Waiting... On You (Force Recon Marines)

by S A Monk

  “I suppose Nick will reenlist now that they are going to promote him again,” Hanna said, breaking into his thoughts.

  “Probably. I just can’t see Nick retiring. The Corps is his life.”

  They finished their dinner just as the respectable crowd was starting to disappear.

  “I think it’s time to go,” she urged Lance. “Some of the newer arrivals look like they’re too ready to party tonight. Think I’ll turn my pager off.”

  “Yeah, right!” Lance chuckled.

  Hanna laughed silently with him. When was the last time she’d turned her pager off? She was as dedicated to caring for the sick and injured as Nick was to his Corps. She put money on the table and stood up.

  Lance picked up her money and handed it back to her.

  “Why don’t you ever let me pay for dinner, especially when I’m the one asking you?”

  He grinned and shrugged. “I’m old-fashioned.”

  She chastised him with a shake of her head and a teasing prod to his upper arm. “Male chauvinist!”

  “Guilty... sometimes,” he laughed.

  Outside, they walked to his brand new burnt orange Jeep Rubicon. The soft top was off in back. After loading her bike in the rear compartment, he opened the passenger door for her. “Why don’t you get a new car, Hanna, instead of driving that relic that starts some days and stalls others? You can afford it, can’t you?”

  “Yes, I just haven’t had time to go to Seattle and look.”

  “You’ve been going over on the ferry to teach classes at the University Medical Center two days a week all winter. You could take a little time to look on one of your trips. Hell, I’ll go with you and help you pick a car out, then dicker with the salesman. I hate to see you driving a car that’s so unreliable. What if you get stuck out in the boondocks at night after one of your late shifts?”

  “Classes are out, and I’m not teaching the summer session.” A tear slid down her cheek suddenly. “Dylan said nearly the same thing to me the night before he died.”

  “Oh, shit!” Lance cursed his stupidity. “I’m sorry.”

  His arms slid around her, and he pressed her close against his chest. He kissed the top of her head, but she stepped back before he could offer more.

  He found a grin in spite of his disappointment. “Want me to put the top up?”

  “No, it’s a nice warm night. Might as well enjoy it a little.”

  Inside the Jeep, Lance reached for her hand. “Hang in there, Hanna. I’ll try to get to the bottom of this for you.”

  CHAPTER 2

  JESSIE PRICE FELT EVERY ONE OF HER SIXTY YEARS as she walked next door to visit her neighbor and friend, Colleen McHenry. Their houses were separated from one another’s by a few hundred yards. Both were turn-of-the-century, two-story Craftsman-style homes, lovingly kept up and cared for by their owners. Their only difference was that one was painted a slate blue and the other a sunny yellow. Sided in clapboard, they had a blocky design, gabled attic windows, hipped roofs, and huge porches that framed the front of each house. On the second floor, both homes had a small covered porch off the front bedroom. Their similarity was due to the fact that the same builder had built both.

  In addition to the similarity of their houses, both families owned a dozen acres of land that fronted the western side of Discovery Bay. Though Jessie was only a Price by marriage to her now deceased second husband, she was well acquainted with the two families’ history on the peninsula. A century ago, the Prices and the McHenrys had moved into the region about the same time. Fishermen, boat builders, and farmers from the start, they had a long intertwining history.

  More recently, their lives had become tragically intertwined.

  First, Colleen’s grandson had drowned. Then nearly two weeks later, Jessie’s youngest son, Lance, had disappeared. This past week, Colleen’s granddaughter, Hanna, had narrowly escaped two harrowing brushes with disaster on her way home from work. Jessie felt uneasy. Something evil had entered their placid happy lives. She was afraid, and she was beside herself with worry for her missing son. No one seemed to have the slightest clue what had happened to him. He’d gone diving and never come home. Not even his rubber dinghy had been found.

  Walking around the wide front porch with its white wicker chairs and colorful potted flowers, she went around the side of the house, to the back door, passing through Colleen’s incredible garden. The woman had an amazing green thumb. She grew everything that would flourish in this corner of the Pacific Northwest, from gorgeous flowers, to lacy ferns, to fragrant herbs, to a variety of vegetables. And beyond the house, there was Colleen’s lusciously fragrant grove of fruit trees. Jessie gardened, too, but her garden, even with Colleen’s tutelage, wasn’t this magnificent. With its trellises and benches, it was such a peaceful magical place. Jessie usually loved to linger in it. Today, though, she passed through it without even glancing at the early summer blooms.

  Sitting in her rocker on the smaller back porch, Colleen greeted her neighbor as she came up the steps. “Go in and pour yourself a cup of coffee, then join me.”

  Colleen McHenry was twenty years older than Jessie. Despite the age difference, though, they had been the best of friends since Jessie had married Sean Price and moved to Port George with her two young sons. At eighty, Colleen was still an attractive woman. Her snow-white hair was worn in a thick long braid that hung to the middle of her back. Diminutively built, she was in good health, except for her arthritis. Her granddaughter had always lived with her, and Dylan’s wife and baby had just moved in. Since his divorce, Lance and his son, Christopher, had lived with Jessie. Their two homes were full of family, but a great sadness hung over both now.

  After getting herself a cup of coffee, Jessie went back out to the porch and took a seat in the rocking chair next to the older woman. Neither woman spoke for a few moments as they stared silently out over the rear yard, rocking and sipping their coffee. A compact red barn stood in front of a small orchard of fruit trees, and beyond that, there were glimpses of the blue waters of the Pacific Ocean and the Strait of San Juan de Fuca.

  Jessie loved the Northwest, particularly the coastal community of Port George. The weather was the best in the region, and it was such a pleasant, peaceful community, or at least it had been until three weeks ago, when Colleen’s grandson had died.

  Jessie turned to her friend at last. “I came over to tell you that Nick finally called me back. I just got off the phone with him. He said his commanding officer told him to take whatever leave he needed.”

  “He’s coming home, then?”

  “He’s taking the first transport plane out of Kandahar.”

  “How is Nicholas?”

  “Whole and uninjured. He’s happy to be leaving Afghanistan. It’s been a long time since he’s been home. I wish he was coming home under better circumstances. He’s anxious to help us discover what happened to Dylan, and he’s really worried about Lance. He’s worried about all of us, in fact.”

  “He’s a good son, Jessie, a good man. Both boys are.” Colleen’s smile grew wistful. “I guess I love your boys as much as I love my grandchildren. It seems we raised all of them together, like one big family.”

  Jessie had finally decided Nick needed to come home; that this was certainly a family emergency. After Dylan’s death, she’d called the base commander at his forward operating base and left a message for Nick, since he was in a remote border region of Afghanistan, on an extended covert assignment. She’d finally gotten an electronic response from her eldest son a week ago. Then, just this week, she’d had to call his most senior commanding officer at Camp Pendleton. General Tyler was an old friend of her first husband’s. She had sadly informed him that Nick’s brother was missing. General Tyler understood the severity of the family crisis and got in touch with Nick so quickly, it took just a few hours for her son to return her call.

  Like his father, Nick was a Force Recon Marine; a career military man. Now part of the Marine Special Operations
Command, extensively trained in counter-terrorism and intelligence, he was in command of multiple Marine Special Operations Teams. He and his units were sent on some of the toughest, most dangerous missions in the world. Most of his assignments were highly classified and covert. Jesse rarely knew what he was doing, but she always knew where he was stationed. He’d risen through the officer ranks fairly rapidly, his prestigious career helped along from the start by many of the men who had remained in the Corps after serving in Vietnam under her first husband. Twenty years ago, some of those same men, like General Tyler, had helped Nick get nominated, then accepted into the Naval Academy at Annapolis.

  “What did Nicholas think about his brother’s disappearance?” Colleen asked.

  “He was upset and concerned, like all of us.”

  “Did you tell him what happened to Hanna this week?”

  “I did. He didn’t like it one bit. He told me to tell Hanna to leave things alone until he got home—that it was too dangerous to investigate on her own.”

  “So he thinks her vehicle mishaps could have been deliberate?”

  “He thinks it’s a possibility.”

  “Hanna isn’t going to leave Dylan’s death and Lance’s disappearance alone.”

  “I know. She feels terrible about Lance. She thinks it’s her fault for encouraging him to look into Dylan’s death, then letting him dive alone.”

  “Lance would have done that on his own anyway. Dylan was his best friend.”

  “Oh, Colleen, this is all such a nightmare!” Jessie exclaimed in a rush of tears. “What’s happening to our families? What happened to Lance? He was less than a mile offshore. If he had drowned, his body, dear God, would have washed up by now! Lance is as expert a diver as Nick. I just can’t believe he died diving. He does it for a living, and he’s been in much more dangerous waters. There still hasn’t been any sign of his boat or his equipment. Thank God, Christopher doesn’t fully understand what happened to his Dad. For once his limited understanding is a blessing. He’s worried, but not frantic yet. God, I’m just heartsick about all this!”

  Colleen reached over and gripped her friend’s hand as it fisted on the wooden arm of her chair. “Nicholas will be home soon. If anyone can get to the bottom of all this, he can. He’ll make sure no more harm comes to our families.”

  Colleen was the kind of woman who gave comfort even in the face of her own grief. Jessie hurt for her friend because poor Dylan was never coming home. At least she still had hope that Lance was alive. If he was dead, she was certain she would feel it. She’d known the moment her first husband had died. And she’d known when her oldest son had been injured and near death, three years ago on one of his covert missions.

  “When will Nicholas be here?” Colleen asked as she pushed herself stiffly from her rocking chair.

  Jessie rose to take her elbow. “Probably midweek. He’s going to fly into San Diego, pick up his new motorcycle from the dealer, and then ride it up here.”

  The two women left the porch and walked into the kitchen. “A motorcycle, huh? As if the man doesn’t endanger his life enough,” Colleen chuckled, then turned soberly to her friend. “Have you told Hanna he’s coming home?”

  Jessie went to the sink to help Colleen do her morning dishes. “No. Not yet. Will you tell her when she gets home from work this evening?”

  Colleen nodded yes, then smiled wistfully. “Do you remember when they first met?”

  “Oh, yes.” Jessie wiped the cups, bowls, and saucers as the older woman washed them and stuck them in the dish drainer. Staring out the big bay window, over Colleen’s sink, to the yard beyond, she recalled the event wistfully. Lance and Nick had been eight and nine years old at the time.

  She and the boys had only been living on the peninsula for a year when tragedy had struck their neighbors’ lives. Colleen and Ben McHenrys’ only child, a doctor with the Red Cross, and her husband, a doctor with the newly created Doctors Across Borders, had died in an airplane crash in a remote quake-torn province of India. Their two small children, Dylan and Hanna had remained in Calcutta with a nanny. They hadn’t been with their parents when their plane had gone down, thank God, so Colleen and Ben had flown to India to bring them home, along with the caskets of their daughter and son-in-law.

  Soon afterward, Colleen had brought her two grandchildren over to meet Jessie’s boys. She’d been hoping to cheer the children up, especially her five-year-old granddaughter, who was crying herself to sleep every night because she missed her parents so much.

  Lance and Nick had been out in the yard, playing chase with Sean’s big old rangy dog. Jessie had been sitting on the back porch, watching them, when Colleen had come over. Jessie would never forget how Hanna had stolen her heart the instant she’d seen her. She’d been wearing a ruffled sundress, and her honey-blonde hair had been pulled smoothly back into a long, thick braid, secured by bows and heart-shaped barrettes. Even then, the five-year-old had enormous, dark-lashed, emerald green eyes, endearingly framed by even larger, black rimmed eyeglasses. Hanna Wallace was just about the cutest little thing Jessie had ever seen. Having always wanted a girl, she had fallen instantly in love with her.

  But it was obvious at first sight that the little girl was profoundly sad and extraordinarily shy. She had been standing behind her grandmother, fiercely hugging her pant leg, nervously peeking around it to look at Jessie’s two rambunctious boys. She’d also been grasping a small basket with a tiny kitten nosing over the edge. Colleen had bent down to tell her to keep it in the basket, when Hanna’s older brother, Dylan, had charged by them to meet the two boys and play chase with the dog. He had accidently tipped the basket, causing the kitten to jump out. The dog had immediately run after it, barking furiously and chasing the kitten up the tree. Poor little Hanna had started to cry.

  Lance and Dylan, who had hit it off immediately, started to laugh and encourage the dog. The commotion of the barking dog and the hissing kitten, not to mention the adults’ admonishment and Hanna’s frightened crying, made the scene chaotic. Nick took one look at the little girl and how upset she was, and went up the tree after the kitten, which had climbed almost to the top. Jessie remembered being scared to death as she watched her oldest son climb out onto a limb after the barnyard pet. But Nick had gotten the kitten down for Hanna, handed it to her with an apologetic smile she shyly returned amid her tears, then severely admonished the boys for teasing her. From that day on, Hanna Wallace had pretty much worshiped the ground Nick Kelly walked on.

  After that, the four children had become inseparable friends, although it took some coaxing from Jessie and Colleen to make the boys take little Hanna along initially on their exuberant adventures.

  Lance and Dylan were the mischievous ones. They could think of more trouble to get into than a whole army of children. But Nick had always protected and looked out after them all, while Hanna attended to their numerous minor injuries, quietly, but steadfastly, supporting their exploits. The girl was a born caretaker, just like her parents had been.

  And she’d always been in love with Jessie’s oldest son, not that it had ever done her much good. Nick had simply never been home long enough for anything to develop between them, much to Jesse’s regret.

  THE DAY AFTER HER GRANDMOTHER TOLD HER that Nick Kelly was coming home, Hanna went for a long early morning ride on her bike.

  It was a beautiful day. In this tucked away corner of the Pacific Northwest, the forest met the ocean, with sandy beaches covered in long wind-swept grasses curling close to the water’s edge. From the road, Hanna could see the rise of the mountains, lifting the land to gorgeous heights just a few miles east and south, forming the interior of the Olympic Peninsula.

  The whole region was a great place to enjoy the outdoors. It was a paradise for hikers, campers, and bikers, not to mention boaters, fishermen, and divers. Hanna was an outdoor person. She loved doing all those things. But she loved sailing the most. Today, though, she needed to think, and sailing required too much a
ttention to task.

  The past month had been a living nightmare. She felt like she was floundering in a turbulent sea of grief and helpless frustration. Her work schedule had been terrible. Other than a quick dive where Lance had disappeared, she’d had no time to investigate his disappearance or her brother’s murder. There were virtually no clues anywhere.

  The only thing similar about the two incidents was that they had both occurred in Discovery Bay, and the sheriff and the police chief were calling both water accidents. They still refused to entertain any other possibility. A few of Dylan’s friends in the sheriff’s department were quietly looking into the matter, but they hadn’t uncovered anything yet.

  Guilt hung over Hanna like a persistent storm cloud. She blamed herself every day for letting Lance dive alone. When he dove in deeper waters, he never dove alone. All of them knew better than to do that. But less than a mile out, it really should have been safe.

  His poor mother was frantic with worry. His son was agitated and anxious, even at school. And Hanna’s grandmother and sister-in-law had an extra burden to carry. It had been a horrendous time for both the families!

  Then three nights ago, she’d nearly been run off the road on her way home from work. Only quick thinking and quicker maneuvering had kept her from crashing through the guardrail and plummeting off the bluff into the ocean below. The very next night, on the way home from the hospital, she’d had a flat tire. She’d just bought four new ones, too. It had been late and dark, and she had been on the same road again, at almost the same spot as the night before. The stranger who had stopped to help her on the isolated stretch of road that wound around McHenry Point had been much more frightening than the blowout. Luckily. a co-worker had come along not long afterwards.