The thought of being alone scared the shit out of her. And now she had Haley to take care of, too.
So here she was, and there was no doubt about it any longer. Bob Schwegel, Insurance Sales, wanted to fuck her.
He was handsome, he was smart, he had money and a nice car.
He was, without a doubt, the perfect parachute.
But all she could think about was Ihbraham. Who loved her. Enough to keep his distance so that he didn't fuck her.
And wasn't that the oddest thing?
Bob was talking about his work, about selling insurance— which was just about as interesting to her as shoveling cow manure from a barn—and she let her mind wander.
Back to Ihbraham.
Who loved her.
Ihbraham, who, with his quiet gentleness, simply by sitting beside her and breathing, made her happier than she'd ever been in her entire life.
Even though he wasn't a SEAL. Even though he wasn't white. Even though he was only a gardener.
Bob put down his salad fork. "You're not really interested in Mrs. Wilke's policy changes, are you?"
She shook her head. "I'm sorry."
"Have I told you that you look incredible tonight?" he asked.
He had. "Thank you," she said again. The dress she was wearing was too tight across her chest, but Bob sure didn't seem to mind. He kept scraping his eyes across her body, making her more and more uncomfortable by the minute.
Which was strange. Since when did it bother her to have a man check out her boobs with a look in his eye that broadcast his intent to have her naked within moments of leaving this table? She'd been entering—and winning—wet T-shirt contests since she was seventeen. She'd grown up on wolf whistles and catcalls, and had wondered what she was doing wrong when she walked down a silent street.
"I have to be honest, Mary Lou," Bob told her now. "I want more than dinner from you. I've wanted you from the first tune we met."
And she knew part of what her problem was. She'd seen herself in her mirror before she left the house, and she knew she didn't look hot. She looked pathetic and fat. Which meant that Bob was either blind or lying.
Ihbraham, however, loved her.
All she wanted was to pick up Haley from Mrs. U.'s and go home.
Mary Lou used her napkin to wipe her mouth and set it beside her plate. "I'm sorry, Bob. I really am, but I—'
"Hear me out, okay? I know what you're thinking, and yes, I want you to come home with me, but not tonight."
Well, wasn't that... different.
"When you come to me," he told her, "I want it to be permanent." He leaned across the table, his eyes intense as he took her hand. "Leave your husband, Mary Lou. He doesn't treat you the way you deserve to be treated, the way I'll treat you. Run away with me."
She pulled her hand free. "That's crazy. I can't run away, I have a daughter."
"You didn't think I meant ..." He laughed. "God, no. I meant we should all run away. Haley, too, of course. Remember that trip I'm taking to New York?"
She nodded.
"I'm leaving tomorrow, and I want you and Haley to come with me. Pack a suitcase, bring what you need—bring it with you to work. I'll meet you, we'll go pick up Haley from day care and leave right then and there. You told me you always wanted to go to New York. Come on, let's do it. What do you say?"
She said nothing for a moment. She just sat there, looking at Bob across the table, and she knew that she was going to leave Sam. She was going to jump. And she did have a parachute.
But it wasn't Bob.
No, she was going to leave Sam for Ihbraham.
Who loved her.
Bob was handsome and gleaming and perfect in so many ways. Mary Lou would bet her entire savings account that he was great in bed, too.
And if it weren't for Ihbraham, she might be tempted to find out just how great he was.
But while she could've used Bob to cheat on Sam, she didn't want to cheat on Ihbraham.
Who loved her. Who loved her.
She pushed her chair back from the table. "I'm so sorry. I can't do this."
"Sure you can. Sam treats you like shit, Mary Lou. We can really screw him while we're at it—empty his bank accounts, use his credit cards—have fun while he pays for it."
And it became very clear what Bob was after.
"I'm sorry," she told him as she stood up to leave. "But I can't go with you. I don't love you and I honestly don't believe that you love me."
"You busy?" Muldoon said quietly into his cell phone.
Joan was sitting on the other side of the crowded room, and she turned to look at him, shaking her head slightly. "What do you think?"
It was the so-called final meeting before tomorrow's presidential extravaganza, and Admiral Tucker was standing up at the front of the room, giving a long-winded speech about... well, Muldoon wasn't sure exactly what Tucker was talking about, but the man's public speaking skills were legendarily bad, and as usual, he'd gone into repeat mode.
Everything of importance had already been said by the men who were truly in charge of the SEAL demonstration. Lieutenant Commander Paoletti had given a few last-minute instructions and talked about some changes. He was still feeling unhappy about releasing smoke into the crowd and had announced that he was taking it upon himself to play it by ear tomorrow. If he had any sense that there might be trouble, he was reserving the right not to use the smoke.
Muldoon had had a chance to talk to the CO after his meeting with FBI team leader Max Bhagat. Apparently whatever Bhagat said hadn't reassured him.
Bhagat was here now, with a small group of agents from his counterterrorist team, including the infamous Alyssa Locke and a man Muldoon had met in Indonesia last year— George Faulkner. Good guy. Solid sense of humor considering he spent all that time each day in a suit.
"I'm thinking about getting something to eat—maybe a slice of pizza—and having a beer after this endurance test is over," Muldoon whispered into his cell phone.
"Wow, one whole slice of pizza," Joan said. "Go crazy." As he watched, she got to her feet and quietly slipped out of the room, standing just outside the half-opened doorway to the corridor. This way she could talk quietly without disturbing anyone.
Good idea.
But to get over to where she was now standing, Muldoon would have to cross directly in front of Admiral Tucker—not a smart career move. Instead he went out the open doors on the other side of the room. He could see Joan from where he stood, and even though he was standing in shadows, he knew she could see him, too.
"I still watch my weight," he told her quietly. "Force of habit. I'm aware of how many calories I burn each day, and I eat accordingly. Today was a one-slice day. Believe me, there are days when I just start eating from the moment I get up to the moment I go to sleep and I'll still lose weight—which is not something I'm looking to do, because when I lose weight these days, I lose muscle mass. BUD/S training was like that—you eat to refuel, and you need lots of fuel. Some guys come home after a particularly strenuous op, and they keep eating huge amounts, but they're not burning the calories anymore and... that's when you can run into trouble."
"And yet you encourage me to have dessert."
"Yeah, you don't have to run eight-minute miles. I think women should have curves. I think there are too many people these days who confuse being skinny with being physically fit. Starving yourself down to skin and bones doesn't make you healthy. On the contrary."
"I know that," she said. "It's just hard to stand next to a woman who's scary-thin and not feel ... large. I feel large most of the time," she admitted.
"Maybe you should spend more time standing next to me," he suggested. And maybe that was a little too friendly, because across the room, over in the other hallway, he saw her sigh.
Okay, don't let her talk. Don't let her start that same old "I don't think this friends thing is working" speech that she'd tried to deliver all the other times he'd called her on her cell phone this afternoon.
Calling her was, without a doubt, the only way he could talk to her. Their afternoon was filled with downtime, but they both had to be in range of their superiors—ready to leap into action if necessary.
"You're in excellent shape, by the way. You're the perfect weight for a woman of your height," he told her in an attempt to hold on to the conversational ball. "I couldn't help but, you know, notice when, uh..." When she was naked and in his arms. Damn, that was not the way to go, either. This platonic friendship thing was much harder than he'd dreamed it would be.
He wanted to make love to her again so desperately that it was all he could do not to lie down right there in the hall and howl in frustration.
"So. Pizza?" he said instead.
"I've got more meetings to go to," she said. "This might be it for you, but I've still got Brooke duty to take care of tonight."
"How's she doing?" Muldoon asked.
"She's still in the detox part of the treatment," Joan told him. "I think it's harder than she thought. But she's hanging in." She sighed again. "Look, Michael. I think we probably do need to talk—face-to-face, I mean. How about tomorrow evening, after this thing is over?"
"I'm not sure," he said. "We can plan for it, but don't forget there's a chance I'll have to leave right away. And I may not be able to call you to tell you, so ... Just remember that it's not intentional if I suddenly don't show up."
She was silent for several long moments, but then she asked, "Why do you do it? What's the appeal of going out there and risking your life? I just... I don't get it. Why do you have to do it?"
"Someone's got to," he said. "We've talked about this before—you know how I feel."
"And you've wanted to do this—be a SEAL—since seventh grade," she said. "I don't get that, either. Was it surviving that sailing accident that made you want to be a SEAL? Or was it... ? I don't know, I've been thinking all day about that story you told me, and I just keep wondering, when you were in the water and you were swimming with those two other boys, pulling them along, trying to make it to shore ... how on earth did you do it?"
"First of all," Muldoon said, "I didn't try. There was no trying going on. I had to do it, so I did it. I wasn't ready to die, and I refused to accept that option as a real possibility. Wayne kept screaming, 'We're going to die, oh, my God, we're going to die,' and maybe that's what kept me going, because every tune he said that, I thought, Not me. I'd read about Hell Week—you know, the part of BUD/S training where you get no sleep, and they run you around like lunatics—it's a physical and mental endurance test. I'd read some accounts of guys who'd been through it, who'd succeeded, and they all seemed to break that week down into much smaller moments. Heartbeats, if you will. Boom. You take one step forward. Boom. You take another. Boom. Breathe in. Boom. Exhale. You don't set your eyes on the end of the week because that's too far away. That's an impossible goal to achieve. You keep it doable. You don't look beyond that very next step that you're going to take.
"That's what I did when I was in the water," he told her. "I swam for one heartbeat and then one heartbeat more. And then another, and another. I think luck had a lot to do with us hitting shore when we did. We were in a harbor, there was land on three sides, so our chances of reaching solid ground at some point were pretty good. As it was, we didn't take the shortest route. As it was, we swam for a quarter of a mile." He laughed. "That doesn't seem like a lot to me anymore, but believe me, at the time it was a major deal."
"Was that what it was?" she asked. "You tasted what it was like to be a hero, so... ?"
He had to laugh. "Hero, huh?" Yeah, that's right—she'd made up a nifty end to his story, complete with a virtual ticker tape parade through the center of town. "I was grounded for three weeks after that. And Wayne told everyone that I'd capsized the boat on purpose."
"No way!" Joan said. "The little piece of shit! No wonder you didn't want to be friends with him."
"Yeah, it didn't happen quite the way you imagined," he said. "Wayne didn't even thank me for saving his life."
"You've got to be kidding."
Muldoon loved the fact that she could get so indignant about injustices that had happened to him so long ago.
"So what did he say to you?" she asked. "You said you both sat in the hospital, waiting for your parents. He must've said something."
"He said ..." Muldoon laughed softly. "You're going to hate this."
"I know," she said. "I can feel it. I'm going to want to track this little bastard down and kick him in the balls for you. Just like, wham. 'That's for Mike Muldoon, you little jerk,' and then I'd vanish."
"With the police hot on your heels shouting your Miranda rights and charging you with assault and battery."
"Okay," she said. "I'm feeling more in control. What'd that fucker—excuse me, I know you don't like that language, but I have only so much control over being in control. What did he say to you?"
"At this point, it feels a little anticlimactic," Muldoon admitted. "And I love the fact that you called him what you called him because, well, part of me is still that fat kid that nobody cared about and everyone made fun of, and here you are standing up for him—me—him. You know what I mean, don't you? I'm still him, but I'm not. And it's like, because you're so upset about this now, there's some kind of weird warp in time. And the fat kid who's grounded for three weeks for doing something incredible knows that fifteen years later there's going to be someone who cares enough to get pissed about the injustice of it all, and he actually feels better." He laughed. "Yeah, and now you think I'm totally schizoid."
"I don't," Joan said. The meeting was over, and everyone was filing out of the room, malting it harder for him to see her. "God, Michael, you are one dangerous man."
"What?" he said. "Why?" He started toward her, moving slowly along with the crowd of people.
"Just tell me what the you-know-what said. I've got five minutes before my next meeting starts. As it is, I'm going to have to run to get there."
"He said the reason we didn't drown was because I was so fat. He said, 'Blubber floats.' "
He saw her again—she was pacing in a part of the hall that wasn't so crowded.
"I'm going to do it," Joan said. "I'm going to find him and I'm going to... No, you know what I'm going to do? What's his last name, because I know a woman who works for the IRS. I'm going to have the little prick audited."
Muldoon laughed as he broke free from the throng and walked those last few steps to her. "You can't do that. You wouldn't. That's an abuse of power."
"Oh, my God," she said, snapping her cell phone shut and finally talking directly to him. "How did you survive, Mike? How could you have lived through that and grown up to be so freaking nice?"
"Well, thanks," he said. "I'm glad you think that—"
"I'm late," she said, and bolted.
Mary Lou had surprised him.
Husaam Abdul-Fataah sat in his car and watched the lights go on in her house as she moved from room to room, putting the baby to bed.
The husband was already home. He could only guess what kind of excuse she gave him when she went inside, obviously overdressed for an AA meeting.
If the husband hadn't been home, Husaam would have been tempted to go inside and convince Mary Lou—at gunpoint—to write a farewell note. Dear Sam, Things aren't working out. Take care of the baby. Love, Mary Lou.
Not that he had any problem in taking and disposing of the kid, too. But it was his experience that while unwanted wives could disappear without anyone hardly noticing they were gone, people tended to get a little upset when their children went missing, too. Even if they didn't particularly pay much attention to those children when they were around.
But forcing Mary Lou to go with him, with or without the baby, was a moot point, since the husband was home. There was no way he was breaking into the house of a Navy SEAL the night before a job was set to go down.
Husaam had no doubt of his own ability to get inside and pump Starrett full of bullet
s before he even got out of his TV chair. He would, in fact, enjoy it—it had been a while since he'd taken a hands-on assignment. But the minute Starrett failed to show up at the base tomorrow morning, an alarm would be raised. And with the discovery of his body in his TV room, well, President Bryant wouldn't even disembark from Air Force One.
And wouldn't that be a shame, after five brave al-Qaeda fighters did their version of a suicide squeeze—setting up evidence of a "plot" to bomb the airport so that the FBI could find them and kill them and make San Diego seem secure. The terrorist plot's been handled, the Western world is safe, everyone relax. Of course, the real plan—all along—was to gun down the American President during his visit to the U.S. Naval Base.
Husaam had hoped to get out of town in the morning, before the action started. He'd hoped Mary Lou would have agreed to go with him willingly. Baby or not, her disappearance was critical.
He'd woken up in the night with the realization that her fingerprints were on one of the weapons that were going to be used tomorrow. The FBI would find those prints, and if Mary Lou had a police record, they would ID her.
And wouldn't that be sweet? The wife of a Navy SEAL involved in terrorist activity. The fallout from that was going to immobilize Team Sixteen for months, possibly even years.
Husaam was going to get a neat little bonus for that.
But Mary Lou had to disappear. She couldn't be around to defend herself, or to cast any doubt on her obvious guilt.
Ihbraham would have to disappear, too. While Sam Starrett probably wouldn't care if Mary Lou vanished without a trace, Ihbraham Rahman might actually try to find her.
As the lights went off in the Starrett house, Husaam settled back in his seat.
The night was still young, and filled with possibilities. Sam Starrett got called down to the base in the middle of the night pretty frequently—leaving Mary Lou and Haley home all alone.
Chapter 25
"Joan, it's Mike."
"Are you insane?" Joan rolled over to look at the clock on the hotel bedside table. It was 1:44. "I was finally asleep, you jerk!"
Troubleshooters 05 Into The Night Page 41