“Something’s been bugging me,” Sam said as they bent over the street map of Sarasota that Alyssa had spread out on the hood of the car. They were attempting to locate the AA meetings in the area, to figure out which one Mary Lou might have attended on a Wednesday night.

Alyssa glanced up and into his eyes. “Oh, yeah?” she said. “That’s funny, because something’s been bugging me, too.” The look on his face became one of pure guilt—as if he already knew what she was going to say. “About my handcuffs?”

Back at that rest stop, he’d unlocked himself—somehow—from a pair of cuffs with a lock that was allegedly pick-proof. It was the exact same pair of cuffs that had kept them locked together—naked—that dreadful morning after, more than two years ago, when she’d woken up hung over and sick as a dog. She’d been unable to locate the handcuff key, and he hadn’t volunteered to pick the lock then.

“Oh,” Sam said now, “yeah. I was, uh, wondering when we’d get around to that.” He forced a weak smile. “Look, mind if I go first? Because it’s going to be difficult to discuss why this Ihbraham Rahman guy is bugging me after you get so mad you won’t ever talk to me again.”

She laughed her outrage. Holy God. He had been able to pick the lock. This wasn’t a skill he’d learned in the past few months. She knew it. She knew it. He’d purposely allowed her to be humiliated and mortified and... “You are such an unbelievable jerk.”

Sam looked at her with eyes that were the same color as the early evening sky.

“Yeah,” he said. “Maybe I am. I mean, you can definitely look at it from that perspective. And, yeah, I can see where you’d think I was being a jerk not to tell you I could open the lock without a key, but at the time you didn’t exactly ask me and...” He glanced away from her, down at the map, as he shook his head. He looked back up and this time held her gaze. “Maybe you could try to see this from my perspective. I was looking for a way to stay close to you. If I’d’ve unlocked those cuffs, I’d’ve had to leave. I guess I was hoping maybe you’d... I don’t know. Get used to me? I mean, there I was, right? Attached to your arm. Maybe if I stayed there long enough, I’d grow on you. Shit, I really don’t know what I was thinking, Alyssa. All I knew was I was crazy about you. That I’d just had the best night of my life, and you... you had nothing but regrets.”

Alyssa didn’t know what to say, so she didn’t say anything at all. But she couldn’t hold his gaze, so she pretended to look down at the map. She’d been so sure on that awful morning that he was going to brag about what they’d done the night before to all his friends and teammates—people she worked closely with. She had been terrified. Of so many things. Of getting too close. Of appearing too vulnerable. Of being too vulnerable. She still was.

Sam cleared his throat, but his voice came out as barely more than a whisper. “I guess I was hoping that after you got all that out of your system, you know, after you calmed down a little, you’d realize that maybe I wasn’t so bad after all. I mean, you sure seemed to like me a hell of a lot the night before. I guess I didn’t want to believe it was only because of the alcohol. And you know, I still don’t believe that.”

She couldn’t look at him, and she forced herself to focus on the map. “It wasn’t,” she admitted. “I think I probably made that pretty clear in Kazbekistan.”

Six months later, on the other side of the world, she’d actually gone back to his room, and they’d had a replay of their one-night stand. He was silent then, and she could feel him watching her.

She was looking for Beneva Road. “Here’s the Lutheran church.”

He bent over the map, too, his head close to hers as she circled the intersection with her pen. “That’s a good one,” he said. “It’s right between both her old house and the newer one.”

“Yeah.” She risked a glance up at him. “So are you going to apologize?”

“Nah,” he said, without even the slightest hesitation.

She stared at him, and he shrugged, pure Sam Starrett. “Why should I apologize for doing what I thought was the best thing for both of us? You, however, should probably apologize to me.”

“What? Yeah, right.” She laughed. When hell froze.

“No, I’m serious,” he said. “You fuck me like there’s no tomorrow, make me start rhyming sappy verses that end with words like love and stars above, and then you wake up and treat me like shit on a stick. I’m still carrying the scars.” He put his finger on the map. “Here’s the Baptist church.”

Alyssa made another circle on the map. “Yeah, you really suffered that night. Poor baby.”

“No, but I suffered the next day, and a whole Christload of days after, when I realized that you didn’t love me even a little. You were just using me for sex. I was crushed.”

Alyssa put her pen down. “This is a perfect example of revisionist history,” she said hotly. “You were using me, too, Starrett, or have you forgotten that you got me drunk that night? You not only used me, you planned to use me—”

“No,” he said. “No way. I didn’t get you drunk so I could sleep with you. I got you drunk because you were strung so tight, I thought you were going to shatter. I was trying to help.”

“You definitely took advantage of my inebriation,” she countered.

“Yes. Okay. I’ll cop to that. But you can’t deny that your ‘inebriation,’ ” he mimicked, “was pretty damn hard to resist. But I guess I should have said, ‘No, no, no, don’t do that,’ when you took off your clothes and sat on my face.”

Alyssa felt her cheeks heat. Was that really what she’d done? She remembered him... Oh, God. But she wasn’t sure how she’d gotten there. It was all such a blur.

“Alyssa, I’m only human,” Sam continued. “And congratulations. I found out that night that you are, too. It’s not such a bad thing to be, you know.”

“You’re not a woman—a black woman—trying to compete in a white man’s world,” she said quietly.

“I don’t understand what that has to do with any of this,” he said just as quietly. “If anything, I would think that would make you even more eager to have someone who loves you by your side.”

Love. There he went, using that word again.

“You know what your problem is?” she asked him.

Sam exhaled a laugh. “No, but why do I have a feeling that you’re about to tell me?”

“You’re guilty of making the same mistake most people make. You say ‘I love you,’ but what you really mean is ‘I want you.’ You think it’s the same thing, but it’s not. You don’t fall in love with someone just because they fuck you like there’s no tomorrow.” Alyssa purposely used his words. “I don’t doubt that you wanted me, Sam. That you still do. Because on that really primitive, physical level, yeah, I still want you, too. But that’s not love. That’s about possessing, about being possessed. It’s not real—it can’t possibly last. Love is something you give. It’s not about taking, or possessing.”

Sam found the last location on the map, and he picked up the pen and marked the spot. And then he wrote a one, two, three, and four next to the locations. “And what you’ve found with Max? That’s real love?”

“I don’t know,” she admitted. “Max and I...” She shook her head. “It’s way more complicated than you think.”

“Yeah, I bet. Mind if I drive?” Sam asked, folding the map so that their first destination was facing up.

“No.” But she made sure she got into the car before handing him the keys.

He smiled at that, scooping up the M&M’s wrappers he’d left on the floor of the passenger’s side and stuffing them into an empty McDonald’s bag. “Still think I’m going to drive off without you, huh?”

“I don’t just think it,” she told him. “I know it. If I’m not careful, sometime in the next—” She looked at her watch. “—approximately forty-one hours and seven minutes, if we don’t find Haley, I am definitely going to be eating your dust.”

He glanced at her as he started the car. “Who knows? One of these days, maybe I’ll surprise you.”

Whitney was acting weird. She’d been hanging around all day. Every time Mary Lou looked up, there she was. She even asked if she could help when Mary Lou got out the fingerpaints and spread newspaper on the playroom table.

It was a little nerve-wracking, to be honest. Especially when, as Mary Lou got ready to put Haley and Amanda down for their naps, Whitney picked up a magazine and settled into one of the easy chairs in Mary Lou’s little living room.

Mary Lou had been counting on having this time, while the girls were sleeping, to put those guns back in King Frank’s office. In the light of day, having unlocked weapons around two-year-olds seemed to be a greater danger than terrorist assassins.

But Whitney—who usually spent most of her time looking for ways to escape her father’s house—wasn’t going anywhere today.

As Mary Lou closed the door to the girls’ room, Whitney put down the magazine and said, “Don’t you think it was romantic in Castaway, when Tom Hanks came back from being shipwrecked and went to see Helen Hunt?”

“It was really sad,” Mary Lou said, “because she was married to someone else.”

“Yeah,” Whitney said. “I keep thinking there should be a sequel. You know, where her husband starts beating her up and she runs away because she knows he’s going to kill her, and then Tom Hanks comes to the rescue. Don’t you think that would be really romantic?”

“Don’t you want to go to the mall?” Mary Lou asked her. She’d put those weapons in her bedroom closet and locked the door, but that wasn’t safe, especially with Whitney’s habit of poking around where she didn’t belong. And what if King Frank changed his mind and came home early?

He’d fire her so fast...

If Mary Lou couldn’t put them back now, during the girls’ nap, she’d have to wait until after they were asleep tonight.

“I think it would be really romantic.” Whitney went back to reading her magazine, clearly not moving from her chair.

Mary Lou sighed and picked up her own book. Tonight couldn’t get here soon enough.

Once they left the confines of the naval base, and after receiving a call on his cell phone, WildCard Karmody drove like a man possessed.

Tom was wedged in the middle of the backseat, between Lopez and Jenk. It was not a backseat that was designed to hold three Navy SEALs, even when one of them was as vertically challenged as Mark Jenkins.

Izzy was riding shotgun, up with WildCard. Usually the pair of them could keep the mock insults and banter flowing in a steady stream, but today they were dead silent.

“So where are we going?” Tom asked the Card.

“We’ll be there soon, sir” was all he would say.

If they hadn’t been so damn grim, Tom would’ve guessed that his former team had broken him out of the BOQ to take him to the Ritz, or some other fancy hotel, so that he and Kelly could have a proper wedding night.

But the pucker factor in the car was way too high, and when WildCard’s there proved to be Sharp Memorial Hospital, the buzz of uncertainty he was feeling turned into a flicker of real fear.

“What the fuck is going on?” Tom asked as WildCard ignored the speed bumps and pulled up right at the front doors. “Someone goddamn better answer me. That’s a direct order. I still outrank you bastards.”

“Sir, we were ordered to deliver you here to Lieutenant Jacquette and the senior chief,” WildCard told him.

Sure enough, the XO and senior of Team Sixteen had come out of the hospital’s lobby and were approaching the car. Lopez slid out, and Tom followed.

Jazz Jacquette’s default expression was grim. It was the look on Senior Chief Stan Wolchonok’s face that turned that flicker Tom was feeling into an icy stab of fear. Sweet Jesus, Stan actually had tears in his eyes.

“No,” Tom said. No, not Kelly.

Stan took him by one arm, Jazz by the other, and together they hustled him into the hospital.

“Tommy, she’s alive,” Stan said, “but the doctors don’t think—” His voice broke. “But they’re wrong. Those fuckers are always wrong. She’s a fighter. She is going to make it.”

“She’s got a lot of internal damage, sir,” Jazz told him as they pulled him into an elevator. “They’ve been trying to get her stabilized before they take her into surgery, but she’s just not responding. The doctor thought it would be best for you to be here before—” He cleared his throat. “We didn’t have time to go through channels, so I ordered a training op to test base security.”

Kelly was dying. Neither of them said it directly, but that was what they’d just told him. This was unreal. This couldn’t be happening. This was just part of the god-awful nightmare he’d been trapped in for the past few days. It had, however, just been ramped up to a new, more terrifying level.

“What happened?” he asked as the doors opened onto a floor marked ICU. “How did she get hurt?”

“Car bomb,” Jazz reported.

“What?” Tom stopped walking, but they kept carrying him forward.

“Cosmo was with her, Tommy,” Stan told him. “He’s injured, too, but not as bad as Kelly. It’s probably best if you get the whole story from him.”

Damn it, this was his own fault. Kelly had been digging around, looking for ways to help prove Tom’s innocence, and it never even occurred to him that she might actually stir up real trouble. A fucking car bomb.

“Was the bomb in her car?” he asked. Dear God, how badly had she been hurt?

“No,” Stan said, but then Tom stopped listening, because there she was.

Kelly. In the middle of a hospital bed, hooked up to all sorts of machines with wires and tubes and, oh, God... Her face was scraped and her hair was singed. She still had all her arms and legs. But internal injuries, Jazz had said.

Stan or maybe Jazz pushed a chair up behind him, and he sat, holding on to her hand. It was scraped. She had little nicks and cuts on her wrist and all the way up her arm. Flying glass could do that to you.

“Hey, Kel,” he said to her, even though she was unconscious. Maybe, just maybe, she could hear him. “It’s me. Tom.”

His voice shook, and he stopped, took a deep breath. He didn’t want her to hear his fear. No fear. No doubt. No letting her think there were any options besides getting through this.

“Here’s what we’re going to do, all right?” He leaned close. “I’m going to stay here with you. Every step of the way. You’re not alone. Whatever you do, don’t forget that. And what you’re going to do is stay alive. Keep fighting. Don’t quit on me, okay? Keep breathing. Inhale and then exhale. Remember when I told you about going through BUD/S training? Well, this is just like BUD/S, Kel. So stay in the moment, and stay in the game. One breath, one heartbeat at a time. Don’t think beyond that. Don’t think about how much it hurts or how tired you are. Don’t think. Just breathe. Just stay alive. I’m counting on you to do that.”

“Sir.”

He looked up to find a nurse standing beside him, a clipboard in her hands.

“I’m sorry to interrupt, but the surgeon’s ready,” she told him, and hope was in her voice, her eyes, her body language. “If you’ll just sign these forms...”

“Who’s the doctor?” Tom asked.

Jazz was there behind him. “Anne Marie Kenyon’s the head of the trauma team. She’s the best, Tom. I made sure of it.”

The nurse explained the procedure, but the words flew past Tom, only a few standing out. Stop the internal bleeding at the source... force of the blast... multisystem trauma... damaged kidneys and liver... spleen... a risk to operate... Dr. Kenyon’s opinion... Kelly’s only real chance.

Jazz leaned closer. “I spoke to Dr. Kenyon before you arrived, and I made some phone calls and talked to the other doctors about her, too. She knows what she’s doing. Sign the releases, sir.”

Tom let go of Kelly’s hand and signed the forms. “May I walk with her?” he asked the nurse.

She smiled at him. “I’m sure Kelly would like it if you did. But only to the double doors, I’m afraid.”

It was maybe twenty-five feet, but Tom took Kelly’s hand and held it the entire way.

But then he had to let her go. “Don’t forget what I said,” he told her. Please don’t let this be the last time he saw Kelly alive. Please... “I love you,” he called as they wheeled her away, as the doors swung shut behind her.

He sensed more than saw Stan and Jazz beside him.

“Take me to Cosmo,” he ordered them. “Now.”

Recovering alcoholics had privacy issues.

Alyssa had always thought Alcoholics Anonymous meetings were open to the public—places where people stood up and said loudly and proudly, “My name is Joe and I’m an alcoholic. I’ve been sober for three years.”

Apparently that was only a small part of the program. Some meetings were twelve-step meetings, some were women-only meetings, some were meetings that focused on reading from a special book, and most were closed to everyone but recovering alcoholics.

Walking in and flashing a picture and asking if anyone knew Mary Lou Starrett was not getting the response she’d hoped for. It wasn’t getting any kind of response at all. Except for being asked to leave by two very large men wearing motorcycle leather.

But Sam spoke their language. He pulled them aside and in very short order had them looking at the picture of Mary Lou and Haley that Jules had sent to Alyssa, thanks to the Internet and a brief stop at Kinko’s. But they both shook their heads no. And then Sam was walking back toward her, shaking his head, too.

He’d taken off his suit jacket because of the heat. He’d actually sewn the sleeve back on with neat, tiny stitches as they drove down from Gainesville, using a needle and thread they’d picked up at a convenience store during a stop for gas and coffee and peanut M&M’s.

His pants were a little dusty—he’d never managed to brush them off completely after wrestling with her in the back hallway of the Wal-Mart. His sleeves were rolled up, but one was higher than the other, and his tie was loosened to the point of ridiculousness.

Aside from the dust and disarray, his clothes weren’t that different from those of men who worked in offices all over this city. But were he and a businessman to stand side by side, Alyssa would have had no problem identifying the Navy SEAL. It was evident in the way Sam stood, the way he moved, the way he breathed.

“Hank and Roy have been running this particular meeting for the past four years,” he told her now. “They don’t remember seeing her. And they would have. They’re protective of the women in their group. They keep an eye out for thirteen-Steppers.” At her blank look, he explained. “Men who pretend to be part of the program but are really just trolling for vulnerable women.”

“Wow, that’s a shitty thing to do.”

“No kidding.” He led the way out of the building, back toward the car. “I don’t know if we’re on the right track here. It’s possible Mary Lou stopped attending meetings after she moved in with her sister. It’s possible she was already lying low back then. I mean, think about it. She left California the day after the Coronado attack. She must’ve known her prints were on that weapon.” He shook his head. “I just hope wherever she is, she’s not drinking again.”

Alyssa suspected Mary Lou wasn’t—because dead people couldn’t drink. But she kept that to herself as she unlocked the car and they got in.

Sam glanced briefly at the map, finding their next location, before he started the car. “So you want to hear what’s been bugging me about the Ihbraham Rahman thing?”

“Okay.”

He shot her a look. “You think this is a waste of time, don’t you?”

“Sam, I said okay.”

“You think they’re dead,” he accused her.

“I’m trying to be supportive, but...” She sighed. “I’m sorry. I’m... Look, just tell me.”

“Two things,” Sam said. “First is that I don’t believe Mary Lou would get involved with a man who wasn’t white. So whatever her connection to Rahman was, it wasn’t romantic or sexual. I’m virtually certain of that. She had strong opinions about racial separation.” He laughed in disgust. “I don’t know why I just don’t say it. She was racist, all right? I didn’t find out until a couple of months after we were married.”

Alyssa laughed softly as she looked at him in the light from the dashboard. “Oh, Sam. That must’ve hurt, huh?”

“It made her completely unattractive to me,” he admitted. “I couldn’t get past it. I tried talking to her about it, tried to widen her narrow-minded view—it just came from ignorance—but she just never wanted to talk to me about anything.” He sighed. “That was when our marriage ended. I swear, I should’ve filed for divorce right then and there, but I was too stupid to realize it. Instead, I just stopped trying. It wasn’t conscious. I didn’t even know I gave up. I was so freaking depressed and... I thought I was still trying, but I was just kidding myself. Like I’m really going to be able to make a relationship with this woman work?”

“That would have been a hard one for me, too,” Alyssa told him. “I mean, flip flop it around a little. I’ve dated black men who are really vocal about how much they dislike interracial relationships. They start in on how their little sister better never date a white man, and I’m thinking, Hello. My mother was someone’s little sister, and she married a white man, and if she hadn’t, she never would have had me.” She shook her head. “Needless to say, there’s usually no second date.” She shot him a look. “See how smart it is to have a policy about never having sex with strangers? You never wind up married to someone you don’t want to talk to, let alone live with.”

“Yeah, well, I don’t need any policies like that anymore,” he said. “Because until I have the operation to remove my testicles from my sinuses, I won’t be able to have sex again. Which really isn’t that big a deal since it’s been so long since I’ve had sex, I’ve forgotten what it’s like.”

Alyssa snorted. “If you’re looking for sympathy, Starrett, you’re looking in the wrong place.”

“I’m not,” he said. “I’m just trying to be funny and failing. But there was nothing funny about my marriage. I mean, shit, the whole thing was a tragedy from the start. I didn’t love her, but I honestly did try to like her. But after finding out that...”

Sam stopped at a red light and turned to look at her. “She said something about Jazz, about how hard it must be for me to take orders from him, and I’m telling you, I didn’t get it at first,” he told her. “I honestly thought she had a problem with him because his demeanor is so, you know, grim and serious. I thought she was talking about the fact that it seems like he never smiles, but when I realized that it was because he’s black, I was blown away.”

The car in front of him was moving, but much too slowly. Sam signaled to move into the left lane so he could pass.

He glanced at Alyssa after that. “I didn’t mean to go off on a rant. I just wanted you to know why I’m having such trouble with her alleged connection to Rahman.”

“Don DaCosta did call him Mary Lou’s friend,” Alyssa pointed out. “And he was obviously looking for her.”

“Well, I don’t think she’d be unfriendly to him,” Sam said. “She wasn’t like my father.”

He was silent for a moment as he drove. But then he said, “You know, I’ve been thinking about the fact that Rahman was nearly killed in Coronado. That he got jumped by people in the crowd who were afraid he was armed. There were plenty of other people of Middle Eastern descent who got tackled during that attack. But they were sat on. They weren’t beaten nearly to death.”

“It happens sometimes in a crowd,” Alyssa said. “People lose control. Mob mentality, you know?”

“Yeah, okay, maybe,” Sam said. “But what if it wasn’t an accident that he was the one to get beaten nearly to death? One possibility is that he really was involved with the attack, and the FBI just hasn’t found the connection yet. But maybe someone set him up to be killed there, in Coronado. Because what if Rahman can ID the real terrorists—just like Donny and Mary Lou? Maybe Rahman knows this light-haired guy Donny mentioned—this alien that Don saw all the time in my driveway. You know, the same guy he saw following Rahman yesterday. Jesus, I don’t—” He stopped. Cleared his throat. Kept his eyes on the road. “Donny never hurt anyone. He was—” He stopped again. “He was a good guy. God, his family must be devastated.”

Alyssa didn’t dare touch him. “We don’t have to talk about this right now.”

“Yeah,” Sam said. “We do. Because I want to catch this fucker and watch him fry.” He was holding tightly to the steering wheel. “Lys, what if Rahman’s not the tango? What if it’s Donny’s alien, the blond man—a white guy, right, so Mary Lou’s okay with sleeping with him—who brought that weapon onto the base in Mary Lou’s car?

“Maybe Rahman’s not AWOL,” Sam continued. “Maybe he’s dead. Maybe he’s in the trunk of some car somewhere, with a bullet in his head.”

Alyssa already had her phone out and open and was speed-dialing Jules.

She needed Max to hear Sam’s latest theory about Ihbraham Rahman, but she was still too angry to call him herself.

FORT WORTH, TEXAS

1987

“We’ll still have Sundays to fly,” Noah pointed out as Ringo followed him up the stairs and onto the front porch.

“I don’t think Coach MacGreggor is going to want me to try out,” Ringo said. They went through the screen door, closing it behind them with a bang.

“Why not?”

“Well, to start, he hates my freaking guts.”

The baseball coach also taught history, and Noah knew that he and Ringo had clashed many times over what Ringo insisted were simplified, rich white men’s propagandistic versions of the past.

Noah set his backpack down by the stairs. “He’s not going to bring that with him onto the baseball field.”

“Want to bet?” Ringo muttered.

“You’re just paranoid.” Noah raised his voice. “Hey, we’re home!” He turned back. “Or scared.” He did a quick shuffle to get well out of Ringo’s reach. “You’re a girly man,” he said, imitating Hans and Franz from Saturday Night Live. “Too scared to try out for the high school baseball team, girly man?”

Roger cracked up. “Shut up, fuckhead!”

“Grandma!” Noah pretended to shout, knowing full well that Dot wasn’t wearing her hated hearing aid. “Ringo called me a fuckhead!” Laughing, he escaped Ringo’s skull duster by dashing down the hall to the kitchen.

“Don’t gallop in the house, young sir.” Ringo mimicked Walt’s deep voice as he followed.

“Seriously, Ringo,” Noah started to say, but then he stopped short, just in the doorway to the kitchen.

What the...?

“Seriously, Nos.” Ringo was behind him and didn’t see it. “If you honestly want to, I’ll go to the tryouts with you. God help us both, though.”

“Grampa?” Nos shouted, pushing past Ringo and bolting back toward the stairs.

“Holy fuck,” Ringo said as he saw it—an entire pot of bloodred tomato sauce spilled on the kitchen floor. Walt’s stool was overturned, as well as one of the kitchen chairs.

Noah took the stairs three at a time, heading for the upstairs bathroom, praying that Grandpa had burned himself cooking and that Grandma was with him in the bathroom, searching the medicine cabinet and cussing because she couldn’t find the aloe vera gel.

He could hear Ringo running through the first floor of the big house, shouting for Walt and Dot.

The bathroom was empty. All the bedrooms were, too.

Noah didn’t think of them as old, but they were. They were old, and old people died. Johnny Radford’s father had just had a fatal heart attack. And he had been younger than Walt.

Panic made his chest tight, but he forced it away as he clattered back down the stairs and pushed his way out the screen door.

Walt’s blue station wagon was still parked in the driveway.

Ringo was thinking along the same lines as Noah, and he’d already hopped the fence into the Leonards’ yard—an impressive feat that usually brought Mrs. L out of her house to chase them with her broom. She said she was tired of big boot prints in her flower bed, but that wasn’t Ringo’s fault, that was all Noah. It had been months since Ringo had failed to clear the garden.

As Noah took the long way around, Mrs. L met Ringo on the porch, wiping her hands on a dish towel.

“Please, ma’am, do you know where Walt and Dot went?” he asked.

“You missed the excitement by just half an hour,” she said, as Noah got to the gate. “Two ambulances, a firetruck, and three police cars.”

No.

“What happened?” Ringo asked. “Where are they?”

“Harris Methodist Hospital,” she told him. “I’m not really sure of the details. I think Mrs. Gaines fell or collapsed or something, and I guess Mr. Gaines called 911. I don’t know if it was a heart attack or what. But they got her out of here pretty fast. He went with her in the ambulance.”

Grandma. Don’t let her be dead.

“Please, ma’am,” Noah called to Mrs. Leonard from the gate, “I know we’re not your favorite people in the world, but we really need to get to that hospital right away. Please, will you drive us?”

“I would if I could,” she said, “but Sherman has the car. He’ll be back around five-thirty. If you still need a ride then, just give me a shout.” She narrowed her eyes at Ringo. “But from now on use the gate.”

Noah looked at his watch. Five-thirty. It was barely even three.

“Thank you, ma’am,” Ringo said. “But I think we’ll try to find another ride.”

He headed for Noah and the gate at a dead run, and vaulted clear over the damn thing.

“Use the gate!” Mrs. L shouted after him. “Unlatch it. Walk through it. Like a human!”

“Let’s call the hospital,” Ringo said as they ran back to the house. “Find out what the hell’s going on.” He was trying to be reassuring, but Noah knew he was scared, too. “It’s probably nothing big. You know how sometimes old people fall and break a wrist or a hip? I’m sure she’s all right.”

“Breaking a hip is pretty big.” Noah grabbed the phone book from the shelf.

“Well, I don’t know that’s what happened.” Ringo picked up the phone. “What’s the number?”

Noah read it to him, then started cleaning up the tomato sauce while Ringo went through verbal contortions, trying to find out who he should talk to to learn Dot’s fate.

They needed to get to the hospital now. Not at five-thirty. Now.

They could call Jolee, but it would take her just as long to get up here. Although, they needed to call her anyway to tell her Grandma was in the hospital. Noah grabbed a pencil from the cup on the kitchen desk and started one of Walt’s lists. You can’t forget to do something if you write it down. “Call Jolee.”

Who else could they call for a ride?

Ringo hung up the phone with a crash. “Those dickheads won’t give out any information about Aunt Dot over the telephone.”

They stared at each other.

Noah voiced what they both were wondering. “Do you think that means she’s dead?”

“Fuck, no!” Ringo said, but it was so obvious he was lying, Noah couldn’t help it. He started to cry.

“Hey, come on, Nos.” Ringo put his arms around him. “She probably just twisted her ankle.”

“Then why wouldn’t they just tell us that?”

“I don’t know! It’s probably some stupidass hospital policy. You know what Uncle Walt always says about bureaucracy. Let’s figure out a way to get to the hospital, okay? Then we can stop guessing.”

“I don’t know who to call,” Noah said. All the other neighbors were at work, except elderly Mrs. Jurgens, who had cataracts in both eyes.

“I’ll find us a ride.” Ringo had a look of sheer determination all over him. He pushed Noah toward the kitchen door. “Why don’t you go upstairs and get a bag and pack some of Walt and Dot’s stuff in it. You know, things they might need. Get Uncle Walter a change of clothes, in case he spilled that sauce on himself. And... and pack, you know, their toothbrushes and... and Walt’s razor. A warm pair of socks and a sweater for Dot, ’cause she’s always cold. And whatever book’s on her bedside table. Stuff like that.”

Noah nodded and went upstairs. Grandpa’s leather overnight bag was in the closet, and he quickly packed it and started back down the stairs.

He heard Ringo hang up the phone with a crash, heard him curse over and over. “Fuck, fuck, fuck! Why aren’t you home?”

Ringo picked up the phone again and dialed. “Be home, be home, be home...” he said. And then his next words made Noah freeze there on the bottom step of the stairs.

“Pop. It’s me. Roger.”

Ringo had actually called his father, to ask for a ride.

Noah sat down on the stairs. He hadn’t even realized that son of a bitch was in town this week. He should have recognized it, though. All of the signs were there. Ringo had disappeared during lunch—no doubt running home to make sure his mother was okay. Roger Starrett Senior had stopped beating the crap out of Ringo about a year ago, but Noah suspected that hunting season on his wife was still open.

Ringo’s father was so loud that, when combined with the extra-powerful speaker Walt had installed on the kitchen phone for Dot, his voice easily carried to where Noah sat.

“Well, now, I thought you was calling yourself Ringo or something equally foolish these days,” Starrett drawled.

“Noah and I need a ride to the hospital, sir,” Ringo told him. “You know I wouldn’t ask you if it wasn’t a matter of life or death—”

“You hurt?”

“No, sir. But Noah’s grandmother was taken to the hospital by an ambulance right before we got home from school—”

“You haven’t come home from school yet,” he said.

Unbelievable. Roger Starrett Senior knew good and goddamned well that Noah’s grandmother was his very own sister. Ringo had just told him she was in the hospital, and he was messing around with semantics.

“Excuse me, sir,” Ringo said instead of Fuck you, you mean-spirited prick. Noah couldn’t believe what he was hearing. He couldn’t believe Ringo was doing this for him. And it was for him. To get him a ride to that hospital, Ringo was willing to ask this man that he hated for a favor.

“I meant to say,” Ringo continued, “before we got to Noah’s house.”

“I thought I made it clear that I didn’t want you going over there.”

“Pop,” Ringo said, desperation making his voice crack. “Didn’t you hear what I told you? Aunt Dot might be dying.”

There was silence on the line, then, “Considering she’s been dead to me for forty years, it’s about time she was put in her grave—end the embarrassment she’s brought to her family. Get yourself on home, boy. Now.”

“I am home,” Ringo said quietly. “I won’t be bothering you anymore.”

He hung up the phone, and Noah heard him start to cry. He was trying not to, trying to hide it—typical of Roger.

Noah dried his own eyes on his sleeve, stood up, and went into the kitchen.

Ringo heard him coming and stuck his head under the kitchen faucet, letting the water run on his face and into his mouth.

“You okay?” Noah asked.

“Yeah.” Ringo pretended to be all right as he dried his face on the kitchen towel. “Lookit, I just had an idea. If I cut my hand open with one of Uncle Walt’s cooking knives, you could call an ambulance, and they’d take us to the hospital.”

He was serious.

Noah’s mouth was hanging open. “Roger, that’s completely insane.”

“So what? It’ll get us there. Fast.”

“I’m not going to let you do that,” Noah told him. “Cut yourself? It’s bad enough that you went and called your father—”

“Aw, shit, you heard that?” Ringo was beyond embarrassed.

“You shouldn’t have called him.”

“I thought...” He worked hard to keep from crying again. “Maybe he’d do something decent for once, you know?”

Noah did know. He knew that Roger was almost unbearably ashamed of his father, ashamed to be the man’s son.

“I mean, Jesus,” Ringo continued. “Even Darth Vader apologized to Luke for being such a dickhead.”

“Darth never gave Luke a ride to the hospital.”

“Luke wouldn’t have asked,” Ringo pointed out. “He didn’t need a ride anywhere. He had a speeder.” He stopped. “That’s it!”

“We’ll blow up the Death Star,” Noah mocked him, “and then when the ambulances come, we’ll get a ride to the hospital.”

Ringo laughed, which had been Noah’s intention. “Shut up, fuckhead, and help me find Uncle Walt’s car keys.”

They were, of course, in the key box.

Ringo held out his hand for them, but Noah didn’t hand them over. “This, too, is insane.”

“Everyone always says that we both look much older than fifteen.”

“Driving in a parking lot’s different than driving on the street,” Noah told him. “I wouldn’t want to do it.”

“Well, I would,” Ringo said with complete conviction. “I want to. If you want, I can go by myself and then call you from the hospital once I find out if Dot’s okay.”

Noah handed him the keys. “Like I’m going to let you do that.”

“I would,” Ringo said, heading for the door.

“Yeah, I know,” Noah said, hefting Walt’s bag and locking the door behind them.

They got into the car, and Ringo adjusted the seat and the mirrors, the way Walt had showed them.

He had to be scared shitless, just like Noah. But he put the key in the ignition, and turned it, and the engine roared to life. Ringo was going to get them to the hospital if it was the last thing he did.

“Luke Skywalker’s proof that paternity amounts to squat,” Noah told him. “And you are too my brother.”

“Fasten your seat belt,” Ringo said, and pulled out of the driveway.

The band had started playing early, at seven, so by nine-thirty, Gina was more than ready for another break.

Fandangos was filled, and she had to squeeze her way through the crowd to get to the bar.

Max wasn’t there.

The musicians were set up on a platform with a direct view of the front door. As she’d played, she’d been able to see everyone who came in or left.

Max had done neither. Unless he’d come in through the kitchen.

There was this one spot, back by the rest rooms, where it was really dark. She was sure she’d seen an extra shadow there while she was playing. But when she looked now, no one was there.

“Hey. How’re you doing? Gina, right?”

She found herself staring up at Detective Soul Patch.

He was holding a beer in his left hand and he held out his right for her to shake. “Ric Alvarado.”

“Ric. Right.”

“I didn’t know you were a musician.”

Yeah, sure. As if Max hadn’t sent him over here. All of her hopes crashed and burned. He was never going to give in. He’d gone so far as actually to send over a replacement... a real replacement this time—not just Jules Cassidy.

“You okay?” Ric asked.

Gina forced a smile. “Yeah, it’s just a little too crowded in here. I get claustrophobic sometimes.”

“I know what you mean. Hey, so far no luck in my search for your underwear,” he said, and then laughed and rolled his eyes. It was too dark in there to tell for sure, but it was possible he blushed. “Oh, man, I’m such an asshole. I can’t believe I actually said that.” He looked around the room. “It is crowded tonight. Wow. Hot, too.” Another eye roll. “Look, can I buy you a drink? Something frozen, maybe?”

“Actually, because I’m in the band, I drink for free.”

“Oh. Well, that’s... sweet.”

“Yeah,” she said. “I guess.”

Sweet. Her last college boyfriend, Trent Engelman, used to call everything sweet.

Ric Alvarado himself was pretty damn sweet—at least as far as replacements for Max went. Dark hair, heavily lidded brown eyes, killer cheekbones, broad shoulders, trim waist. Younger than Max, but older than Gina. She’d bet that he was a good dancer, too.

“Well.” Ric looked embarrassed, as if he were about to back away, as if she’d given him a brush-off instead of an honest response about that drink. So she grabbed him by the shirt and pulled him closer to the bar.

“Hey, Jenn,” she called to the bartender. “This is Ric. He’s going to make sure my wineglass is never empty during the next set, okay?”

Jenn pushed a refill in Gina’s direction.

“I think we can take that as an affirmative,” Gina said to Ric, whose embarrassment had turned to nearly palpable hope. Oh, come on. Didn’t Max mention she was a sure thing? She made herself smile back at him as she took a healthy sip of her wine. “You don’t mind being my slave tonight, do you, Ric?”

Someone bumped into her, and she had to hold her glass out to keep it from spilling. Ric steadied her with a hand at her waist. A hand he didn’t bother taking away again. “Absolutely not,” he said.

“So tell me,” Gina said, determined to play this through. If this was really what Max wanted... “How far are you willing to go in your search for my underwear?”

Cosmo Richter’s right leg was in traction.

As Tom went into the SEAL’s hospital room, a tight-lipped nurse was coming out. “Tell him he doesn’t have to be a superhero,” she snapped, before marching off down the hall.

Cosmo’s face was almost the same color as his eyes. Kind of pale bluish-gray.

“He’s refused to take any pain meds until he’s talked to you,” the senior chief said quietly into Tom’s ear.

“Sir,” Cosmo said to Tom. “I’m at fault. Chief Karmody ordered me to stay with Kelly, to keep her safe. I should have—”

“You should have expected a car bomb? In suburban San Diego?” Tom shook his head. “No, Cos. You got her out of the house.” Stan had told him that Don DaCosta, the man who lived there, hadn’t fared so well. “On a broken leg,” he added. Man, there was a cast on Cosmo’s left ankle, too. “Two broken legs.”

Once again, Stan and Jazz had a chair for him. Tom sat, part of him still upstairs, in surgery with Kelly.

“Can you start at the beginning?” Tom asked. “Why were you over there in the first place?” Stan had also told him that this Don DaCosta lived next door to the house Sam Starrett had shared with Mary Lou before they separated. DaCosta was mentally ill—a shut-in who never left his house.

“Kelly had these videotapes from somewhere, I don’t know exactly—”

“The library parking lot?” Tom asked.

“Yeah, that’s right,” Cos said. “Card wrote a computer program to help her check to see if Mary Lou Starrett appeared in any of the tapes, and she did.”

Chief WildCard Karmody could do things with a computer that would have made him filthy rich, were he not employed by the U.S. Navy.

“He printed out a bunch of pictures of Mary Lou with this guy—some guy Kelly recognized.”

“Sweet Jesus.” Tom hadn’t thought she’d actually find anything from the information gathering she had been doing.

“She said he came into her office a coupla times. He was selling drugs. You know, not the illegal kind, but—”

“A pharmaceuticals rep,” Tom said. Kelly had told him that salesmen and women from drug companies came into the clinic on a daily basis, pushing various antibiotics and prescription medications, encouraging doctors to prescribe their company’s brand of pills.

“Yeah, that’s it,” Cosmo said. “This was about six weeks before the Coronado attack.”

“And Kelly found a picture of this same man talking to Mary Lou Starrett,” Tom clarified.

“Yes, sir.”

“Mother of God.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Where’s the picture?” Tom asked.

“Card’s making copies right now—he’s sending it as a download to everyone on the team to share with girlfriends and family and such,” Cosmo reported. “He was in here just about a half hour ago, and we suddenly realized if this guy is one of our tangos—” He used the radio-code word for the letter T, which stood for this decade’s version of trouble—terrorists. “—he may have contacted other people close to the team, and they may be in danger, too.”

Tom looked at Stan and Jazz. “I want a copy of that picture,” he ordered. “ASAP. And we need to get this information to the FBI.”

Stan left the room as Jazz said, “Cosmo’s already spoken to Peggy Ryan. She’s XO of Max Bhagat’s CT team.”

Tom nodded. “Good.” He knew Peggy. She was no Max, but she was good. He turned back to Cos. “So what the hell were you doing at DaCosta’s house?”

“Kelly was in touch with the other wives and girlfriends,” Cosmo told him, “looking for someone just like this guy—someone who’d maybe been sniffing around, looking for access to the base. You know, so he could smuggle those weapons in.

“Lieutenant Muldoon’s wife, Joan, is Don DaCosta’s sister. Joan told Kelly that her brother had some FBI agents camping out in his house. He’s in the habit of seeing aliens in the shadows, and he told Lieutenant Starrett that an ‘alien’ he used to see lurking around Starrett’s house had come back. From what I understand—and I’m not sure I’ve got it entirely straight, sir, it’s pretty freaking confusing—DaCosta recently saw this same alien following some Middle Eastern gardener who used to work in their neighborhood—”

“Ihbraham Rahman?” Tom asked. God damn, Kelly really had been on the right track.

“That sounds right, sir, but, it’s been a hell of a day, and I was paying more attention to the other guy. The guy in Kelly’s picture. That’s why we were at DaCosta’s—because Kelly wanted to show him the picture, to see if this guy was his alien.” Cosmo nodded. “And sure enough, DaCosta IDed him. I mean, as much as someone who’s mentally challenged can make a positive ID. But as far as I’m concerned, the words, ‘That’s him, that’s the alien,’ makes me think we probably have a photo of a man who may have helped set up the Coronado attack.”

Tom ran his hands down his face. He’d never thought... It had never occurred to him that Kelly might be in danger—that she’d actually get close enough to the truth.... He looked at Cosmo. “What happened? You got there, you went inside, Kelly showed DaCosta the photo, and then what?”

“One of the agents got right on the phone—this picture is a very major deal as far as the investigation goes,” Cosmo said. “We got what we came for, so I wanted to get out of there. I was spooked. I don’t really know why. I was just... The hair on the back of my neck was standing up—you know how that sometimes happens? But Kelly was trying to calm down DaCosta. The picture got him really worked up and she didn’t want to leave him like that.

“She was telling him he was safe, because the FBI was there, and I was there, and I was a SEAL. He’s got this hero worship thing about SEALs. And he was telling us about how Lieutenant Starrett always came over to watch the game on TV, and I was thinking, Shit, he’s a better man than I am. I was thinking that it was the closed windows that were freaking me out.

“And the second FBI agent—the one who wasn’t on the phone—suddenly goes, ‘Are we expecting more visitors?’ I look up and he’s over by the window, and he’s got the blinds open, and I can see there’s a car pulling up, right out there. And someone gets out and starts running, and Christ, Commander, I knew. Kelly was sitting across the room, on the sofa, next to DaCosta, much closer to that side of the house than I was. I should have been right next to her. But I wasn’t, and I shouted to get down. But she didn’t and aw, fuck, it blew, and the force just picked her up and I couldn’t do a fucking thing.”

“Except carry her outside on two broken legs,” Tom reminded Cosmo quietly.

“I didn’t know they were broken, sir. I just knew they didn’t work the way I needed them to.” He shook his head. “I tried to go back in there for DaCosta and the others, but I couldn’t do more than crawl, and then the fire truck was there and they pulled me back. I had to hit some dumbfuck in the face to make him stop dicking around with me. Kelly obviously needed more immediate attention. Those guys got there fast, but I’m telling you, they need a refresher course in triage.” Cosmo’s eyes were red.

Tom knew his own eyes must’ve looked the same. “She’s going to be okay, you know,” he told the petty officer. “She’s going to pull through.”

Cosmo nodded. “I’m praying for that, sir.” He paused, his face working as he tried not to cry. “But oh my holy God, sir, you need to know... I saw the way she hit that wall, and...”

Cosmo Richter, the man with the reputation of being one of the coolest, most deadly operators in SEAL Team Sixteen, covered his eyes with his hand and cried.