Sanctuary 02 - The Only Easy Day (CMS) (MM) (2 page)

When it came to disembarking, Joseph had never felt happier the SEALs never had to share a plane with anything other than a few combat support guys. Six guys getting off one plane made life a lot easier than a plane full of troops. As soon as his booted feet hit the blacktop, Joseph inhaled deeply of the fresh Virginia air. Everyone stood absolutely still for a few seconds, and Joseph glanced critically at each man. Apart from Dexter and his nose, the team of six men, by some luck and more than a little skill, had made it back largely unscathed. The way every man stood so utterly still meant he wasn't the only one to be glad they'd made it back alive.

The team's reactions to coming home varied from excited to resigned to way-too-exhausted-to-register. The night of landings was always the same. With unspoken agreement, the small group started the walk back to the main hanger where there would be some way of getting back to wherever the hell they all needed to go. Some, like him and Dexter, had apartments nearby; others had rooms in larger houses. All had to be within the one-hour recall when not on leave. He and Dexter walked side by side as the SEALs made their way from the immediate area to the regroup point.

"Fuck. Commander's here." The curse from Fuentes stopped him in his tracks.

Joseph startled at the pronouncement that spilled from the team's newest recruit's mouth. The words were tinged with newbie awe that the commanding officer was in attendance to their arrival home. Joseph was instantly watchful and tried to make out who the CO was looking at.

The team usually had time to breathe before the official crap started, but the CO being here, standing silently and waiting for them to arrive, could mean only one thing. For one of the six in the team, there was bad news.

Something had happened while they were deployed, and for one of them, life had somehow changed when they were out of reach.

"Shit." Even with the broken nose, Dexter uttered that single word very clearly and with an edge of fear.

Dexter not only had the long-term girlfriend but two living parents and five siblings with associated partners and children. Jeez. Not Dexter.

The lieutenant held up a hand to stop his team and then walked swiftly ahead to stand toe-to-toe with the CO.

They talked briefly, and the lieutenant turned to face his men with a look of resignation on his face.

"Chief Kinnon," he started firmly. "Go with the CO."

The entire bottom fell out of Joseph's world, and he reached blindly to grip Dexter's arm. Dexter took a step forward to go with Joseph, but he pulled him to a stop.

"It's okay," he reassured Dexter, and tugged his arm free. It wasn't okay. It was far from being okay. He only had a few people outside his team that meant anything to him. Something had happened to his mom? It was the only thing he could think of, the only family he had, and that his CO was standing there waiting to tell him bad news was wrong.

He took the few short steps to the CO, a tall imposing man with a face carved from stone. Commander Finch hadn't gotten to be a CO of elite SEAL teams by being the nice guy. He was tension and passion and loyalty all wrapped up in one commanding presence.

"Chief Kinnon."

"Sir."

"Walk with me, son."

Only training and blind obedience kept Joseph from freezing in the middle of the freaking airfield refusing to move and demanding answers right the fuck now. They reached a door and passed through it into the shaded corner of a huge hangar. Dim lighting was enough to see compassion on the CO's face.

"I'm sorry to be the one to tell you this, Joseph. While you were off radar, your stepsister passed away." 

"Elisabeth?"

Of course Elisabeth. He had only one stepsister.

When his mom had remarried two years before, he had inherited both her and a stepdad, Harvey Costain. He didn't know them very well. He was never stateside long enough to form a real bond, but, jeez, his mom and Harvey must be devastated.

"You have my condolences."

"What the fu—hell happened? Sir." He added the belated sir on the end as his training kicking in with a vengeance.

"The police are conducting a murder investigation."

"Murder?" Joseph dropped his pack to the floor as any energy he had slid straight out of him. " How? Who?"

"If it's any consolation, it was quick, and she wasn't… harmed in any other way."

Consolation? Quick wasn't a consolation to any family. One day it might be. But now? Nothing made this easier to hear.

"She was coming to stay—we weren't close—but she wanted to spend time with me…" He was rambling.

Why the hell was he telling all this to a man who didn't need to hear it? He could hear himself talking, but the shock weighed heavy on him, and suddenly the words just stopped. Emotion choked his throat. This leave was supposed to be him finally finding his role as a big brother, maybe even giving definition to his life. And from what she'd said, to Elisabeth's life as well. She had called him and left messages when he'd come back last time, said she needed a friend, a brother, said it had been too long since their parents married for them to connect. His CO was still talking in that tone only reserved for those who had to dispatch bad news on a regular basis. Soft and low and so damn understanding.

"Is there someone who can help you? I can assign someone from the family liaison—"

"No," Joseph said quickly. This was his family, and he didn't need liaison or support or any of that official shit.

His shoulders were plenty broad enough to handle what life threw at him. This would be no different. Priorities. It was all about priorities to make sense of the buzzing in his head.

Intel was first. A SEAL was nothing without the intelligence gathering to back up a mission. Phone his mom to find out when it had happened and why it had happened.

Pushing back the flood of sudden grief that forced its way forward, he fell back on his training. 

"Can you make sure Dexter sees a medic, sir? And tell the lieutenant I'll be back in the normal thirty days."

"I will. And Joseph? Between you and me, if you plan on—" He paused. "—doing anything then just be careful. Good luck, son."

It was a four-mile run to his apartment in Virginia Beach. Less than twenty minutes and he would be in
his
place. An hour and he could have showered Afghanistan from his skin, shaved his thick facial hair and packed.

Three and he would be heading to Albany to find answers.

* * * *

His apartment was just as he had left it—empty and clean. In a daze he went through the motions of finding the man under the layers of grime. Shaving the beard that protected his skin beneath removed the persona of soldier a scrape at a time, and the shower water was cold before he exited the stall. This was ritual; this was normal, and for a few minutes, he found solace in the repetition of actions that grounded him to the here and now. He heard his cell but didn't answer it, just left it on charge as it was flat from its disuse and only showed one bar of charge. He knew Dexter was trying to contact him, but until he had his bags packed and he was on the road, he wasn't ready to answer questions. Dexter stopped calling; instead he texted a simple
call me
, which Joseph knew was his friend's way of offering unconditional support and showing he would back off and wait for Joseph to make the first move.

Dressed in jeans and a t-shirt and grabbing a jacket from his closet, he checked he had wallet, keys, and his bag. Locking the door and crossing to his old Jeep, he hoped to God the damn thing started after sitting for so long. The heap started on the third turn just as Joseph thought his luck might well have run out. Three thirty-five in the morning, and he was heading north on highway 13.

Shock was something he knew one hell of a lot about. The dead and dying and the ones who watched… He had seen the horror of it all, and as detached as he had to be, he could categorize every single nuance of disbelief and grief. None of what he knew was even halfway real when he remembered his stepsister. He pulled off at a gas stop for fuel and grabbed a protein bar and a bottle of water. He couldn't delay the inevitable any longer, and with a heavy heart, he dialed the number he knew by heart. His mom answered on the third ring. Proof that it didn't matter what time of day he called; she would have a phone close by.

"Joseph," she said calmly. "Did they tell you?" 

"I'm so sorry, Mom. How is Harvey?" Joseph was a master at changing the subject, and his mom didn't call him on it.

"Devastated. Totally heartbroken. We've had newspapers calling for interviews and people stalking us, taking photos. It's only died down in the last month." The last month? Why the hell had it garnered so much attention? "We tried to let you know. Passed it on to the right people. They said they would let you know when you were back in the US."

That sounded about right. Joseph and the rest of the team were very often off radar and out of reach. It was standard procedure to make contact when it didn't jeopardize what the SEALs were doing.

"Will you tell him I am so sorry for his loss?"

Joseph offered gently. He had a lot of respect for Harvey and felt grief for what the other man had gone through.

"I will… wait—"

Joseph heard the phone being passed to another; he assumed it was Harvey.

"Joseph?"

"I am so sorry for your loss." It felt wrong to say
our
loss. Harvey had lost a child, his daughter, and it must feel like nearing the end of times. Joseph had simply lost someone he'd begun to be friends with. It was a different world of pain.

"Where are you, son?" Harvey sounded exhausted, and Joseph didn't bristle at the term "son". He never had.

When his mom had met Harvey, it was almost as if Joseph could finally let himself relax about who was looking after his mom. It felt real. Like a family. He had even received a readymade sister. Harvey had been more of a husband to his mom in two short years than Joseph's real father had been. He'd been nothing more than a sperm donor when his mom was sixteen. Should he lie? Tell Harvey he was on base or due to ship out? Would the man stop him from what he wanted to do if he actually admitted he was planning on looking into this murder? Harvey could well have already resolved his emotions about losing his daughter, probably in an arena that didn't include throwing himself in the middle of a murder investigation, as it did for Joseph.

"On my way to Albany on the 13," he finally admitted.

"What are you going to do?" There was tension in Harvey's voice, but no accusation or words to put Joseph's intended actions on hold. The line went quiet, and he wished he could see Harvey's expression. Had he put two and two together? Was the gentle man horrified or relieved Joseph was going to the place his daughter had been killed?

Harvey and his mom living in Florida had never made Miami seem farther away.

"I'm going to find out why my stepsister died, sir," he said very simply.

Harvey exhaled noisily, and his mom was back on the phone in seconds. She had watched Joseph go into the Navy, become a SEAL, get ordered overseas. Every single time she had waved him off with a smile and a promise she would be there when he came back. She knew it was what he was trained for, and he was well aware this time would be no different.

"What are you doing, Joseph?"

"Going to find out who killed Elisabeth and why."

He didn't expect her to stop him from taking this path, but he was aware she would have something to say on the matter.

"Please, Joseph… stay safe. This is a very different kind of evil than what you are used to."

"I'm always safe, Mom." He was good at reassuring.

"How can we help?" Trust his mom to cut to the chase. He wanted to ask more about the case itself.

"If it's not too hard, can you tell me what happened?" 

"We don't know much more than what was in the papers. Elisabeth was murdered in an alley at the back of a hotel near her home, and the shooter was a lifetime cop with a family. No one knows why she was there at that time or why she was shot. The case has been closed because the cop… Gareth Headley… admitted what he had done and is now serving time for his actions. Harvey wanted to stay in Albany and find out why the cop risked everything he had to kill someone, but his heart…" His mom had met Harvey volunteering in the heart unit at the local hospital. He might have been only in his early fifties, but, as he put it himself, he was on enough medication to rouse the dead.

"It's enough for me to start."

"Will you call us when you have anything?"

"I will, Mom."

The call ended with the usual goodbyes. Whatever had happened to Elisabeth, he had thirty days to find the answer. Whoever had hurt his stepsister—killed her—
wasn't going to get away with this. Justice would be done.

That much he was sure of. 

"I have eyes on the target." Dale MacIntyre leaned away from the wall at the sounds of the words in his ear.

"West entrance. He's alone." A prickle of apprehension skittered down his spine as he casually glanced around him.

The west entrance was the busiest ingress into the shopping center, and the rush of humanity piling in and around him made for difficult identification of the subject. He had photos, images from yearbooks, and some grainy surveillance shots, but he wondered just how easy it would be to identify Robert Bullen from those alone in this sea of faces.

Nik had it easy; the facial recognition software he was using would tag Robert immediately. "Blue jacket, jeans, dark hair. Five ten," Nik confirmed into Dale's ear buds. "He's carrying a duffle."

Dale moved to one side of the clutch of moms and toddlers who had decided to gather on what he thought of as his corner then dropped his half-finished coffee in the bin. Eyes focusing on the newcomers, he finally saw someone enter the main door who fit the profile he had been given. When the man turned his head, clearly looking for someone in the mess of people, Dale got a full look at his face. That was definitely his guy, Robert Bullen, twenty-one, which made him eight years younger than Dale and probably eight years less careful. The idiot was standing there staring around like he had all the time in the world and didn't care who saw him.