Troubleshooters 05 Into The Night

by Suzanne Brockmann

  Tarawa. He told President Roosevelt about what it had been like at Tarawa. He told him about growing up the son of a Cape Cod lobsterman, and about his idea—to use his strength as a swimmer to provide information for island invasions.

  He remembered the glint of light against the president's glasses, the smell of his cigarette smoke, the aide who stepped forward to rush him and Charlotte out of the room when they'd overstayed their allotted time, the slight gesture from Roosevelt that made the man stop and back away.

  He remembered being offered a seat on a sofa, as Roosevelt pushed himself out from behind his desk and joined him at a small sitting area. The president told him about a team of men already formed and training in Fort Pierce, Florida. Underwater Demolition Teams or Combat Demolition Units, they were called. It was Vince's idea almost exactly, already set into motion.

  Somewhere during the conversation, after FDR asked him if he'd be interested in joining this team of men, after Vince had told him a heartfelt "Yes, sir," Charlotte quietly excused herself from the conversation and left the room.

  It was a victory, but it was bittersweet. He was to leave for Florida almost immediately.

  He'd gotten what he thought he'd wanted.

  Except the one thing he wanted most of all, more than anything, was a woman who didn't want him.

  At least not until fate intervened.

  "Yes," Vince said to Charlotte now. "I really want to go to Hawaii. Will you think about it?"

  "Why is it so important to you?" she asked.

  And suddenly he knew.

  It was because he'd lived James's life.

  Vince had lived the life that should have been James Fletcher's. He needed to make this pilgrimage to pay his respects to the man whose death had made Vince's happiness possible.

  "Just think about it," he said. He grabbed his car keys from the box by the door. "We're out of milk. I'm going to go pick some up."

  She put down her pencil. "Vincent—

  He fled.

  And he realized, as he pulled out of the garage, that for all these years, it hadn't been Charlotte who didn't want to talk about James.

  It had been him.

  Chapter 21

  "Do you have a minute, Lieutenant?"

  Muldoon looked up to find Joan standing in the open doorway of Sam Starrett's office.

  It was clear, however, that the lieutenant she wanted a minute from was not Sam.

  "Hey, Joan." Sam couldn't have missed her frosty tone, but he pretended not to have noticed. "Come on in. I'm on my way out." Yeah, right. He had just told Muldoon his plan to spend the next few hours tackling some paperwork. "Make yourselves at home."

  He closed the door behind him as he made a hasty exit.

  And there they were, Muldoon pulling himself to his feet.

  He should have been the one who had bolted. Just looking at her made him angry all over again—angry enough to say things he definitely shouldn't say, neither aloud nor in mixed company.

  "I really only have a minute," he lied. "So if this is going to take longer—"

  "Oh, my God," she said. "You are hiding from me, aren't you? At first I was worried when you didn't show up, because you promised me you'd give my grandparents this tour—"

  "Was there some kind of problem with Steve?" he asked. "He's the one who usually gives our VIP tours. I didn't think you'd have a problem with having someone more knowledgeable on hand."

  "He was fine," Joan said. "But... well, you know, I was kind of looking forward to seeing you. I mean, hey, I didn't spend the night with Steve."

  It was supposed to be a joke, meant to lighten the mood, but he didn't laugh. "I'm sure we could arrange that for you if you like."

  Joan probably wouldn't have looked more shocked if he'd reached out and slapped her across the face. And after the shock came anger. Her eyes actually flashed as she glared at him.

  "What is wrong with you?" she asked hotly. "What an awful thing to say!"

  It was. But goddamn it, he was angry and frustrated. And hurt. Really hurt. "If you were looking forward to seeing me, you could've called me, Joan. Like last night, for example. Like hours after Brooke had her press conference and told the world that there was nothing going on between the two of us. Like after there was no longer any reason on earth why you and I couldn't be seen together—except maybe your own insecurity about your career."

  He'd waited hours for Joan to call, assuming she was in meetings or up to her ears in making arrangements for Brooke's admission to that rehab center. But no. She'd been in the hotel bar, kicking back with some of her White House friends.

  Pathetic asshole that he was, he'd gone looking for her, like some kind of creepy stalker, desperate for just a glimpse of her smile.

  Joan's silence last night had been a very clear message to him, letting him know that their night together had meant far more to him than it had to her.

  Jesus Christ, you'd think he'd learn. What a loser.

  Oh, yeah, he was feeling really good about himself today....

  "You're the one who stood me up—in front of my grandparents, no less—and you 're mad at me for not calling you?" she clarified. "What's that about? You couldn't call me?"

  "I told you very specifically that the next move was yours," Muldoon told her tightly. "You want to see me again, you call me. That's how it works."

  "Well, excuse me for not knowing the rules! I've never dated a gigolo before!"

  Silence.

  She didn't meet his gaze. Or maybe he was the one who couldn't bring himself to look at her, because, God, it was hard to maintain eye contact with a knife in the gut.

  "Well," he finally managed to say. "At least we now know what you think of me."

  "I didn't mean that."

  "I think you did."

  "Look, I should have called you," Joan admitted. "I'm sorry. I was scared. I'm confused about this." She gestured between the two of them. "About us. I don't know how we can make this work, Mike, and it's completely freaking me out."

  "Yeah, well, we can't make it work," he told her, looking out of Sam's window. "It won't work. I mean, yeah, we can see each other as often as we possibly can for the next few weeks, and, sure, it'll be fun. We'll talk and laugh a lot and make love for hours." He sighed. "And then you'll go back to D.C. You'll tell me you'll call me, that we'll get together soon, and you'll get on a plane and ... that'll be it. That's the last I'll hear from you."

  "That's not true."

  "Yes, it is." He turned to look at her, angry at her all over again for not admitting it. "I'll call you, and your assistant or secretary or someone in your office will tell me you're busy and take a message. They'll even take my name and phone number—at least they will the first few tunes I call. But you won't call me back. And then, when I call again and again, they won't even bother taking my number, and eventually I'll stop calling. Eventually I'll stop bothering you. I'll become a distant memory—part of the good time you had on your last vacation. I'll be just another barely remembered name on your 'guys I had fun fucking' list."

  Color was spreading across her cheeks, and her lips got tighter and tighter with each word he spoke. He'd offended her with his language, there was no doubt about that. But damn it, she'd offended him, too.

  "Well, I guess we now know what you think of me," she said. "You know, this kind of insecurity and... and... cowardice is pretty unappealing in a grown man. But wait, I forgot. You're only twenty-five."

  He felt his own face flush at her particularly low blow. "I thought women liked honesty. Because, hey, I'm just being honest here—call it whatever you want. And you know what? Right now I'd just rather skip it all. Maybe if we can both manage to be honest, we can cut out that entire month of me pitifully hoping you will call back. We can just skip ahead to the part where the light bulb comes on and—God, I'm a fool—I realize too little too late that you were just another lousy mistake in a long string of lousy, god-awful, goddamned mistakes."

  Joan didn
't slam the door on her way out. She closed it gently behind her, with a tiny but entirely too final sounding click.

  Mary Lou was in such a fog, she almost didn't recognize Bob Schwegel, Insurance Sales, when she saw him.

  "Hey," he said, his blond hah- and white teeth gleaming in the sunlight. "Wow, that's good timing. I was just coming in to see you. Are you on break?"

  He was standing there in the parking lot of McDonald's, and he followed her back to the Dumpster, to her car.

  "I just took my break," she told him. Which was a relief. She would have hated spending her entire fifteen minutes with Insurance Bob breathing down her neck. She was already too rattled by yesterday's conversations with both Sam and...

  Ihbraham.

  Whom she hadn't been able to stop thinking about. Not for one minute in the past eighteen hours.

  She'd actually gathered up her nerve and called him, just a few minutes ago, from the pay phone back by the bathrooms.

  She'd pretended that everything was normal. That nothing had happened. That he hadn't kissed her, that she hadn't kissed him back.

  "I'm going to a meeting tonight," she'd said, leaving a message on his machine. "Give me a call if you want to go, too."

  It was a friendly enough message, without a hint of sexual invitation. Because what she really wanted was to go back to that place where they'd been friends and only friends.

  Anything else was too frightening to think about.

  Even though she'd been able to think about nothing else.

  "I guess my timing's bad then." Bob watched as she unlocked the front door of her car and put her book bag onto the seat.

  "Sorry," she said, not sorry at all as she relocked her car and slipped her keys into her pants pocket.

  He blocked her way back to the restaurant. She hadn't realized he was quite so tall and broad. Or maybe he'd just never stood that close to her before. "You can make it up to me. Have dinner with me tonight."

  "I'm sorry, I'm busy tonight."

  "Tomorrow night, then."

  "Why?" she asked.

  Her frank question caught him off guard, and he blinked at her.

  "What could you possibly see in me?" she persisted.

  A few more blinks and then he laughed. But then he got serious. Really serious.

  "I see someone who's been neglected for too long," he said quietly. "Someone who's as lonely as I am." He backed off. "I'm sorry if I came on too strong. I didn't mean to scare you or upset you or... I just... I haven't met a woman I've liked as much as you in a long time."

  "I'm married," she said. And completely unable to stop thinking about someone else.

  "I don't care," he told her, still with that same disarmingly quiet sincerity. "Maybe that makes me a bad person, but I think if you meet someone you're meant to be with, you should do whatever it takes to wind up together."

  "You think you're meant to be with ..." Me. Mary Lou looked at him again, focusing this time on his face, his shoulders, his legs in the suit he was wearing. He was even more beautiful than Sam, and he thought...

  "I think I'd like to get to know you better," he said. "So what do you say? Just dinner. No pressure. We can take it slow, see where it goes."

  Mary Lou shook her head. "I don't think—"

  "Don't think," he said. "Just say yes. Do something crazy for a change, Mary Lou."

  She laughed. "Bob, I—"

  "Okay, do think about it," he said. "Think hard, sleep on it, and I'll call you tomorrow." He lifted her hand to his lips and kissed her.

  She watched as he got into his car—it was parked right next to hers—and pulled out onto the main road that went through the base.

  It was only then that she wondered.

  What was he doing here?

  Vince had been oddly quiet all day. Even Joanie had commented on it, during their tour of the Navy base this morning.

  "Is everything all right with Gramps?" she'd pulled Charlie aside to ask. "His health's okay, isn't it?"

  Charlie sure hoped so. He was turning eighty this year. That was something to celebrate, considering many men in America didn't live to see that particular milestone of life.

  She watched him now from the bedroom window. He was in the garden, just sitting and watching the wind move through the trees.

  After sixty years of marriage, she'd learned that sometimes he sat and watched the leaves move in the wind because he had something on his mind. But sometimes he just liked to sit and watch the wind and the sky.

  His silence, however, was a little bit harder to explain away.

  But she'd learned as well that he'd talk to her when he was good and ready.

  And if he couldn't bring himself to speak, he'd eventually write to her.

  For a man who swore he was a walking disaster when it came to writing letters, Vince had written her quite a few doozies down through the years.

  And he'd started with one heck of a letter back just weeks after they'd first met. He wrote to her the day he boarded the train for Fort Pierce, Florida. He left it for her to find, on the pillow of her bed.

  Dear Charlotte,

  I love you. I've never said those words to anyone before, let alone written them down on paper, but it's true.

  I love you and I continue to hope that someday you will marry me. In fact, I'll ask you again. Will you be my wife?

  Charlotte had gone with him to the train. It seemed impolite not to, especially after having slept with him the night before.

  She was still a mess—angry with him for leaving, angry at herself for her vast list of sins. And there were so many. Or so she'd believed.

  He was silent in the taxi, silent as they walked into the station.

  She wanted to tell him to be careful, to stay safe, but really, what was the point? He was going off to war and she probably wasn't going to see him alive again.

  Somehow she managed not to cry.

  And then there they were. Standing by the train. Moments from parting, perhaps forever.

  Vince was in his uniform. It made him look even younger than he was—as if twenty-one wasn't young enough to die— because it hung on him a little too loosely. He still hadn't regained all the weight he'd lost from being injured and ill.

  I don't need an answer right away. I hope you 'II take a good long time to think about it—all the way to the end of the war. And this war will end, my sweet Charlie, and we will win. I can promise you that.

  "Well," he said, setting his duffel bag down on the platform next to him.

  "I just want you to know that I don't regret last night," she told him, all in a burst.

  Vince nodded, looking searchingly into her eyes. If he wanted answers, he wasn't going to find them there. She didn't know anything right now. She could barely remember to keep breathing.

  "I don't, either," he said, and smiled. "And there's the understatement of the century. Charlotte, last night—"

  "Don't," she said. "I don't regret it, but it didn't ... It wasn't real."

  "It was very real to me. I'm going to come back, and we are going to make love again. Believe it."

  "I can't," she whispered. "I wish I could, but..."

  I know I've promised you that I'll return, and you 're right. That is a promise I cannot truly make. I will try my best though, and God willing, you will see me again.

  But I've been to war before, and I know—as you know— all too well what it's like. I've made arrangements with my sister to send a letter to you and Mrs. Fletcher if I should be killed, so that you aren't left wondering.

  "I'm not waiting for you," she told him. As the words left her lips she couldn't believe she could be that cruel.

  But he just laughed. "I know," he said. "I'm waiting for you. Just let me know when you're ready, okay?"

  She refused to cry. She'd cried when James had left for the last time. He'd gotten on a train, too. Heading out to California, heading to a ship that was to be deployed from San Diego. She could have gone with him for that train r
ide, but they'd decided to save the money for the future—a future that never happened, because, halfway around the world from her, he'd died.

  But I need you to know, my dearest, that if lam to die, I will not die alone. You are part of me now. You are in my heart. I know that you love me. I know this is true—whether you know it yourself or not. And that knowledge will be with me always. Your love for me will be my constant companion, along with my memories of the beautiful night we shared. It will keep me warm from now until the day I die—whether that day is tomorrow or a hundred years from tomorrow.

  "All aboard!"

  Vince glanced over his shoulder at the train, his mouth tightening and his eyes dark with worry. He was leaving to fight in a war, and he was worried about her. "If you need me, I'll be in Fort Pierce for a few months at least. The training is—"

  She didn't want to hear about the training he was going to undertake. She didn't want to know. She didn't want to mark her calendar and think of him. She couldn't bear it. "You better go."

  He nodded and put his arms around her, but she didn't respond. She couldn't. He kissed her, but she turned her face and he only kissed her cheek.

  He picked up his bag and, touching her cheek one last time, he turned and climbed up the steps. She turned, too, and hurried away.

  "Hey!" he shouted after her. "Charlie!"

  She stopped but she didn't turn back. She couldn't bear to look at him again.

  "I love you!" he shouted over the din as the train began to move. "And I know you love me, too!"

  She ran for the stairs as she started to cry, wishing with all her heart that she hadn't been such a coward, wishing that she had kissed him, too.

  Out in the grinder, Sam stretched his legs, waiting for the rest of Team Sixteen to gather for a late-afternoon run.

  In just a few hours, the team's officers and chiefs would be locked inside in a meeting, putting the final details on this demo they were supposed to be doing during the presidential dog and pony show.

  Final details—that was pretty funny, considering they didn't even have much more than preliminary details. Previous meetings about this event usually started with someone— usually Sam—saying, "Why the fuck can't the Leap Frogs put on this PR show so we can get our asses back to Afghanistan and do something worthwhile?" and then deteriorated into a discussion of security measures on base.