Actually, what he’d said was “Whoever did this deserves to die.” Somewhere along the way, as The Story had been told again and again, someone had added the infinitive-splitting profanity and done that little verb switcheroo. Cosmo couldn’t blame them. It made for higher drama.
He himself was partially to blame, because he’d never bothered to correct it.
The op in question had happened years ago, early in his career. SEAL Team Sixteen had been sent to a terrorist hotbed of a country known as “the Pit.” In the mountains up north, two warring factions had been duking it out, and someone in a remote little village had pissed off one of the warlords, who had wreaked that terrible havoc.
The SEALs’ orders had been to escort negotiators into the mountains, to help get talks started to end the bloodshed, and to keep other villagers in the area safe.
Several of the officers were given an order—to locate the warlord’s encampment. A squad had left to do just that.
Cosmo, though, had helped handle the cleanup. Even though it was winter, something had to be done about the dozens of bodies lying in the village square.
He’d done some crap jobs in his life, but that one had been the worst. It made yesterday’s garbage chute seem like a picnic in the park with Nicole Kidman.
And Renée Zellweger.
“The theory is that he discovered the location of the warlord’s camp,” Collins told Vlachic now.
By he he meant Cosmo, who now surrendered. He sat down in Mikey’s office chair, put his head back and his feet up, and closed his eyes. This was going to take a while.
“No one remembers seeing him at the briefing,” Collins continued, “but he could have been listening outside of the tent. During the night, it’s said that he went into the mountains and paid that warlord a little visit. And instead of negotiating a meeting, the next morning those diplomats ended up helping load up a hundred more body bags. That warlord and most of his men were dead.”
“And everyone’s certain it was Chief Richter?” Vlachic questioned.
“No,” Collins said. “But apparently he was unaccounted for that night—just short of UA. And—if he was doing something else, why doesn’t he talk about it and end the speculation, huh?”
Because what he’d done one night, all those years ago, was no one’s freaking business. Cosmo almost got up and said it aloud as he walked out into the hall. But he stayed seated. Vlachic was a good kid. It would embarrass him to be caught gossiping this way.
Collins, however, was one of those cocky young officers that the chiefs prayed would either move quickly into the civilian sector or grow up—preferably before he got someone killed.
“And,” Collins continued, “get this: a SEAL name of Hoskins—he’s no longer with the Teams, but he hangs out sometimes at the Ladybug Lounge, so you can ask him yourself—he says he spotted the chief around dawn, heading toward the river to get cleaned up because his uniform was covered with blood. And Bill Silverman—you’ve met him, right? He heard one of the village elders thanking Cos, like ‘I can never repay you for what you have done.’ ”
“Shit,” Vlachic said, the word filled with meaning.
“Yeah,” Collins responded. “But seeing as how it brought peace to the region, at least until a new warlord moved in . . .”
Their voices faded as they finally moved off down the corridor.
“Do you think he did it?” Cosmo heard Vlachic ask. “Killed all those men?”
He couldn’t hear Collins’s reply.
He waited until he heard the door closing down at the end of the hall. He reached for his sunglasses as he got to his feet. “Free at last.” It was little more than an exhale, barely audible and certainly not meant to be overheard.
“Are you?” a voice asked. It was female and faintly Hispanic, and he recognized right away that it belonged to Sister Mary Grace, the youngest of his three nuns.
Despite that, it took everything he had to keep himself from jumping. How was it possible that he hadn’t heard her approach?
The sky outside the window was overcast, but he put his sunglasses on before he turned to face her.
Fortunately, she didn’t expect him to answer her question. “Lieutenant Muldoon thought I might find you here.”
Cosmo waited, and sure enough, she kept going.
“I didn’t get a chance to thank you,” she told him. “So . . .” Her hands fluttered. She had long, graceful fingers, with short but well-kept nails. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome, ma’am,” he said with a nod that was meant to give her permission to exit. “I’m glad you and your friends are safe.”
But she didn’t leave. “Do you have a minute?” she asked. “Do you mind if we sit down?”
That’s when he secured his spot in hell. He picked up that report he’d put in Muldoon’s basket and lied to a nun. “I’m afraid I need to get this to the lieutenant right away.”
She nodded solemnly, as if she believed him. “May I walk with you, then?”
Cosmo hesitated, and she didn’t wait for him to answer. She led the way out the door.
There was nothing to do but follow.
She was pretty in a very nun kind of way, with short dark hair and glasses that didn’t hide the luminousness of her eyes. Whatever she wanted, it wasn’t going to be good. Best-case scenario was that she was intending to preach at him for using deadly force during the rescue.
Thank you for saving my life, but couldn’t you have done it without hurting those poor terrorists . . . ?
He knew how to answer that. If she were someone he knew well and considered a friend, he might say, You mean risk your safety and that of my teammates by doing anything other than permanently removing the “poor” terrorists who were responsible for three different bus bombings and 268 civilian deaths over the course of one week, who attacked the hotel where the delegates from your peacekeeping mission were billeted, who executed eleven members of your delegation, and who kidnapped you and your two friends with the intention of videotaping your impending torture and death as a warning to others who might defy them?
But no. Instead, if she asked that question, he would merely respond with, No, ma’am, I could not, politely excuse himself, and walk away.
If this woman’s recent experiences hadn’t made an adjustment to her never-use-violence way of thinking, nothing he said was going to change her mind.
And she sure as hell wasn’t going to change his.
But she didn’t speak until they went down the stairs and out into the crisp, cold sunshine.
“I was wondering,” she said then, “and forgive me if this is too personal, but . . . Are you married?”
What the fah . . . ? Cosmo couldn’t help himself. He looked at her over the top of his sunglasses.
It wasn’t often that someone managed to surprise him so completely. And Sister Mary Grace—who’d also sneaked up on him—was two for two.
“No,” he said.
“Do you have a girlfriend?” she asked.
He broke eye contact. “No.” Jesus, was she . . . ? Cosmo prayed—for the first time in years—that she hadn’t sought him out to hit on him. That would be too ungodly weird.
But it would be just his luck when it came to women. He attracted the strange ones. Or the needy ones—needy in the sense of “I need to be tied up.” Or even worse—“I need to be treated like crap, so if you’re going to be nice to me, I’m leaving right now.”
He had some kind of homing beacon that drew in the desperately dysfunctional—the women who thought he was dangerous and got off on that. If there was such a thing as a nympho nun, it made sense that she would seek him out.
Please, God, if You’re out there, make this woman’s desire be for nothing more than to sing a verse or two of “Climb Ev’ry Mountain.”
“Any kind of significant other?” she persisted. “Someone that you can talk to?”
And just like that, he understood. She wasn’t hoping to jump his bones, thank
you, dear sweet Jesus. She just wanted to make sure he had an outlet for his emotional and spiritual relief.
Sister Mary Grace didn’t falter as he stopped walking, as he gazed silently down at her. He knew damn well that the combination of his mirrored shades and his poker face could make strong men shake in their boots and back away.
But she took a step closer. “I just wanted to let you know that I’m here if you ever need to talk,” she told him.
She had beautiful eyes. They were so warm, so peaceful. So nonjudgmental.
“I’m all right,” he said.
“I know.” The way she said it, with that smile—it wasn’t just a platitude. “But everyone needs someone to talk to. Don’t you think?”
“The team has a shrink,” he told her, mostly because she was standing there with those eyes, waiting for some kind of response. With anyone else, he would’ve excused himself and been long gone.
“That’s good,” she said with another warm smile.
It made him feel like a liar. “I don’t go very often, or . . .” He corrected himself. “At all, actually. Except, you know, when I’m ordered to. . . .”
“But you can go if you ever need to,” she said. “Right?”
“Yeah.”
There was silence then, but she didn’t try to fill it. She just stood there, smiling at him.
Collins and Vlachic were across the yard, talking to Izzy Zanella, who was trying to get a softball game going. All three of them were watching Cosmo and the nun out of the corner of their eyes.
“I’ll pray for you,” Sister Mary Grace finally told him, and, Christ, what could he possibly say in response to that?
“Thank you, Sister.”
Jenkins saved him—God bless him. He came running out of the administrative building. “Hey, Zanella, have you seen Cos?”
Izzy pointed, and Jenk jogged in his direction. “Excuse me, Chief,” he called. “We just got a call from the States. Your mother—she’s going to be all right—but she’s had an accident. I guess she fell and . . . Sounds like she broke both of her wrists.”
Oh, shit. “Excuse me,” Cosmo told the nun.
As he ran for the admin office, he heard Ensign Collins say to Vlachic and Zanella, “Chief Richter has a mother?”
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CHAPTER
ONE
C osmo’s mother was driving him crazy.
Well, okay, to be fair, it wasn’t his mom, but rather her choice of music that had pushed him out of her condo, into his truck, and back down the 5, here to San Diego.
He parked in the lot next to the squat, ugly building that held the offices of Troubleshooters Incorporated. The sun was warm on the back of his neck as he crossed to the door. As usual, it was locked—apparently Tommy Paoletti had had no luck yet finding a receptionist for his personal security company. But he had installed a system that would allow him to let people in without having to run all the way out to the door twenty times a day.
A surveillance camera hung overhead, and Cosmo looked up at it, making sure Tommy would be able to see his face as he hit the bell.
The lock clicked open as a buzzer sounded, and he went inside.
“Grab some coffee—I’ll be right out,” Tom shouted from one of the back offices. “How’s your mom?”
“Much better, thanks,” Cosmo called back.
And she was. Right after the accident, when Cosmo had first gone to see her, she’d been in a lot of pain. Her face had been almost gray, and she’d looked old and frail lying in that hospital bed.
But she’d been home a few days now and was feeling far more her old self.
Which was great.
But, dear sweet Jesus, if he had to listen to the soundtrack from Jekyll & Hyde one more time, he was going to scream.
“You just haven’t had enough time to appreciate it,” his mother had told him. “A few more listens and—”
Oh, no. No, no, Mom. I’ve heard it quite enough, thanks.
Cosmo poured himself some coffee from the setup in the Troubleshooters waiting room.
He’d actually liked Urinetown. He could handle repeated listens of The Full Monty, too. And West Side Story, if done properly, could bring tears to his usually super-cynical dry eyes.
But most of his mother’s very favorite Broadway musicals were those which Uncle Riley had dubbed “screamers.” They were filled with hyper-emotional ballads with crescendos that swelled to triple forte, delivered by sopranos or tenors who, as Riley had insisted, deserved immediate arrest by the “too-too” police.
Uncle Riley had gotten away with it, but God help him if Cosmo ever said anything like that aloud.
Not just to his mother, who would give him her best injured look, then subject him to several hours of lectures on true music appreciation.
But God help him also if he talked about such things to the other men in SEAL Team Sixteen.
They would look at him as if he were, well . . .
Gay.
Which he wasn’t.
Not even close.
Not, of course, that there was anything wrong with it.
Shoot, with his mother, it would’ve been easier if he had been. He might’ve been born with some special genetic ability to actually enjoy Jekyll & Hyde. And Phantom and Les Mis and all the other screamers he’d gritted his teeth through, as he’d taken his mother to see them through the years.
Cos took his coffee and sank down into one of the new leather sofas in the Troubleshooters waiting room. Buttery soft and a light shade of honey brown, they replaced the former mismatched collection of overstuffed chairs—thrift shop rejects—that had cluttered the area in front of the receptionist’s desk.
Whoa, the walls had been repainted, too.
Magazine racks, potted plants, real lamps instead of overhead fluorescents . . .
Tom’s wife, Kelly, had been threatening to redecorate for months, insisting that the image Tom was trying for with his new company probably wasn’t “piss poor and tasteless to boot.”
But huge leather sofas—as nice as they were—weren’t exactly Kelly’s light and breezy New England beach house style.
Someone else had done this.
Someone besides Tom—who was a great leader but seriously fashion and design challenged.
“Are you here for the meeting?”
Cosmo looked up. The woman coming down the hall toward him was a stranger. She was wearing a pin-striped suit that had been tailored to accentuate her feminine shape. Petite, with blond hair cut short and delicate features in a launch-a-thousand-ships face, she had blue eyes that were coolly polite. Professional. Intelligent.
Ivy-league intelligent.
Her hands were ring-free. Both of them. Her fingernails were short, bitten down almost to the quick—a direct and intriguing contrast to the career-woman persona.
She took a few steps closer and tried again. “May I help you?”
“No, ma’am,” he finally answered her, then mentally kicked himself. Talk, asshole. She most certainly could help him. He would love for her to help him. And at least be polite. “Thanks. I’m waiting for Commander Paoletti.”
She finally smiled, and it transformed her from merely breathtakingly beautiful to full-power-defibrillator heart-stoppingly gorgeous. He wanted to drop to his knees and beg her to bear his children.
“You must be one of his SEALs,” she said.
“Yes, ma’am.” Stand up, fool. But, Christ, don’t spill the coffee . . . Too late. It splashed over the edge of the cup and onto his fingers. Gahhhhd, it was hot.
She pretended not to notice as he pretended that he hadn’t just been scalded. She even held out her hand to shake. “I’m Sophia Ghaffari.”
Sophia. It was a beautiful name, and by all rights violins should have started playing when she said it. She looked like a Sophia, she dressed like a Sophia, she even smelled like a Sophia.
Troubleshooters 09 Hot Target Page 2