There was more laughter, and Veronica leaned over Lucy, as if she were hoping for something. A smile. A movement. A twitch. She looked up, caught Lucky watching her and shook her head. Nothing. The strain that was just below the surface on all of their faces showed through at the tight edges of her mouth.
But she forced a smile. “Hey, Lucy, Lucky’s here with Syd.” She looked around the room. “Who here hasn’t met Sydney Jameson? Brace yourself, ladies, no fainting please, I know we all thought it would never happen, but our Luke has been smitten at last. Syd’s moving in with him.”
The noise of all those female voices talking at once as introductions were made and congratulations given—along with hugs and kisses—should have been enough to wake the dead, but Lucy still didn’t move.
And Syd was embarrassed. Lucky met her eyes, and knew exactly what she was thinking. The moving in together thing wasn’t real. It was part of the girlfriend game. Despite the fact that their relationship had become intimate, he hadn’t asked her to move in with him.
And she hadn’t accepted.
He tried to imagine asking such a thing. How did a man go about it? It wasn’t a marriage proposal, so there wasn’t any need to get down on your knees, was there? Would you do it casually? While you were making dinner? Or maybe over breakfast? “Hey, babe, by the way…it’s occurred to me that as long as you’re here all the time…”
It didn’t seem very romantic, far more like a convenience than a commitment.
PJ Becker stuck her head in the door. “O’Donlon. About time you graced us with your appearance. Anyone in here given him a sit-rep yet?”
“Situation report,” Tasha told Syd. “They talk in code, but don’t worry. You’ll learn it in no time.”
“Well, I found out that Melody wants to set Wes up with her sister,” Lucky said to PJ, “but I doubt that’s what you meant.”
“Mitch left last night,” Mitch’s wife Becca said quietly. “As soon as Admiral Robinson called. He’s going to find Blue, and send him back here, but it’s probably going to take some time.”
“We’ve decided to take turns sitting with Lucy,” Veronica reported. “One of us is going to be here around the clock until Blue gets back. We’ve worked out a schedule.”
“Her doctor said it was good if we talked to her and held her hand—tried to establish some kind of contact,” Nell Hawken, Crash’s wife, blond and delicately pretty, added. “We thought we’d try getting together—all of us, like this—in the early evening, right before dinnertime. We figured we’d have sort of a party, tell stories and talk—see if maybe Lucy would want to wake up and join us.”
“So far it hasn’t worked,” Mia said, “but we’ve just got to be patient. The doctor said the procedure they did to relieve the pressure from the subdural injury has made the swelling go down significantly. That’s a good sign.”
It was amazing. Lucky was standing in a room filled with beautiful women—the wives of some of his best friends in the world. He’d had crushes on most of them at one time or another, and he’d never dated anyone—even the illustrious Miss Georgia—that he didn’t compare to them and find lacking.
Until now.
Until Syd, with her sleek dark hair, and her heart-shaped face. He’d made her wear another of his shirts today—one that was missing the top two buttons, and the collar gapped open, revealing her throat and her incredibly delicate collarbones.
But the truth was, it wasn’t her body that put her into the same league as these incomparable women he adored. It was her sense of humor, her sharp wit, her brilliance—all of which shone clearly through in her incredible smile and her amazing brown eyes.
Across the room, Melody Jones slid down off the windowsill, slipping her feet into a pair of sneakers. “I better get back. Tyler’s probably driving my sister nuts.” She looked at Veronica. “Take your time coming over, Ron. Frankie will be fine. In fact, he can just spend the night in the baby’s room, if you want.”
“Thanks,” Veronica said. “That would be great.”
Melody turned to Becca. “You don’t need a ride, right? You’ve got your own car…?”
On the other side of the room, Nell stood up and stretched. “I’ve got to go, too. I’ll be back tomorrow, Lucy.”
“Whoa,” Lucky said, blocking the door. “Wait a minute. Where are you going?”
“Home,” they said in unison.
“No, you’re not,” he said. “There’s no way in hell I’m letting any of you just go home. You’re all potential targets. You’re not walking out of here without protection.”
Melody looked at Veronica. Veronica looked at Nell and Becca. Mia stood up gracefully—no small feat—and they all turned to look at her.
“He’s right,” she said.
God, it was a logistical nightmare. All these women going in all these different directions….
Melody didn’t look convinced. “It’s not like I’m alone at home. My sister and the kids are there.”
“And I certainly don’t need protection,” PJ added.
“My ranch is way out of town,” Becca said. “I’m not really worried.”
Mutiny. No way was he going to let them mutiny. Lucky bristled, ready to let them know in no uncertain terms that they were all, star FInCOM agent PJ Becker included, going to follow the law that he was about to lay down.
But Syd put her hand on his arm.
“I’m worried,” she said to the other women. She looked down at Lucy, lying there so still and silent in that bed. “And I’m betting that if Lucy really can hear everything we’re saying, that she’s worried, too.”
She leaned over the bed. “This would be a really perfect time for you to wake up, detective,” she continued, “because your friends need a crash course in exactly who this monster is we’re all up against. Of course, if you don’t mind, I can speak for you. I saw the way he came into your house through a locked living-room window—the way he bypassed your fancy alarm system.”
Syd looked up, looked directly at Melody. “I saw the blood in your bed and on your bedroom wall—your blood.”
She looked at Becca and her voice shook. “I saw the second-story window you dove through, risking a broken neck from the fall, because you knew that if he got his hands around your throat again, he would kill you.”
She looked at PJ through the tears that brimmed in her eyes. Her voice was just a whisper now. “And I saw the gun you kept just under your bed, thinking that it—and your training as a police detective—made you safe. The gun you never even got a chance to use.”
The room was dead silent.
Syd looked around at all of them. “If you’re still not worried, think about your husbands. Think about the men who love you receiving the same awful message that Blue McCoy’s going to get in just a few days, in just a few hours. Think about Blue, finding out that he may have lost Lucy forever.”
“Oh, my God,” Veronica breathed. “Lucy just squeezed my hand!”
Chapter 13
Syd paced.
And when she looked at the clock again, it was only six minutes past one—just two minutes later than it had been the last time she’d looked.
Luke’s house was so silent.
Except, that is, for the booming sound of her pounding heart.
This must be the way it felt to be a worm, stuck on the end of a fishing hook. Or a mouse slipped into a snake trap.
Of course, Luke and Bobby and Thomas and Rio and Mike were hidden in the yard. They were watching all sides of the house, and listening in via strategically placed microphones.
“Damn,” she said aloud. “I wish these mikes were twoway. I could use a little heated debate right about now, guys. Fight, flee or surrender. I realized there was an option we haven’t discussed—hide. Anyone for hide? I’m telling you, those are some really tough choices. Right now it’s all I can do to choose between Rocky Road or Fudge Ripple.”
The phone rang.
Syd swore. “All right,” she
said as it rang again. “I know.” She wasn’t supposed to watch TV or listen to music. Or talk. They couldn’t hear potential sounds of forced entry if she was talking. “Roger that, Lieutenant O’Donlon. I’ll behave, I promise.”
The phone stopped right in the middle of the third ring.
And Syd was alone once again with the silence.
The past few days had been crazy. Luke had worked around the clock to set up a safe house for the wives of the SEALs who were out of town. He and PJ Becker had organized teams of security guards and drivers who would take the women to and from the hospital and wherever else they needed to go. After Syd’s little speech at the hospital, no one was complaining.
Luke also rode the police and FInCOM, trying to get them to work faster in picking up the men who were on the likely suspects list Lucy had helped compile. So far, they’d only picked up six of the men on the list—most of whom had had strong alibis for a good number of the attacks. The others had willingly volunteered to submit DNA samples, and so far, none had matched.
Luke also gave interviews to TV reporters, looking splendid in his gleaming white Navy Ken uniform, saying things guaranteed to enrage—or at least annoy—the man they were after. Come and get me, he all but said. Just try to come and get me or mine.
He sat by Lucy’s bed and held her hand, hoping that Blue would be found soon, and praying with the rest of them that that single hand-squeeze hadn’t been just a muscle spasm—the explanation the doctors had offered.
At night, he’d kiss Syd goodbye with real trepidation in his eyes and he’d leave her alone, pretending to help with BUD/S training, but in truth sneaking back to help guard her as she sat here in silence and alone—as serial rapist bait.
At 1:30 or 2:00 a.m., he’d return through the front door and fell into bed, completely exhausted.
But never too exhausted to make exquisite love to her.
The phone rang. Syd nearly jumped through the roof, then instantly berated herself. It wasn’t as if the San Felipe Rapist were going to call her on the phone, was it?
She glanced again at the clock. It was quarter after one in the morning. It had to be Lucky. Or Bobby. Or maybe it was Veronica, calling from the hospital with news about Lucy.
Please, God, let it be good news.
It rang again, and she picked it up. “Hello?”
“Syd.” The voice was low and male and unrecognizable.
“I’m sorry,” she said briskly. “Who’s—”
“Is Lucky there?”
The hair on the back of her neck went up. Dear God, what if it were the rapist, calling to make sure she was alone?
“No, sorry.” She kept her voice steady. “He’s teaching tonight. Who’s calling?”
“It’s Wes.”
Chief Wes Skelly. That information didn’t make her feel any better. In fact, it made her even more tense. Wes—who smelled just like the man who’d nearly run her down on the stairs after brutally attacking Gina. Wes—who had the same hair, same build, same accentless voice. Wes, who was—according to Bobby—having a rough year.
How rough, exactly?
Rough enough to completely lose it? Rough enough to turn into a homicidal maniac?
“Are you safe there, all by yourself?” Wes asked. He sounded odd, possibly drunk.
“I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe you should tell me.”
“No,” he said. “No, you’re not safe. Why don’t you go to this safe house thing and stay with Ronnie and Melody?”
“I think you probably know why I’m not there.” Syd’s heart was pounding again. She knew Luke didn’t believe Wes could be the attacker, but she didn’t have years of camaraderie to go on. Frankly, Wes Skelly spooked her, with his barbed-wire tattoo and his crew-cut hair. Whenever she saw him, he was grimly quiet, always watching, rarely smiling.
“What?” he said. “You wanna go one on one with this guy?” He laughed. “Figures a woman who thinks she’s going to get any kind of commitment from Lucky O’Donlon’s a little wacky in the head.”
“Hey,” she said indignantly. “I resent that—”
He hung up abruptly, and she swore. So much for keeping her cool, keeping him talking, for coaxing a confession out of him.
“Luke, that was Wes on the phone,” she told the listening microphones as she dropped the receiver into the cradle on the wall. “He was looking for you, and he sounded really strange.”
Silence.
The entire house was silent.
The phone didn’t ring again, nothing moved, nothing made a sound.
If this were a movie, Syd thought, the camera would cut to the outside of the house, to the places where Luke and Bobby and the SEAL candidates were completely hidden. And the camera would reveal their unconscious faces and the ropes that bound them—that would keep them from coming to her rescue when she needed them.
And she would need them.
The camera would pull back to show the shadowy shape of a very muscular man with Wes’s short hair, with Wes’s wide shoulders, creeping across the yard, toward the house.
Bad image. Bad image. Syd shook her head, cleared her throat. “Um, Luke, I’m a little spooked, will you please call me?”
Silence.
The phone didn’t ring. She stared at it, and it still didn’t ring.
“Luke, I’m sorry about this, but I’m serious,” Syd said. “I just need to know that you’re out there and—”
She heard it. A scuffling noise out back.
Flee.
The urge to run was intense, and she scurried for the living room. But the front door was bolted shut—for her own protection—and she didn’t have the key. Last night that bolt had made her feel safe. Now it didn’t. Now she was trapped.
“I hear a noise outside, guys,” she said, praying that she was wrong, that Luke was still listening in. “Out back. Please be listening.”
The front windows were painted shut, and the glass looked impossibly thick. How had Lucy managed to break through her bedroom window?
She heard the noise again, closer to the back door this time. “Someone’s definitely out there.”
Fight.
She turned around in a full circle, looking for something, anything with which to arm herself. Luke didn’t have a fireplace, so there were no fireplace pokers. There was nothing, nothing. Only a newspaper she could roll up. Perfect—provided the attacker was a bad dog.
“Any time, Luke,” she said. “Please.”
Baseball bat. Luke had told her he’d played in high school, that he still sometimes went over to the batting cages on the west side of San Felipe.
He didn’t have a garage, didn’t have a basement. Where would a guy without those things keep a baseball bat?
Front closet.
Syd scrambled for the closet, threw open the door.
It was filled with U.S. Navy-issue overcoats of all weights and sizes. She pushed through to the back and found…
Fishing poles.
And lacrosse sticks.
A set of lawn darts.
And three different baseball bats.
She grabbed one as she heard the kitchen door creak open.
Hide.
Hiding suddenly seemed the most intelligent option, and she slipped into the closet, silently closing the door behind her.
Her palms were sweating, and her mouth was dry, and her heart was beating so loudly she couldn’t hear anything else.
She gripped the baseball bat as tightly as she could and prayed. Please God, whatever happened to her, don’t let Luke be badly hurt. Don’t let them find him hidden in the backyard, with his throat slit, staring sightlessly up at the sky and…
Whoever was inside the house wasn’t trying to be quiet anymore. Footsteps went down the hall toward the bedroom, and then faster, heading back. She heard the bathroom door slam open, heard, “Syd? Syd!”
It was Luke. That was Luke’s voice. Relief made her knees give out, and she sat down hard, right there in the clos
et, knocking over fishing poles and lacrosse sticks and God knows what else.
The closet door was yanked open and there was Luke. The panic in his eyes would have been sweet if her relief hadn’t morphed instantly into anger.
“What the hell did you think you were doing?” She nearly came out of the closet swinging that bat. “You damn near scared me to death!”
“I scared you?” He was just as mad as she was. “God, Syd, I came in here and you were gone! I thought—”
“You should have called me, told me you would be here early,” she said accusingly.
“It’s not that early,” he countered. “It’s nearly oh-one-thirty. What’s early about that?”
It was. The clock on the VCR said 1:27.
“But…” Syd regrouped, thinking fast. Why had she been so frightened? She pointed toward the kitchen. “You came in through the back door. You always come in through the front—which was locked with a deadbolt, you genius! If you had been the San Felipe Rapist, I would have been trapped!”
She had him with that one. It stopped him cold and doused his anger. He looked at the lock on the door and then at her. She could see him absorbing the baseball bat that still dangled from her hand. She watched him notice the fact that she was still shaking, notice the tears that were threatening to spill from her eyes.
Damn it, she wasn’t going to cry in front of him.
“My God,” he said. “You don’t have a key? Why the hell don’t you have a key?”
Syd shook her head, unable to say anything, using all her energy to keep from crying.
Luke wasn’t lying dead in the backyard. Thank God.
Frowning, he looked down at his belt, and pulled his cell phone free. It was shaking silently. He flipped it open, switched it on. “O’Donlon.” He listened then said, “Yeah. We’re both okay. She got…” He looked at her.
“Scared,” Syd said, shakily lowering herself onto the couch. “I was scared. You can say it. I admit it.”
“She didn’t know it was me coming in,” Luke said into his phone, “and she opted for the hide solution to the nightmare scenario.” He looked at the baseball bat. “With maybe a little fight thrown in.” He took a deep breath, running his other hand back through his hair, making it stand on end. “I came in, couldn’t find her and—” He froze. He stood absolutely, completely still. “It’s not?”
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