Cold Dawn

by Susan Sleeman

  “You know it.” She grinned. “And with the precision guidance system, even I can hit my target at a good distance.”

  He stroked the barrel another time.

  “I’m sure Gage would let you take it to the range after all this is over,” she said.

  “You better believe I’m going to ask him.” He took another longing look at the weapon then circled the space where everything was tidy and labeled. He let out a low whistle. “You really do know how to do equipment, I’ll give you that.”

  “Gage only buys top of the line.”

  “I can see that.”

  “And he expects it to be cared for and put back. Not that it’s a hardship. We’re all so thankful for our jobs we’d do pretty much anything he asked.”

  “I get that. And respect it.” He turned. “Thanks for showing me.”

  “Sure thing.” She headed for the door, and after he stepped out, she made sure the latch clicked into place.

  “No wonder you have such tight security for the compound.” Respect laced his tone.

  His compliments made her unreasonably happy. She really had nothing to do with the equipment except keeping it clean and putting it back, but she was a proud member of the Blackwell team, and she was glad a former SEAL with exacting standards didn’t find them wanting, and in fact, praised their setup.

  She led the way outside. The sun had disappeared long ago and sparkling stars filled the night sky. A very romantic setting if they weren’t in the middle of a compound where they’d just admired a room filled with weapons.

  Griff pointed down the winding road in the opposite direction of the cabins. “What’s down that way?”

  “Our heliport and firing range are at the far end. And just ahead, we have a city street with plywood building fronts. We use it for urban training.”

  His eyes widened. “Can I see it?”

  “I thought you were starving.”

  He grinned again. “I can hold off if you can.”

  She headed down the road and stopped near the sidewalk leading through what looked like a Hollywood movie set. They walked the tree-lined street that held a bank, post office, grocery store, and other retail stores.

  Griff gawked as he took it all in. He shook his head. “You even have a Starbucks.”

  “Gage wanted it to be realistic.”

  “He succeeded.” Griff stopped and stared down the street, his gaze glazing over.

  She recognized that look. He’d left her in his mind and went to that place—the place she was never allowed to go with him. He was somewhere in a foreign country. Battling a foe that the American people rarely knew about. A foe he could never tell her about who haunted him at times. Yet he’d always loved being a SEAL.

  “You miss it, don’t you?” she asked quietly and resisted taking his hand no matter how much she ached to do so. “The team.”

  He nodded. “The guys especially.”

  “And the adrenaline?” That’s what she missed the most when she’d left patrol. She missed the current that ran through her for the entire shift, knowing if she wasn’t vigilant, each move could be her last one.

  “I replaced that,” he said. “Fighting a fire is a rush all on its own.” He suddenly grimaced and rubbed a hand over his face. “But it requires intense concentration, too. It can wipe out a team. Just not with a bullet or grenade. Now my enemy isn’t man, but the elements.”

  She assumed his battalion had the same dedication to their job, each other, and everyone’s families as the SEALs had. “You still keep up with Bravo team?”

  “As much as I can with them down in Coronado and me up here.” Bravo was based in Coronado, California, one of two SEAL bases in the country.

  She’d met and hung out with all of his teammates and their significant others more times than she could count. She missed the camaraderie after they’d split up, and she still thought of them as family. “Everyone still active except you?”

  “All but Stretch.” Griff scrubbed that hand over his face again, looking wearier than she’d ever seen. “He died.”

  “Stretch? Oh, no. He was such a great guy.” Fond memories of the good-humored man raced through her brain, her heart aching with the news. She couldn’t imagine how painful the loss must be for Griff. She rested her hand on his arm and tried to get him to look at her, but he didn’t. “I’m so sorry, Griff. I know you and Stretch went through BUD/S together.”

  “Yeah. He’s the reason I didn’t wash out.” He stared over her shoulder, likely remembering the grueling six months of Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL training at the Naval Special Warfare Training Center in Coronado.

  He shook his head, his eyes clearing with each shake. “We should get going. Got those calls to make and it’s getting late.”

  He spun and took off at a rapid pace, and she had to jog to keep up. That was it. All he was going to say. Even if she had security clearance allowing him to tell her how Stretch died, he wasn’t going to do so. At least not details of the op. Not even where it happened.

  No matter. He didn’t want to talk about it, but she thought it could very well be the reason he’d left the team. If so, she would keep bringing it up and hopefully get him to open up about the details he could share. Like how the loss was impacting his mental state. Keeping tragic things bottled up only led to unhappiness. She should know. She’d kept her own secret for long enough.

  As Sam prepared dinner, tiredness settled in, and she wanted to crash in her bed and forget the last few days. She wasn’t one to run from her current problems, but they kept mounting on top of each other, and she felt beaten down. First Andy died. Then someone tried to kill her. Then Griff showed up. And now Griff was staying at the compound. Worse yet, he was sitting at her kitchen island staring ahead into space, that same vacant expression on his face.

  “Everything okay?” she asked, hoping he would be more open now.

  He seemed to force away his melancholy with a hard swallow and took a look around the room for the first time. “Your kitchen surprises me.”

  “Why’s that?” She scooped the salad fixings into the bowl and tossed them together.

  “Um…well…” He shifted on his stool in an unusual display of uncertainty. “You never were much for cooking.”

  Ah, he was afraid of insulting her. She got it. Even if being together seemed natural in many ways, they were strangers again. “I wasn’t bad at it. I just never did it.”

  He cupped his hands around a mug of black coffee that had to have gone cold while he was lost in thought. “When did that change?”

  “After the shoulder accident. I had a lot of time on my hands and decided to give cooking a try.” She washed her hands under running water. “Turns out I’m pretty good at it.”

  “Then thanks for inviting me.”

  “No biggie. We have work to do, and we had to eat.” She dried her hands, and nodded at the table where she’d left her laptop and notepad. “We should get to making that list and the phone calls while the chicken cooks.”

  “It already smells wonderful.”

  She agreed. The spicy tang of salsa mixed with cilantro, black beans, and cheese coating the chicken filled the air.

  He swiveled and took the few steps to the small maple dining table, taking his cup with him. “Your place really feels like you.”

  “Thanks, I think.”

  He chuckled. “I meant warm and homey. Not pretentious.”

  “Then thanks for real.” She sat across from him. “We each got to design our cabins, and the team pitched in to help me do most of the building. I wasn’t with the team when they formed, so I didn’t work on the other cabins, but they all helped with mine.”

  She looked around the small space decorated in grays with orange accents. “It was very rewarding to be hands-on with it. Feels like I own the place even if Gage really does.”

  “He seems like a great guy. But then, that’s what I expected.”

  She nodded and opened her mouth to ask why
he’d left Bravo team, but they had work to do, and she could ask him on their drive to Rugged Point tomorrow.

  She grabbed a pen and jotted down Mr. and Mrs. Hollis on the top of a legal pad. “We’ll start with Andy’s parents. Then we normally look at best friends, but that would be us, right? Who else has been friends with him since grade school?”

  “Middle school for me, but same difference.”

  “So we’ll move on to his former employers in Portland and go talk to his coworkers. He likely had friends there.”

  “He hasn’t worked at Flint Accounting in almost a month and didn’t mention anyone from there.” The tension in Griff’s face grew. “You think it might still be related?”

  “Maybe.”

  Griff shook his head. “You know, it’s weird now that I think about it. We lived in the same place for the last month, but we didn’t really spend much time together.”

  “Part of that would be your schedule, right? You sleep at the firehouse.”

  “I’m on twenty-four hours, but then off for forty-eight. So I was home plenty of the time. But he was out a lot or in his room.” Griff frowned. “I wonder if he hung in his room because he was depressed over the life changes he made. Maybe he missed his life in Portland.”

  “Or maybe he didn’t want to wear out his welcome by bugging you.”

  Griff crossed his arms. “I sure hope I didn’t make him think he was bugging me.”

  “No, wait.” She held up a hand. “That’s not what I meant. Just that he was in your space and was mindful of that. If I stayed with you, I’d be conscious of intruding as little as possible.”

  He flashed her a shocked look. “You could never stay with me.”

  “I…it’s…I was speaking hypothetically.” Man, she really didn’t think before saying that. He was right. If she was his houseguest, tension would fill his place twenty-four seven.

  “Yeah…right…okay.” He gripped the cup so tight his fingers lost color. “But just so you know, we could never be under the same roof for long.”

  “I get it. I walked out on you, and you must really hate me.”

  “Hate? Far from it. So far, that it’s not funny.” He met her gaze and held it.

  His connection felt like such an intimate caress that she felt her face and ears get hot and she couldn’t think of a word to say.

  “That’s why it wouldn’t be a good idea. Right?” He motioned between them. “There’s still something here, isn’t there?”

  She nodded and wanted to reach out to him. To let him know again that she didn’t leave him because of anything he did. It was all her. But going there wouldn’t be good for either of them. Best to stick with the facts. “But nothing has changed for me. I still can’t be with you.”

  He held up his hands. “Got it loud and clear. You might be into me, but you don’t want to be with me. Maybe someday you’ll explain that.”

  Right. Her closely held secret. She wasn’t ready to share that with him or anyone. She took a deep breath and tapped her pen on the notepad. “We should focus on our plan.”

  He opened his mouth to speak, but she rushed on, “So we’ll visit his office. He may or may not have had friends there, but they would know any office gossip about him.”

  Griff tilted his head. “You think there is gossip about him?”

  “I don’t know, but like I said at the cannery, I find his reasons for moving back home kind of odd. Maybe the managing partners of the CPA firm can shed light on that decision.” She noted Flint Accounting on the page. “Why did he quit? Or…was he fired?”

  “He quit.”

  She nodded. “Anyone else you can think of that he’s been talking to lately?”

  “Hmm. Let’s see.” Griff tapped his finger on the table. “What about Nick Ogden? I know Andy met up with him since he’s been back home.”

  She raised a surprised gaze to him. “Nick, really? They were never friends, were they? At least not in high school.”

  “No, but Andy hung out with Nick a few times in the last month. That I’m sure of.”

  She added the name to her list. “Anyone else?”

  “He was talking about Emily Simpson a lot.”

  “The girl he had a crush on in high school?”

  “Yeah. She got divorced recently, and I think he was trying to get up the nerve to ask her out. I don’t know if he ever did, but we can talk to her.”

  “Okay.” Sam put Emily’s name down. “It’s too late to call the accounting firm. Let’s split up the rest of the list and make appointments for tomorrow. And maybe just ask Emily if they talked. No need to go see her if they didn’t.”

  He nodded. “You take his parents. I’ll call Nick and Emily.”

  She got out her phone and noticed she’d missed a text from Gage. “Blake said Andy’s phone wasn’t found at the scene.”

  Griff sat back, his eyes narrowing. “I suppose it’s not a surprise. Andy was forever misplacing things.”

  “He was an absent-minded guy for sure.”

  “Could be in his room at my place.”

  “And we can ask his parents about it.” She started to dial them, then paused after tapping in the third number to look at Griff. “I know how much I’m hurting, and I can’t even imagine the pain they must be going through. I don’t want to make it even worse for Andy’s folks.”

  “I did a few death notification calls in my SEAL days.” He clasped his hands on the table and looked at them. “The thing I learned is that parents may not want to hear the news, but after they do, they want to know the details of how their child died. Andy’s mom and dad will want his killer caught. Giving them closure is helping them, not hurting them.”

  “But that’s just it,” she said imagining the call. “As of now, they probably don’t know that someone tried to kill me today, and that he was likely murdered.”

  “Yeah, that’ll be rough to hear.”

  “I can’t tell them that on the phone. It’s going to hurt them even more. Bad news like that needs to be delivered in person.”

  “Just ask if we can come over tomorrow.” Griff took her hand and held it tight. “And then I’ll be right by your side to help if you need it.”

  She smiled her thanks and finished dialing. But she couldn’t ignore the thought that she passed up the opportunity to have this caring, compassionate man by her side for life.

  She’d chosen to be alone. All alone. And suddenly it didn’t seem like she’d made the best choice.

  7

  A dreary rainy day greeted Griff when he stepped from his small cabin with Sam by his side. She’d walked over in the misty rain so he could drive his truck today. He was a control freak with some things. Driving was one of them. Went back to his SEAL days. As an operator, he drilled and practiced driving maneuvers until they were second nature and muscle memory kicked in. The average attack was over in a matter of seconds. There was no time to hesitate. No time to second-guess. Just let rote training kick in.

  Tactical and defensive driving was one of those things. If he was behind the wheel, he was certain he could handle anything that came up. Sure, Sam had defensive driving skills from her officer days, but honestly, she’d never trained to the level he had. Thankfully, she’d always accepted this about him.

  He opened the passenger door for her, taking in her well-fitting jeans, dressy suede boots and leather jacket over a turquoise knit top that highlighted her blond hair. She smelled like vanilla and coconut, and he had the hardest time keeping his eyes off her. And that’s when he spotted her holstered weapon under the jacket and was glad to see she wasn’t chancing anything. She’d had the same idea as he did. There was no way he would go forward without carrying.

  “I like your ride,” she said, running her gaze over the leather seats and top-of-the-line equipment he’d insisted on adding. “Must’ve set you back a few dollars.”

  He patted his truck and grinned. “You know about guys and their trucks.”

  “Yeah, they’ll a
lways be their first love.” She laughed freely and climbed up onto the pricey leather seat.

  A nice ride was one of the perks of being single. He’d been deployed for much of his military career and didn’t have a family to support. That allowed him to save most of his pay. Now he had a nice nest egg, and the cost of living in Rugged Point was pretty low. He was financially set and splurged on nice things once in a while.

  He joined her in the truck and pointed the vehicle toward the main exit, passing law enforcement officers walking toward the training building. Griff made a mental note to compliment Gage on his business.

  He stopped at the main road to make the turn toward Rugged Point. “When’s the last time you were home?”

  “Been awhile.”

  “Did you go to your parents’ cabin for Christmas?”

  “Nah. Stayed here.”

  He looked at her. “Okay, what’s going on? You never miss that celebration.”

  She bit her lip and looked away. “My mom and I had a falling out.”

  “About what?”

  She lifted her chin in a cute stubborn angle. If she were standing, she would plant her feet and put her hands on her hips, too. And no matter how much she’d hurt him in the past, she looked like an adorable scrappy pit bull, and he lost his anger. “Don’t bother trying not to tell me. You know I won’t give up.”

  “Yeah, but it’s none of your business.”

  “Humor me. I want to know.”

  “It was about a few things, but if you must know, some of it was about you, okay?” She shot him a quick look then turned away again. “She said I was foolish to let you get away.”

  Not the answer he expected at all. “She’s right.”

  Sam clenched her fists on her knees. “She’s wrong. But she doesn’t understand.”

  “Because you probably told her as much as you told me, and I don’t understand either.”

  She pointed at the road. “We need to stop analyzing my past and get going. We have a lot to do to find Andy’s killer.”

  He continued to stare at her, wondering about the many details she was keeping to herself. “Fine, but this isn’t the end of this discussion. You know I’m going to want more details.”