Over the Edge (2 page)
“Fine. Let’s do it. Someone say go,” Stan said, his gaze never leaving Cro-Magnon.
“Go,” Jenk shot back, good man.
A quick jab, a hard uppercut, and an elbow to the back of the head. Stan stepped back, and Cave Boy was down and not coming up any time soon.
It would’ve been even more effective if Stan hadn’t been sweating as he stood there, light as a dancer on the balls of his feet. Light-headed from fever, too, but those fools didn’t know that. He looked at the other jarheads, giving them his best dead eye gaze. Cold and emotionless. An absolute machine. “Who’s next? Come on, line up, girls. I’ll take you one at a time if that’s what you want.”
He definitely had their attention. He had his SEALs’attention, too.
“Stay back, Junior,” he said evenly, without turning around to see who was shuffling his feet back behind him. He didn’t have to turn. He knew his men.
And they knew him. But right now he’d surprised them because although he was a fighter by nature, in the past he’d usually preferred to talk things out.
The younger Marines were looking to the corporal for direction, and the Marine corporal, thank God, still had a few brain cells working. He stared down at his platoon’s boxing champ, unconscious and drooling on the dirty barroom floor.
Stan watched while the corporal slowly did the math. If Stan could take their best man out in one point three seconds, then . . .
“What do you say I call your CO and we set up a time for your best guy to meet Karmody in a boxing ring?” Stan said again.
The corporal nodded jerkily, looking from Stan to the bathroom door, no doubt remembering Karmody with his mad scientist hair and his lean build, no doubt thinking that in the ring, their guy would be able to give him a thrashing.
If Stan didn’t have the flu, he would’ve smiled. They were in for one big surprise. “What do you say you take Sleeping Beauty here and go on back to the base?” he suggested. Relentless repetition was usually needed when dealing with alcohol and idiots. “And tomorrow morning we’ll set up that boxing match.”
“Well . . .” the corporal finally said.
“Great,” Stan bulldozed over him. “We’ve got a deal.” He would’ve shaken the corporal’s hand if his own hadn’t been so damn sweaty. All he needed at this point was for the kid to think he was scared, so he tucked his hands behind his back in a modified parade rest. “Move it on out,” he ordered.
Two of the Marines grabbed Cro-Magnon and they all shuffled away.
As the door closed behind them, the room seemed to take a collective sigh of relief. Not that there were a lot of people left. A few bikers who looked disappointed that there wasn’t going to be a brawl. A pair of women eyeing Jay Lopez and Frank O’Leary as the SEALS stood holding the men’s room door tightly closed. A few couples making out in the darkness of the corner booths, ignoring the rest of the world.
There was a time Stan had sat in one of those corner booths himself, getting very familiar with women who didn’t care that he didn’t look like Mel Gibson, who didn’t care that he left town at the drop of a hat and sometimes didn’t bother to come back. Candy, Julia, Molly, Val. Laura. Lisa. Linda. He’d met them all, if not here then in a dive very similar to this one. He should be feeling nostalgic, not nauseous.
But shit, all he wanted was to go home.
And he was only up to step two.
Lieutenant junior grade Sam Starrett intercepted him on his way to the bar and the waiting manager. Starrett had his arm around a woman who had, quite possibly, the biggest breasts in the world. He was grinning and a little tipsy—if that word could be used to describe a big, bad Navy SEAL.
The woman whispered something in his ear, brushing her enormous jugs against him, and Starrett laughed. Obviously he thought he’d found the right kind of solace for whatever had been eating him up these past few months.
“Senior Chief Stan Wolchonok,” Starrett said, “meet the marvelous Miss Mary Lou Morrison.”
Damn, did he look like he was here to attend a party? Starrett had had more to drink than Stan had thought if he couldn’t see that Stan was dead on his feet. “Ma’am.” He managed to nod politely. He had to work to look her in the eye instead of staring, hypnotized, down into that amazing Grand Canyon of cleavage.
Sweet lord.
He solved the problem by glaring at Starrett. “You shouldn’t be here right now. Sir.”
And the recently promoted lieutenant junior grade also shouldn’t have been playing with fire by starting something with this Mary Lou Morrison. She was too young, too pretty, too desperately hopeful. While Starrett was looking only for a night in her bed, she was looking for a ring. Someone was going to end up disappointed.
“Yeah, I know, Senior,” Starrett said in his cowboy twang, made thicker by all he’d had to drink, “but I do love to watch you work. And I’m not the only one impressed. Mary Lou’s sister Janine over there was wondering what you’re doing later.”
Starrett gestured with his head toward the other side of the room, where a woman was standing. She gave Stan a little wave. Ah yes, she was definitely Mary Lou’s sister.
A little bit older, not quite as pretty, but just as completely, amazingly stacked. She approached, but Stan escaped, nodding at the younger sister. “Excuse me. I need to speak to Kevin Franklin.” He turned and ran.
But Janine was crafty. “Hi—Stan, isn’t it?” She’d managed to circumnavigate her sister and Starrett and cut Stan off before he reached the bar, blocking his route. “I couldn’t help noticing you.”
She was sober. Amazing. Her eyes were blue and warm and she sipped what looked to be plain soda pop. And he’d been wrong. She was the prettier sister. Maybe not on the surface. But she was certainly the less desperate sister, and he’d always found lack of desperation to be particularly appealing.
“How’s that for a come-on line?” she continued. Her gaze was frank and open and flat-out admiring, and her smile was friendly. He almost felt handsome. “You have any time later to pull up a chair and pretend to get to know me?”
Stan had to laugh at that. “Tempting, but believe me, ma’am, you don’t want what I’ve got.”
Her laughter was low, musical. “Want to bet?”
Oh, mama. “Seriously—Janine, right?” He dropped his voice. “Janine, I’ve got the flu and I’ve got about twenty more minutes, tops, before I’m going to fall over.”
She lowered her voice, too, moved closer. “Oh, you poor thing. Then you need someone to take care of you, don’t you? I make an awesome chicken soup, I’ll have you know.”
Someone to take care of him? “I don’t think—”
“Well then, Stan, maybe you have a friend you could introduce me to. I’m not looking for long term, but this is a position I’d like to fill immediately. Forgive my bluntness, but we’re both adults and we both know why people come to a place like this, don’t we?”
Her honesty made him laugh again. “Truth is, I came here to talk to the manager and get my guy out of the men’s room without him hurting anyone or himself. It wasn’t by choice.”
She bulldozed over him as completely as he’d run down the Marine corporal, reaching up to feel his forehead. Her hand was cool and soft against his too-hot skin. “God, you are burning up.”
He stepped back, away from her. Guinness Book of World Records breasts and pretty eyes be damned—he didn’t want her touching him. Lately he didn’t seem to want any woman touching him, except Teresa Howe.
Christ, where had that come from?
The fever. That was one goddamn feverish thought, no question. Because helo pilot and Naval Reservist Lieutenant junior grade Teri Howe was the last woman on earth who’d want to touch him. God, talk about beauty and the beast. Yeah, a woman like her hooked up with a guy like him only in a fairy tale.
And while his life was far from dull, it was no freaking fairy tale, that was for sure.
Meanwhile, he’d hurt Janine’s feelings. “I’m sorry, but right now I really need to talk to—”
“It’s all right,” she said quietly. “You don’t have to explain. It was nice meeting you.”
Shit. Now she was walking away. What was he doing? She was pretty and funny and built like a Playboy Bunny and it had been months since he’d gotten laid. And yet he’d reacted to her touch as if she had the plague. What was he doing? Saving himself for Teri Howe? This fever was definitely addling his brain.
“Senior Chief.” Kevin Franklin, the Bug’s manager, called to him from behind the bar. “What are we going to do about that broken mirror?”
Ah, hell. Stan turned to him, forcing himself back to the business at hand, dismissing Janine as absolutely as he was usually able to dismiss all thoughts of ever being touched by Teri Howe.
Old Kev was more of an asshole than usual tonight. It was a pity Stan couldn’t throw a few punches to shut him up, the way he’d done with that Marine. Instead he lived through an endless list of complaints and a whole lot of whining, entertaining himself by trying to guess exactly when his knees would finally give out, and what his men would do when that happened.
Stan tried his hardest not to listen, but there were a few things he couldn’t help but hear. A, Franklin still wanted to call the police. And B, he was tired of bar fights on his watch, tired of WildCard Karmody in particular.
That made two of ’em.
“Here’s the deal,” Stan said flatly, when he finally got a chance to get a word in edgewise. “You don’t press charges, and Karmody pays for the mirror and the chairs, and he never comes into the Bug again when you’re working the night shift.”
“He doesn’t come in when I’m working any shift,” Franklin countered, just as Stan had known he would. Good, let him feel as if he’d won a hard bargain.
“Well . . .” Stan pretended to think about it. “I guess so. I guess we got a deal.” He held out his hand for the man to shake.
“Karmody’s not going to go for this,” Franklin warned.
“I’ll handle Karmody.”
Which was step three.
Christ, this was the part where Stan would go into the men’s and sit down on the tile floor and talk to WildCard. “What happened this time, Karmody?” Through clenched teeth: “Nothing happened, Senior.” A sigh from Stan. “Don’t bullshit me, Kenny. I know you went to see Adele.” “Fuck Adele!” Back and forth they’d go, with WildCard venting his anger, ranting and railing about whatever injustice Adele had done this time, until he was all ranted out and ready to go home and pass out.
Which was what Stan was ready to do right now.
Tomorrow WildCard would wake up all contrite and hungover. Stan would call him in to his office and do some ranting and railing of his own. WildCard was going to be feeling the repercussions of tonight’s little hell party for a long time.
Stan made the trip from the bar to the men’s room on legs that were leaden. Janine was still there, still watching him. He couldn’t look at her, couldn’t do more than put one foot in front of the other.
O’Leary was still guarding the door, but WildCard had stopped his pounding and shouting. It was quiet in there. Maybe the son of a bitch had knocked himself out from hitting his head on the tile walls.
No, that was too much to hope for, too much to ask.
O’Leary opened the door for him, and Stan went inside and . . . Oh, Christ.
“Shut the door and don’t let anyone in here,” Stan ordered O’Leary.
WildCard was crying.
He was sitting on the floor, arms around knees that were up close to his chest, head down, body shaking, sobbing as if his heart were breaking. Which it probably was, poor bastard.
Adele Zakashansky had no idea what she had lost by ditching him the way she had six months ago. Yes, WildCard could be completely obnoxious. Give him enough time, and he’d probably get on Mother Teresa’s or Ghandi’s nerves, but in all honesty, the man had a heart the size of California.
“Shit,” Stan breathed, lowering himself gingerly down onto the floor next to him. He spoke gently. There’d be plenty of time tomorrow to yell at the man. “Why do you keep going to see her, Kenny? You know, you’re doing this to yourself.”
WildCard didn’t answer. Stan hadn’t really expected him to.
He put his hand on the kid’s back, feeling completely inadequate here. Even when he wasn’t fighting the flu, he wasn’t the cry-on-my-shoulder type. He didn’t do hugs, rarely touched the men in his team unless he had to—at least not much beyond the occasional high five or slap on the shoulder.
“She got a restraining order, Senior,” WildCard lifted his tearstained face to tell him with the much too careful enunciation of the extremely drunk. He looked about five years old and completely bewildered. “How could she even think that I would hurt her? I love her.”
Stan felt like weeping himself, his head throbbing in sympathy. God, being in love sucked.
“Yeah,” he said. “I know that, Ken, and you know that, but maybe you haven’t done such a great job over the past few months communicating that to Adele, you know? When you come at her all loud and angry, and completely shit-faced, too, well, that’s got to be a little upsetting for her. I think you need to try to see it from her point of view, huh? She tells you it’s over, and two weeks later, you’ve parked your Jeep in her flower garden at four in the morning, waking up the entire neighborhood by playing Michael Jackson at full volume on your car stereo.”
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