Into the Fire (2 page)

“Gilligan?” Izzy said in surprise.

And all of the trepidation in her eyes was completely replaced by shining relief. Having her look at him like that almost knocked him over. “You know him?” she asked, way too excited considering this was Gilligan they were talking about.

Did Izzy know Dan Gillman? “Yeah,” Iz said. “Me and the fishboy, we’re…tight.” If tight meant locked in mortal combat at every possible opportunity.

And okay, that was an exaggeration. He and Gillman got along just fine out in the real world, while on military ops. Gillman respected Izzy—but he didn’t like him, and he didn’t particularly want to hang with him during playtime. Out of nearly everyone in Team Sixteen, there was no one who appreciated Izzy
less
during R&R than Dan “Gilligan” Gillman. And that wasn’t an exaggeration.

It was also a giant pain in the ass, since Izzy
was
tight with Jenk and Lopez, who were also Gillman’s two best friends in the team. More often than not, the four of them hung together. And despite Lopez and Jenk’s best efforts, Iz and Gillman had not yet learned how to get along. In fact, over the past year or so, their relationship, as it were, had gotten even more adversarial.

The girl moved closer—a dream come true—slipping onto the stool next to him. “Do you know where Danny is? I kind of need to get in touch with him, like, right away…?”

Up close, she was even more beautiful. She was also younger than Izzy’d first thought. The bartender had been right to try to card her—she wasn’t twenty-one. Probably more like twenty. She was wearing quite a bit of makeup, no doubt in an attempt to look older, which pretty much worked. But one thing that she couldn’t hide with eyeshadow and lipstick was the fact that she was both worried and enormously upset. And even a little scared.

Ah, Gillman, Gillman, Gillman, you sly dog. For months, the fishboy had been pretending he was pining away over Sophia Ghaffari, an exotically beautiful, yet somewhat mature woman—light-years out of Gillman’s league—who worked at Tommy Paoletti’s personal security company, Troubleshooters Incorporated. Sure, Danny and Sophia had gone out to dinner a time or two, but nothing had ever come of it. At least not the orgasmatronic fireworks Gillman had been hoping for.

All this time, for months now, Gillman had relentlessly been
Sophia this
-ing and
Sophia that
-ing until even Jay Lopez’s eyes had rolled back in his saintly head. And yet, apparently, Gillman had dealt with at least a portion of his despair over the fact that Sophia wouldn’t do him by spending some quality time with this extremely healthy member of Colbert Nation.

“I haven’t talked to Danny in months,” the girl continued, which immediately blew up Izzy’s theory. Which was a fairly common occurrence with him and wild speculation, and perfectly fine, because it meant that he’d just move on to salacious theory number two. “I wasn’t even sure if he was OCONUS or…”

“No, he’s Stateside,” Izzy said, and got another heavy dose of relief, crossed with a dollop of “you’re my hero” from her bottomless eyes. Damn, she had
the
prettiest brown eyes…

Okay, focus. What had he just learned here besides the fact that Gillman’s relationship with this girl had—allegedly—happened months ago? OCONUS. Whoever she was, she knew at least a little Navy-Speak. So…

“Are you Susan?” Izzy asked her.

Back before Sophia had appeared and eclipsed all other women on the planet and possibly on Omicron Ceti III as well, Gillman had dated a Susan. A college student at San Diego State. Lopez, who usually didn’t drool over his friends’ girlfriends, had described Susan as hhhhhot. But, he’d told Izzy with a sad sigh, she was a total SEAL groupie. Oh, and heads up, all y’all—she was completely insane, to boot.

As Maybe-Susan sat beside Izzy in the Bug, her eyes shifted slightly as she opened her mouth to answer what should have been a simple yes-no question.
Are you Susan?
According to the Body Language of Hot Babes Manual, that slight eye movement was a strong yet unconsciously made signal that an untruth was about to follow.

Gather ’round, kids—it’s storytime!

But the bartender interrupted them before she could fabricate her answer. “I’m serious, girlie. I need you outa here. Don’t make me call the bouncer.”

“Come on, Kev,” Izzy said as mildly as he could manage, considering the man was a certified dickhead. “We’re just having a conversation. She’s looking for Dan Gillman—”

“She’s underage—she can look for him outside.”

“I’m happy to go outside to talk to her, but I’m not quite done with my beer.”

“Yeah, well, ’f I turn back around and she’s not gone…” The dickhead left the threat unspoken, so of course Izzy had to respond with a silent but very clear
Oh, yeah? And then what?
by taking his good ol’ time finishing up his beer.

Meanwhile, M-Susan was looking from him to the Kevster and back. She was still solidly planted on her barstool, clearly intrigued, waiting to see what was going to go down next. Izzy smiled at her, and she smiled back, and his heart did a slow flip in his chest, because damn, he liked a woman with a heavy dose of rebel in her soul.

Too many of the women he’d met were rule-followers. When harshly scolded by the voice of alleged authority, they’d slink away, tails between their legs.

Either that, or they spoke a completely different language from Izzy. Oh, it sounded like American English coming out of their mouths, but nearly every word had an entirely different meaning. And most of the time, his somewhat-sideways sense of humor didn’t translate well.

This woman, however, just waited and watched, and—on a certain level—enjoyed. Which may have, in Lopez and Gillman’s book, made her completely insane.

But not to Izzy.

He took his time with his last mouthful of beer, waiting to swallow until Kevin did, in fact, turn around. At which point Izzy slowly and carefully put the glass on the bar, all the while holding the dickhead’s less-than-happy gaze.

And it was only then, when Kevin didn’t do more than stand there and glare—a silent but strongly implied
then I’ll go home and bite my pillow
—that Izzy took out his cell phone and lifted his ass offa that barstool. Smiling again at Maybe-Sue, he gestured with his head toward the door. “Step into my office. I’ll give Gillman a call.”

M-Susan slid off her stool, too, and led the way. Two steps out, though, she slipped on something—maybe a wet patch on the floor. Or maybe her insanity caused her to hallucinate, and she’d tripped over invisible purple poodles. Whatever the case, Izzy caught her arm to keep her from going down.

It was hard to tell what it was, exactly, that stunned him into stupidity—the sensation of her smooth skin beneath his fingers or the sweet smile of gratitude she shot him.

Either way, he didn’t feel inclined to let go, and she didn’t seem to mind. And when, as they passed the wailing jukebox, she leaned close to ask, “So you’re a SEAL, too,” Izzy knew with a tingly certainty that, as long as he didn’t do anything terrifically assholeish, odds were good that he was going to get some tonight.

“I am,” he said. “So, see, maybe you don’t need to find Gillman after all.”

SEAL groupies were women who would put out—usually in the bar parking lot—merely because a guy had gone through the ball-breaking BUD/S training and wore a trident.

And color Izzy putridly shallow, but right at this moment, considering he filled the criteria quite nicely, he just couldn’t see the problem with that. He himself wasn’t particularly interested in finding out whether Maybe-Susan had had a puppy growing up, or what classes she was taking this semester, or what she wanted to do when she finished school. As long as they were both consenting adults…

“If you can’t be, with the one you love, honey, love the one you’re with…”
Izzy hummed the melody just under his breath as he opened the door and followed the most beautiful woman in the world out of the Bug.

A L
IFETIME
A
GO
…
S
UMMER
1993
B
ARTLET
, M
ONTANA

“Hey, you! Scholarship girl!”

Hannah put her head down and kept walking along the gravel road to the mess hall, but the girls from the Sunflower group, led by the insufferable Brianna Parker, ran and quickly caught up.

They surrounded her—eight other fifteen- and sixteen-year-olds, including Bree, who’d been coming to this camp since she was seven, whose father donated liberally to the scholarship fund, which allowed so-called underprivileged girls like Hannah to spend two weeks in the company of Bree and her equally rich-bitch, entitled friends.

It was only day two, and Hannah desperately wanted to go home.

Carolyn Ronston and one of the multitude of Megans moved right in front of Hannah, forcing her to either push past them or stop.

So Hannah stopped, looking around at eight angry faces. One of them, a girl named something ridiculous like Petunia, was in tears. Whatever was up, it wasn’t going to be good.

She sighed. Are we happy campers yet?

“Where are you going in such a hurry?” another of the Megans asked—or maybe it was the just plain Meg, who had a note from home that allowed her to break camp rules by wearing makeup to cover her acne. How the gallon of mascara and eyeliner that she wore did that, Hannah wasn’t exactly sure.

She didn’t need to answer. Bree did it for her. “It’s lunchtime,” she said. “Careful she doesn’t trample you in her haste to stuff her face.” She turned to Hannah. “You should really wait and let the paying customers go first.”

Carolyn was onboard for that. “They should really make these girls work. I mean, what are they learning here, anyway?”

“Actually,” Hannah said, “I’ve already learned not to write a prizewinning essay ever again.” And to keep her Uncle Patrick away from Ms. Julio, the high school guidance counselor. They’d ganged up on her with this totally absurd idea that she needed to spend more time around women and girls—as in two weeks here at Camp Bitchfest. Which also conveniently would get Hannah out of Pat’s house just long enough for him to charm Nancy Julio out of her designer jeans and into his bed and then, unceremoniously, dump her.

Which wasn’t going to bode well for Hannah’s junior and senior years. Because what she was
really
learning here, was that girls—at least the ones she’d met here—didn’t play fair or have a strong sense of honor or respect for their peers.

Backstabbing and trash-talking and rumor-spreading and revenge-seeking seemed to be the order of the day.

If Ms. Julio was anything like Brianna or her friends, she was going to react to Pat’s dumping her by taking her anger and hurt out on Hannah.

“Give it back,” Petunia sobbed now. “You have to give it back.”

But first? Hannah was going to have to get through today.

“Give what back?” she asked the smaller girl.

Carolyn got in her face. “Don’t play dumb,” she said. “We know you took it. Meghan-with-an-H saw you walking in the woods past Tooney’s tent.”

Tooney was the nickname for Petunia? Really?

“I’ve walked past a lot of tents today,” Hannah admitted. She’d gotten lost, and spent quite some time trying to find her own tent—not that she was going to tell them
that.

“Just give it back.” Carolyn pushed her hard—her hands against Hannah’s shoulders, which very well might have knocked her over, had Hannah not seen it coming and braced for it. She brought her own arms up and out, breaking Carolyn’s hold on her and causing the older girl to retreat.

But only temporarily.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Hannah insisted. They were drawing a crowd. She could see some of the girls from her cluster—the Daffodils—not that any of them came forward to offer support against the mighty, ultra-popular Sunflowers.

She caught a glimpse of her bunkmate, Lacey, who quickly hid behind a group of other girls—what a surprise.

Yeah. Swell. Hannah was totally on her own.

“As if you really don’t know, we’re talking about Tooney’s bracelet,” Bree spat out, in a tone that dripped with
you moron.

“I didn’t take anyone’s bracelet,” Hannah said.

“Prove it.” Carolyn again invaded Hannah’s personal space, reaching for the front pocket of Hannah’s jeans.

What the hell…? Hannah knocked her hand away. “Get away from me!”

“Empty your pockets!” Carolyn came at her again.

“Get your hands off me!” Hannah couldn’t retreat because three or four mouth-breathing Megans were penning her in. She didn’t want to hit Carolyn—it was one thing to break a hold, another entirely to plant a right hook in the older girl’s face.

She was focused so intently on Carolyn, that she didn’t notice when one of the other girls—possibly Meghan-with-an-H—stuck out a foot and tripped Hannah.

She went down into the dust, onto her elbow—ouch—taking off a layer of skin.

Which was when Carolyn kicked her.

She caught Hannah hard in the ribs, knocking the air from her lungs.

Enough was enough.

Gasping for air, Hannah grabbed Carolyn’s foot. Twisting, in a move that she’d learned back when
she
was seven from Pat and his Marine buddies, she brought Carolyn down into the dirt with her.

Which surprised the hell out of everyone—especially Carolyn, who wasn’t used to her victims fighting back.

And once the fight became a fight and not a one-sided beating, Carolyn did what most bullies did. She ran away.

Hannah scrambled to her feet, panting. She pushed her disheveled hair back from her face as she scanned the group of Sunflowers. “Who’s next?” she said and they all took a solid step back.