All Due Respect

All Due Respect

by

Vicki Hinze

All Due Respect

My God, he’d found her.

Unable to believe her eyes, Dr. Julia Warner-Hyde turned her back to him, squeezed her eyes shut. Calm down. Think. Think!

She darted a frantic gaze up then down the shore, out on the churning Gulf of Mexico. Sand. Water. Deserted picnic area. Not even a trash receptacle close enough to hide behind.

He’s found you, Julia. Accept it. You have to face him.

Face him? She couldn’t face him. She didn’t want to face him—or anyone who reminded her of the past.

No matter how hard you try, some things you can’t outrun. Your history is one of them. You ‘we got to accept that, too.

She did. But now?

The water crept up on the beach, soaking her shoes. Maybe it wasn’t him. Maybe it was an optical illusion. Maybe the bleak glare off the water or the blinding reflection of the sugar-white sand had tricked her. The stiff sea breeze was burning her eyes and blurring her vision. She could have seen a resemblance where there wasn’t one.

Squinting back over her shoulder, she double-checked. Six two, mid-thirties, black hair. Same familiar body and resolute stride. He sidestepped the beachside park’s picnic area, the brisk wind plastering his windbreaker against his

white shirt and jeans-clad hip, and moved straight toward her.

It was definitely him.

The fine hair on her neck stood on end and the chill cut through to her bones. Damn it, she’d been so careful. How had he found her? How had anyone found her?

Had to be Intel or the OSI, Julia.

Since she’d left the lab and come here to teach first grade, the Office of Special Investigations had been keeping tabs on her and briefing every Department of Defense honcho with a vested interest on her activities. She would resent that, but she couldn’t do it with conviction and a clear conscience. If an agent hadn’t breached protocol three years ago and warned she was in danger, she’d be dead now. Still, their keeping tabs on all former employees didn’t explain why her former Black World coworker, Dr. Seth Holt, was in Grace, Alabama, and not in his lab in New Orleans, designing ballistic missiles. What did this visit mean? Would she have to leave Grace now, too?

Seth stopped in front of her. “Hello, Julia.”

She crossed her arms over her chest and stared up at him, doing her damnedest to control her fear. “What are you doing here?”

His eyebrows inched up on his forehead. “I expected a ‘Hello, Seth. It’s good to see you,’ but I guess you still haven’t mastered the rudiments of tact.”

Tact? He wanted tact from a woman who was terrified her whole life was about to be ripped to shreds—again? Or did he think she was the world’s biggest sucker? This wasn’t a friendly visit; the grim slash of his mouth and jut of his jaw proved it, not to mention his finding her. This visit had purpose. Risks with grave consequences. And that had to be horrible news for her.

“We need honesty, not tact.” He’d always said honesty made their relationship special. Shifting uncomfortably, she edged back from the creeping water. “Now, why are you here, Seth?”

He fisted a hand in his jacket pocket and professional distance filled his eyes. “I need your help.”

Definitely sucker bait. Seth Holt never allowed himself to need anyone, or anything from anyone. He was the most self-sustained, self-sufficient man ever born. “You prefer working alone,” she reminded him.

“Not when I’d fail and innocent people would pay the price.”

So he wasn’t here to ruin her new life. That should be good news, but it wasn’t. It meant his back was against the proverbial wall in a professional crisis. And his crisis carried the capability of destroying many lives. Seth worked in the Black World: that shadowy and undiscussed segment of the military where everything—personnel, missions, and weaponry—was classified Top Secret or higher. He designed and developed new technologies and weapon systems that were incorporated into existing weaponry packages and used in covert military operations. Operations that typically remained classified for years after they occurred, if not forever. When Seth Holt said innocent people, he didn’t mean a sprinkling of civilians. He meant all the citizens of the United States.

“What price?” She asked the question but, former rocket scientist to current rocket scientist, she understood, and Seth knew it.

“Millions could pay with their lives.”

Her skin crawled, and she wished that just once she could recall Seth’s damage-assessment estimates being exaggerated. But they had always been logical and uncannily accurate. He never elevated risks or potential—not even when refusing to do so had cost him the funding of a project. Even dead certain his request for funds to develop his own missile-defense sensor design would be denied, Seth had called it exactly as he’d seen it and, knowing it, made his “millions could pay with their lives” all the more chilling.

He sat down on the first of three tables. His feet on the bench and his arms braced against his knees, he stared

across the beach to the rough water, blowing right out the window the stereotype of a rocket scientist and engineer as a squirrely old man with inch-thick glasses and a bowed back. He looked more like a bodybuilder; he had to be still spending an hour a day at the gym. Though he wore his hair longer now, it was still that rich, deep black, contrasting starkly with his green eyes and sharp features. He looked… wonderful.

She hated it.

Her pulse quickened, and she hated that, too—and it surprised her. Seth was gorgeous, true, but he always had been, and looking at him before never had affected her.

Considering your situation back then, this surprises you?

It didn’t. But maybe her reaction to him was a sign. Maybe she was finally healing. .

You’ve got to be kidding, Julia. No human being can heal that much.

Certain her conscience was right, she sat on the picnic table beside Seth, propped her feet on the bench, and looked out at the water, giving herself a moment to absorb the gravity of this visit.

The gulf was rough, choppy, and whitecaps rolled into froth at the sandy shore. The wind carried a salty tang and the lack of sun and the slate-gray sky only reinforced her gloomy mood. His showing up here rattled her through to the soles of her feet, but it had cost him a lot to come to her, and it didn’t take a rocket scientist to know it. For some reason, that helped her calm down. “How can I help you?”

A frown creased the skin between his heavy brows and his square jaw tightened. “I’ve been advised against this but, before I get specific, I have to ask you something.”

Advised. Definitely work-related. Strangely disappointed, she worked to not tense up, taking this one breath at a time. “Okay.”

“I want to be clear. I am not prying into your personal life. I just… Oh, hell, Julia. The truth is, I need to know

who you are now.” He leveled her with a steady look. “This situation … It’s sensitive.”

A sensitive crisis and he needed to know if he could still trust her. After the way she’d walked out on him without notice, his questioning her shouldn’t have hurt. And yet it did. But she couldn’t blame him. She had earned his doubt. “All right.”

“Why did you leave without saying goodbye?” He looked her straight in the eye. “Was it something I said or did?”

She had hurt him. Amazing, because she hadn’t realized she could hurt him. Professionally, yes, but not personally. And why, on realizing she could hurt him personally, had he had to ask her the one question she couldn’t answer honestly?

Regret bit her hard, and she worked to give him a truth, if not the truth. “I loved working with you.” Hoping what she could tell him would be enough, she fingered the mini flashlight on her key ring, avoided his eyes. “Leaving was my only option. I didn’t like it, but I had no choice, Seth.” And she had lived with the guilt and regret to prove it.

He stared at her, seeking the truth. “Why?”

She squeezed her eyes shut. “I can’t tell you that.”

“It had nothing to do with me or work?”

“No.” Oh, God. A half-truth and now he knew her reasons had been personal.

Seth looked torn between pressing her and clamming up. A few beats passed and, oddly, he opted to press. “Did your husband’s job transfer here?”

She should tell him about Karl, yet she couldn’t make herself do it. In waltzing back into her life as abruptly as she’d waltzed out of his, Seth had caught her unawares, and for a split second, she had been mentally transported back into her kitchen in New Orleans, back to Karl, the man she had married who supposedly had loved her. Now the old memories rushed in and crushed down on her. A shudder rippled through her. She stiffened against it, furious that just thinking of him still terrified her. She respected

and admired Seth but, God, how she hated her memories: That life was over, finished, and she resented like hell any part of it intruding into the new life she’d struggled and sacrificed to build.

If there was any good news in this, it was that word of Karl’s being in prison evidently hadn’t filtered back to Seth or to others in the field—and she would rather it not filter back now. The truth was gruesome, the grapevine merciless. Seth might understand about Karl but, then again, he might not. And even if his opinion shouldn’t matter to her, it did. She didn’t want to risk losing his respect.

She had lost everything once. Every single thing. It had hurt like hell and nearly had killed her, but somehow she had dredged up the courage to start over. She didn’t want to regress—couldn’t afford to regress—and go through any of it again. She wouldn’t regress or go through any of it again. “I earned five times what Karl earned as a cop. If you were me, would you quit because Karl transferred?”

“No, but then I’m not you.”

Terrific. She’d let tension unleash her temper and now Seth knew her reason for leaving his lab was personal and work-related. Brilliant move. “Karl’s job wasn’t a factor.”

“I take it Karl is fine, then?”

“Yes, he’s fine.” True as far as she had gone. During her last check with his arresting officer, Detective LeBrec, that’s exactly what he had told her. Karl is fine. So, okay, LeBrec had added unfortunately. But nothing compelled her to relate that to Seth. “I chose to come here and to teach.”

Clearly struggling to understand, Seth asked, “Did you know anyone here, before coming to Grace?”

Coming to Grace. If she told Seth she had come here for a fresh start on an omen seeking grace, he would forget needing her help and insist she be mentally evaluated. Seth worked with proven entities, with facts, not with omens, or with those who followed them. “No.”

“Why first grade, Julia? Why not college? I thought you gave up teaching after graduate school.”

Because kids have to learn to lie, just as they have to learn to hate. Because little kids weren’t yet corrupt, and if she could teach them that everything—everyone—deserves respect before they became corrupt, then she stood a chance of preventing others from going through the hell she’d been through. “I did give it up. But now I’m back.” She shrugged. “It’s what I wanted.”

“I don’t get it. You loved your work in the lab. I know you did.”

She had, and she’d had enough of this. She really had tried to ease Seth’s mind and to assure him he had played no part in her decision to leave the lab. God forbid he ever learn the truth. But she couldn’t stand his digging into her past anymore. She just couldn’t. “I said, it’s what I wanted.” She cooled her gaze, signalling him to back off. “Now, what do you want?”

His expression stiffened. Still resting his elbows on his bent knees, he leaned forward. “I’ve developed a system that will return a hostile, in-flight smart bomb to its launch site.”

He had to be kidding. But he didn’t look like he was kidding, and she’d never known Seth to kid around about his work. He was talking about an extremely innovative missile-defense system here. Until now, attempts to develop a missile-defense system had centered on interceptor “kill” missiles, where an incoming, hostile missile was rammed into and detonated by a outbound, friendly missile. So far, even that program hadn’t produced a stellar performance. Its personal best was a couple of hits and a truckload of near misses, and a near miss was a failure. Depending on the type of warhead the hostile missile carried, a near miss allowed catastrophic damage to occur. But Seth was talking about taking the entire ballistic-missile-defense program in a whole new direction. One refining and manipulating technology so an attack resulted in a self-inflicted wound. Excitement bubbled in Julia, overtaking the tension. “Is it successful?”

“The prototype is.”

“Seth, that’s wonderful.” She smiled. “Will it negate the need for traditional ‘kill’ missile interceptors?”

“If we’re lucky.”

Pursing her lips, she tilted her head. “Are you going to be lucky?”

“Maybe.” He glanced at a pelican perching on a dockside pier post. “They’re calling it Project Home Base.” He followed the pelican’s move down to the next post. “The contract to develop it is about to be awarded.”

“So why do you look so glum? You should be flying high.”