Into the Fire (42 page)

But she gestured toward the sofa where he’d been sitting mere moments earlier. “I
can
help you,” she said. “I will. Please.”

It felt like an out-of-body experience, as if Deck were floating above himself, watching from afar. But he nodded and he got his feet to move and then he sat.

S
AN
D
IEGO
, C
ALIFORNIA

The SpecWar Group Sixteen parking lot was almost completely deserted, which was a good portent—at least in terms of his not being sent overseas within the next twenty minutes. Izzy parked next to the senior chief’s truck and went into the equally empty building, his dress shoes clicking on the floor despite his attempt to walk quietly.

Light was blazing from the senior chief’s office and as Izzy headed toward it, the expression
moth to the flame
came to mind.

The senior chief was sitting behind his desk and scowling. If he were surprised to see Izzy in full uniform, he didn’t show it. He didn’t so much as blink. He just affixed Izzy with his
you-are-toast
dead-eye stare.

“Senior.” Izzy greeted him.

Despite looking like a hired killer who used to box and had received one too many nose-breaking, face-smashing blows, Senior Chief Stan Wolchonok had a heart and a soul. He had to—he was married to one of the prettiest, sweetest, most kick-ass helo pilots in the United States Coast Guard. His wife, Teri, used to be an officer in the Naval Reserve, but she’d made a lateral and somewhat downward move in order to marry Stan, who was career Navy enlisted.

It was not the kind of thing a highly skilled woman would do for a man who was a total bastard.

So despite the fact that the senior frequently acted like a total bastard, Izzy knew he wasn’t one.

He’d also heard rumors that the senior and his wife had been trying to have a baby for quite some time now. Teri’d had a couple of miscarriages before her latest so-far successful pregnancy, which couldn’t have been easy for either of them.

And, perfect. Here came Izzy, instantly married with a wife who was effortlessly pregnant. Way to rub it in Stan’s face.

Izzy cleared his throat as Stan just sat and glared at him. “May I—”

“No,” Stan said, before Izzy even said the word
sit.

So Izzy assumed parade rest. This was going to be one of
those
kinds of meetings. The kind where he stood silently and got yelled at.

“Have at me, Senior,” he said. “I know I broke the rules of our agreement, but she’s six months pregnant. The idea of driving her all the way to San Diego and then all the way back to Vegas—”

“Jay Lopez called me,” the senior said. “He told me what’s going on. I assume since you’re back that you already married the girl.”

“Yes, Senior Chief. A few hours ago.”
Lopez
had called the senior chief, not Gilligan. “And her name’s Eden.”

As Stan looked steadily up at Izzy, it was obvious that the senior was aware that his phone call had interrupted Izzy’s wedding night. And maybe Izzy was imagining it, but there seemed to be a flicker of chagrin in the older man’s eyes.

And when he spoke, his words surprised the hell out of Izzy.

“Call me on your cell phone,” he ordered. “And tell me again exactly what you told me before—about not being able to get to San Diego to request the CO’s permission, on account of your fiancée’s health.”

Izzy stood there, stupidly, staring at Stan.

“I want to go home,” Stan said, each word distinct, as if he were talking to a moron. “Where my wife is in my bed. I have fought for you, Zanella. I championed you when Commander Koehl wanted to kick your ass back to Little Creek.
He’s too fucking smart for his own good, sir,
I said.
If we keep him challenged, I know he’ll do us proud. Beneath all the bullshit, Zanella’s a very intelligent young man and an exceptionally excellent operator.
Don’t prove me wrong by making me sit here a minute longer than I have to.”

Izzy was beyond surprised and well into stunned territory. “Senior, I thought you hated me.”

“Zanella, shut the fuck up and call me.”

Izzy got out his cell phone, and with a thumb that felt clumsy, he dialed the senior’s cell number.

“Wolchonok,” the man answered. The signal, of course, took its time and caused a delay. The speaker at Izzy’s ear echoed, “Wolchonok.”

“Senior,” Izzy said, because he knew, with a flash of insight, exactly what Stan wanted him to do. “I realize this is short notice, but I’m calling to request permission to get married this evening. My fiancée is six months pregnant. I was unaware of her condition until very recently, otherwise I would have approached Commander Koehl and made this request sooner. I realize there’s going to be a ton of paperwork to sign, and also request that permission be granted to delay that until after the wedding. I’m available to come in to your office to sign the forms immediately upon arrival from Las Vegas.”

“Son, are you sure you don’t want to talk to a counselor,” Stan said, “or at least ascertain that the child is, in fact, yours?”

“The baby’s mine, Senior,” Izzy said, past the lump that had appeared in his throat at that completely uncharacteristic and unexpected
son.

“Lopez says otherwise.”

“Despite popular belief, Lopez is, on occasion, wrong.”

“This girl—Eden—is very young. Lopez said you told him—”

“The baby’s mine,” Izzy said again.

“Then take a paternity test, to confirm—”

“I don’t need to. I’m taking responsibility. I had a…sexual encounter with the young lady six months ago, she’s currently six months pregnant…With all due respect, Senior, I’m down with that math.”

“Lopez told me Eden is the sister of one of your teammates,” the senior chief said. “Is that going to create a problem for—”

“No, Senior. It will not.”

“It better not.” Stan paused, then asked, “Do you love her?”

Izzy met the senior chief’s steady gaze across that big desk, as the man’s voice echoed in his ear.
Do you love her?

As the silence dragged on, the senior chief added, “It’s a simple yes/no question, son.”

So Izzy answered him. “Yes, Senior,” he said. “She’s…” He nodded. “Yes.”

God help him.

“Permission granted,” Stan said and snapped his cell phone shut. “I’ll make it right with the CO. In the meantime…” He pushed a stack of papers and a pen toward Izzy and gestured with his chin toward the chair in front of his desk. “Sit. Read and sign.”

“Thank you, Senior,” Izzy said. It was amazing. All of the forms had been filled out. It was all completely ready for him and…There were more than just the standard forms needed for changing his marital status. The senior chief had prepared all the additional paperwork, too. The forms Izzy needed to make Eden the beneficiary of his life insurance, forms that would allow her to get medical care, the form in which Izzy was to list the person or persons who would notify Eden in the event of his death…

Damn.

It was a standard military form. Everyone—officer and enlisted—had to fill one out. He’d just never thought of it before in terms of having someone who depended on him. Someone who might actually be upset if he were dead.

Of course, if Eden didn’t particularly care if he slept with every available woman in Europe and the Middle East…Maybe his death wouldn’t be that big a deal.

The senior chief saw what had stopped him.

“You can take that one home if you want,” he said. “Just bring it back soon. First thing tomorrow.”

Izzy glanced up at Stan. “Is that a hint that we might be going wheels up?”

The senior didn’t blink. “No,” he said. “It’s a hint that we’re definitely going wheels up. Before the end of the week.”

Hence the necessary expedition of his paperwork.

Izzy finished signing everything and stood up. “Senior Chief, I really don’t know what to—”

“No need for speeches, Zanella,” Stan said, standing too. “You’re welcome. Now, let’s both go home to our wives.”

C
HAPTER
N
INETEEN

S
ACRAMENTO
, C
ALIFORNIA

H
annah wasn’t questioned at all about her visit, last March, to the Freedom Network compound.

As she sat in the hospital room and the questions didn’t come, and then
still
didn’t come, she realized it was entirely likely that Craig Reed had refused to give the FBI access to a list of compound visitors. Probably because it would identify all of those people as being card-carrying members of the vitriolic hatemongering organization, and most of them wouldn’t want that information going public.

It was also possible that Reed feared the FBI would be able to use that information for other purposes, such as monitoring the movement and location of Freedom Network leaders.

So the good news was that the FBI didn’t know that Hannah had visited the compound last March, and at this point, she wasn’t about to volunteer that fact.

She was, however, questioned extensively by both the police and FBI—right there in the hospital room—about the shooting at Steve and Paul’s place. She was able to tell the interrogators the time of the incident and little else. She saw no one, didn’t hear any of the shots and only felt the impact of one.

Did she know of anyone who would wish to harm her?

As a former police officer, she could probably come up with a four-page list, yes.

Where was she prior to the attack?

In her friends Steve and Paul’s apartment, taking a nap.

And before that?

Driving around the Sacramento area. Murphy and his murdered wife Angelina used to visit friends in this part of the state rather often. Murphy was seeking closure, but rewind a bit to that wish-to-harm question, because Hannah knew that, as a gay couple, Steve and Paul had been targeted more than once.

Before they’d moved to California, they’d lived in the Florida panhandle, where drive-by gun blasts to their house had been, sadly, a common occurrence. As far as Hannah knew, nothing like this had happened since they’d moved to Sacramento, but she’d read on-line about an organization called the Watchmen on the Walls, an Eastern European immigrant-based homophobic group who’d recently set up shop in the area. Between the Watchmen and the Freedom Network, that part of California was becoming quite the place for haters.

The police and FBI might want to round up the usual suspects from both groups, because the bullets fired may well have been meant for Steve and Paul, Hannah had theorized, inwardly apologizing to her friends for using their sexual orientation as a handy excuse.

Notes were made and heads nodded before she got the next question: What was Hannah’s relationship with Murphy?

Longtime friends. She’d introduced him to his now-dead wife.

There was no need to mention that they were friends with benefits. Murphy had made it clear before he’d left that that was over, anyway. Which was probably for the best.
I know you love me…

Hannah pushed the thought away and focused on the questions being asked.

Had Murphy ever spoken to her about Tim Ebersole?

She wasn’t comfortable discussing conversations held in private, conversations in which she allowed a grieving friend to vent. Whatever his intentions had been, Tim Ebersole’s ugly words on his website had resulted in Angelina’s death. Cause and effect. Murphy, in his grief, had every right to be angry—not just with the Freedom Network, but also with the movie producer who was their official target. Hell, he’d had the right to rail against Hitler, too, since the controversial, true-life movie being made, the one Ebersole had been protesting, was set during World War Two.

Talk about cause and effect.

So Murphy
did
express anger against Tim Ebersole?

Murphy was angry with everyone in the entire world. Are you also looking at him as a suspect in last week’s murder of that shopkeeper in Calcutta? Because Murphy was angry with him, too. He was angry with
you.
He was
angry.
He was allowed to be. His wife, whom he loved, was dead.

To Hannah’s surprise, the questions ended there.

She was free to go, as soon as she received her official discharge from the hospital.

However, Murphy—who’d been taken off-site to be questioned—was going to be detained longer, for an undetermined amount of time. The police detective and FBI agent both gently suggested Hannah not expect to see him soon—and she knew from experience that it was probable that Murph was going to be arrested and charged.

Which meant she absolutely had to go and get that letter that he’d sent her back in March.

The police and FBI left her room, and, after sitting there for about half a minute, Hannah got out of bed.

God, that hurt. Forget about her arm, it was nothing compared to the three-ring-circus of pain in her ankle.

The nurse had given her a painkiller, which Hannah had promptly stuck deep inside of the pillowcase, only pretending to swallow. Now was not the time to be drowsy. Or to dance with the prescription drug devil. She’d weaned herself off of painkillers once already. She was not looking to do
that
again.

She hobbled across the room and peeked out the door into the hallway.

The police guard was gone.

And Dave Malkoff was down at the end of the hall, talking to the police detectives, his back to her.

One of the nurses who’d been in just moments earlier to take her blood pressure had told Hannah that the doctor wouldn’t be in to sign the hospital discharge papers until midmorning at best. That would, she’d cheerfully suggested, give Hannah a little time to send one of her friends out to pick up something for her to wear, to replace the bloodstained T-shirt she’d traded for a hospital gown. Hannah should try to get some rest—which was hard, the nurse knew, with everyone traipsing in and out all the time. But they wouldn’t be bringing the breakfast trays around for another few hours, so….

Hannah gently closed the door and then, using the pillows and blankets from the hospital bed Murphy’d been in before they’d taken him away, she formed a human-seeming lump under the covers of her bed. It was an old camp trick, and when the light was low…

She adjusted the blinds and turned off as many of the lights as she could, pulled on her jeans and boots, grabbed her daypack and opened the door to the hallway again.

Dave’s back was still to her.

Dave—who’d promised Murphy he’d put Hannah on the next flight to Arizona.

Hannah slipped out the door and around a corner, heading for a different exit—discharge papers and Murphy’s apathetic death wish be damned.

S
AN
D
IEGO
, C
ALIFORNIA

The rental car was gone.

Izzy stood for a moment in the apartment complex parking lot, looking at the empty spot where he’d parked the damn thing, mere hours earlier.

Maybe Avis’s midnight to six a.m. shift was super efficient.

Or…Maybe he was a freaking idiot.

He took the stairs two at a time, unlocked his door and…

“Eden?”

The place was silent. The lights that he’d left blazing, turned on when he and Eden had first come home, were all off. Nothing but the dawn’s early light, gleaming through the windows, lit the place as Izzy checked the bedroom.

Eden was not there.

She wasn’t in the kitchen either. Or the bathroom.

He knew it was stupid, but he even checked the closets.

It was then that he realized that the bag with her clothes was gone, too. With his heart doing an express elevator ride all the way down to his large intestine, he checked the top drawer of his dresser…

His ATM card was still there.

His relief was short-lived.

His fucking ATM card was still there, sure, but Eden was gone.

She hadn’t cleaned out his bank account—she’d
only
stolen the rental car.

And the fifty bucks he’d handed her.

And his motherfucking heart.

Disappointment and anger competed in an attempt to choke him as he stood, alone in his apartment.

There had to be a note. Somewhere. Surely she’d at least left him a note.

Izzy could still smell traces of her perfume in the kitchen—where she’d actually cleaned up the mess in the microwave. The sink was scoured, dishes in the dishwasher, counters clear.

It didn’t make sense.

Why would she do that?

His bed had been made, too, and the towels neatly arranged in the bathroom.

He went back into the kitchen, where his laptop was out on the table. She hadn’t taken that. As far as he could tell, she hadn’t taken anything.

Except the rental car…

Which he’d asked her to help him with, by finding the nearest rental location—by looking it up online.

He pulled his computer toward him, pushing the screen down almost flat, so he could see it better and…

There it was.

Eden’s note.

She’d written it on his computer. It filled the screen in an unsent e-mail.

Izzy, I am so, so sorry. I couldn’t find a pen or pencil. I hope you find this. I returned the rental car for you at the Sweetwater Road location. There was a drop box for the keys. I borrowed the money you gave me. I’ll pay you back, but it might take me awhile. I had no idea it would be this bad. I hope you’ll believe me, but I know you won’t, so I couldn’t stay. I’ll call you when I figure out what I’m going to do, and then we can do whatever it takes to annul the marriage. If it costs money, of course I will pay you back for that, too. Again, I am deeply sorry.

Sincerely, Eden

What. The fuck?

As Izzy printed out a hard copy of Eden’s note, he realized that she’d left her freemail account open. He clicked shut the e-mail she’d left unsent for him, and a recently received e-mail from someone named Britt appeared on the screen. He quickly scanned it—oh, fuck. He clicked on the web browser, where a list of all his laptop’s recently visited URLs appeared and…

Oh,
fuck.

Bracing himself, he highlighted GirlsWhoLoveToShag dot-com slash edenzanella and…

“Oh, Eed, no,” he breathed as the first of what looked like three different homemade sex videos began to play.

D
ALTON
, C
ALIFORNIA

Hannah put the car that she’d borrowed from Steve and Paul’s driveway in a little overgrown pull-off at the bottom of the hill. She backed it in, ready for an easy getaway, which made her feel a little foolish.

But Murphy wasn’t going to be happy with her for coming back to Dalton. Maybe if she told him she’d been ridiculously careful, he’d forgive her that much sooner.

And she
was
being ridiculously careful—now, anyway.

Going back to Steve and Paul’s had involved some risk, but Hannah had needed a car. Plus, she’d wanted to recover those handguns Murph had submerged in her friends’ to-be-recycled kitchen cooking oil.

She was carrying them now, still slippery and coated in grease, in ziplock baggies, in her daypack.

She’d gone into Steve and Paul’s apartment via the front stairs from the garage. She’d moved quickly, swiping a clean T-shirt to wear in place of her hospital gown, as well as the keys for this nondescript little not-yet-converted Toyota on her way back out.

As she’d driven away, she’d checked constantly to see if she were being followed. She’d also pulled over at a convenience store to search the vehicle for GPS tracking devices and had found none.

Once back in the car, she hadn’t stopped again. She’d driven straight here to Dalton, along roads that were mostly empty, as the night became dawn.

She was going to get that letter and then…What? Bring it back to Dave, she supposed, to show it to both a lawyer and to that in-house headshrinker who had joined the Troubleshooters team.

And ultimately turn it over as evidence, to the FBI.

So, careful or not, it was probable that Murphy was never going to forgive her for that.

I just didn’t care enough to do the right thing. That’s who I am now. I just don’t care about anything…

Bullshit.

It was possible that Murphy didn’t care about himself, but he cared about her. Hannah knew it. She had it in his own hand, in that note he’d written her.

The note that, because she’d sat down on those stairs to attempt to read it, had saved her life.

Han,
he’d scribbled, his penmanship god-awful as always. His handwriting and spelling were that of a slightly dyslexic seventh-grader. His words, however, were something else entirely.

When I said what I said, I meant that I don’t have any of the things I thought I’d have, back when that picture was taken. Those things—Angelina, my career, our plans for a home—they’re gone. Out of all the things that I had, and things that I thought I’d have by now, I have none.
That’s
what I meant to say. But I don’t have nothing, because I have you. Without you, I would have quit a long time ago. Without you, I’d
be
nothing. I look in the mirror and most of the time I don’t recognize my own face. But I’m me again, Han, as much as I’ll ever be, when I’m with you. And the really crazy thing is how much you still care about me, how totally you disregard just how different I am, how you can still find me inside this stranger I’ve become. And I love you for that. More than words can say. You made me feel good, too, Han. For the first time in forever. So don’t give up on me. Not yet, okay?

But between the time he’d written that note and the time the FBI had taken him from the hospital,
Murphy
had quit.
Don’t give up on me…?
He’d gone and given up on himself.

And all that implied “thanks for the sex” bullshit he’d hit her with back at the hospital had been just that—bullshit. He was actually trying to hurt her so that she’d…what? Run away crying like a little girl?

I know you love me
…In truth, he had
no
idea.

At any rate, here she was again, demoted from lover and back to playing the role of best friend. Which she was going to do, whether or not Murphy wanted her to.