Hard Landing (7 page)

"Great." He clapped the kid on the back. "Y'all have fun."

Chuckling inwardly at the linguist's stunned expression, he turned and walked away, scanning the crowded club for Bullfrog. Standing half a head taller than anyone else and normally off to one side, his friend was always easy to spot. Brant found him close to the door, leaning against the wall with his arms across his chest, looking bored. He hadn't wanted to come here in the first place, citing his desire to finish reading
Anna Karenina
.

Read a book on a Saturday night?
Brant had scoffed.
Hell, no. We're going out dancing
.

But now he wished he
had
stayed home because his buzz was fading fast, and the ache behind his eyeballs was building, thanks to the lights and the cheap tequila. He couldn't take a woman home, so what was the point of even coming to this meat market?

"Ready to go?" he asked, shouting over the music that had quickened into another mind-numbing beat.

Bullfrog didn't budge. "Is
she
coming with us?" He nodded toward Marina, who looked to be deep in conversation with Collins.

"No. Come on, let's go." He turned and bolted for the door, counting on his teammate to follow. SEALs operated in pairs, which was the only reason why Bullfrog had ventured out in the first place.

A minute later, they sped from the parking lot in his friend's silver soft-top Jeep, with Bullfrog driving. Brant ignored his sidelong, curious stares. It was obvious that their early departure puzzled his teammate, but he didn't comment, which was an attribute that Brant utterly appreciated. Bullfrog knew when to keep quiet and drive.

It was Brant who finally broke the silence, raising his voice to be heard over the hum of the tires. "Remind me why I live this kind of lifestyle," he requested.

"To pick up chicks," Bullfrog answered flatly.

"Right. So if I was to stop doing that, there wouldn't be any point in subjecting myself to the shock-and-awe environment or the hangover the next day, would there?"

That gained him an astonished glance and the answer he'd already guessed. "Nope."

In the hush that followed, Brant accustomed himself to the oddly liberating sensation of returning home companionless. He'd thought he would feel like he was missing out on something, but the only thing he hankered for at the moment was Rebecca's company, which was never going to happen. Apart from that dissatisfaction, he felt strangely pleased with himself—cleaner, somehow.

"So, what's so special about
Anna Karenina
, anyway?" he heard himself ask.

Bullfrog's grin flashed in the Jeep's dark interior. "It's about a woman stuck in a loveless marriage. She meets someone else and falls desperately in love with him, but they can't be together. You should read it," he advised.

Brant scowled at the insinuation. "What are you saying?"

"Nothing." Bullfrog shrugged. "It's a classic. Classics convey truths about the human experience."

His friend was probably warning him about the pitfalls of befriending the CO's wife. He pretended to go along with the idea. "How many pages long is it?"

"Like twelve hundred."

"Hah." He couldn't hold still long enough to read that many pages. "I'll rent the movie. We can watch it tonight if you want." What the hell else was there to do?

Bullfrog chuckled. "Sure, why not?"

Chapter 4

Rebecca wiped the granite counters with isopropyl alcohol and a dry paper towel. She'd already scrubbed and disinfected the entire kitchen from the tiled floor to the top of the refrigerator, but a final wipe down left a nice glossy sheen that usually engendered satisfaction.

But not today. Her stomach continued to twist and roil.

Clearly Max was worried that she would tell Bronco about his secret account. Why else would he have made that blatant threat?
Something bad might just happen to him.
She had gone straight into her bathroom when they got home, turned on the shower and placed a surreptitious call to her friend, Maddy, in order to procure Bronco's cell phone number.

I need to warn him today,
she decided
. Do it now, or wait until later?

The roar of the lawnmower drew her gaze out the sliding glass doors. Max was out back, cutting the long expanse of grass between the pool and the pier, something he preferred to do himself because their gardener never cut it the way he wanted.

Swiveling her head, she assessed the camera on the ceiling. No red light. The security system wasn't armed. Max usually kept it off in the daytime, at least while he was home. She could call Bronco right now on her cell phone and Max would never know—or would he? After all, he was the one who owned their cellular phone plan, which meant he could probably research any calls she made.

She gnawed on a hangnail while considering her husband through the window.

In spite of her urgency, it would be wiser for Bronco's sake if she called him from a pay phone. If Max found out she was still talking to him, he'd make his chief's life a living hell at work.

I should never have told Bronco Max's secret.

Heaving a troubled sigh, she plodded to the trashcan to throw away the paper towel. Then again, if she hadn't told him, would she dare to even think of leaving Max? It was Bronco's moral support that made her feel brave. Still, she ought to have relied on her girlfriends for support. If only they could grasp what life with Max was like. She had been told more than once by her colleagues that she was lucky to be married to a high-ranking SEAL.

Don't you talk bad about your husband, girl,
one of them had scolded her.
Think about what he's gone through for our country. Didn't he earn a Bronze Star?

The wives of other SEALs weren't quite so adamant. Maddy had merely suggested she was approaching the four year itch, one year early.
It'll pass,
she'd promised.

Only Bronco really understood that life with Max was often scary. Like her, he seemed to recognize the potential menace lying latent in his commander. And unlike her friends, he encouraged her to think for herself, to trust her intuition.

Seeing Max's key ring on the counter instead of hanging on the hook where it belonged, she scooped it in her palm, weighing its heaviness as she went to hang it up. The set of keys struck her as a symbol of her captivity. As she slid it on the hook mounted by the door, the smallest key on the end caught her eye. The number 2850, etched into the bronze head, identified it at once.

It was the key to her old post office box. She frowned down at it.

Before marrying Max, in the absence of a permanent address, she had kept a mailbox at the Princess Ann Post Office. But she hadn't used it since their marriage. So what was Max doing carrying it around?

With a shrug, she decided she would ask him later and proceeded into the laundry room to move their clothes from the washer to the dryer. Max didn't like his clothes being left to wrinkle.

Half an hour later, she was folding the white load on their bed when he hurried into the room, stripping off his sweaty T-shirt.

"Damn it—I've got a golf game with Admiral Johansen in half an hour. Can't be late for the admiral."

He shucked off the rest of his clothes and stalked naked into their
en suite
to shower. Rebecca tore her gaze off his broad back. Max was getting fat.

Minutes later, he emerged with his hair damp, still toweling off his mat of chest hair. Grateful for his haste, which would keep him from making any sexual advances, she remained quiet while he pawed irritably through his drawers, hunting for his golfing socks. This was not the best time to ask him why he carried around her old mailbox key.

Dressing in record time, he came over to drop a kiss on her dry lips before heading to the door. "I'll be back in three hours."

"Play well," she called, feeling a distinct pressure ease off her shoulders as he walked away.

A moment later, the door between the laundry room and the garage slammed shut. She listened to the automated garage door rumble open and then close again. At last she was alone and free to take action.

But Max would have armed the security system before leaving, the way he always did under the premise of keeping her "safe" inside. He would know if she left the house because, of course, the system would send a message to his phone when she opened the garage to let herself out. He would also know how long she'd been gone when she opened it again upon her return.

First, she had to think of an excuse. Because sure as Max would throw the game to keep the admiral happy, he would interrogate her when he got back—where had she gone and what had she done? With her heart already beating faster, she abandoned the clothes she had yet to put away and hurried to the other side of the house to the laundry room. The camera in the kitchen couldn't film her behind the laundry room door where she opened the half-full bottle of detergent and poured the contents down the drain.

Oh dear, it seems I'd better run out and get some more.

Hastening to the garage, she let her mind catalogue the local shops and restaurants, trying to recollect where she'd seen a pay phone. As much as she regretted having to cut ties with Bronco, it was for the best. She'd had no right to involve him in her marital woes in the first place. For his sake, she hoped that telling him about Max's warning would quell his suspicions and keep him safe from his commander's certain retribution.

* * *

Brant pushed out of the Exchange with a Subway combo meal dangling from one hand and a large cup of iced tea in the other. Sweat still moistened his hairline from the game of rec-league basketball, in which his team had lost 51 to 23. Both teams had walked over to the Exchange afterward for a well-deserved meal, but to avoid the smug stares of the victors who now lounged in the food court making jokes and boasting, he'd left the building to eat outside.

A temperate ocean breeze dried the last traces of moisture from his brow as he turned toward the wooden bench at the far side of the building. He wasn't at all surprised to see that Bullfrog had beaten him to it, his face buried in the last pages of
Anna Karenina
. Brant thought about the movie they'd watched the previous night and shuddered. Considering the fact that the heroine jumped in front of a moving train at the very end, he couldn't fathom why Bullfrog would want to finish the book when he knew how the story ended.

His ringing cell phone interrupted his trek to the bench. Juggling his lunch to free a hand, he noted the unfamiliar number. "Hello?"

"Hey, it's Rebecca."

He jerked to a stop. The clouds above seemed to part, and a ray of sunshine streamed down, warming his shoulders.

"Well, hi." But then he wondered if creepy Tony had made another appearance and concern edged aside his pleasure. "Is everything okay?"

"Uh, sure. Everything's great."

That sounded a bit forced. "Well, that's good." Why the hell would she risk calling him, then? He continued forward.

"I'm using a pay phone," she said, putting his mind at ease. "You have no idea how hard it was to find one. Listen, I need to tell you something," she added on an anxious note.

Bullfrog glanced up at him as he neared the bench and sat down. "Go ahead."

"Well, first off—" She hesitated, and he could picture her biting her lower lip. "Max kind of mumbled a threat against you the other day. I just thought you should know."

He lowered his lunch onto his lap and balanced his drink on the arm of the bench. "What kind of threat?"

Bullfrog paused in his reading, lowering his book to his lap.

"More of an implied threat, really. He said, 'I wouldn't enjoy his company anymore if I were you. Something bad might just happen to him.'—him being you, of course. I'm so sorry, Bronco. It's my fault for talking to you in the first place."

Frustration heated Brant all over again. "Christ, we were only talking!"

"I know," she said, with lament. "But I should never have involved you in our issues."

"I didn't leave you much choice, remember?" He deliberated telling her then what he'd learned about Max's secret account.

"Yes, but now I've drawn unnecessary attention to you, and I'm truly sorry. I probably shouldn't talk to you anymore, even at a party."