The Unsung Hero (51 page)
It wasn’t quite the complete acceptance Mallory had wished for, but she was glad her mother had waited to make the crack about the eyes until David was in the bathroom. He’d find out about Angela’s ignorance at some point, but now was just a little too soon.
As for her mother’s other comment, Mal hoped with all her heart that it was true, that David would never leave her.
Angela looked at him and saw a guy with bad hair who was uncomfortable and awkward inside his own body. Mallory saw a beautiful man who loved her.
She didn’t think she’d moved, but he glanced up from his drawing. “I’m sorry, is this light bothering you?”
“No.” Mallory got up, wrapping the sheet around her, still uncomfortable with the idea of walking around naked the way David did so easily. “What are you doing?”
He sat back to let her look, reaching for her, pulling her close to him, his hands warm and gentle.
She felt him watching her as she looked at the still-rough sketches he’d done. It was Nightshade, and she was in superhero mode, scowling at the leader of a mangy, cyber-looking gang.
“If I turn out to be wrong about you,” Nightshade was saying in David’s perfect block letters, “I will kick you so hard your balls will come out your nose. Do you understand?”
Mallory laughed as she looked at David. “That sounds very familiar.”
He smiled back at her. “It was too good not to use.”
There was heat in his eyes, but he didn’t move, didn’t kiss her. He just looked at her.
And Mallory looked back, losing herself in that falling elevator feeling that took her breath away.
She wanted him again. Wanted to make love. But . . . “The box of condoms says they’re not one hundred percent effective. But it doesn’t say how effective they are. I mean, God, are they ninety-nine percent effective or ten percent or—”
“I think it depends,” David told her. “I think I remember reading that it varies from somewhere in the high eighties—”
“Eighty percent? Holy shit. That means that twenty percent of the time . . .”
“That’s if you use them the wrong way,” he added quickly, “or if they break.”
“Break.” Oh, God. She hadn’t thought about that. Condoms could break. It was true. She’d learned that in health class.
“But if you use them correctly, they’re close to ninety-eight percent effective.”
Mallory looked at him. That meant best case scenario, two percent of the time . . .
“You know, if I get you pregnant, I won’t leave you the way your father left your mother.” David kissed her. “If I get you pregnant, I’ll marry you.”
“I don’t want you to have to marry me. I don’t want to do it that way.” She kissed him, too. “I want to make love to you all the time, except that two percent scares me. Because that means for every hundred times we make love, then at least two times I’ll be at risk to get pregnant, right? And all you really need is one time—I’m living proof of that. And if we make love three hundred times, then that’s six times, and—”
David laughed.
“It’s not funny. I’m serious!” But it was hard to keep a straight face, his laughter was so infectious.
“I’m not laughing at you,” he told her with a kiss. “I’m laughing because you told me you want to make love to me three hundred times—which is really great news. It does things to me you can’t even imagine. But right after telling me that, I’m supposed to try to explain percentages and probability to you?”
He kissed her again, longer this time, lingeringly. “I can’t get enough of you, either, Nightshade. I’m willing to take the risk—even if that box said fifty percent effective. But this isn’t just about me, it’s about you, too, and if you don’t want to . . .”
Don’t want to wasn’t even close.
Mallory let the sheet drop.
Tom lay on his back on his bed, one arm around Kelly, the other up, elbow bent, over his eyes. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been this tired.
He couldn’t remember the last time he’d broken down and cried. When he was fourteen, and his soon-to-be stepfather had beaten the shit out of him for something ridiculous, like a glass of spilled root beer at dinner, and his mother hadn’t said a word in his defense?
When he was fifteen, and his mother had packed up all his things and told him to move into Joe’s house for good, when she’d chosen that vicious bastard she’d married over her own flesh and blood?
When he’d found out that Angela had gotten pregnant and would probably never escape from this soul-sucking town?
When not-even-sixteen-year-old Kelly had whispered for him to meet her later, in her tree house, when she’d turned and looked back at him, letting him see in her eyes that she wanted him to kiss her again, that she wanted him, and he knew like a rock in his gut that he had to leave town as quickly as possible, or else he’d never leave at all?
Because that was really why he’d left. He’d told himself it was about her not being old enough. But he could have waited until she was old enough. He could’ve done it. For Kelly, he would have waited forever. He could have slowed things down, kept them both from going too far until she was ready.
She’d been in love with him. He knew she’d been in love with him. And if he’d stayed, they would’ve had what Mallory and David had found.
They’d have children by now, because he would have married Kelly. He’d be lying here on this bed with his wife, instead of his sometimes, almost lover.
Sure, he probably wouldn’t be a SEAL, but hey, in a few weeks, he wasn’t going to be a SEAL anymore, anyway.
If he had known then what he knew now, would he have left?
“The what ifs can really kill you,” he said.
Kelly lifted her head slightly to look at him. “Don’t play that game,” she said. “You can’t win.”
But he had to. “What if I hadn’t left that summer, Kel? What if I’d met you in the tree house that night?”
She laughed softly, lowering her head back to his shoulder. Her hand was warm against his chest, against his heart. “I would’ve lost my virginity a lot earlier than nineteen.”
“I’m in love with you.”
He felt her freeze. It was funny, because she wasn’t moving to start with. But he felt her get even more still.
Not a good sign.
“I didn’t say that expecting any kind of response,” he told her. “It was just something I had to, you know, say.” Definitely time to change the subject. “I went back to room 104 tonight, and I dusted for fingerprints. You know what I found?”
“No,” she said faintly.
“I found prints for Maria Consuela, Ginny Tipten, Gloria Haynes, and Erique Romano—all employees of the Baldwin’s Bridge Hotel. I found some old, smudged prints for George and Helena Waters and Mr. Ernest Roddiman, all previous patrons of the hotel. But I did not find one single other print for Richard Rakowski. There was nothing on the outside or inside of his suitcase, nothing on the buckle of a belt that was packed with a pair of plaid golf pants in that suitcase, nothing on the closet door or the TV or the telephone. Nothing.”
It had taken him hours to dust, hours to clean it up, all the while aware that the man calling himself Richard Rakowski could return any moment. His team was watching, and Tom was wired with a radio so he could talk to them. But their heads-up wouldn’t give him much time to get out or even hide.
He pushed the pillows behind him, pushed himself so that he was sitting up. Kelly sat up, too. “Yes, that’s very suspicious—no other prints of his in the room except the ones that probably were planted on that bottle,” he continued. “I know exactly what you’re dying to ask. You’re also dying to find out what the hell aka Richard Rakowski is doing away from his two hundred and eighty dollar a night hotel room at nine o’clock at night. Right?”
Kelly nodded. Her hair had gotten wet in the rain, and it was curling around her face as it dried. Combined with the white cotton nightgown, it made her look impossibly young.
Tom reached for the alarm clock on his bedside table, turning it to face them. “You’re wondering why at nearly midnight I still haven’t received a call from my team telling me our man’s back in his room. And you’re right to wonder. It’s some kind of decoy room, some kind of . . . hell, I don’t know. Maybe he’s going to bring the bomb there at the last minute. Maybe it’s a precaution designed to throw people like me off his track. Maybe he’s the goddamned paranoid one.”
He gazed into her eyes. “It’s him, Kelly, I know it’s him. I have these moments where I’m so completely convinced, I can taste it. And I know the celebration for the Fifty-fifth is his target. I know I have to tell someone. Only they’re not going to believe me. I have no proof, I have nothing but an empty hotel room without any fingerprints, a set of pictures of a man who’s basically got the same shape skull as the Merchant did.” His voice shook. God, don’t let him start crying again. “And then I start to wonder. Maybe I am nuts. Maybe it’s the injury that makes me so blindingly certain it’s him. But I’ve decided . . .” He had to stop and clear his throat. “I have to call Admiral Crowley.”
He’d made up his mind tonight. Or rather, he’d resigned himself to making the call first thing in the morning. There really wasn’t a decision to be made. There was only one right thing to do in this situation, and he had to do it.
Even if it meant giving up his career, his entire life.
“If I’m wrong about this . . .” He had to stop for a second because his goddamned lip was trembling. “If I’m wrong, if I’m seeing dead terrorists when I shouldn’t be, then I don’t deserve the command of SEAL Team Sixteen. If I’m wrong, I should accept a medical discharge. It’s not what I hoped for, but there’s no shame in it.”
“There’s not.” She moved to push herself even farther up, to kneel beside him on the bed. “But there’s also a chance, with a few more months of rest, you’ll be—”
“No,” he said. “Once I call Admiral Crowley in the morning, once I sound the alarm, I’m not going to be given a few more months. My doctor’s a captain who’s wearing a choke collar—and Rear Admiral Tucker’s on the end of his leash. I’ll go before a medical board almost immediately, I can guarantee it. And seeing dead terrorists in Massachusetts isn’t something even a bipartisan board is going to take lightly. If I do this—when I do this—there’s a good chance that not only will I be discharged, but I’ll be psych evaled to death—and confined for the duration.”
Kelly had tears in her eyes.
“But I can’t not tell anyone,” Tom said softly. “I can’t just ignore it. And I’m running out of time.”
“Is there anything I can do to help?” she asked. “To make it any easier? Is there someone I can talk to, or call for you, or . . . ?”
He shook his head, afraid to reach for her, especially after she’d pulled back, after she’d almost seemed to make a point not to touch him.
I’m in love with you. It was a stupid-ass thing to have said. He’d scared the hell out of her, even more than he’d done with his crazy talk about terrorists. It should have scared the hell out of him, too, but tonight he’d gone out to a point way beyond fear.
“Tom.” She was going to talk about it. She was going to let him down gently. She was going to try to explain everything that he knew was crazy about him loving her. “About what you said—”
“No.” He stopped her. “I can’t talk about that. Can we please not talk about that right now?”
She nodded, silent. She wanted to go, she wanted to stay—he didn’t know. He couldn’t read her body language at all.
“Do you want me to stay for a while?” she asked, exactly as he said, “You probably need to get back to the house.”
“Yes,” he said, while she said, “Oh.”
“No,” she added. “My father has Joe’s phone number, so . . .”
“Just . . . For God’s sake, don’t stay out of pity,” he told her roughly.
Kelly leaned forward and kissed him. And when he reached for her, she slipped into his arms, as if she knew that was where he wanted her, where she belonged.
What if she never left him? What if he’d cut her off too soon and she’d actually been about to tell him that she loved him, too? What if he awoke in the morning to find her in bed, beside him?
She pulled her nightgown up and over her head, and then she was naked, his hands skimming the softness of her skin.
The what ifs could really kill you. He wouldn’t play that game. He couldn’t win. The future would play itself out. There was no way to know for sure what was to come.
Tom helped Kelly help him out of his shorts.
And then he lost himself in the here and now.
13 August
Charles stopped just inside the sliders that led from the living room to the deck. Kelly was already up and out there, sitting on the railing, her knees pulled up to her chest.
She was dressed oddly—in her white cotton nightgown and . . . his old boots?
She was gazing out at the ocean, watching the sun rise.
It was still windy from the storm that had blown through last night, and the skirt of her nightgown flapped. She looked tired. Dark circles beneath her eyes. Her normally healthy cheeks slightly pale. The boots didn’t help.
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