Meade didn’t begin the interview until they had finished the meal and were sipping coffee. He had only half a dozen questions, each of them incisive and relevant.
“Here’s my last question,” he said after about forty minutes. “Will you go back there, and will you ever pilot another Super Cobra helicopter?”
“I’m prepared to go wherever my orders demand, though not quite so readily as when I didn’t have a dependent. My late brother’s five-year-old son is in my care, and I would prefer not to leave him, but I’m trying to teach him that I may someday have to do precisely that. As for that copter, I can hardly wait to get back in the cockpit. If not that, I’ll take the F-16 any day.” He steeled himself against the pain that shot through his right shoulder, grateful that Meade didn’t notice.
“I wasn’t aware that you pilot the F-16.”
“Oh, yes. Well before I flew the copter. It’s an exhilarating experience.”
“I can imagine, and I’m glad we have men like you who enjoy it.”
They walked out of the dining room together and stood in the lobby talking. “If you have any questions, give me a call,” Nelson said, “though I can’t imagine there’s anything left to ask.’
“Thanks, I’ll... Say, can you think of a reason why a guy in a black suit with a narrow lapel, white shirt and dark tie would be so interested in us? I thought he was lip reading when we were waiting for lunch, so I made sure he didn’t get anything important. Actually, I didn’t start the interview until he left. Now, here he is peering over the top of that newspaper.”
He could only feign ignorance as he looked in the direction to which Meade nodded. “Beats me. I didn’t see him in the dining room.”
* * *
“He was behind you.” Outside, on the corner of Fourteenth Street and Pennsylvania Avenue, they shook hands and went their separate ways. Nelson turned the corner, took out his cellular phone and dialed Marilyn’s number. “Checkmate. Mustache followed me to lunch at the Willard Room.”
“I know. We have a tail on him as well as on you. Not to worry. Talk later.”
He was becoming annoyed with her superior attitude. If she knew something, he wished to hell she’d let him in on it. If the fellow was haunting his neighborhood with an attack dog for company, he deserved to know why. He dialed her number and told her so.
“I’m getting damned sick and tired of that guy, and if he doesn’t blow off, I’m going to confront him. It isn’t just me, it’s my family and my—”
“I know you’re frustrated and you need to vent,” she said, “but please limit your venting to me. We have this well under control. Later.” Maybe so, but he didn’t know her definition of control.
* * *
He was standing at her door when Audrey arrived at work that morning. She stopped three feet away to await his move, but he didn’t keep her guessing and, as Nelson had explained, smiled and held his official ID well out in front of him so that she could see it with ease.
“’Morning, ma’am, I’ll just sit here and read,” he said, looking around. “Right over there in that corner by the lamp. You won’t know I’m here.”
She would have labeled him as anything but a security officer. Handsome in an off-the-wall sort of way with fine features and a self-deprecating manner, he didn’t wait for her assent, but headed for the corner, took a copy of a horse-racing journal out of his pocket and opened it as if to read.
“Who’s that man in there?” her receptionist asked later that morning. “He’s been sitting in there for three hours, and he hasn’t said a word to me about fitting him in.”
“I spoke to him as I came in this morning,” she said. Nobody had told her how to explain the man’s presence. She went into her office, closed the door and phoned Nelson on her cell phone.
“He knows what to tell her,” Nelson said. “If she brings it up again, tell her to speak to him. Uh...Lena’s going to the South to a family reunion this weekend. Want to make Ricky and me happy?”
She leaned back in her chair and prepared herself for his next sally. “I’d love to make the two of you happy, but not if it involves housekeeping in any of its forms. Besides, you know I don’t cook.”
“Really!” His voice had a rough, jagged sound. “If I ask you to cook up something, you bet it won’t be food.”
Her eyebrows shot up. “Wait a minute. You don’t have to get your dander up. I’m not apologizing, either.”
It didn’t surprise her that he ignored her last remark. She had learned that if he didn’t want to engage in a topic, he didn’t mention it.
“As I was about to ask, would you like to spend the weekend somewhere nearby, a place that offers swimming, fishing, a place that has good weather, trees, water, hiking—”
She interrupted him. “You make it sound like heaven, Nelson, but heaven isn’t what you want right now, and I’m not sure I’d enjoy being there all by myself.”
“Talk that way sometimes when I’m with you. I guarantee it’ll bring results.”
“Promises, promises. I want to see some action.”
“When it comes to you, Audrey, I don’t have a sense of humor. None at all. So don’t expect laughter when we’re talking about us. What’ll it be? Yes or no?”
“I don’t think so. I’m trying to get the cobwebs out of my life, and being with you confuses me. I’m trying to go about this logically.”
“And getting nowhere. I’ll answer for you. I’ve tried it, and I know it’s useless. This is a matter of the heart, and hearts don’t give a hoot about what is or isn’t logical. You know that.”
“If I could just be at peace. If I could have contentment, a warm satisfied feeling about my life and my world, I’d settle.”
He was silent for a while, but she didn’t mind because he always measured his words with care when he spoke seriously. “I’ve come to the conclusion that, together, each of us would find far, far more. So, I’m not settling for less. From now on, expect to deal with me in a serious manner. You understand?”
Stunned, she detected a quiver in her voice and knew that he did, too, when she said, “I...uh...please excuse me this weekend and give Ricky my love. You’ve made it through, but I’m still floundering.”
“Audrey, whenever I have accepted my own culpableness in the things that have gone wrong in my life, I have always been able to put them behind me, and that’s what I’m trying to do now. My father used to say that so long as we hold someone else responsible for what happens to us, we won’t try to change it. I’m telling myself to apply that rigorously, and I hope you succeed in doing the same.”
This man is philosophical, she thought, and then he suddenly changed his manner. “Besides, I’m a decent fellow. I’m neat and clean with my person. I hate garlic, so you don’t have to shy away from kissing me. I make a good living. I say my prayers when I get scared. And I don’t do drugs. I’m a real pussycat. On top of all that, I’m a lover from head to foot, and I’d like to know what the hell else could a woman want?”
By the time he finished that litany, she was nearly convulsed with laughter. I could love him, she thought. Oh, Lord. How I could love this man! To him, she said, “So now you’re a comedian. Send me a notarized affidavit that you’re all those things, and I’ll hang my coat in your closet.”
“Whoa, there. Tomorrow I’ll have my lawyer send you a notarized affidavit spelling that out in detail. So if you mean what you said—”
She didn’t believe him. “You do that. I’ve got a patient in there. This kind of joshing can get out of hand. Enjoy your weekend.”
Flustered. She did not like being flustered, and that was what he did to her. She peeped in on the government’s man, saw that he continued to read the racing sheet and resisted asking him if the paper was transparent. She told herself not to get fanciful.
“
What do you do for lunch?” she asked the man.
“My replacement will be here at one, and he’ll stay until you close up. He’ll also see you safely home or wherever you’re going.”
She stared at him. “If I were planning to rob a bank, would one of you tag along?”
“We’re on the lookout for criminals. Any kind, regardless of age, sex, or previous condition of servitude. I believe that’s the way it reads somewhere in the Constitution. Or is it the Bill of Rights?”
She figured his answer suited her question. “Sorry. I asked for that.”
“This is serious business, ma’am. My office doesn’t lay out this amount of resources for no reason.”
“It’s my intention to cooperate,” she said, “but as an intelligent person, I feel the need to know what I’m in danger of.”
“I’m sure you know who to ask about that,” he said and let his gaze fall once more on the racing sheet, effectively terminating the discussion.
He referred to Nelson, she knew, but if he possessed that information, he hadn’t seen fit to pass it on to her.
At one o’clock, man number one, as she decided to call him, introduced her to man number two, who looked for all the world like a criminal himself, and told her he’d left her in good hands and would see her the next morning. She didn’t know what kind of explanation number one gave to her receptionist, but he had evidently placated the woman. When she arrived home that afternoon, her guard went in, checked the place and left.
She prowled around the house, wishing she hadn’t been so glib with Nelson and that she’d taken his suggestion of a weekend vacation seriously. Nothing claimed her attention for long. For half an hour, she spent some time in every part of her house, including the foyer and back porch, pacing from room to room without thought as to why she did it. An irritating odor brought her racing into the kitchen where she saw the charred meal that had been warming on the stove.
Call him and tell him you changed your mind, that you want to go with them. “Never!” she said aloud. She went to the phone to order a take-out meal for her dinner, and stopped in the process of dialing the restaurant. Suppose that man paid the delivery boy to let him bring the food!
“Oh, Lord,” she said, storming back to the kitchen to cook. “I’m getting paranoid.”
She answered the telephone after the second ring, hoping she would her Nelson’s voice.
“Do you mind if I come over, sis?” Winifred asked. “I’ve got to talk, and Pam’s starting to sound as if she’s my mother. Sometimes I think she was born old.”
“Of course. Say, would you bring over dinner for two? I just burned mine.” She hung up at the sound of Winifred’s laughter.
* * *
“What’s the problem?” she asked Winifred as they ate a meal of jerked buffalo wings, stewed collards, candied sweet potatoes and baked corn bread—Winifred’s kind of food, but which Audrey considered a health hazard.
“It’s Ryan. I know we’ve only known each other for a month, but he’s it for me. Am I foolish to want to go away with him for a weekend?”
Her fork clattered to the plate, and her hand remained a few inches from her mouth as if frozen there. When she found her voice, she said, “But Wendy, honey, you’re a virgin. How can you consider such a thing?”
As if she hadn’t dropped that bomb, Winifred continued to enjoy her food. “I love him, and I know it’s the real thing. I’ve known lots of guys, played around with four or five—one in particular, but I have never felt anything approximating what I feel for Ryan. When I’m with him, nothing else in this whole wide world matters or even seems real. The minute I looked at him, I was a goner. Besides, he knows I’m a virgin, ’cause I told him.”
“What did he say to that?”
“His eyes got pretty big. Then he grinned and said he wouldn’t hold that against me. He loves me, Audrey, and he communicates it to me in so many ways. So why shouldn’t we be together?”
She took a deep breath, let it out and tried to think. “I haven’t see you and this man together, so I can’t judge. Indeed, I don’t know him and I probably shouldn’t compare your relationship with him to mine with Gerald Latham. But...”
Suddenly, she remembered her turmoil before Winifred called her, her dilemma about Nelson and her lack of courage to call him and tell him she wanted to spend the weekend with him and Ricky. What right did she have to discourage her sister? Every woman had to decide for herself the man with whom she would learn to make love.
“But what?” Winifred asked her.
“But nothing. You’re old enough to know your feelings, and if he’s the first man you’ve really wanted, I take my hat off to him. You love him? Go for it.”
Physician, heal thyself. Those biblical words came to her as if from nowhere. She had allowed that opportunity to be with Nelson in a different, perhaps more intimate, environment slip by, but in her present frame of mind, she didn’t think she would pass up another chance. Nelson had not suggested a lovers’ idyll, she recalled. If he had that in mind, he would surely leave Ricky at home. I’ve got to stop being so uptight about men, especially about Nelson. If I don’t get my act together, he’ll kiss me off. And that, she knew, in a moment of enlightenment, she could not bear.
“We’re talking about you and Nelson as well as Ryan and me, aren’t we?”
“I guess so.”
“Auntie says he’s a wonderful man, that he treats her as if she were his mother, and he’s a good father to Ricky. He doesn’t have women running in and out of there, either. Why can’t you straighten things out with him? I got the impression that he thinks a lot of you.”
“He does.” She reached across the table and patted her sister’s hand. “If this talk has been good for you, it’s been a blessing to me. Pam doesn’t have to approve, and she doesn’t have to know you spent the weekend with Ryan. She’s got Hendren, and she’s happy with him.”
“Yeah, and that’s an amazement to me,” Winifred said. “Pam doesn’t believe you should make love with a guy unless you’re married to him. She lucked out, but I’m scared to take that chance.” She grinned. “Besides, my hormones are acting out.”
“As long as you’re sure.”
“Not a doubt.”
She looked out of the living room window, watched Winifred get into her car and hoped her sister was as right as she was sure. Hours later, she went to bed, still at odds with herself for having rejected Nelson. It would be a long and lonely weekend.
* * *
Nelson couldn’t remember when he had enjoyed so relaxing a weekend as he had the previous few days with Ricky in St. Michaels, Maryland. The boy had loved the cruise on the Chesapeake Bay, and his enjoyment of the water reminded Nelson of Joel, for whom swimming represented the peak of relaxation. Many times, he’d wished Audrey was with them, but he knew and appreciated that she needed to take her time, that for her, joining them would have been tantamount to a commitment. He walked into his office that Monday morning and closed the door.
“Please don’t disturb me this morning,” he said to his secretary. “I have to finish this report.”
That much was true, but his reason for wanting to work undisturbed had more to do with the pain in his neck and shoulders. He had to put on his hard cervical collar to ease the discomfort, and he didn’t want to be caught wearing it. By noon, the pain eased, and he removed the collar and locked it in his desk drawer.
As he left his office for lunch, Lieutenant Colonel Holden strode toward him. “You stay out of sight, Colonel,” Holden said. “I take it you’re over the injuries you got when you crashed your copter.”
So the man had served notice that he would live up to his reputation. “I thought you knew my helicopter took a hit in the fuel tank.” He ground his teeth, a sure sign that he was on the verge of losing his temper. “Yes. You
do know it. Fortunately, so do several dozen other men, including my copilot. I spent a couple of months recovering, but that’s behind me. See you around.”
He hated being angry, especially not when he was about to eat. He got a ham and cheese sandwich, a banana and coffee in the cafeteria and went back to his office to find his red light flashing.
He got that signal only when there was an emergency. A serious one.
Chapter 7
It could be anything. He punched the code and waited. “Lieutenant McCafferty speaking.”
Relief flushed his body with such force that he had to sit down as he realized the problem wasn’t with Ricky, Lena or Audrey. “Colonel Wainwright answering you call,” he said with such calm that he hardly recognized his own voice. “What’s the good news?”
“You may not think it’s so good. You’re wanted at Camp Pendleton tomorrow morning. Be ready to leave this evening. We have a contingent going to Afghanistan, and the officer who was to brief them has become ill. You’re to fill in.”
He threw up his hands and looked toward the ceiling. “My housekeeper is in South Carolina at an address unknown to me, and I’ll have to either make child-care arrangements for my five-year-old or take him with me. I’ll get back to you in the next hour.”
He didn’t recall having previously considered any aspect of his Marine Corps responsibilities a burden. But he regarded the order that would reach him in writing momentarily as an inconvenience, and he didn’t have to be told that domestic life with Ricky and Lena had pared away some of his military crust, shaved off some of his toughness and his disregard of personal inconvenience. The thought arose that Audrey may have played a role in the change he recognized in himself, but he pushed that aside.
He leaned back in his desk chair, made a pyramid of his fingers and braced them against his chin. What were his options? Handing Ricky over to foster care even for two or three days would have a traumatic effect and rob the boy of the sense of security that he’d worked so hard to build. He couldn’t do that.
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