Over the Edge (52 page)
“Whoa,” he said. “Teri, I’m late. Don’t do this right now. Please. Just wear your flack jacket and stay safe.” He kissed her—it was like kissing a two-by-four. Great. He started for the stairs. “I’ll see you later.”
The pounding on her door was so persistent, Alyssa was sure it had to be Sam Starrett.
She’d been certain he’d show up sooner or later, but frankly, she’d expected him more on the sooner side. And at nearly 0500, it was definitely later.
She crawled out of bed and opened the door without bothering to find her robe. “If you think I’m just going to let you into my room without so much as a . . .”
She found herself staring at the empty space where Sam Starrett’s head should have been.
“Sorry, ma’am.” She shifted her gaze down about eight inches and found Mark Jenkins’s apologetic face. “But it’s urgent. L.T. needs to talk to you, and cell phones are out. There were four different terrorist attacks to satellite receivers last night. Landlines are down, and even if they weren’t, the hotel lines are not secure.”
He held out a radio.
She took it, aware she was standing there in only an extra large T-shirt and her underpants. Jenkins politely looked the other direction as she thumbed the mike. “Locke.”
“Alyssa, it’s Tom Paoletti. You know O’Leary was killed yesterday. Over.”
“Yes, sir. I was very sorry to hear it. Over.”
“I need a second shooter for this takedown, and I want it to be you.”
Alyssa nearly dropped the radio.
“I know it’s highly irregular,” Paoletti continued. “You’re supposed to be observing, but I want you in place with Wayne Jefferson as our second sniper. We’ve got other marksmen in the team, but no one even comes close to your level of skill—hell, O’Leary wasn’t as good as you. It’s absurd to use anyone else if you’re available. I’ve cleared it with Max Bhagat. Will you do it? Over.”
“What’s Sam Starrett have to say?” she asked. “Over.”
“He generally says Aye aye, sir, when I give him an order,” Paoletti came back. “I haven’t spoken to him yet. But if he gives you trouble of any kind, tell him to come see me. Over.”
“I’ll keep that in mind, sir,” Alyssa said, wondering if Tom had any clue at all about the kind of trouble Sam Starrett had been giving her lately. “Count me in.”
Stan made it all the way to the stairwell door before Teri ran after him.
“No,” she said as she followed him up the stairs. “No, Stan, I’m not going to wave good-bye and hope you come back in one piece so that I can then tiptoe around the fact that there’s far more going on here than you and me having a good time in bed. You’re the one who’s always telling me to confront people when they piss me off, to get aggressive, to fight back, and god damn it, you just really pissed me off!
“Yes, you’re older than me, yes, you’re more experienced than me in a lot of ways, there’s a lot you can teach me, I’ll give you that, but I don’t want you to be my teacher or my mentor or—” She shook her head, wishing he would slow down, but knowing that his haste to get to the roof was as much to make her stop talking as it was to reach the helos and the rest of the team.
“When we made love last night, that was just me and you, without any other garbage. It was about . . .” Love. Teri wanted to say it, but she couldn’t get the word out. “We were equal partners. Fifty-fifty. It wasn’t about you telling me to be a good girl and wear my freaking flack jacket. If you want me to wear my flack jacket, if you care about me enough to want me to wear it, then dammit, don’t laugh at me when I care about you and ask where yours is.”
Stan stopped her. One flight from the roof. “Teri, please, you’re turning this into something bigger than it is. I’m telling you to wear your flack jacket because it saved your life yesterday. This is not an unreasonable request. It doesn’t have anything to do with . . . with any of this other . . . bullshit.”
She stared at him. “This is bullshit?”
“Oh, Christ,” he said. “Teri, look, I hear what you’re saying, I don’t necessarily agree with it. I’m glad you’re telling me that you’re angry, I’m not so glad it’s right this second. Your timing needs a little work.”
“When is the right time to get angry?” she asked hotly. “If you want me to do it when it’s convenient for you, then maybe you should stop being such a jerk.”
He laughed as he took the stairs up two at a time. “God save me from estrogen-induced insanity.”
She followed him up the stairs. The entire team was up there. Trying their damnedest not to listen—or maybe trying to listen, she didn’t care either way.
“Who’s not here yet?” Stan asked.
“Cosmo and Lopez,” someone volunteered. “They’re coming.”
“That was a really assholeish thing to say,” Teri lit into Stan, catching his arm and scrambling so that she was in front of him, blocking him. “God save me from testosterone-induced assholeishness! I love you, god damn it!” With all the words she’d stumbled over while chasing him in the stairwell, that’s what she should have said. “I want you and I’m coming after you. I’m not going to let you get away from me. You better get some furniture for that house of yours, because I’m coming over!”
Oh, God. Everyone was looking at her. Sam Starrett. Mike Muldoon. WildCard and Jenk. “That okay with you?” she asked Jenk.
He nodded quickly. “Yes, ma’am.”
Teri nodded, too. “Good. Well.” She glanced at Muldoon. “Sorry.”
He shrugged. “I think I pretty much knew.”
She looked at Stan again, but he was looking away. Over toward the helo, as if he wished he were on board and flying away from her forever. Oh, God, what had she just done?
And there, in front of her, was helo pilot Walt Green. “Walt, I don’t suppose I can talk you into switching—”
“Not a chance, Teri.”
“Right. So. My day’s going particularly well.” She looked at Stan again, and this time he was at least looking back at her. But for the life of her, she couldn’t read the expression on his face. God, she loved his face. “Good luck.”
She turned and would have walked away with dignity, her head held high—at least until she made it back to her room.
“Lieutenant.”
She stopped walking and turned around, resigned to facing the formality in his voice.
“I apologize for being an asshole,” Stan said.
It was one of the last things she’d expected him to say. “I apologize, too,” she whispered. “For embarrassing you like this.”
“Do I look embarrassed?” He laughed. “A little overwhelmed maybe, but I’m sorry, the most beautiful, smartest, sweetest woman that I’ve ever met announces that she wants me? You’ve just cemented my reputation for being able to do anything. If you want to embarrass me, Lieutenant, you’re going to have to do better than that.”
She nodded, relief surging through her. “I’ll try harder next time.”
He smiled. “Good.”
Lopez and Cosmo came bounding up the stairs, and Stan turned away, busy then being the senior chief, loading the team on board the helo. He was the last man on, and as he turned to look at her, she hugged herself, arms across her chest, determined not to stand there and wave good-bye while he went to save the world.
He cupped his hands to his mouth and shouted. “Keep your flack jacket on.”
And it occurred to her in a flash of realization that when he said that, maybe it wasn’t because he wanted to boss her around, to keep the distancing effects of age and experience prominent in their relationship. When he said that, maybe it was his way of telling her just how desperately he cared.
Teri waved.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Twenty-two
A body had been kicked down the stairs of the hijacked plane.
Stan went into the terminal building to find the negotiator’s room grimly silent.
Lieutenant Paoletti turned to meet him, gesturing with a twist of his head for the two of them to step out in the hall.
“Shots were fired about fifteen minutes ago, and again about ten minutes ago,” the lieutenant informed Stan. “The tangos opened the door just now, dumped this body.”
“Is it the girl?”
“We don’t know yet,” L.T. told him. “Scooter and Knox are out there on surveillance, but even with high-powered glasses, they can’t give a definite ID. The tangos wrapped some sort of blanket around the girl’s body—that’s assuming it is the girl. Bhagat is trying to raise them on the radio, trying to negotiate getting a vehicle out there to pick up the body. Meanwhile audio and visual are still out in the cockpit.”
“Does Max want to wait till nightfall to send us in?” Stan asked.
“No,” L.T. said. “He’s got seven different people advising him to wait, but he wants to go now anyway. He knows damn well that that body is a ‘come get us’message.”
“So let’s go and get ’em, sir,” Stan said. “Let’s be done with it. I want to go home.”
The lieutenant sent him a sidelong glance. “To pick out furniture for the house?”
Oh, Christ. “News spreads ridiculously fast around here.”
Paoletti held out his hand. “Congratulations, Senior Chief.”
“Hold up, Lieutenant. There’s a long road between getting laid and getting married.”
Paoletti was visibly taken aback. And Stan instantly understood. “No,” he said. “Tom—don’t get me wrong. That’s not what I’m . . . that’s what she’s doing. I mean, she thinks she loves me. . . .” The memory of her standing there, telling him so in front of the entire team, still shook him to the core. “Jesus, what’s she thinking? Where’s it gonna go? At the risk of sounding as if I’m boasting, because you know me—I’m not—I think she’s blown away by the, uh, shall we say, the physical nature of the relationship. She’s not real experienced, and trust me, in a week or two, she’s gonna be—”
“Blowing you away,” Paoletti finished for him. “Because if she means what she says, she’ll prove it. The sex is a great part of the package, believe me, I know, I’ve been there, but it’s just a part of it. It’s her face, her smile, her knowing something’s wrong and talking to you in bed at night until you cough up the problem, even when she’s exhausted. It’s her eyes. You look in her eyes and she’s not afraid to let you see that you’re her world. It’s her taking care of you and needing you to take care of her, too.” He laughed. “Stan, trust me, your life is never going to be the same.”
“I hope so,” Stan said quietly. “I’m not convinced she’s thought it through and that’s really what she wants, but Christ, Tom, I hope so.”
“Alyssa!”
Alyssa turned around with a defensive set to her shoulders and a coolness in her voice and face that made his heart sink. “Lieutenant Starrett.”
Damn. He’d thought they’d gotten beyond frosty and formal the last time they talked. Unless her response to his declaration of undying love was this cool get lost.
But this wasn’t about them. This was about getting his team ready to go.
And the gods, in a last-ditch attempt at ultimate irony, had aligned the planets and put O’Leary into the path of a bullet, thus making the impossible happen. Alyssa Locke had become a member—temporary, yes, but still a member—of his, Sam Starrett’s, SEAL team.
And maybe there were some devils at work, too, because—and what were the odds of this ever happening—Sam was actually glad to have her.
The woman could shoot.
He and his men were going to kick their way onto a plane in which five men were in possession of deadly weapons. And he knew that because Alyssa was one of his two snipers, there were at least two fewer tangos that he and his team were going to have to tango with.
It wasn’t as if she was going to be in any danger. It wasn’t as if Lieutenant Paoletti had assigned her to muscle her way onto the plane alongside of Sam. If he had, Sam would’ve fought him, kicking and screaming. That he would’ve flat out refused.
But using Alyssa as a sniper—that was something he could agree with.
No, it wasn’t easy to shoot another human being—to shoot to kill. There were people who argued that women weren’t up to that task. They claimed a woman would choke in a sniper situation.
But Sam had no doubt that Alyssa would do her job, that she had her own way of coping with the elimination of a human target. Of course, maybe she was like him, and she just threw up afterward and then went out and got drunk.
But probably not.
Right now part of his job as CO was to make sure the other members of the team had as much faith in their snipers as he did. So he spoke loudly and made sure he was overhead. “L.T. told me you volunteered—”
“If you have any problem with it, you need to talk to—”
“I don’t.” Jesus, would she just relax? “I just wanted to tell you I’m glad you’re here and to thank you.”
She nervously moistened her lips, clearly surprised. Jenk and Cosmo were surprised, too. In the past, Sam had laughed at Alyssa’s desire to be in the action, at the front lines, every chance he could get. “You’re welcome,” she said.
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