.
“Nearly seven-thirty.”
Gina watched his eyes as he realized that he’d not only slept, but he’d slept for nearly seven hours.
“Hooray for sex,” she said.
> “Yeah.” He met her gaze only very briefly again before rolling onto his back, his arm up over his eyes. It was remarkable how quickly his beard grew. She’d always thought he was just being meticulously anal retentive to shave every few hours throughout the day, but he really did get a total GQ look with very little effort.
“Christ, I have to go,” he said on an exhale, definitely not moving at all. “I should’ve been in the office an hour ago. Manny Conseco’s probably sitting behind my desk. Of course it was his desk up until a few days ago.”
Gina propped her head on her elbow. “I guess this means you don’t have time to take me to breakfast.”
“Breakfast?” he asked. “What’s that?”
Hey, a joke. That was a good sign.
She put her hand on his chest, but his phone started shaking again, so she didn’t really know which it was that made him push himself up so that he was sitting on the edge of the bed.
“God,” he said. “You know, this is why I don’t sleep—because once I start, I don’t ever want to stop.”
“If you do it every night, it makes it a little easier to wake up in the morning.”
“Oh, yeah,” Max said, rubbing his face. “That makes sense.”
He reached for the remote control on the bedside table and turned on the TV, flipping until he reached CNN. There was a news report about the increase in gun sales over the past year, and he put it on mute.
“It’s always good when I turn on the TV and nothing’s blowing up or on fire,” he told her.
Despite the fact that he didn’t seem to want her to touch him, this morning-after thing was going okay. They were talking, and it wasn’t too weird.
But his phone was still buzzing.
“Aren’t you going to answer that?” she asked.
“No. It does that all the time.”
She sat up, and the covers slipped off of her, and Max turned away, fast.
Okay. Now the mood in the room was definitely weird.
“You know, you saw me naked last night,” she pointed out.
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