When the door opened, it actually took several seconds for Tom Paoletti to recognize the two enlisted men standing outside his room. It was the combination of dress uniforms and fresh haircuts that made Petty Officers Dan Gillman and Cosmo Richter look nothing like their usual froggish selves. The fact that Cosmo wasn’t wearing his sunglasses didn’t help, either.

“You better get dressed, sir,” Gillman said, maneuvering his way into the room on crutches.

Tom shook his head. “No. The leader of the Spanish Inquisition was just here. I’m not needed again for at least a few hours.” And since taking his dress uniform to the dry cleaner didn’t seem to be an option while under “house” arrest, the less time he spent sitting around in it, wrinkling it and making it stink, the better. “How’s the ankle, Danny?”

“It’s a pain in the ass, sir.”

“I bet. Look, could you guys do me a favor and give Kelly a call?”

“Excuse me, but you really do need to get dressed, sir,” Cosmo interrupted, shutting the door tightly behind him.

Cosmo Richter’s eyes were an unusual shade of pale gray. It definitely had been a while since Tom had seen him without his sunglasses. Or maybe it was the haircut that made him look so different. It actually met military regs. Or maybe it was just because it had been six months since Tom had been Richter’s commanding officer that made the man look like a stranger.

“And you can tell her whatever you need to yourself, Commander. I’m sure you’d prefer that anyway. Kelly’ll be up here in—” Cosmo consulted his watch as if he were part of some synchronized plan. “—three and a half minutes.” He handed Tom his pants. “So shake it a little faster, sir.”

Tom pulled them on. Kelly was on her way up, thank God. “I hate to shock you, Cos, but she has seen me in my shorts a time or two.”

Gilligan was already there, holding out Tom’s jacket, crutches balanced under his arms. “Yes sir, but Father Stevenson hasn’t.”

Father...? “Who?” Tom asked.

Cosmo and Gilligan exchanged a look.

“Father Stevenson, sir,” Gillian repeated. “He’s like, you know, a Father with a capital F.”

“A priest?”

Cosmo cleared his throat. “Kelly ran into a glitch today, sir. Since she’s not legally your wife, they’re not letting her visit you. She wasn’t too happy about that.”

Son of a bitch. He’d been afraid of that. “But you said she’s on her way up,” Tom pointed out.

Cosmo looked at Gilligan again, who was now straightening Tom’s shoulderboards. “Well, sir, she is, but she isn’t,” he said. “See, the guards aren’t going to let her into your room. So we’re going to have to do this with her out in the hall and you in here.”

“Do what?” Tom asked.

Cos cleared his throat again. It was probably sore. He’d already spoken more in these past few minutes than he had in all of the years Tom had known him. “You know that time about a year ago, when we were hanging at the Ladybug Lounge—you, me and the senior chief? Do you remember what you said?”

Tom laughed. “Try the Sam Adams Summer Ale...?”

Cosmo Richter actually gave him a chiding look. Tom hadn’t realized that chiding was in the usually impassive petty officer’s arsenal of facial expressions. “Tommy, this is serious shit.”

“I’m being held under guard in the BOQ,” Tom told him. “I think I know how serious this shit is.”

Chiding turned to something that was almost eager. “Say the word, sir, and we’ll get you out of here.”

Tom suspected that Cosmo wasn’t kidding. He shook his head. “Just tell me where you’re going with this. It sounds like a bad joke. A CO, a senior chief, and a petty officer walk into a bar. And...?”

“You told us that one of these days Kelly would be ready to get married, but until then, you were just going to play it cool,” Cosmo reported, and then dropped a bomb. “Well, Kelly’s ready. Today. In fact—” another glance at his watch “—in about thirty seconds, she’s going to marry you, Commander.”

“What?”

“You need to fix your hair, sir,” Gilligan said as a murmur of voices sounded outside the door.

“You still do want to marry her, don’t you, sir?” Cosmo asked, his hand on the doorknob.

Tom smoothed down his hair. “Yeah, but—”

“You look great, sir,” Gilligan told him.

Not like this.

The door swung open. And there she was. Kelly. In a freaking wedding gown. Arguing with the guards. There was a wide-eyed young man in a priest’s collar standing next to her.

“I realize that I’m not allowed in to see him,” she was saying to the two ensigns who stood in front of his door, “but is there really a problem with my standing here in the hall?”

She was so beautiful, something in Tom’s chest snapped. It just broke.

The guards looked very unhappy. One of them said, “Yes, ma’am. I have to ask you to keep moving.”

She was holding a small bouquet of flowers. “And I have to ask you to call your commanding officer and verify that I’m not allowed to rest here for a moment after climbing all those stairs. It wasn’t easy in this dress, you know.”

It was an amazing dress—a long, sweeping length of some rich-looking shiny fabric that Tom knew would slip coolly beneath his fingers if he touched her. It fell behind her in a glistening, shimmering pool of ivory. But it was the impossibly low-cut neckline that killed him. The entire gown set off the gorgeous smoothness of Kelly’s shoulders and the pale voluptuousness of her breasts. And all that creamy skin was a perfect frame for her beautiful face, her incredible eyes. She caught sight of him and just looked at him, her heart in those eyes. Her heart, and a hint of uncertainty.

“Kelly,” Tom whispered. “This is insane.”

The other guard glared at him. “Move back into the room, sir. You must keep this door closed.”

Tom ignored him.

“Isn’t it?” Kelly said. “But I didn’t know what else to do.” She turned to the priest. “Forgive me for rushing things along, but, Father, if you don’t mind?”

“Sir,” the guard insisted, “if you don’t move back—”

Tom took a very small step backward. “Kel, I’m not going to marry you. I’m looking at spending the next thirty years in jail—”

“For something that you didn’t do!”

“To hell with that!” Tom winced. “Excuse me, Father, but would you please tell her that thirty years is thirty years and the fact that it’s unjust and unfair isn’t going to make it pass more quickly.”

“Sir, this door must stay closed.”

Cosmo leaned forward, closer to the guards. “We need a little air in here, Ensigns,” he said quietly. “No one’s going anywhere. If we were trying to break Tommy out of here, we’d already be gone.” And you’d be dead. He didn’t say it aloud, but he didn’t have to. That message gleamed clearly in his odd-colored eyes. “This’ll be over and done much sooner, sirs, if you put a sock in it.”

“Go ahead, Father,” Kelly said.

Tom shook his head. “Kelly, I’m sorry, you look incredible. The dress is... It’s perfect. You take my breath away, but... I can’t do this.”

“You’re not going to jail,” she told him rather fiercely.

“You don’t know that.”

“Oh, yes, I do.”

“And if you’re wrong?”

“We’ll get an annulment,” she said. “Tom, this is the only way I’ll be allowed in to see you. How can I help you if I can’t even talk to you?”

He shook his head.

“Tom!” She glared at him. “Are you giving up?”

“No!”

“Then marry me, so I can actually stand next to you when I stand by you!”

Tom laughed. It was either that or cry. “God, I love you."

“For richer or poorer, for better or worse, in sickness or in health, and even in jail,” Kelly told him. She looked at Stevenson. “Is that close enough?”

The priest nodded. “It is. All you really have to do is sign the license.”

“I do,” Kelly said as she gazed at Tom. “I take you, Tom. For all those things. Forever.”

He nodded, wanting to hold her so badly that his chest ached. “I do, too.” But forever was going to be god-awful long if he had to spend it in prison. And, damn it, he didn’t have a ring for her. This was so not the way he wanted to do this.

She already had the paper and a pen out and was affixing her name to the document. No doubt she’d torn his den apart searching for the license, God love her.

Cosmo reached out of the doorway and, with a glance at both of the guards, took the paper from Kelly. Tom couldn’t believe he was doing this as he signed his name, as Cosmo and Gillman signed, too, as witnesses. It was a dream come true—in the middle of a nightmare.

“By the power vested in me... I pronounce you husband and wife,” Father Stevenson said.

No rings. No kiss. No real future.

Except Kelly didn’t believe that. And as Tom stood there, looking at her, he didn’t believe it, either.

Kelly looked at the guards. “Thank you,” she said with quiet dignity. “Now. Please call your CO and tell him that I demand to see my husband.”

“What the...?” Sam stared at Alyssa.

When she glanced over at him, she saw that his gaze was out of focus. He wasn’t really looking at her. He was merely looking in her direction, thinking hard, no doubt trying to make sense of the stunning news she’d just given him.

Mary Lou Morrison Starrett was Lady X, connected to the terrorists who’d tried to kill the U.S. President at the Coronado naval base six months ago. Alyssa was having some trouble making sense of it herself.

“Pull over,” Sam said, and when she looked up from the road and over at him again, he was back. Alert, focused, and grim. Very grim.

She could relate. This was beyond bad. But she shook her head. “Sam, we’re already late enough as it—”

“Pull over!” he roared. Loudly enough for her hair to move from the force of his voice. “Jesus Christ, Alyssa. You didn’t honestly expect to drop that news flash on me and just keep driving, did you? Pull this car over and at least have the decency to look me in the eye when you tell me the details of—”

“Don’t you shout at me!” She gripped the steering wheel and kept driving as she yelled over him. “I don’t know the details. Other than the fact that Mary Lou’s fingerprints apparently show up quite clearly on one of the terrorists’ weapons recovered in Coronado last year. Congratulations. You now know everything I know.”

“Alyssa, I swear to God, if you don’t pull this car over, I’m going to grab the steering wheel and—”

He was serious and just crazy enough to try it. Alyssa pulled over, tires squealing as they bounced into the empty parking lot of an abandoned restaurant. As soon as she hit the brakes, Sam opened the door and got out of the car.

“Whoa,” she yelled. “Starrett, get your ass back here!”

But he just kept on walking away.

Her tires squealed again as she moved the car into an intercept path. If she could have, she would have slapped him on the rear with the open car door. Instead, she put the vehicle into park and climbed out to face him. “What are you doing?”

He gazed at her, and when he spoke, his voice was soft. Gentle. “You know what I’m doing, Lys. You know I can’t go back to Sarasota with you.”

What? “You have to. There are a lot of people with a lot of questions—”

“That I can’t answer,” he cut her off. “I have no idea what’s going on. Is this a setup? It sure as hell smells like one to me. But why would someone frame Mary Lou? It’s absurd—almost as absurd as Mary Lou actually being involved with terrorists. Unless what they’re really trying to do is frame me.”

Alyssa moved around the car toward him. If he ran, she was in trouble. She was fast, but he was faster. She knew that from experience. “If she’s not involved, then who killed Janine?”

Sam rubbed the back of his neck. “I don’t know. If she is involved with something... Still, there’s nothing I can tell anyone. I didn’t know any of her friends. I didn’t even know she had any friends. I mean, not outside of AA—and she told me the people she met there were mostly acquaintances. When you’re just a few months sober, it’s not a good thing to get too close to people who could fall off the wagon any minute—and drag you with them. When she went into rehab, she pretty much dumped all of her drinking buddies—except her sister, who was dabbling in sobriety herself.”

“What about on base?” Alyssa said, wanting to keep him talking as she moved closer. Closer. “There must’ve been women she at least associated with?”

He scratched his beard as he thought about that. “There was a wives group on the base, but it was for everyone on base, not just the SEALs, and I guess that wasn’t good enough for Mary Lou. But Team Sixteen doesn’t have anything official. We’re still a relatively new team, most of the guys aren’t married, and the ones who are... Mike’s and Kenny’s wives always go out of town when the team goes wheels up. And these are people who are dealing with a bicoastal relationship. I didn’t feel like I could call them up and ask them to form a support group for my wife. Although, shit, Mike and Joan didn’t even get married until after Mary Lou left for Florida, so really it was just Ken’s wife, but—”

He shook his head. “I don’t know, Lys. Out of the guys in the team who are married, most are enlisted, and, well, I hate to say this, but Mary Lou didn’t exactly help people to like her. I know Meg Nilsson—Johnny’s wife—and Teri Howe, who’s married to the senior chief, they got together with Mary Lou for awhile right after we got married. I think it was weekly or maybe... I don’t know. But then they stopped coming over, and when I asked why, Mary Lou made all this noise about how Teri’s husband was only enlisted so she shouldn’t have been invited, and then Meg kept trying to force all this information on counseling down her throat, and she’d done enough of that in rehab, so...

“I really don’t know what I could tell anyone in an interview. Mary Lou spent all her time taking care of Haley, and doing, jeez, I don’t know what. Reading, I thought. She had some bullshit job that she insisted on getting at the McDonald’s on base—”

“Which gave her access—”

Sam laughed his disbelief. “You don’t honestly think—”

“I think her prints were on a weapon used in a terrorist attack. I think you need to come to Sarasota with me. I think we need to get there as quickly as possible.” Alyssa moved closer to him, reached into her back pocket, praying he didn’t figure out what she intended to do....

“I’m sorry,” he told her.

“I am, too,” she said, and, moving swiftly, handcuffed his left wrist to her right.

“Claire on line one,” Maddy’s voice came through on Noah’s intercom.

Noah picked up the phone. “Hey, baby.”

“What in the name of heaven has Roger gotten himself into?”

Oh, shit. “They came to visit you, too?”

“When you say it like that, it sounds almost reasonable. Visit. Right. What they did was come into the nursery school, right at drop-off time. I had parents waiting to talk to me. What was I supposed to say? ‘Excuse me while I’m questioned by the FBI?’ I mean, wouldn’t you be a little nervous about putting me in charge of your four-year-old child?”

Claire was the administrator of the nursery school at their church, and they were running a six-week summer program that started this morning. It wasn’t a high salary position. In fact, Noah had figured it out once, and, with all the extra time she put in, she was earning well below minimum wage. But Claire loved doing it, that was for sure. And if it made her happy, it made him happy.

Although, he really wished that program hadn’t started today. She had meetings into the afternoon—no chance for their lunch.

“Believe me, no one’s going to fire you for cooperating with the authorities,” Noah told her. “And if they do, you can finally get a real job.”

“Thanks so much, Noah. That's so comforting and supportive.”

“What did they ask you?”

“A whole bunch of questions about Mary Lou,” she told him. “Did I know her, were we close, when was the last time I saw her, had we ever visited the Starretts in San Diego. And Roger. My God. They wanted to know his state of mind. Is he violent. Has he ever been violent. And what about his temper. I didn’t know what to say. I mean, yes, he does have the tendency to burn hot, but I’ve got a mean temper, too. And it flared up a bit when they had the audacity to ask if he’d ever expressed any anti-American sentiment. Can you believe that? What kind of question is that to ask about a man who’s spent over a dozen years risking his life for his country?”

“It’s the same kind of question they asked me,” Noah said. “Did they tell you to contact them if he calls or shows up?”

“Yes, they did.” Claire paused. “I may have lied to them a little bit when I told them I would.”

Noah laughed.

“Nos...” There was something in her voice that made him stop laughing.

“Yeah?”

“Is it possible that Roger really killed Mary Lou’s sister?” she asked him.

He didn’t hesitate. “No.”

“Think about it,” she said.

“I don’t have to.”

“Remember that story you told me?” she said. “About that fight Ringo got into where you thought he was going to kill that kid. What were you—in eighth grade?”

“Yeah. And he didn’t kill Lyle. God, what was his last name?”

“Only because you stopped him.”

Noah sighed. “Claire, I know him.”

“I’ve read about certain kinds of medication that servicemen have to take when they go overseas—pills that prevent malaria—that can sometimes result in psychotic episodes.”

“Morgan,” Noah said. “Lyle Morgan. What a fool. He thought his being bigger would keep Ringo from swinging at him.” He laughed. “He didn’t know Ringo.”

“Doesn’t it creep you out just a little bit that he’s been trained as a killer?” Claire asked. “You know, I read that SEALs can do things like break necks and snap spinal cords. And fire shotguns.”

“I know,” Noah said. He’d once wanted to be a SEAL. He’d read all those books, too. “But lots of people know how to use a shotgun.”

“I don’t,” she said. “And—hold on a sec...”

He could hear her muffled voice talking to someone who had come into her office.

“I’ve got to go,” she told Noah.

“Ringo didn’t kill Janine,” he said again.

“People change,” she said.

“Not that much.”

Sam couldn’t believe it. She’d actually handcuffed them together. “Oh, for... Come on, Alyssa.”

“Get in the car,” she told him, pulling him with her as she went in through the passenger’s side and climbed over the parking brake.

It was either get in, or resist and end up hurting her.

“Please, please don’t do this,” he said, hoping quiet begging would get him farther than another temper tantrum. Or than making a pointed comment about exactly how they’d ended up—naked and covered in chocolate syrup—the last time she’d handcuffed herself to him.

But she already had the car in gear and the tires moving before he’d shut his door.

“They just want to ask you questions,” she told him, clearly uncomfortable with the warmth of his arm and hand so close to hers. If she drove with both hands on the top of the steering wheel, his hand was dangling, the weight of it surely making the cuffs cut into her wrist. But if she drove with her right hand down at the bottom of the wheel, that put his hand in her lap.

Which was fine with him. Or she could put her hand in his lap—also fine with him. She did neither, instead resting her hand on the gear selector between their two seats.

“Just questions,” Sam repeated. “You want to make a guess at how long it’s going to take them to ask me all those questions?”

“I’ll do everything in my power to—”

“Four months,” he said. “If I’m really lucky. Longer—like forever—if they get the idea into their pinheads that I’m somehow involved.”

She was silent because she knew what he was saying was the truth. They already thought that Tom Paoletti was involved.

“Alyssa,” he said. “Have a heart. If you bring me back, I’m going to be locked in some room, answering those fuckwads’ questions, while somewhere out there Mary Lou is hiding from Janine’s shooter. Who is probably an al-Qaeda trained terrorist. I need to find her—I need to find Haley. Don’t do this to me. Please. I’m begging you.”

She was silent, and he used the time to pray. Please God, if there was ever a time he needed a little divine intervention it was now.

“I’ll talk to Max,” she finally said.

“Oh, great. Thanks—this is after you tell me you have absolutely no influence over him. Which I find very hard to believe, by the way.”

Her temper flared, too, as she took the entrance ramp onto Route 75 south. “Believe what you want, Lieutenant. I’m doing the best I can in an impossible situation.”

He was Lieutenant again. Which meant he was so screwed. Sam or even Roger would have had at least a slim chance of talking her out of bringing him in, but not Lieutenant Starrett.

No, Lieutenant Starrett was going to jail. Directly to jail. No passing Go. No collecting his ex-wife and daughter.

God damn it.

“You know, a good blow job can be pretty goddamn influential,” he shot at her. “And if you’re at all uncertain, you could probably get some valuable pointers from Jules.”

Her voice rose. “Why do you say things like that?”

The air-conditioning was cranking, gale forces howling from the vents in the dashboard. But despite the heavy winds inside the car, her words seemed to hang suspended between them, as palpable as the warmth of her arm next to his.

“I don’t know,” Sam admitted, his anger suddenly deflated. And he really didn’t. What was wrong with him? “I just...” He shook his head. What could he say? “I’m an asshole. I’m sorry.”

“You purposely antagonize me. You find my buttons and you jump on them with both feet.”

His crack had struck one of her “buttons.” Was it possible...?

“Whoa. You don’t really think I meant that, do you? About getting pointers from— Lys, sex with you was incredible. You could teach a master class. You know, you did things to me with your mouth and tongue that I still—”

“Stop,” she shouted. “You just don’t get it, do you? I do not want to talk about sex with you in any way, shape, or form. I do not want to reminisce about anyone’s mouth or tongue, thank you so very much. We did things together that... that... God, that I’m ashamed of! If I could, I would go back in time and erase it all. Completely.”

Well, shit.

Sam almost let that one shut him up. He almost turned away and just sat and stewed in silent misery. But if stupid things he didn’t really mean could come out of his mouth, then surely the things that came out of Alyssa’s mouth could be things she didn’t really mean, too. Right?

Evisceration. It was entirely possible that if Alyssa was ashamed of anything, it was that she’d let herself care enough about him to be eviscerated when he’d said good-bye. And it took a shitload of caring to warrant an evisceration.

“I want to go back in time, too,” Sam told her quietly. “I want to walk into your apartment in D.C. and take you out to dinner.” He wanted to go on that dinner date they’d planned, instead of doing what he’d done—show up to tell her he couldn’t see her again, that he was going to have to marry Mary Lou.

Alyssa was silent for a good long while then, just driving, her eyes glued to the road, her mouth a tight line. Sam waited, silently praying. For what, he didn’t really know.

She finally glanced at him, her face and eyes showing signs of fatigue and strain. “We can’t change the past,” she said. “We both made choices that we can’t undo.”

“Mine’s been undone.”

That got him another look, this one filled with a crapload of disgust and disdain. “You think it’s that easy? Poof, you’re divorced. Poof, you’re suddenly back in my apartment, in my life? Dinner date with Alyssa, take two? You can show up if you want, Roger, but I won’t be home. You’re two years too late, and I have moved on.”

This wasn’t helping. Getting her all pissed off over the sins of his past wasn’t likely to make her want to start over with him. And, even more important right now, it wasn’t going to make her want to give in and set him free. Although, he was back to being Roger.

“How’s Nora?” he asked, abruptly changing the subject.

Alyssa narrowed her eyes at him, obviously trying to predict where this new topic was going. “She’s fine.”

Jules had told Sam that Alyssa spent a lot of time with her sister, Tyra, and her little niece. The very niece who had been born the very same day he and Alyssa had first made love.

They’d gone together to visit Tyra and the baby in the hospital. And afterward Alyssa had cried from relief and emotional overwhelm. Sam hadn’t thought she was capable of that kind of breakdown. She’d always come off as Superwoman, with nerves of steel, and ice water running through her veins. Ice water. Man, he’d been so wrong about that.

“She must be, what, now? Three?” Sam asked.

“Almost,” Alyssa said.

“Imagine how you’d feel—how Tyra would feel and—” Oh, crap. What was the husband’s name? Sam focused hard and pulled it out of his ass. “Ben.”

Alyssa gave him another look. “And now am I supposed to be all impressed that you remember my sister’s and brother-in-law’s names?”

“Yes, ma’am. But it’s okay if you’re not. I’m impressed enough for both of us.” Sam laughed at the expression on her face. Oh, come on, Lys. She was working every muscle in her face so that she wouldn’t smile—just because she was still pissed off at his blow job comment. He really had to learn to keep his mouth shut. “Imagine how freaked out they’d be if they didn’t know where Nora was. Imagine how freaked you’d be.”

“Yes, I would be. And unlike you and Haley, I’ve actually seen Nora in the past six months.”

Ouch. She’d cut him in two with that one, but like that robot in Alien, he wasn’t going to just lie back and die.

But it was time to try another tack. He pulled the conversation and his bloody torso forward with his arms. “Lys, I swear to you, just let me find Haley and then I’ll turn myself in.”

“The entire FBI is searching for her,” she told him. “Along with local law enforcement agencies. Believe me, by now Mary Lou is the subject of the biggest manhunt of the decade. We will find her, and soon. Even without your help.”

“Is that supposed to comfort me? The biggest fucking manhunt of the decade is supposed to reassure me?” The implications of that made his head spin. He hadn’t even considered... “Holy shit, do the APBs actually list her as armed and dangerous?”

Alyssa clearly realized that she’d only managed to make him more upset. “I haven’t seen them. I don’t know—”

“You goddamn well do know,” he countered hotly. “What’s SOP for an alleged terrorist?”

“Okay, you’re probably right. Since her prints were on an automatic weapon—”

“Fuck!” This was far worse even than he’d first imagined. “This is insane! Some FBI hotdog is going to spot her and go after her, weapon blazing.” And Haley could well be hit in the cross fire. Jesus, he had to get out of this car. He had to go and find them, now. He had to talk Alyssa into letting him go, or he was going to have to use force or threat of force to get her to release him. Way to get back into her good graces... But he had no choice. “No way is Mary Lou armed or dangerous!”

“Maybe she’s not, but you know as well as I do that she could very well be with someone who is. I know you’re probably getting tired of hearing this refrain, Sam, but her prints are on that weapon. We know at some point she... interacted with someone who wanted the President dead.”

“Why don’t you just say what you’re thinking?” Sam shot back at her. “At some point, Mary Lou was screwing around behind my back with some terrorist scumball.”

“That’s not what I’m thinking.”

“Well, it should be. It’s sure as hell what I’m thinking. I find it far easier to believe than the idea that she, I don’t know, somehow targeted me from the start. Is that really what you think? Like, she’s a terrorist? So she picks me up in a bar and purposely gets pregnant so I’ll marry her and... what? She didn’t need me to gain access to the Navy base. She just needed that job at the Mickey D’s.”

Alyssa glanced at him. “I think when we get to Sarasota, there are going to be a lot of questions about how and where and when you met her,” she said.

“The Ladybug Lounge,” Sam told her flatly. “During a night of heavy drinking and piss-poor judgment, just about two fucking awful months after you broke my heart.”

Alyssa didn’t take his bait. She didn’t even blink at the implication of his words. “So you did pick her up in a bar. Or did she pick you up?”

“She definitely hit on me. But it wasn’t because she was a terrorist. She was, you know... Jesus.” This was embarrassing to admit. “A groupie.”

SEAL groupies would sleep with anyone in the teams just because they were in the teams. All he’d needed to make Mary Lou want to take him home was a SEAL trident pin and a dick. Alyssa didn’t say anything. She didn’t comment, didn’t snort, didn’t do anything other than drive.

“Why don’t you just say it?” Sam said. “I’m pathetic. I know it.”

She shook her head, laughing slightly. “Maybe you should just wait and tell this to the task force. You’re going to have to tell it again anyway, and I’m not sure I really want to know—”

“Actually, I’d like you to know.” Sam paused. What was the best way to say this? “She was... the exact opposite of you, Alyssa.”

“Okay. Thank you. I’m no longer not sure. I definitely don’t—”

Sam spoke over her. “I went home with her that night because I was trying to, I don’t know, exorcise you, I guess. I mean, she was drunk. That was maybe kind of similar to that first night you and I got together.”

“Oh, please—”

“But everything else about her... the way she dressed, her whole attitude... was, I don’t know, bimbo trash. She actually did this stupid coy thing with her eyelashes that you wouldn’t be caught dead doing.”

“Starrett, I really don’t want to—”

“And, Jesus, she was young. I think she must’ve used a fake ID to get in there. She wasn’t exactly a rocket scientist, either. That’s one of the things that I’ve always found so attractive about you, Alyssa. You’re so damn smart.”

That shut her up, but only temporarily.

“Starrett, I really think—”

“I remember thinking that I couldn’t compare her to you because there was clearly no comparison,” he told her. “I was sick and tired of rejecting everyone I met out of hand, simply because they weren’t you. So I went home with her because of that, and also because back then two months seemed like a long time to go without getting laid.”

If someone had told him then that a time would come where he’d be approaching a solid year without sex, he’d have laughed in their face.

Alyssa kept her eyes on the road. “You’re going to tell all this to the investigators?”

Jesus. He was sitting here, baring his soul, trying to make her see how completely messed up he’d been after Alyssa had slept with him and then decided that they should forget about it, just pretend it never happened. And she was worried about people finding out that they had a past?

“No,” he told her. “I never told anyone about you and me. I mean, Kenny Karmody knows because he saw us together. Some of the other guys in the team have probably figured out that there was more to what we had going on than a broken dinner date. But they never asked for details, and I never told, and I’m not about to start now.”

Alyssa glanced at him. “I don’t want you to lie about it. It’s very important to tell the truth—whatever they ask you.”

“I know,” Sam said. “I just... won’t volunteer that particular information. I really don’t think anyone’s going to have a problem believing that I went home with Mary Lou that night for the sex. It was a one-night stand that just kind of kept going for a few weeks.”

He needed her to understand this. “I was freaking miserable without you, Alyssa. You told me we weren’t going to happen again and I believed you. I was looking for, I don’t know, a distraction. I honestly thought Mary Lou and I were both on the same page in terms of no strings. As soon as I realized that she wanted a wedding ring and that I was still completely unable to think about anyone but you, I broke it off. And then, Jesus, when you and I did get together again...”

He’d been so sure he was going to die. It seemed like a good practical joke for God to play on him. Let him sleep with Alyssa Locke again and—finally!—have her agree to have dinner with him, to move their one-night-of-sex-every-six-months relationship into something bigger, like maybe a relationship where they had sex once every two months... It seemed only inevitable that he should be killed during SEAL Team Sixteen’s takedown of a hijacked airliner.

But somehow he’d survived. Only to find that God’s practical joke was all about Mary Lou. She was pregnant, and guess what? The baby was his. Really. He’d gone charging off to do the right thing because that was the way he’d been raised, and Alyssa had been eviscerated. Silently. If only she had told him...

Would it have made a difference? He honestly didn’t know. Right now she was still silent.

“Do you believe me?” he asked.

A glance. “Yeah.”

He briefly closed his eyes. “Thank you,” he said.

“It doesn’t change anything.”

Sam nodded, letting her believe that.

She moved into the left lane to pass an eighteen wheeler. “You really don’t think it’s possible that Mary Lou was part of a terrorist cell—that she specifically targeted Team Sixteen?”

That really cracked him up. “I do not,” he said. “You don’t know her, Alyssa. She’s... way too uncomplicated.”

“She’s complicated enough to tamper with condoms and get herself pregnant so that you’d marry her.” She shot him a look. “And apparently she got to know you pretty well during those weeks of one-night stands. It’s not every man who would marry a woman just because she was pregnant.”

“I thought it was the right thing,” he tried to explain. “I was severely mistaken, though. I thought—”

“It doesn’t matter,” Alyssa said.

“Yes, it does.” It mattered so much. “When Noah was seventeen, he got Claire, his girlfriend, pregnant. I was in Sarasota for the summer, and it was extremely intense. Lots of shouting and crying, you know? Claire’s parents were talking adoption and even abortion, and Claire had some strong opinions about that. And then they announced that they were going to send her to Europe afterward to get her away from Noah, which made him completely bullshit. He concocted this scheme to break Claire out of her house, with a ladder to her second-floor bedroom, so they could run away together. They were talking California or Vegas, and... I was supposed to create a diversion out front, but it never happened.

“I remember Dot didn’t say much of anything other than admonishing Nos for not using birth control. Dot went out and bought me a box of condoms. Can you picture this elderly, practically deaf woman in a wheelchair, rolling up to the pharmacy counter and shouting out that she wanted a box of Trojans, ribbed?”

A smile from Alyssa. Hallelujah.

“Did I tell you she was a WASP, a pilot during World War Two?”

“Really? A black woman?”

“No, she was white. She met Walt during the war. He was a pilot, too—a colonel with the Tuskegee Airmen. They were an all-black fighter squadron out of Alabama.”

“I know who the Tuskegee Airmen were,” Alyssa said. “They had some kind of amazing record, like they never lost a single bomber they were escorting, right? I’m impressed.”

“Finally. I’ve been working my ass off here, trying to impress you.”

“I meant by Noah,” she countered.

She was actually teasing him. At least he hoped she was teasing. Noah was a very good-looking man.

“He’s still married,” Sam pointed out. “To Claire.”

“And Walt and Dot were his grandparents?”

“Yeah, his father was killed in Vietnam when he was a baby. They pretty much raised Nos from the get go. They were something else, Uncle Walt and Aunt Dot.” Sam hesitated, uncertain of the words to use to try to explain. But he wanted her to know him. And she wouldn’t know him without knowing about Walt. “Walt was, like, the most important person in my life when I was a kid. He was my, you know, hero, I guess. Someday, when we have more time, maybe when you’re visiting me in jail, I’ll tell you about him and Aunt Dot.”

That one got him an exasperated laugh. “Sam, don’t be ridiculous.”

“Yeah, you’re probably not going to visit me, are you?”

She gave him a look. “You’re not going to jail. I’m not going to let that happen.”

Oh, yeah. Good news. If she didn’t care about him even just a little bit, she’d just turn him in and let him rot.

“Thanks,” he said. “You can drop me at the next exit.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“Yeah, I know.” It was worth a try. “Anyway, Noah came up with this second plan. He would marry Claire, and they would keep the baby. Which was completely insane because they were both only seventeen. I remember thinking that he was nuts and that Walt would never agree to that. But Nos had figured out that he could go to work for Walt to support his wife and child, and get his GED in his spare time. Then he could go to night school to get his college degree. I was like, oh, that’s going to be a real fun life.

“But Noah and Walt went into the den and closed the door. They stayed in there a long time, and when they finally came out, Nos went to find Claire without stopping to tell me what had gone down. So I asked Walt, and he said that he was real proud of Noah. That Noah was doing the right thing, and that he and Claire would be married at the end of the month.

“I was like, shit. And I figured that Walt had just been waiting for Noah to step up, to take responsibility, you know, to be a man.

“So that’s what I tried to do with Mary Lou. I tried to do the thing that would make Walt proud.” Sam shook his head. “Although I’m pretty sure I’ve made him roll in his grave.”

They were both silent for several long moments, then Alyssa said, “I thought you grew up in Texas.”

“I did,” he said. “Fort Worth. That’s where I met Noah. But in sophomore year of high school, Dot had a stroke that was pretty debilitating. And there was this doctor in Sarasota who was getting good results with stroke patients, so Walt and Dot sold the family business to their employees, packed up their house, and moved down to Florida.”

He paused, and when she glanced at him, he added, “I would have gone with them if I could’ve. They wanted me to. Their house was always my, well, my sanctuary, I guess. See, my father was this real asshole, and... I was wrecked when they left. But I hitched down to visit them every summer, so I guess it was all right.”

Man, he couldn’t remember the last time he talked this much. It certainly hadn’t been while he was married to Mary Lou. He’d tried talking to her early on in their marriage, thinking that their getting to know each other might be important if they were going to be a real family, but she didn’t want to talk to him. She didn’t want him to be human. She wanted him to be some kind of superhero. And superheroes were never afraid. They never felt uncertain. They never wrestled with feelings of inadequacy that had been pounded into them when they were children. And above all, they never, ever cried.

“Alyssa, I really have to find Haley before I can go to Sarasota with you.”

She didn’t say anything for a long time. She just drove. She was so beautiful with those ocean-colored eyes that were such a vivid contrast to her mocha-colored skin.

“You’re going to have to trust that I’ll find her for you,” she finally said.

She glanced at him before he could turn his head away. With luck, she’d think that the tears in his eyes were from some emotion other than frustration and disappointment.

“It’ll help if you’re prepared for all the questions,” she told him. “They’re going to ask about Mary Lou’s job at the McDonald’s on base. When did she start working there?”

He couldn’t remember. “I think just a few months before she took off for Florida,” he told her. Every minute took them another mile closer to Sarasota. He was going to have to do something pretty damn soon. “I don’t know the exact date, but the manager there would still have those records, wouldn’t they?”

“Yeah, probably.” Alyssa frowned, a slight furrow marring the perfection of her brow. “Let’s see, they’re surely going to ask if Mary Lou ever questioned you about your work as a SEAL.”

“She only asked about my schedule. When I had to go in and what time was I coming home. She attended an AA meeting almost every night,” Sam explained. “I made it home on time about three times a week. Sometimes more often, depending on what the team was up to. She would go out, and I would stay home with Haley.” He had to smile, remembering. “Mary Lou sometimes put her to bed before she left, but Hale, she knew if it was just me and her home alone, I’d let her hang out with me until right before Mary Lou got back. It was weird. She was just a baby, but she was smart. We used to watch ESPN together, and I swear, she knew the Cowboys just from their uniforms.” He looked at Alyssa. “I know you probably harbor a lot of resentment toward Mary Lou and probably Haley, too. God knows I haven’t wrapped my head around Mary Lou’s doctored condoms yet. Jesus. But Haley’s a treasure, Lys. Don’t hold it against her—you know, the fact that Mary Lou’s her mother.”

“How could you have stayed away from her for six months?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “How could I have stayed away from you for six months?”

“Please let’s not start this again.”

“It was because I was scared.” There. He’d said it. “Scared I’m not goddamn good enough. Scared I’m going to somehow fuck it up and screw her up but good.”

Admitting this, saying it out loud, was damn near making him break into a cold sweat. He’d tried talking to Mary Lou about Haley, telling her that even just holding her terrified him, not because of the physical fears of dropping her or somehow breaking her, but because of the enormous emotional responsibility. His own parents had damaged him so badly, and at least on his mother’s part it had been completely without intention. He was scared he’d unknowingly do the same to this tiny, precious baby.

Mary Lou had looked at him as if he were some kind of freak, so he’d shut the fuck up and kept it all inside. Please, God, don’t let Alyssa look at him that same way....

He forced himself to keep talking. “My own father sucked. I mean, we’re talking nightmare scenario. He was a piece of work, Lys. I swear, he was tormented by... something, and he took it out on us. All I know about being a father and a husband is to not be like him. But even if I do it differently, I can still do it wrong and—”

Sam had to take a deep breath and exhale hard. God damn it, he wished she would say something. But she was definitely listening, so he kept going.

“Except, looking back at my marriage to Mary Lou, I’ve realized I made some of the same mistakes my father did. I found myself married to a woman I didn’t like—a woman I discovered I couldn’t love—so I bailed. But only bailed halfway. Just like he did. I actually turned into him in some ways, which is, um... pretty sickening to have to admit. Looking back, I can see the transformation, like one of those bad werewolf movies—but I couldn’t see it at the time. He traveled for work, so he spent as much time as possible on the road to get away from us. I tried to do the same thing, for different reasons, but whenever the team went wheels up, I was on that plane. And the rest of the time, shit, I was gone, too. I mean, even though I was there in body, the rest of me was out to lunch.” He tried to laugh, but it came out sounding embarrassingly like a sob. “At least I didn’t beat the hell out of Mary Lou and Haley when I was home.”

Shit, that was more than she needed to know. It had just come blurting out. What a loser.

Except, O hosanna, was it possible...? Jesus God, it was indeed reward time. Alyssa actually laced their fingers together, holding tightly to his hand. It was freaking amazing. It was the last thing he’d expected her to do, and it left him breathless and speechless and, goddamn, it filled him with hope.

The really stupid part was, he couldn’t have manipulated her into doing that if he’d tried. Somehow she knew that what he was saying was the real deal. That it was hard as hell to put what he was feeling into coherent sentences, and harder still to utter them aloud.

They drove past a sign saying SARASOTA, 140 MILES. Alyssa was holding the car at a pretty steady 80 mph. At this rate, he had about ninety minutes left to get himself free.

Ten minutes. He’d give himself ten more minutes of holding Alyssa’s hand before he’d tell her he had to take a leak. That would rattle her, for sure. At the very least, she’d pull over to the side of the highway. Best case scenario, she’d stop at a rest stop. He’d convince her to uncuff him, and the moment she did, he’d ninja out of there. Instant vamoose. One minute he’d be there, and the next...

She was going to be mad as hell.

But right now she was actually holding his hand.