“Jules Cassidy to see you, sir.”

Max sighed and leaned forward to push the button on his intercom. “Send him in, Laronda.”

The team had returned from Gainesville, pissed as hell that Sam Starrett had slipped through their fingers. Max was betting that they’d drawn straws to decide who would come and confront him—and lay the blame for this goatfuck squarely on his desk. Which was exactly where it belonged.

Jules Cassidy opened the door and came in, a modern-day Oliver Twist. Please, sir, may I have some more? Interestingly, there was no sign of recrimination or even anger in his eyes. Just cool curiosity.

Max looked at him over the top of his reading glasses. It was a “this better be good” look, and since they both knew damn well that it wasn’t good, that Jules had no business coming in here in the first place, the kid should have been shitting bricks.

But Jules gazed back at him, pretending to be unperturbed. “May I sit?”

“No. Whatever this is, it’s not going to take long enough for you to sit.”

Jules actually laughed. “I really have to learn to do that,” he said. “That icy stare thing. It’s very effective.”

“I’m busy,” Max said tersely. “If you have some kind of complaint—”

“I’m not here to complain, sir,” Jules cut him off. “I just wanted to make sure that today’s little exercise went down the way you planned.”

Max kept his face expressionless. The office was filled with angry people who were sure that his interference had created a giant snafu. And yet somehow Jules Cassidy, a man most people didn’t want working for them because—horrors!—he was gay, had figured it all out.

“So what was it?” Jules asked. “The committee from Politicians R Us breathing down your neck? This way you could tell the senators and congressmen, ‘Well, we almost had Starrett. Unfortunately, he got away. But see how hard we’re trying?’ This way Alyssa finds him and gives him those forty-eight hours you promised, without you getting reamed for it.

“What I’d like to know,” he continued, “is how you knew Alyssa was going to position herself outside of the doughnut shop, when she didn’t even let anyone on the team there in Gainesville know. I’d also like to know if she’s called in yet. She vanished right after we found out we had the wrong man. I can only assume she’s with Sam right now.”

Max nodded as he took off his glasses and tossed them down on his desk. “So what do you want, Cassidy? A promotion for being so smart?”

Surprise, and then something very like hurt, flashed in the younger man’s eyes. “That’s not why I’m here. Sir.”

“I know. Sit down,” Max said more gently than he’d ever spoken to Jules before, trying to make up for being such a bastard.

As he watched, Jules sat on the edge of a chair. This kid was the real deal. He was not only smart, he was also extremely loyal. And Max really had to stop thinking of him as a kid. He only looked ridiculously young. In truth Jules was rapidly approaching thirty.

“You’re worried about your partner,” Max said. He sighed. “Well, I’m worried about her, too. She hasn’t called in. I don’t know if she’s thinking clearly enough to piece it together the way you did. I may have made her so angry at me that...”

He could see the words he’d left unspoken in Jules’s eyes. That I’ve lost her forever. But, Christ, maybe that was part of his plan, too. Maybe he had some subconscious desire to push Alyssa away. He thought of Gina, sleeping in his arms last night....

“If Alyssa calls me,” Jules said, leaning forward in his seat, “I’ll tell her—”

Max shook his head. “No. Not over her cell phone. Someone might start monitoring that. I don’t want word to get out—in fact this conversation doesn’t leave this room.”

“Of course, sir.”

“But you have my permission to give her whatever information she asks for. Don’t ask her if she’s with Starrett, though. And don’t let her tell you, either. Keep her from saying it. You and I aren’t going to know anything about that, all right? As far as we’re concerned, she’s on her own, following a lead.”

Jules nodded. “Yes, sir. Don’t ask, don’t tell. I’m familiar with the concept.”

Max forced a smile. “But if you do see her in person, go wild in my defense, would you?”

“I don’t think I’m going to see her. At least not for forty-eight hours.”

“Yeah,” Max said. “I don’t think so either.”

Jules got to his feet. “How did you know what she was going to do? You know, put me in the doughnut shop in her place, with one of her scarves on my head?”

“I didn’t know. But when you headed toward Gainesville...” Max smiled. “I trusted she had something good up her sleeve.”

Jules nodded. “Thank you for taking the time to see me, sir.”

“Yeah,” Max said. “Oh, and Jules?”

Cassidy stopped, his hand on the doorknob.

Max cleared his throat and picked up his glasses. “Gina Vitagliano’s apparently checked out of her motel room. Did she, uh, give you any idea where she was going?”

“No, sir. But there are dozens of other little places to stay right there on the beach.”

“Yeah, I’m aware of that,” Max said. There were 155, to be exact.

“The info came in, you know, regarding her trip overseas,” Jules told him. “Did that cross your desk yet?”

Ah, Christ. “No,” Max said. “What have you heard?”

Jules made a cringing face. “Oh, sweetie, you’re going to hate this, but Gina’s going to Africa. I believe her final destination is Kenya.”

Max kept a whole string of expletives from escaping by closing his mouth and gritting his teeth. But somewhere in his brain, a vein definitely popped. Kenya.

“What I really hate,” Max somehow managed to say without sounding apoplectic, “is you calling me sweetie.”

Jules actually blushed as he went out the door. “Sorry, sir.”

Sam was driving even though his balls still ached. There was no doubt about it, he was going to be feeling Alyssa’s mighty wrath for days, if not weeks, to come.

Every time he caught a glimpse of the scrapes and bruising on her wrist from the handcuffs, his queasiness returned. He suspected those weren’t the only bruises he’d given her, because God knows he was feeling pretty tender in various places himself.

Every time he’d tried to bring it up, to talk about it, to apologize again, she’d shrugged it off. Forget it, it’s over.

But it was kind of hard to forget, considering that she wouldn’t have a single mark on her if he’d only trusted her. She was talking to Jules on the phone, making notes on a pad on her lap.

The stretch of road they were on was straight, so Sam took his eyes off it to glance down and read what she’d written.

Publix supermarket, she’d scribbled, along with an address, and a date—May 24th—and Mary Lou never shows up for work, no phone call, never returns.

So they knew where Mary Lou had worked. It was worth going over there, talking to her coworkers, as well as checking the Alcoholics Anonymous blue book to see where the meetings were in that area—meetings Mary Lou had gone to on a nightly basis in San Diego. They could try to figure out which meetings were close to her Sarasota home, too. Or—better yet—which meetings were close to the house that she and Janine had shared with Clyde. The two addresses weren’t so far apart that Mary Lou would necessarily want to change meeting locations after a move.

The AA meetings were support groups. Drunks who didn’t want to drink, leaning on each other. It seemed like a shaky way to rebuild a life, but it really could work. It had for Sam’s mother.

“Uh-huh,” Alyssa said to Jules, as she wrote down what looked like a name. Ihbraham Rahman, a dash and then the words gardener, also currently AWOL.

Hoo-yah! That had to be the name of Donny DaCosta’s so-called flower guy. The man Mary Lou was probably screwing on the side. Except, maybe it couldn’t really be called on the side, since by the end of their marriage, Sam hadn’t been sleeping with her at all. She was just living in his house, using his last name, taking care of his daughter, and probably getting it on with the neighborhood gardener.

Except there was something really wrong with this picture.

Ihbraham Rahman was an Arab-American with very dark skin.

And Mary Lou was a racist—something Sam hadn’t found out until months after they were married. She wasn’t a vicious racist, the way his father had been. And she probably would have been offended if someone had called her a racist to her face. She never used obviously derogatory words—she would never dream of it. But she had a real “us” and “them” attitude that only worked to perpetuate the racial divide. Instead of trying to find similarities between different races and cultures—a philosophy that Walt and Dot had preached at Sam and Noah endlessly—Mary Lou focused on differences.

No, no matter how Sam tried to view the situation, he just couldn’t see Mary Lou hooking up with a man who wasn’t Wonder Bread white. Unless she’d somehow had her eyes opened, had her archaic way of thinking overhauled...

Yeah, and maybe she’d also learned to fly by flapping her arms.

He glanced down Alyssa’s pad.

Kelly Paoletti, she had written, knew Rahman, too.

Holy shit. Wasn’t that one hell of a coincidence? Except for the fact that Sam didn’t believe in coincidences. It was a variation on Occam’s Razor. If you’re looking for a terrorist, and you’ve got a likely suspect, chances are he’s the terrorist you’re looking for.

Maybe he was wrong about Mary Lou and this Rahman. But no. He just couldn’t see it. It was possible that Rahman had a light-skinned associate, though, that Mary Lou was involved with. And of course, there was always Donny’s blond alien.

“So Rahman’s already been investigated—six months ago, while he was in the hospital with a head injury—and he’s believed not to be connected,” Alyssa said to Jules, obviously for Sam’s benefit. Wasn’t that interesting? She paused, listening. “So let me get this straight. We have a guy—Rahman—who gets his skull fractured during the Coronado assassination attempt. We’ve placed him there, in the crowd at the Navy base, during the terrorist attack, but he’s not connected?”

She paused. “No... No, wait, let me finish with Rahman first. So as of just a few days ago he allegedly comes knocking on Starrett’s door, possibly looking for Mary Lou—this coming from a neighbor who’s mentally challenged, who also gives us reports of some light-haired man, his alien, who’s following Rahman. Okay, yeah, you’re right, if Rahman’s part of the terrorist cell behind the Coronado attack, he’s probably not going to march right up to the front door of Mary Lou’s house and ring the bell. But still... Her prints are on that weapon. They got there somehow.” Pause. “So Rahman’s being checked out again, except now he’s vanished.” She shot Sam a hard look. “And vanishing when the authorities want to ask questions never looks good.”

Yeah, yeah. Point taken.

“So Tom Paoletti’s wife—”

“She’s not his wife,” Sam whispered, and got another sharp look from Alyssa. No talking while she was on the phone with Jules.

“So Kelly Ashton, who just married Tom Paoletti—” she said.

No kidding. Kelly finally married the commander. About freaking time.

“—has no recollection of Ihbraham being associated with this mystery man with blond hair. Although hair is only about the easiest characteristic to alter.” Alyssa sighed, jotting the words library and AA meetings on her pad.

Yeah, that, along with work, about summed it up as far as what Sam knew about Mary Lou’s activities outside of the house. There were no meetings supporting extremist Islamic jihad on the FBI’s list, either.

Of course it was entirely likely that the terrorist fucking had been an in-house activity.

“Okay, let me know if anything more comes up on Rahman,” Alyssa continued. “So tell me now about this thing that just came in.” She listened for a moment, but then froze, pen above paper. “Oh, dear God...”

“What?” Sam asked. Her tone was enough to strike terror in his heart. His biggest fear was that the FBI investigation would uncover Mary Lou’s and Haley’s bodies.

Alyssa glanced at him as she shook her head. Yeah, he knew. He was supposed to stay quiet so Jules wouldn’t know they were together. But come on...

“How long were they in there?” she asked.

They wasn’t a good word.

Frustration and exasperation rang in her voice. “Well, what’s their guess? They do know how to guess?” She listened, then, “Shit.”

It was a quiet shit. A very, very bad news shit. As if the look on her face wasn’t enough of a clue that whatever Jules was telling her was really going to hurt. Sam had a strong feeling that crushed balls had nothing on the pain that was coming.

“Please,” she said. “Keep me updated. Anything that comes in. No matter how little.” Pause. “Thanks, Jules.”

“Tell me,” Sam ordered as she hung up her phone.

“It’s not conclusive,” she said. “There’s been no positive ID.”

Oh, no...

Alyssa actually touched him, her hand on his arm. “Maybe you should pull over.”

Sam nodded. “Yeah.” The nearest exit wasn’t for another six miles, so he just pulled to the right on to the shoulder of the highway.

It took forever to get there, to brake to a full stop, to put the car into park, to turn and face Alyssa and see the sympathy in her eyes. Oh, Jesus...

“This isn’t conclusive,” she said.

“You said that.”

“I wanted to make sure you understood—”

“Alyssa, tell me.”

She nodded. “Bodies have been found. A woman. And a child who looks to be about Haley’s age.”

No. “Where?”

“Just west of Sarasota,” she said. “In the trunk of a car. The car’s been burned, and the bodies are... well, hard to identify. As far as anyone can tell, they’ve been there somewhere between two and three weeks.”

Sam sat in silence, just looking at her.

“I’m so sorry,” she whispered.

“No,” he said. His stomach was churning. “Don’t be. Because it’s not them.”

She nodded, even forced a smile. “You’re probably right.” Yeah, she didn’t believe that for one second. “Let me drive now, okay?”

Sam nodded, opened the door, and pulled himself out, forgetting to be extra careful. Holy fucking shit, these stupid pants were too freaking tight, and they really probably only brushed against him, but that was enough, and he was on the ground, on his knees, by the back of the car, fighting nausea all over again.

Alyssa was there, her hands cool against his face. “Oh, Sam.”

She probably thought he was going to get sick because the thought of Haley burned to death in the trunk of a car was so fucking awful.

“It’s not them in that trunk,” he said through gritted teeth. “I know it’s not. I just... whacked myself getting out of the car. Hypersensitive today.” He forced himself to look at her. “Which is good, actually. It gives me something else to focus on.”

Alyssa laughed at that, as he’d hoped she would. “Well, shoot, I’ll be happy to kick you again, whenever you want.”

Sam laughed then, too, but allowing himself to do that was a mistake, because it opened the door to everything else he was trying not to feel. His eyes almost instantly filled with tears.

No, no, no...

Oh, please, don’t let her notice...

But he knew she did. Alyssa noticed everything. She pushed back a chunk of his hair that had fallen over his forehead, and her touch was heartbreakingly gentle.

“You do get through it, you know,” she told him quietly. “Losing someone you love. You may never get over it, but you do get through it.”

“Yeah, well, I haven’t lost Haley yet.” He forced himself to his feet. They had to get back in the car before some state trooper came to check them out. “Let’s get to Sarasota, go to that Publix, and talk to some people who might know Mary Lou.”

His use of present tense was not lost on Alyssa, who nodded. But she also touched his arm, her hand warm against his elbow. “Careful getting in the car.”

“Yeah.”

Gina called from a pay phone, giving her name and asking to speak to Max.

He picked up almost immediately. “Kenya?”

“I’m fine, thanks,” she said. “And how are you? Did you sleep at all last night?”

“No. Why Kenya?”

His voice was so cold, she almost faltered. But she’d made up her mind. The worst he could do was hang up on her.

“Because I’ve made friends with some people who are doing good things there, and I need to do something worthwhile. Look, that’s not what I called to talk about. I called because I have a favor to ask you.”

He was silent. Max was capable of the loudest silences in the world. But he’d taught her everything she knew about negotiating during all those days she’d spent on the hijacked airliner, and she ignored it. She knew it was only meant to rattle her. Of course, it was working.

“It’s a big favor,” she said, resisting the urge to ask him if he were still there. He was. She knew he was. “I have this problem. It’s about sex.”

There should have been a response here, even if it was a growl of anger or disbelieving laughter, but Max’s silence just stretched on.

“I’m all jammed up about it,” she continued. “I haven’t been with someone since, well, you know.”

“Since you were raped.” His voice was so cold. “I thought we decided to put that word back into our working vocabulary.”

“Yeah,” she said. “Thank you. We did. Since I was raped.”

“No,” Max said. “I can’t help you.”

“Maybe you should wait to hear what I’m asking.”

“I know exactly what you’re asking, and I’m telling you no.”

He only sounded so glacial because he was freaking out. She knew that. She knew that. Still, it took everything she had not to mumble an apology and run from the phone.

“Guys my age are afraid to get close to me,” she told him, and her voice only shook a little. “I completely wig them out.”

She heard him draw in a breath—ragged proof that he was human and not some relentlessly calm, cold robot. “I’m very sorry to hear that, but—”

“I’m not asking for a relationship, Max. I’m asking for one night. One.” Gina closed her eyes and prayed that he wouldn’t know she was lying, that he wouldn’t be able to hear it in her voice. In truth, she was hoping that one night would lead to another, and another and...

“I’m sorry—”

“I need you,” she pleaded, laying as much of it on the line as she dared. “I know you’ll make me feel safe. I trust you.”

“Which is exactly why—”

“I want that part of my life back again,” she told him.

“—I can’t.”

“I need it back! God damn it, they stole that from me!”

His silence wasn’t silent anymore. She definitely could hear him breathing, hear him sigh. And when he spoke, there was finally emotion in his voice. “I’m so sorry.”

“Please,” she whispered.

“Gina, I can’t help you. I have to take another call.”

“Okay,” she said, no longer caring whether or not he knew that she was crying. “I understand. And it’s, you know, okay. Really. I’m disappointed, but... I’ve got that gig tonight.” She played her last card. “I’m sure I’ll find someone in the bar who’s willing to—”

“Don’t do this.”

“Someone old enough to be gentle—”

He finally raised his voice. “Gina, for the love of God—”

“What are you going to do about it?” She wiped her face. This wasn’t over yet. “Send Jules over to arrest me? Except last I heard, picking someone up in a bar wasn’t a crime.”

“No, it’s just insanity!”

“No, Max,” Gina said. “Insanity is you saying no when we both know you want to say yes.”

She hung up the phone with a hand that was shaking. She stood there for a moment with her eyes closed, praying that this would work, that she’d see him tonight, that he’d give himself permission not just to confront her in person, but to take her home. And stay.

Alyssa’s cell phone rang while they were in the Publix supermarket.

None of the cashiers in the store knew Mary Lou well enough even to speculate on where she might have gone. The store managers were just as spectacularly lacking in information.

Apparently, while she was employed there, Mary Lou showed up, did her job, kept to herself, read a book during her breaks, and went home. She was responsible and reliable. She always showed up on time. Until the day that she didn’t show up at all.

Sam looked exhausted. He was standing and staring at a community bulletin board, at a brightly colored sign advertising a church nursery-school fun fair. It was right next to a help wanted poster for a nanny. A live-in position, the sign said. Room and board plus a generous monthly salary. Single mothers welcome to apply.

Sam interrupted the store manager midsentence. “That sign been up there for very long?”

The man blinked at him and then at the poster. “I doubt it. Anything that’s been up for more than two weeks automatically gets taken down.”

“Too bad,” Sam said. “Because if I were Mary Lou...” He pointed to the poster.

And it was then that her phone rang.

“Thank you for your time,” Alyssa said to the manager.

Sam went from completely exhausted to completely wired in the space of a heartbeat, and all of that intense energy was suddenly focused on Alyssa and her phone.

She went out into the early evening heat and started for the car as she checked her caller ID. “It’s Jules,” she told Sam, and pressed the Talk button. “Locke.”

Sam caught her around the waist, pulling her close and lowering his head so that his ear was next to hers, so that he could hear, too.

“Yo, it’s me,” Jules said. “I’ve got thirty seconds to tell you some really bad news. I know you’re going to have questions, but I swear, I’m telling you everything I know, and I’ll call you again as soon as I hear anything else.”

Sam’s arm tightened around her waist, and Alyssa spoke for him. “Just tell, uh, me.” She’d almost said us. Sam wasn’t the only one who was exhausted.

“There’s been a car bombing in San Diego.” Jules gave it to them point blank. “Someone parked a car in Don DaCosta’s—you know, Sam’s neighbor’s—driveway, ran like hell, and the thing blew.”

“Oh, fuck,” Sam said. “Is Donny okay?”

“I’m really sorry, Alyssa, but I don’t think so, although the reports coming in are still pretty garbled.” Jules didn’t seem fazed by the sound of Sam’s voice, but his message made it clear that she shouldn’t start broadcasting the fact that the SEAL was in her company. “We’ve gotten conflicting casualty reports, although Don seems to be on both of them. Apparently he refused to leave his house, and the fire that started was too intense and... Okay, yeah, I’m getting something new here that... Thanks, George. Yeah, God damn it, it’s bad news. I’m sorry, we’ve confirmed DaCosta’s death. One of the agents and at least one firefighter died, too, trying to save him.”

Sam had his eyes closed and the muscles in his jaw were jumping. Don DaCosta had been a friend of his.

Alyssa put her arm around him, but he kept his eyes tightly shut.

But Jules wasn’t done. “That’s not all of it, I’m afraid. Kelly Paoletti and Cosmo Richter were apparently there, too, when that bomb went off.”

“What?” Alyssa said. Sam’s eyes opened. “Why? What were they doing there?”

“I don’t know. Maybe it was take tea with the town lunatic day.”

“Show a little respect for the dead,” Sam growled. “He was a good guy.”

Jules was instantly contrite. “Forgive me. That was insensitive. I didn’t realize you knew him that well—”

“I didn’t know they knew DaCosta,” Alyssa interrupted. She couldn’t figure out what Lt. Commander Tom Paoletti’s perky little blond cheerleader of a wife and Cosmo Richter, a quiet man with freaky-colored eyes and the whispered reputation on the Spec Op grapevine of being a remorseless killing machine when the need arose, were doing together, let alone with DaCosta.

“I didn’t either, but I guess they did,” Jules said. “I don’t know their status. One list has them wounded, another has them down as dead. I don’t know details. I don’t know dick. This just happened—we’re still in chaos mode. Again, I apologize for my inappropriate—”

“It’s all right,” Sam said. “I know what it’s like. It’s so fucking awful, you try to find whatever humor in the situation that you possibly can, with no disrespect intended.”

“Thank you, sweetie. That’s very generous of you to say.” Jules cleared his throat. “I’ll call, I promise, as soon as I find out anything else.”

“Any word on the bodies in the trunk?” Alyssa asked. She wasn’t sure whether to hope that there was or that there wasn’t. The news they’d just received was bad enough. And yet not knowing whether his ex-wife and daughter were dead was taking its toll on Sam.

“I’m not expecting the preliminary forensics report until the morning,” Jules told her. “But, unofficially, I have to tell you that it doesn’t look good. Cause of death is gunshot, not burning. Both bodies have a bullet in the back of their heads.”

Just like Mary Lou’s sister. Alyssa didn’t dare glance at Sam.

“I’ll call you later—I’ve got to go,” Jules told her. And he was gone.

Sam was, too. He was already getting into the car. “Let’s hit the library,” he said. “See if anyone there knew Mary Lou. At the same time we can get the information we need about the AA meetings in this area. Actually, maybe we should do that first, since most meetings are in the evening—they’ll be starting pretty soon. We can always talk to the librarians in the morning and—”

“Sam.”

He wouldn’t look up at her, instead flipping through the pad of notes they’d made during the drive down from Gainesville. “I’d also like to pay a visit to Haley’s day care provider.”

“Sam.”

He glanced at her, but only briefly. He was terribly upset by the news they’d just received. Alyssa crouched next to the open car door.

“Maybe we should take a break,” she said as gently as she could. “We’re both tired, and you’ve just found out that some good friends are dead.”

“We don’t know that Kelly and Cosmo are—”

“You’re right,” she said. “We don’t. But even if it’s just Donny, that’s bad enough. Why don’t we find a motel so we can sleep for a few hours and...”

And be more prepared, at least physically if not emotionally, to receive the bad news that was surely coming from that forensics report in the morning.

But Sam was shaking his head. “If Mary Lou and Haley are still alive—” He broke off, and the expression on his face made her want to cry. “I can’t believe I said if.”

Alyssa took his hand. “Maybe that’s a good thing. You know, to be prepared for the worst case scenario.”

“No.” He shook his head, tightly gripping her hand. “There’s no preparing for that. Jules is going to call, and you’re going to say oh, no, and then you’re going to have to look me in the eye and tell me that my daughter was murdered by some fuck who I’m then going to find and kill.” He finally looked at her, finally held her gaze, and she knew he wasn’t kidding. If someone had killed Haley, Sam was going to rip him to pieces.

“But until then, I’m not going to live in the land of if,” he continued. “I can’t do that, Lys. Haley’s alive until she’s dead—no if, no maybe. And since I haven’t heard you say she’s dead, I’m going with she’s alive. And since she’s alive, the same people who killed Janine and Donny DaCosta and maybe Cosmo and Kelly—Jesus God! Tom must be going nuts! You think that was a coincidence she was at Donny’s when that bomb went off? Think about it. She and Don both knew Ihbraham Rahman—who also knew Mary Lou. This son of a bitch and the rest of his cell are cleaning up after themselves. This guy is removing anyone who can ID him from the playing field, and if—” He caught himself. “Since Mary Lou and Haley are still alive, he’s going to be coming after them next. I have to find them first.”

Alyssa nodded. “Okay. Let’s hit some of those AA meetings. But you know it’s a long shot, right? Everywhere else she goes, Mary Lou keeps to herself. And if she was paying attention to what you told her about changing habits to stay hidden...”

“I know,” Sam said. “But we’ve got to try.”

She understood. “After that, we’re going to have some down time.” Alyssa told him this. She didn’t ask. “I mean, unless we get an obvious lead.” She didn’t think that was going to happen. She thought Mary Lou and Haley were in the forensics lab right now, having autopsies done on their dead bodies. “I know we’ll both be able to think a little more clearly if we get some sleep. If you don’t want to get a room, we can park somewhere and just shut our eyes for a few hours.”

“A room?” Sam asked, but it was obvious that he had to try very hard to be his usual obnoxious self.

“Yeah.” She tried hard to pretend, too, that this was business as usual between them. “As in you get a room and I get a room.”

He drew her hand up to his mouth and kissed her fingers. “Rats. And here I thought my luck was going to change.” He smiled at her, but it was clear that his heart wasn’t in it.

Because he had to know that luck didn’t play a part in whether or not those bodies belonged to his ex-wife and daughter. It had to do with Mary Lou getting involved, more than six months ago, in something deadly with someone dangerous who she never should have trusted. And it was already too late for luck to play any part in that.

Tom was making tremendously slow progress through the first of a stack of books about the judicial process when someone actually knocked on his door.

“Come in,” he called.

The door swung open to reveal a squad of SEALs from Team Sixteen. Nearly all of them were wearing BDUs—battle dress uniforms—which was nothing new. It was the way they dressed most of their time on base.

There was nothing unusual about them at all—except for the fact that Duke Jefferson and Izzy Zanella were down on the deck, just finishing tying knots in the ropes that bound the wrists and ankles of the two guards who’d been posted in front of Tom’s door.

“Oh, come on,” Tom said. This couldn’t happen.

Jay Lopez and Billy Silverman helped Duke and Izzy carry the guards into Tom’s room, as Ensigns MacInnough and Collins—both resplendent in summer whites—shouldered the former guards’ weapons and took their places at the door.

“Time to go, sir,” Chief Karmody told Tom. Figures Karmody—also known as WildCard—would be part of something like this.

Tom sighed as Lopez, who was carrying his medical kit, put several syringes in a container marked “Sharps—Biohazard,” and removed a pair of latex gloves from his hands with a snap.

Whatever Lopez had given the guards—and Tom really didn’t want to know—had knocked them out.

Izzy arranged one of the guards on Tom’s bunk, positioning the man so that his back was to the door. He covered him with a blanket. “Sleep tight.”

The other guard had been safely stashed in the bathroom.

“I appreciate the effort, men,” Tom said, “but I’m not going anywhere.”

“Begging your pardon, sir,” apologized Ensign MacInnough—a monster of a young man who’d been appropriately nicknamed Big Mac. “But we’re under direct orders from Lieutenant Jacquette to test base security. Our assignment is to take you off the base and to deliver you to an as-yet-undisclosed location. Our orders, sir, are to do this with or without your cooperation.”

This was a hell of a time for Jazz Jacquette to be war-gaming. But the look in Big Mac’s eyes was unmistakable. Tom could say no. He could refuse to leave. And Mac would give Lopez a nod, Tom would get a needle of his own in his ass, and they’d end up carrying him out of here.

Tom sighed again as he looked around at his men. His former men. They were deadly serious, to the point of downright grim. No one so much as cracked a smile. Was this really what they were like these days on an op? “I’d like you all to know that I’m leaving under protest.”

“Duly noted, sir,” said Ens. Joel Collins—Tom still thought of him as “the new guy.” He’d joined the team just a few weeks before Tom had been relieved of his command.

Petty Officer First Class Mark Jenkins was standing watch at the top of the stairs. “Sir.” He nodded a greeting, then led the way down, leaving Big Mac and Collins in place.

If anyone came onto the floor, they’d never know that Tom wasn’t securely in his room.

“If your plan is to just walk me out the door—which, by the way is brilliant,” Tom pointed out as they moved in a group down the stairs, “you might want to consider the fact that I don’t think I’ve ever seen you guys walking around the base dead silent like this. Karmody, don’t you have any bad jokes to share?”

“Sorry, Tommy, I’m not quite in the mood today.”

“Have you guys had a chance to talk to Cosmo or Gilligan?” Tom asked.

“Yes, sir,” Duke said.

“So aren’t you going to congratulate me?” Tom asked. “Kelly finally married me. If I’d known it would do the trick, I’d’ve gotten myself locked up a long time ago.”

No one laughed, probably because it wasn’t very funny.

“Congratulations, Commander,” Silverman said. But he wouldn’t meet Tom’s eyes.

“Congratulations, sir,” the other men echoed. But Zanella and Duke, too, seemed fascinated by the tiles on the floor.

And Jenk and Lopez exchanged what was definitely a worried look.

Tom was pretty sure he knew why. “Hell of a time to get married, huh?”

“Come on, sir,” WildCard Karmody said, with something that looked a lot like sympathy in his eyes. “We really do need to hurry.”