“Ah,” Jules said. “The old threat combined with dangling a little of what they want most in front of them. That should do the trick.”
Locke glanced back at the trucks. Sam was gone.
“I heard from Max Bhagat that we’ve announced to the media that the so-called hostage situation at the K-stani embassy was just a training operation.” Jules laughed. “Everyone saves face—except CNN and all the other networks who’re made to look like fools for having reporters standing outside a training op for all these days.”
Locke spotted him. Sam had moved over to the house, where he sat on the front steps, head in his hands.
Who would’ve thought . . . ?
“Excuse me for a sec,” she said to Jules.
“Sure.”
Locke approached Sam cautiously. Slowly. Carefully.
He heard her coming, though, and he looked up. And laughed derisively. “Great, you saw that, huh? Perfect. Have at me, Alyssa. My night hasn’t been painful enough.”
“Are you okay?” she asked.
“Fucking perfect,” he said. “I’m not sure which it was that did it to me—the thought of how close that little girl and her grandmother came to getting a bullet in their heads or catching a glimpse of the forensics guys shoveling pieces of a human being’s brain into one of those body bags. Either way, it still makes my stomach churn.”
“I wanted to apologize,” she said. “For some of the things I said to you before, you know, back at the hotel.”
He was surprised and working hard to hide it. He reached down onto the step beside him and picked up a dead twig that was lying there. “Some of the things,” he repeated, snapping the twig into two. “Only some?”
She gave him the smallest of smiles. “That’s right. You know you were there dogging me.”
He looked her dead in the eye and the world tilted slightly. “Can you really blame me?”
She couldn’t respond to that. “I really appreciate your not giving in to your anger and, you know, your not talking to anyone about what we, um, did that night.”
“Okay,” Starrett said. “We’re a slow learner, huh? Let me see if I can say it so you’ll understand. I’m not going to talk about it to anyone. It’s not their business. What we did is between you and me. No matter how mad you make me—and, shit, you can make me mad!—that’s not going to change. You want me to say it again, more slowly this time?”
Locke shook her head. “No, I’m . . . I got it. I’m . . . Thank you.”
He tossed the pieces of twig into the dust, one at a time. “Forget about it.”
“Yeah,” she said. “That’s not a bad idea. In fact, I was thinking . . .”
He looked up at her in silence, waiting for her to go on. How was it that he could have been so good, so gentle and kind with Amy and Eve out there in the woods just a few hours ago? She’d been impressed with the way he’d taken charge of the situation. He was good at what he did. She couldn’t deny that.
So why did he always treat her so badly?
Locke cleared her throat. “You know, Starrett, since you’re in the most elite SEAL team in the country, and I’m in the FBI’s top counterterrorist unit, well, there’s a really good chance we’re going to run into each other with a certain frequency.”
He nodded. “There is.”
“I’m assuming you’re not going anywhere in the near future—”
“No, I’m not.”
“And I would rather not have to transfer and . . .” She took a deep breath. “In an attempt to make things as least awkward as possible, I think we should both simply pretend that night never happened. You know, forget it ever took place.”
Sam nodded, still just watching her. “Is that really what you want?” he asked quietly.
As she looked into his eyes, she felt a flash of uncertainty. “Yes,” she said, trying to feel as sure as she sounded. “From this point on, we don’t talk about it again, all right?”
Sam still watched her steadily. Finally he nodded. “All right.”
Locke nodded, too. “Good,” she said. “Thank you.” She backed away from him. “I’m going to . . . go find Jules and . . .” Her voice trailed off as she looked at him. He looked even more green than he did before. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
“Perfect,” he said. “I’m abso-fucking-lutely perfect.”
“See you around, then,” she said.
“Right. Later.” His soft laughter followed her as she walked away.
The sun had been up for hours before Meg came out of the room in the safe house where Amy was sleeping.
“I’m going to sleep in there,” she told Nils. “I hope you don’t mind. I just . . . I need to be with her for a while.”
He nodded. “I didn’t expect anything less.”
She sat next to him on the couch, slipping into his arms as if she belonged there.
“Okay,” he said.
She looked up at him. “Okay?”
He nodded. “I’m ready.”
She put her hand directly on top of him. “Hmm,” she said, “that can’t be what you mean . . .”
Nils laughed and moved her hand. He kissed her palm and placed it over his heart. “Don’t try to distract me. This is hard—I mean, difficult—enough, Ms. Dirty Mind.”
She kissed him sweetly then pulled back to gaze into his eyes. “John, you don’t have to do this right now.”
He shook his head. “I’ve got something I need to ask you, but before I can do that, I have to talk to you about a couple things. You know, about tonight—”
“Ah,” Meg said. “I was wondering when we were going to talk about what you had to do tonight to save my life. Are you okay?”
“Actually, it’s not an issue for me,” he told her. “But I thought the fact that it wasn’t might be an issue for you. I eliminated two targets tonight. To be honest, I don’t think about them as people. I know that probably sounds cold to you, but . . . I don’t gain anything by giving names and homes and families to terrorists. They were threats, Meg. To you and to me. And I took them out. It was fast, it was clean, and if I’d only wounded them, they would have kept shooting until one of us was dead. I did what I had to do and I refuse to feel bad about it.”
“Really?” she asked.
“After something like this happens, I have to go in for a required number of sessions with a shrink,” he explained. “He seems convinced I’m doing okay—at least for a guy who’s a liar, a killer, and a thief.”
“Liar, killer, and thief I can handle. What I’m having trouble with is the fact that you never taught me to say shit in Kazbekistani.”
He laughed. “Sorry about that. She asked, and . . . well, I told her.”
She leaned her head back against his shoulder. “You’re forgiven. I’m feeling very forgiving today.”
Nils took that as his cue. “When I was fifteen,” he told her, “my father got a job working as a janitor at Milfield Academy.”
“He was the janitor. Suddenly it all makes sense.”
“He was treated like crap by all those rich kids,” Nils said. “He hated it, I know he did, but he wouldn’t quit. He said it was good, honest work and there was no shame in that. But you see, part of his salary was my tuition. He was doing it for me.”
She was listening, so he kept going, telling her things he’d never told anyone. Things he’d never managed to forget. Things he’d tried for years to keep hidden. Things he didn’t want to hide from her. Not anymore.
“So I went there—this poor-as-shit kid, jammed in with all those rich assholes. And it got to me, Meg. What they did and what they said and what they thought. It started to matter. And I . . .” He choked it out. “I pretended I wasn’t related to that weird old janitor who shuffled around the campus. God forbid anyone find out he was my father. Yeah, even though I wasn’t rich, I got the asshole part down pretty well, pretty fast.”
Meg took his hand and interlaced their fingers. “I did some terrible things in high sc
hool, too, John. Nobody judges other people on that kind of ancient history.”
“I judge myself,” he told her. “I live, every day, with the memory of the look in my father’s eyes . . . It was the afternoon I got the highest score on some test—I don’t even remember what it was anymore. All I remember was that I was a freshman, and I got the best grade in the school—it was posted for everyone to see. And, Jesus, he was so proud of me. He waited for me outside of one of my classes after he got the news. I saw him there—he knew I saw him. And I walked right past him without even saying a word. I didn’t want to stop and acknowledge him in front of my friends.” Just thinking about it still brought tears to his eyes. “From that day on, he never approached me during school. Never again.”
Nils shook his head. “I swear to God, Meg, until the day I die, I will never forget the look on that man’s face as I walked away. He was a good man. He was one of the most honest, intelligent, kindest people I’ve ever known.”
“Yet he drank.” Meg sat up, kneeling on the couch to face him.
“That doesn’t make him a bad person,” Nils told her. “He was a good person who made mistakes.”
She was looking at him with those eyes that could see right through him, past all the bullshit and pretense, right to his heart and soul. “Why can’t you cut yourself the same slack?”
Nils nodded. “That’s what I’m trying to do—what I’m hoping you’ll do. Cut me some slack and . . .” He laughed. “I don’t know how to do this, how to say it, so I’ll try to imagine what my father would’ve done, okay?”
He got down on the floor, in front of her, on one knee.
Meg laughed. “Oh, John . . .”
“Will you marry me?” he asked her. He couldn’t keep from laughing either. “I’m serious. I know I don’t look or sound it, but, Meg . . .” He lost himself in her eyes. “I want to spend my life with you.”
She smiled at him. “I like your father’s style. And I love your father’s son, despite all the mistakes he might’ve made.”
His heart leapt. “Is that a yes?”
“Yes,” she whispered.
She smiled into his eyes, and he knew he’d found the ultimate win-win scenario.
Nils kissed her, grabbing hold of his happily ever after. It had been a long time coming, and he was never going to let it—or Meg—go.
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Troubleshooters 02 The Defiant Hero Page 46