Into the Storm (27 page)

Deck had to duck as he came in, but his gaze fell immediately upon Sophia, and his relief was obvious.

Dave could practically see the list Deck was mentally checking off. She was conscious—sitting up, wearing Jenk’s jacket with Dave’s sweater around her head like a hood, and Lopez’s sweater wrapped around her feet. Her color was good and her hair was dry if slightly messy. She was holding that MRE wrapper filled with tea in her hands, and her eyes were bright and alert.

“Everyone okay?” Decker asked, as Lindsey and two SEALs—an officer and a senior chief—squeezed their way in behind him.

There was a chorus of affirmatives, from Sophia, too. Still Decker came right over to her. He pulled off his gloves as he hunkered down, reaching into that makeshift hood to touch her, his hand against her neck so he could check her temperature for himself.

She saw it coming and tensed, which, of course, Decker noticed. How could he not? And instead of pulling her close and greeting her more properly with a soul kiss, he let her go.

Of course, maybe the soul kiss thing had never been his intention. It was, however, what Dave would have given her, had Dave been Decker.

Or at least he would have said something along the lines of, “Thank God you’re okay. I was so worried.”

Instead, Deck swung a daypack off his shoulder. He gave it to Sophia. “Dry clothes and boots,” he told her, then straightened up, moving over to check on that asshole, Gillman.

The SEAL officer, a burly lieutenant name of MacInnough, was carrying a duffel. “Coats and blankets and plenty of flashlights,” he announced. He smiled at Sophia. “Glad to see you’re feeling better, ma’am.”

Decker and the senior chief were over talking to Lopez, checking Gillman out as carefully as Deck had looked at Sophia.

“Where’s Jenk?” Sophia asked Lindsey.

“His jacket was back here, so he stayed with the vehicles.”

“All by himself?” Izzy asked. “Man, he really doesn’t get spooked easily, does he?”

“It was a direct order from the lieutenant,” Lindsey said. “He didn’t stay behind by choice.”

“Okay,” Izzy said. “This is too good to pass up. First one back has to kill their light, sneak up on Marky-Mark, and say,
Give me back my leg
!”

Sophia laughed, but Dave could tell she was distracted by Decker’s presence. He knew with certainty that she, too, had expected Deck to do more with his mouth than utter the words “Dry clothes and boots,” as he’d crouched there in front of her.

Or maybe expected was too strong a word. Maybe she’d only hoped.

Because even though Decker hadn’t said “thank God you’re all right,” it had been there, in his eyes, clear as day.

“Let’s get coats and boots on so Sophia can get dressed in privacy,” Decker ordered now. “Lindsey, stay and assist.”

He led the way out into the sharp coldness of the night. Dave followed more slowly, putting on the sweater that Sophia gave back to him. It smelled like her hair. He breathed in deeply as he pulled it over his head.

As he shrugged into his jacket, he realized that he himself might well have been guilty of the very thing Decker had done, so he went back inside.

“Have I told you how thankful I am that you’re okay?” he asked Sophia. “I treasure your friendship more than you will ever know. And I’m so proud of you. Your strength and courage awe me on an average day, but today…You were incredible. You
are
incredible. There’s no doubt in my mind that you saved Dan’s life.”

“Thanks, Dave,” Sophia whispered. The smile she gave him was so wistful, it broke his heart. She wasn’t just brave and strong, she was smart, too. She knew he was trying to make up for everything that Decker hadn’t said.

It probably only made it worse.

C
HAPTER
T
HIRTEEN

D
inner was destined to suck.

Since everyone else had eaten earlier, and someone had noticed that it was significantly warmer in the restaurant kitchen, they’d moved a few tables in for the group that had been out at the hunting lodge. In theory, it was nice, especially since Lindsey still hadn’t completely warmed up yet.

But the price to be paid for the warmth was that the space in the kitchen was limited. The tables had to be pushed together, so that the Troubleshooters and SEALs were forced to eat in one big group. Like one big, happy family.

Lindsey sat at one end. If she were lucky, Jenk would arrive while there were still plenty of empty seats available. Her hope was for him to sit as far away from her as possible.

His harsh words rang in her head quite nicely on their own. She didn’t need to look at him and see an echo of his accusations in his eyes.

One of his words in particular had lodged like an arrow in her gut.

Penance.
Used in the same sentence as
your dead mother.

Just thinking about it still hurt a little too much. So much so that Lindsey was beginning to believe that Mark Jenkins might be right.

Dave plopped into the seat next to her. Lopez claimed the chair on her other side, and she was mostly safe. All she needed now was someone who wasn’t Jenk to sit directly across from her, and she might make it through the meal without massive heartburn.

Izzy didn’t save the day, the bastard. He sat next to Lopez.

It was then that Lindsey spotted Jenk, still helping himself to the food—spaghetti with meat sauce—kept hot in warmers over on the other side of the kitchen. Tom Paoletti was with him, and the two men were deep in conversation.

Clearly the best thing for her to do was to eat fast and get out of here.

She put her head down, dug in and, whoa. She’d expected military rations or school cafeteria food at best, but this sauce was delicious. The salad dressing was excellent, too. She hadn’t realized just how hungry she was.

“Stella told me her husband Rob cooked dinner,” Izzy announced. “I begin to understand why she hasn’t left him for me. This shit
rocks.
”

Decker sat down across from Lopez. Two of the SEALs Lindsey didn’t know that well—their names were Stan and Mac—sat next to Izzy and immediately began arguing the pros and cons of setting up that bad-weather shelter out at the hunting lodge. Apparently, the storm they were expecting had slowed down over Chicago, and Tom still hadn’t decided if the precaution was necessary.

There were only three empty seats available at the table now, and Lindsey knew without a doubt that Jenk would end up seated across from her. It had been that kind of day.

“I’ve been meaning to ask you for a coupla days now,” Lopez said, and she looked up to find that he was talking to her. “You made a toast back at the Bug to your grandfather, Henry. Was he your father’s father?”

Lindsey nodded, her mouth full.

“Oh, man,” he interrupted himself to say, “this is good, isn’t it?”

She nodded again.

“Stella told me Rob’s back is out again,” Izzy reported. “He got out of bed to cook for us. Dude deserves a medal.”

Across the table, Dave asked Decker, “Is Sophia having dinner in her room?”

“Yeah,” Deck said. “We thought it was smart for her to get into a warm bath. Tracy came and got her something to eat.”

Dave laughed. “Tracy did.” He opened his mouth, as if to say something else, but then just shook his head, obviously disgusted.

One thing about military personnel—they ate unbelievably fast. Faster even than cops.

Lopez turned to her again as he mopped up the last of the sauce on his plate with a crust of bread. “So was your grandfather by any chance the same Henry Fontaine who was a guerilla fighter in the Philippines during the Second World War?” he asked.

And suddenly the entire table’s attention was focused directly on Lindsey. Including Jenk, who was juggling his dinner, a salad, and a mug of coffee as he approached. Tom was right behind him.

Lindsey considered lying, but Tom knew the truth. Or at least the version of it that she’d chosen to share with him.

She tried to make light of it. “Yeah, although he wasn’t my biological grandfather. He married my grandmother when she was already pregnant with my father, so…”

“Yeah, but you knew him.” Dan Gillman slid into one of the few remaining chairs. He had a bandage just below his hairline and was starting to develop one heck of a shiner. He must’ve hit his head terribly hard, and yet here he was, having dinner with the rest of them. “That’s very cool.”

“Everyone who’s been through BUD/S has studied Henry Fontaine’s jungle warfare techniques,” Dave told her. “He was amazing. What was he, nineteen, when the Japanese invaded the Philippines?”

“He didn’t talk much about the war,” Lindsey admitted. She’d found out about her grandfather’s heroic part in World War II through books, the year after he’d died.

“My great-uncle was OSS, in France,” Tom sat down, leaving Jenk, yes, the seat across from her. “Medal of Honor winner. Try getting him to talk about it.”

“We did what we had to,”
Gillman said. “That’s what my grandmother always said right before she changed the subject. She was an Army nurse in North Africa. Incredible lady.”

“So what was he like?” Lopez asked her, bringing the focus back to Lindsey.

“He was quiet,” she told them. “He never had much to say.” And when her grandfather did speak, he never wasted a single word. “He was…tall. Solid. With this thick shock of white hair.”

And those blue eyes that were so different from her own. He had a face that was leathery from years spent outdoors. Big, gentle hands, warm and reassuring, resting briefly on the crown of her head—she could feel him still if she closed her eyes, infusing her with some of his peace and calm. The smell of cinnamon, of Red Hots. Although come to think of it, he’d liked chocolate, too. He’d offer her a piece of a Hershey’s bar, warm from his pocket, as they sat and watched his vegetable garden grow in the peace of a lazy afternoon.

Lindsey had spent an entire summer with him when her mother was first diagnosed with cancer, when the chemo made it impossible for her to do so much as get out of bed. Grandpa had taken Lindsey camping. He’d also taken her to visit her mother as often as she wanted, battling the freeway traffic in his old truck as if the five-hour round-trip was nothing for a sixty-plus-year-old.

Of course five hours in a car
was
nothing compared to what her grandfather had endured during the war. He was one of only a handful of men who’d managed to escape during the Bataan death march—the Japanese transport of seventy thousand malaria-ridden American and Filipino POWs over sixty miles in the tropical sun. Sixteen thousand men had died, not just from the grueling heat and lack of water, but also from the brutality of the guards and their commanding officers.

One of whom had been her biological grandfather.

“He ate Wheaties for breakfast,” Lindsey continued, because it was clear they wanted more. “Every morning. At least whenever I was visiting. He had these forearms that were like Popeye’s—solid muscle. He read a lot, and he loved doing jigsaw puzzles and playing Monopoly. He played to win, too. None of this ‘let the kid have Boardwalk’ crap. He was quiet and kind and…I don’t know what else to say.”

Henry Fontaine kept his house immaculately clean. And he’d kept a photo of his Japanese wife on the table beside his bed. Perpetually twenty-two years old, she smiled unblinking through the years, her hair and clothes that of a typical 1950s American housewife. She was the grandmother that Lindsey had never known, as well as the reason Henry had never returned to his little hometown in Iowa after the war.

One of the reasons. The other was her father, who’d been only five when his mother had died.

Lindsey had asked Grandpa once why he didn’t move back home after her father was grown. He’d answered her after careful consideration, as he always did, never talking down to her because she was a child. “California is my home now.” Hours later, while they sat on the back porch in the twilight, he’d told her, “I still see Keiko’s hands at work in this garden.”

“He died when I was fourteen,” Lindsey told them. “He just…didn’t wake up one morning.”

It was then, while getting his father’s papers in order, that her own father had made the rude discovery of his true paternity. Henry had told him that he was the son of a lowly lieutenant in the Japanese army, a former student at the university in Tokyo, who served his country dutifully, but in truth preferred a quiet evening spent reading to the art of war. Instead, the blood that flowed through his veins was that of a far-higher-ranking officer. His real father was career army—and one of the bloody right hands of the Japanese commander who’d gone down in history known forevermore as “the Butcher of Bataan.”

Lindsey’s father had freaked. Quietly, of course, since he never did anything loudly. But she’d overheard him, talking with her mother.
He should have told me.
He meaning Henry senior.
If I’d known, I would have…

What would you have done differently?
her mother gently asked.

I would never have had a child.
Words to make a fourteen-year-old’s head snap back.
It’s an insult—all those men who died, men he killed. Thousands of them. Most of them never had families. They never had the chance. Yet this monster’s lineage is allowed to live on.

Lindsey was descended from a monster. It wasn’t the best news to receive, especially since, in her innocence and naivety she hadn’t even realized that her father, Henry Fontaine Junior, wasn’t truly her grandfather’s son.

Along with her grief and confusion, worry and fear consumed her. Her beloved grandfather was dead, having slipped away in his sleep. To her knowledge he hadn’t even been ill. If
he
could just suddenly die, what was to keep her mother, who still fought her cancer, from doing the very same thing?

Lindsey took to sitting outside her parents’ bedroom late at night, after they’d gone to sleep. She’d kept her ear pressed to the door, listening for the quiet sound of her mother’s breathing. If she stopped, Lindsey would hear her, rush in, and revive her.

At least that was her plan.

It wasn’t until years later that she truly understood. Her grandfather had had a massive heart attack. Even if she’d been by his side when it had happened, she wouldn’t have been able to keep him from dying.

Much in the same way she hadn’t been able to keep her mother alive.

Around the table, the men were silent, still watching her expectantly, still wanting to hear more about the man who was a legend in the military community.

Jenk, however, was looking at her with almost tender understanding—as if he’d been able to see into her mind and follow exactly where her thoughts had gone.

She forced a smile, forced herself to look anywhere else but at him. She smiled particularly sunnily at Izzy—what was wrong with her? That was just plain childish. Was she trying to piss Jenk off? “What else can I tell you? He was…
really
good at hide-and-seek,” she told them, which of course got the laugh she’d hoped for.

From everyone, that is, but Jenkins. He just watched her, his dinner ignored.

The way he was looking at her was making her feel more exposed than when she’d been with him and naked.

So she pushed back her chair and got to her feet. “I hear a hot shower calling my name. I’ll see you guys later. Or tomorrow. Whichever comes first.” Hardy-har-har. It wasn’t even funny, but she laughed, so they did, too.

Except, of course, Jenk.

She took her plate to the sink, feeling his thoughtful gaze following her all the way out the door.

Tracy had failed to pack her sleeping pills.

Or her hip flask filled with tequila.

Who knew that their destination would be outside the reaches of civilization, and that their rustic motel would be sans attached top-line-liquorfilled lounge?

She sure hadn’t.

Feigning an oncoming case of sniffles, she’d grabbed her purse and told Sophia she was going to see if she could score some NyQuil, which contained both alcohol and sleep aids.

Wearing only her sneakers and her flannel pjs, a zippered hoodie on top, Tracy braved the arctic cold. She jammed her hands in her sweatshirt’s pocket and hurried along the outside corridor and down the stairs, toward the motel lobby. Her hair was back in a ponytail and she’d long since taken off her makeup. She wasn’t exactly dressed for human contact, but her luck was good. Stella was at the front desk.

And
she had some NyQuil that Tracy could have, no charge.

She rummaged through a drawer and came up with a small foil-and-plastic packet that she put into Tracy’s hand.

Tracy stared down at it. Two shiny green gel capsules stared back at her, like some alien creature’s unblinking eyes.

“Oh,” she said. “No, I was hoping for a bottle, you know, the kind that comes in a liquid?”

“That’s all we’ve got,” Stella said.

“Are you sure?” Tracy said. “Sometimes people have it in the back of their medicine cabinets and don’t even know—”

“I’m sure,” Stella said. “Honey, we’re dry. We don’t have any alcohol here. But we do hold a sunrise meeting. Of course, if you need one tonight, you’ll have to drive into Happy Hills. There’s a nine o’clock at the Congregational Church. Rob would be heading over to it himself if his back wasn’t hurting.”

“Meeting?” Tracy echoed even as she understood. AA meeting, as in Alcoholics Anonymous. She laughed. “No, see, I’m just coming down with a cold.”

“Those pills work fine,” Stella told her. “And they’re alcohol-free.”

“Great,” Tracy said, backing away. “Thanks. Is there, by any chance a store—”

“Nearest store is in Happy Hills, too,” Stella told her. “Although the only thing open at this hour is the Criminal, attached to the gas station. But it closes at nine. There’s a twenty-four hour pharmacy, but it’s much farther away.”