by Amy Vansant
“It’s tracking a drone, anyway. Has to be her, right?”
“Nothing has to be anything around here. Might be some horny teenager down the street hoping to catch honeymooners going at it.”
Croix looked at her phone, the device magically appearing in her hand as it was often wont to do. “It’s pinging not far from here, other side of the river.”
“Flying around?”
“No. I don’t think so. It’s only moving a few feet here and there. She must have it.”
Nerves fluttered in Angelina’s stomach.
Shee’s near. She has to be.
A middle-aged man with a shock of bleach-blond hair and matching goatee appeared from the back of the hotel.
Angelina motioned to him. “William, can you keep an eye on the fort? Croix and I have to run out.”
He shrugged. “Sure.”
“Thanks.” Angelina stood and caught Croix’s eye. “Let’s go.”
Harley jumped to her paws, standing bewildered in the center of her desktop nest, sleepy, but too startled by her mother’s urgency to nap. The hair framing her face shot in every direction, like an explosion of muddy water frozen a millisecond after detonation. For a dog who acted like a princess, she more resembled a Dickensian orphan.
“Come here, you crazy little thing.” Angelina scooped the dog into the crook of one arm and strode toward the exit, her long, thin legs outpacing the rest of her body. The front door opened as she approached, thanks to the oversized doorman standing outside in his tropical shirt and khaki shorts.
“Thank you, Bracco,” she said, clicking by in her heels.
“Ticky tack,” he said, smiling. Sunlight glinted off his gold-capped front tooth.
Croix followed so close behind Angelina had to shoo her ahead to end the threat of an imminent rear-ending. She pointed the girl toward her Land Rover.
“Get in. I’ll drive, you navigate.”
Croix did as she was told, an event that didn’t go unnoticed. It hardly ever happened.
Angelina climbed into the driver’s seat, and held Harley in Croix’s direction, the tiny dog’s legs dangling on either side of her palm.
“Take.”
Croix pulled the Yorkie into her lap, eyes never leaving her phone screen.
Angelina started the SUV and crunched through the parking lot rocks to pull onto the street, the fronds of roadside Christmas palms waving her on.
“You have to go over the bridge,” said Croix.
Angelina headed toward the north turn lane. She glanced at her watch to see if they’d be hitting the bridge when it opened on the hour and half past. It was twenty minutes after ten, so it appeared they’d get lucky. On Jupiter Beach, lives danced to the beat of the rising and lowering bridges placed at either end of the island.
Croix waved a hand at the windshield. “Not that bridge, the other one.”
Angelina jerked the wheel right. A car she hadn’t noticed following behind her honked and she held up a hand for them to see.
“Sorry.”
Croix cleared her throat. “You know they have these things called directional signals, or, in your old-timey language, blinkers—”
“Shut it. I’ll start using mine the day these snowbirds start using theirs.” Angelina made a right and weaved around a car with Connecticut license plates. Another driver pulled from a shopping center in front of her and she hit the brakes.
“I swear, if I could mount a cannon to my hood—”
“It looks like she’s in the Crow’s Nest community,” said Croix.
Angelina hit the gas to pass, scanning the roadsides for police. One more speeding ticket and she’d have to buy a bike. She shuddered at the thought of showing up everywhere sweaty.
She checked her watch again. If it were July she wouldn’t worry about missing the bridge opening, but thanks to it being January, seasonal traffic stretched far ahead of her.
Angelina zipped in front of a landscaping truck and crested the bridge with time to spare.
“Where now?” she asked.
“Next right. Oh, shoot.”
“What is it?”
“Crow’s Nest is gated, isn’t it?”
“No worries.”
They pulled to the Crow’s Nest gate and Angelina handed her license to the man at the booth, rattling off the name and address of a community resident she’d once met at a party. They’d dated on-and-off for a few months.
The man handed back her license without looking at it.
“How you doin’ today, Miss Angelina?”
“I’m good, Joseph. How’s your boy?”
The attendant smiled. “He’s real good. Thanks for askin’.”
Angelina tucked her license back into her small black purse and rolled under the rising gate arm.
Croix looked at her. “Do you know everyone?”
“Yes. Where now?”
The girl returned her attention to her phone. “She’s still here. Make a right.”
Angelina turned and they approached a large Miami-modern mansion tucked at the end of a cul-de-sac.
“Stop here. She’s here.”
Angelina hit the brakes so suddenly Harley rolled forward. Croix caught the dog before she tumbled off her lap.
“I can’t believe this worked,” said Angelina.
“Me neither.”
They exited the car and Angelia retrieved Harley before heading up the walkway toward the home’s door.
“Not there, over here.” Croix pointed to the left where well-manicured grass ended at a low bronze fence. Beyond the barrier, an empty lot of scrub bushes and trees stretched for as far as Angelina could see.
She looked down at her Louboutins. She’d just bought them from the high-end consignment shop up the road. The rough terrain would eat her heel leather, and worse, in Florida, anything could be lurking in the grass.
“I can’t walk through there in these heels.”
Without hesitation, Croix moved to the fence, flush with the fearlessness of youth. She climbed over the fence as if she’d spent her life teaching inmates how to escape from honor-system prisons.
Croix studied her phone, took a few steps into the forest and stopped.
“What is it?” asked Angelina.
“According to the tracker, she should be standing three feet in front of me.”
“Well, is she?”
Croix looked back at Angelina, clearly exasperated.
“No.”
“Maybe she’s behind that tree?”
Croix pointed at the skinny palm in front of her. “How thin is this chick?”
“I don’t know. Maybe she’s been on Weight Watchers since she left. Just go look.”
Croix took a few steps forward. Through the fence, Angelina spotted something move on the ground near the girl’s feet.
“Snake!”
Croix jumped at the shriek and then stood with her hand on her chest, staring daggers at Angelina.
“Over there,” Angelina added, pointing.
Croix squatted to inspect something on the ground.
“I’m not sucking out the poison. It will ruin my lipstick,” said Angelina.
“It’s not a snake, freakshow.”
“What is it? Is it the drone?”
“A gopher tortoise.”
Angelina frowned. A tortoise wasn’t useful. It wasn’t even as exciting as a snake.
Croix lunged forward, disappearing behind a weedy bush.
Angelina shifted Harley to her other arm. “Careful. It’ll bite you.”
“They don’t bite,” answered Croix, grunting somewhere in the underbrush.
“Isn’t it illegal to touch them?”
Croix reappeared, studying something pinched between her fingers. “Yes. But not because they bite. Because they’re endangered.”
Angelina strained for a better view. “What’s that?”
“The tracker. It was on the tortoise.”
Angelina retracted her neck, scowling. �
��You’re telling me you shot a flying turtle?”
“It’s a tortoise.”
“Okay, Jacque Cousteau, just tell me—”
Croix folded the tiny tracker in her hand and mounted the fence. “Why would Jacque Cousteau track a land tortoise? He’s the ocean guy.”
“Whatever. Just tell me how you shot a turtle from the roof.”
Croix dropped to the ground and displayed the tracker in the center of her palm for Angelina to see. “I didn’t shoot the turtle. I shot a drone. She stuck it to the turtle.”
“Tortoise,” corrected Angelina with a smirk, suffering a flash of jealousy over how easily the girl had hopped over a fence in flip-flops.
Croix tucked the tracker into her shorts’ pocket. “You really don’t pay me enough.”
Angelina sighed. It seemed Shee hadn’t lost her sense of humor.
This had to be her, didn’t it?
“Maybe the tracker dropped and the turtle rolled on it,” she mused.
Croix peered at her from beneath a lowered brow. “I think they spend a big part of their life trying not to roll. It’s kind of a thing with them.”
“Tortoise. Maybe this one practices yoga—”
“No. She’s messing with us. It was right in the center, top of the shell. She knew exactly what she was doing. Why am I not surprised Mick’s daughter is a smartass?”
Angelina frowned. “Now how are we going to find her?”
The girl thought for a moment. “She must have seen Mick—wouldn’t that make her come to us?”
Angelina pulled her ruby lips into a tight knot. “You’d think so.”
&&&
Chapter Eight
Commander Mason Connelly lay on his back staring at a nail pop in the ceiling. His right leg ached and he wiggled his toes to release the strange pressure in his calf. It didn’t occur him until a moment later that he had no toes to wiggle at the end of that leg.
No toes, no foot, no ankle, no shin.
Kept the knee though.
Lucky, lucky me.
He closed his eyes and pictured himself jogging on the beach, the dark-haired young woman by his side, smiling—
“Look alive, Commander.” First Lieutenant Arturo Felix wheeled into the room and didn’t stop until he’d punched Mason on the arm so hard the discomfort distracted from his other aches. Arturo had been greeting him that way since the kid joined his team. Normally, Mason would punch him back, but not today. After delivering his blow, Arturo jumped an arm’s length from Mason’s hospital bed. For now, it was all he had to do to snuff any chance of retaliation.
“That doesn’t seem fair,” said Mason.
“You gotta be fast.” Arturo dragged a chair from the corner and sat, careful to remain an arm’s length away. “How you feelin’ today, old man?”
Mason pushed himself to a sitting position, his expression frozen on his face to mask the pain the movement caused. “Oh you know, trim. About ten pounds lighter.”
Arturo’s gaze bounced in the direction of Mason’s left shin, a long cylindrical lump beneath his sheets. To the right, the sheets fell flat after the knob of his knee.
Arturo motioned to the space.
“Quit whinin’. It’s below the knee. You’re like, golden, dude. You can get one of those badass blades or something. Run sixty miles an hour.”
“I’m not sure that’s how it works.”
“Yeah, it is.”
Mason chuckled. “You always were a leg-half-full kind of guy.”
“Yeah, well...” Arturo took a deep breath and looked at him with empathy.
Sympathy?
Mason looked away with a grunt.
“This is God’s way of telling you it’s time to retire,” Arturo added.
Mason stared out the window and nodded. He was an old man compared to the kids they kept sending to fill his teams. He remembered the forty-something man he’d served under as a baby SEAL in his twenties. The man had seemed a million years old. And now here he was. The old man.
“You gonna be an instructor?” asked Arturo.
“Nah. Not for me.”
“Gonna take that money and run?”
Mason laughed. “Right. Buy a yacht. Travel the world. Nothing makes you filthy rich like the service.”
“Well, hurry up and get your bionic leg.”
Arturo leaned in to smack his good leg.
Mistake.
Mason’s hand shot out like a snake strike to catch his friend’s wrist.
“Don’t make me embarrass you in front of all these nurses,” said Mason, smirking. He squeezed his friend’s wrist just enough to prove it had been a clean capture and then released.
Arturo chuckled, rubbing his wrist. “I was about to say I’ll buy you a shot at McP’s.”
Mason gasped. “A whole shot? Wow. If you told me sooner I would have ditched the leg years ago.”
Arturo offered some retort and Mason nodded, but his mind had wandered.
What am I going to do?
He didn’t want to be an instructor. He didn’t want to watch wave after wave of healthy young men run circles around his gimpy ass. He didn’t want to hear they’d been blown to bits. He’d been moving for so long—now life had taken the legs out from under him.
Well, the leg.
This time he couldn’t just volunteer for another tour. Throw himself into the mission. Forget about—
“Did you hear we lost Mick?” asked Arturo.
The name caught Mason’s attention. “What?”
“Mick McQueen. He’s dead, dude.”
Mason swallowed. “I thought he was retired?”
“He was, but, I dunno. Heard he got killed.”
“Killed? How?”
Arturo shrugged.
Mason wanted to reach out and shake the information out of his friend. “Accident? Health thing? Give me some details, man.”
“I don’t have any. Just heard he was dead and the situation was sketch.” Arturo squinted an eye and pointed at him. “Hey, didn’t you date Mick’s daughter or something?”
“Me?”
“No, the other lopsided asshole in the bed. I heard—”
“I didn’t think you could make up a rumor about me I haven’t already heard.”
“What can I say? You’re the legend.”
“Uh huh.”
Mason lifted the water on his bedside table and took a sip to hide his thoughts from Arturo.
Mick McQueen dead.
Does she know? Jelly? I have to find out how he died. If he was killed—
Arturo poked him in the arm and Mason’s attention snapped back to the present.
“I’m keeping your hand next time I catch it.”
His friend stood. “Right. Seems like you better start keeping spares. Hey, I have a present for you.”
“Yeah? Is it my leg?”
“Nah. Better than that piece of hamburger. Hold on.” Arturo turned his head and called into the hallway loud enough for patients three floors down to hear.
“Ensign Trevor!”
Arturo returned his chair to the corner as a man wearing the Navy’s tan type II camouflage uniform entered with a curly-haired mutt beside him on a short, black nylon leash.
The pup had grown, but Mason recognized its patchwork of white, gray and black. It had belonged to the kids of their last target and been left behind when they were evacuated. When his team breached the compound, the fire fight had put the Muppet in a panic. During a final sweep, Mason doubled back to grab the dog right as an overlooked combatant lurking in the home’s ductwork dropped a grenade into the hall. If he hadn’t turned back to save the dog, he would have lost more than his leg.
“That’s the puppy from—”
Arturo nodded. “Yep. Your lucky charm.”
Mason swung his left leg over the edge of the bed, dragging what remained of the right one with it.
“Let him go.”
Mason rested his foot on the ground and leaned his tush agains
t the bed for balance. He slapped his thighs.
“Come on, boy.”
The ensign unclipped the dog’s leash from his harness and it bounded forward to put a paw on each of Mason’s knees, craning its neck to lick his face.
He rubbed the dog’s ears and bent to accept a wet kiss, puppy breath sharp in his nostrils.
Arturo grunted. “That’s gross, man.”
“Shut up. How’d you get him here?”
“I convinced the captain to let me bring him home.”
Mason lifted the dog to his lap. “That’s great, ’Turo. Your kids will love him.”
Arturo poked his chest with his finger. “My kids? Naw, man. He’s yours.”
“What?”
“He’s your lucky charm. He can be your, whaddya call it, therapy dog.”
The pup opened his mouth, tongue lolling, squiggling as if he wanted to find a comfortable way to sit but couldn’t hold still enough to settle. Mason didn’t know how he’d take care of a dog. He didn’t even know how he’d take care of himself yet in his new reality.
“Are you sure your kids don’t want him?”
Arturo waved his hands in front of him as if warding off evil. “No dogs. You don’t want him?”
The dog finally wore himself out and slid to the ground.
Mason chewed his lip, thinking. “No. I want him.”
He said the words before he saw them coming.
Am I crazy? What am I going to do with a puppy?
Arturo elbowed the ensign. “Told ya. Big softie.” He turned his attention back to Mason. “When you getting’ out?”
“Monday. Can you keep him until then?”
The grin on Arturo’s face folded like a cheap tent. “Me? I dunno...”
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothin’. I mean, ain’t you got a girl or somethin’ who could—”
“Oh right. I’ve been dating up a storm here in recovery.”
“I saw the way that nurse looked at you. She’d do anything—”
“’Turo...”
Arturo sighed. “My kids would love it. It’s just Josefina’s not really a dog person...”
The ensign snickered and Mason locked on him. “Something funny, Ensign?”
“Sorry, sir. It just seems big bad Arturo’s scared of his wife.”
Arturo’s face flushed red. “I’m not scared of her, I’m respectful. You better learn the difference or you’re going to be a lonely man.”