SEALs of Summer 2: A Military Romance Superbundle (42 page)

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January 3, 2010. Nine Days Before…

AIDS Clinic, Port-au-Prince

D
r. Ysabeau Morno
waited until the clinic was almost empty before dragging her feet into the lab to check the viral loads. Months ago she was brimming with hope and raced like a child down the corridor to see the results of the serum trial. Tonight, her sandals scuffed across the floor as if she was lining up before a firing squad.

Placing the first drop of blood on the slide was a lot harder than it should have been. Her hands shook terribly. The lab was quiet except for the distracting hum of the florescent lights and the pounding of her heart in her ears.

The faces of her sick patients haunted her thoughts. One by one, a hundred of them had come to her clinic and begged her to save their lives. Her serum trial was the last resort for these people, her people. They were the unlucky group who had not responded to traditional medicines and were going to die horrible wasteful deaths, each and every one of them, unless she found the cure. So far she’d buried twenty patients. Twenty! How many more would die before she got the serum right?

“Come on, come on!” She turned the knob on the microscope and pressed her glasses against the eyepieces. “Good results, please, God.”

She held her breath as the magnified image came into focus.
No!
She pushed back from the table. Her stool screeched across the linoleum tiles.

Furiously, she paced inside the lab.
It’s not working! Why?
Ysabeau wanted to scream or hurl the microscope out the window and deep into the Gulf of Gonâve. Maybe she’d jump in after it.

The serum had worked beautifully during the animal testing. What was she doing wrong?

Circling back to the table with the dreaded microscope, she picked up the patient’s file. She would have paid all the money left in her paltry savings account for someone to steal the file right out of her hands. Exhaling deeply, she read the name.

Mr. Johnson.

She blinked hard on the tears. If she started crying now, she might never stop.

Mr. Johnson.

She could almost feel his calloused hands in hers.

“I’ve got faith in you, girl,” the old fisherman had said the day he signed up for the trial. “Them other doctors were headshrinkers. Not you, Dr. Morno, you’re gonna get this right ’cuz my grandbaby is getting married in June. She’s a sweet little thing, my grandbaby. But you don’t want to get her cranky. She turns more venomous than one of them long-nosed solenodons when she doesn’t get what she wants. She says she be dancin’ the
Merengue
with me on her special day. It’s what she wants, and I can’t disappoint her, can I? Make me well, Dr. Morno.”

Ysabeau’s heart shattered. Mr. Johnson wasn’t going to be dancing in June. He’d be cremated long before then.

Grief pounded in her head. Her patients were dying before her eyes.

A nurse knocked quietly and said, “Talitha and her mother are here. Do you want me to bring them to the examination room?”

Talitha was the youngest person in the trial and one of the sickest.

Ysabeau dried her cheeks. “Yes. I’ll be there in a minute.”

She had to pull herself together for her patients. They trusted her. Needed her. Plastering on a smile that felt as foreign and tight as stretched-on rubber, she forced her legs to carry her into the exam room and said as cheerily as she could, “Bonswa! How is my favorite patient?”

The frail girl with knobby knees and painfully thin arms looked up from her chair. “Hi, Dr. Morno. I’m better today.”

The girl’s mother, a woman who had aged five years in the last month, bolted to her feet. “Do you have news, doctor? Is the medicine working?”

Ysabeau swallowed hard. “Soon. We pray for soon.”

The woman dipped her head as she sank back into her plastic chair. It was a slight movement, barely noticeable, but Ysabeau caught it and knew. Talitha’s mother had given up hope.

As Ysabeau lightly pressed the stethoscope to Talitha’s bony back, she said, “Oh Talitha, your dress is beautiful. I love the color.”

The little girl smiled, and for the briefest of seconds a light flashed in her dark, sunken eyes. “Pink makes me feel pretty.”

Her mother turned her head away so as not to show her emotions. Ysabeau struggled to keep hers in check, as well.
Pretty
was a word rarely heard at this clinic.

“You are beautiful, Talitha.” Ysabeau patted the girl’s head while noting her curly dark hair had orange highlights, a sign of severe malnutrition. “Simply beautiful.”

Checking Talitha’s blood pressure, Ysabeau had to remind herself she was examining a twelve-year-old girl who, like any other girl her age, was concerned with her looks. And boys. Talitha was so small and emaciated Ysabeau wanted to pull her into her lap and cradle her like a child. A very sick child dying with AIDS.

Ysabeau bit back on the rage and anguish that threatened to swamp her. She had to fix this. Talitha should be allowed to fall in love. To dance at her own wedding. To live. She couldn’t let this little girl die.

*

Our Lady’s Sorrow, San Francisco

Cutting the engine,
Luke Carter rolled his Carrera to a stop half a block from the guard’s house and pushed it an extra five feet beneath the drooping branches of a willow. He snuck past the house, crept to the locked gates and hopped the fence. Landing in a crouch on the dew-drenched grass, he held the brown bag and waited to see if he’d been detected. Nothing. Not even a whimper from the guard’s old dog. He went on.

The landscape was silver-coated with mist, but still he knew his way by heart. One gravestone, two, three, too many. He counted them off as he passed, careful not to wake the living or dead.

Unzipping his bomber jacket, Luke took out the grass-stained blanket his wife, Soli, had knit with her weak, quivering fingers. He held the folded blanket to his chest a brief second before spreading it out across the grass.

Sitting cross-legged on the blanket, he spoke to his wife’s headstone as he dug inside the bag for a pastry. “Morning, sweetheart. I’ve got breakfast, but the new kid at the bakery sold out your favorite blueberry muffins.” He inspected a scone. “Raspberry.”

Closing his eyes, he tried to envision that heart-stopping Soli smile. Luke’s chest tightened. It was getting harder and harder to remember her smile, soft touch, and amazing laughter. Hell, she was slipping away from him.

A dove cooed in a tree above. It was a lonely, desperate sound.

He toasted her with his cup of black coffee and placed her vanilla latte on the ground next to him. “We’ll have blueberry muffins next time, or the kid is toast.”

He reached into his back pocket and pulled out his wallet. Inside, next to his SEAL trident pin, was his most valuable possession—a picture of their little girl taken last year. He gazed at the photo while fear and pride tied his intestines into knots. Staring into the camera was a bald, fearless thirteen-year-old girl with darkly circled eyes and a blazingly beautiful smile. If a person didn’t really look, they might think the girl in the photo was fragile. Looking closely now, Luke saw the strength in Sunny’s eyes. Her smile was so ferociously beautiful it stole a little piece of his heart. His sweet, loving daughter was a scrapper in the fight of her life. She was far tougher than he’d ever be.

Gently kissing the picture, Luke stood it up next to Soli’s headstone. He couldn’t lose his little girl. He’d never survive without her.

“I swear, Soli, I’m going to have to beat the boys off with sticks. She’s so damned beautiful. Just like her mother.”

His iPhone went off in his hip pocket. So much for sneaking in undetected. He checked the caller ID.
Private caller.
Shit. That could only mean one thing—his past was coming back to bite him in the ass. He ran his hands through his hair and answered on the second ring.

“Yup?”

“Hey, man. How’s it hanging?” He’d heard that voice in his dreams. Sometimes he woke up screaming. But he’d never forget the man who’d saved his life and watched his six more times than he could count. His chest warmed.
Sonofabitch, do I actually miss SEAL Lieutenant Commander Mack Riley?

Luke couldn’t stop the corners of his lips from rising. “Lower than yours, buddy. But we both know that. If you’re calling me, you must be desperate. I’m out.”

“I know. I know. But since Soli is gone, I just thought—” Mack let out a hiss. “Dammit to hell, Luke, we’re in deep shit over here. Jackson, Greene, Henry, all lost. I need you on my team. We all need your medical expertise in the field, man. You’re the best corpsman I know.”

His heart beat strong. Being a corpsman, a SEAL? It was the only job he loved. But he wasn’t patching up bloody men anymore. That part of his life was over. Luke gave up the SEALs when Soli was sick. Shit, he was a bastard for not coming home earlier, before the love of his life was dying. Guilt poured acid in his guts and chewed and frayed the ends of his nerves. No matter which way he turned, he betrayed people he loved—his SEAL buddies. His wife. He wasn’t going to do that to his daughter. No way in hell.

“Sorry, Mack. You’ll find another corpsman. I’m out.”

“Yeah, all right. I get it. I had to try.”

“‘Nothing lasts forever,’” Luke quoted one of the infamous mottos from BUD/s. “Stay safe out there.”

“‘The only easy day was yesterday.’” Mack laughed, quoting another. “Will do.”

“Call me when you’re out. We’ll catch up,” Luke said. Even though he knew they wouldn’t.

Was that gunfire in the background? Where the hell was he? “Sure man. Kiss your little girl for me. I’ve got to go.”

The line disconnected. Luke stared at his phone an extra beat, emotions he’d buried long ago crawled out like
Night of the Living Dead
horror. Hoorah.

The phone rang again. What in the hell? He jammed his finger on the button. “I can’t do it. I have a daughter who needs me.” His voice was no longer graveyard-robbing low.

“Exactly. Dad, it’s a quarter to eight. Where are you?” Sunny’s sweet, slightly agitated voice came through the receiver.

“No, that can’t be, it’s only six thirty.” He glanced at his watch. “Oh, sh—”

“Fifty cents in the Swear Jar,” she warned.

He smiled. His daughter was forever trying to clean up his act. “Sugar. I was going to say, ‘oh, sugar, my watch stopped again.’”

She blew through her lips in disgust. “That thing is worthless.”

He folded up the blanket and picked up the remnants of breakfast. “Not quite worthless.” It was a very expensive Rolex Submariner Soli had given him as a birthday present. He’d never part with it.

“Whatever. Where are you?” she asked.

He let out a deep breath. “I’m having breakfast with Mom.”

“Oh, Dad.” Sadness choked her words. “Why?”

“Marriage vows, sweetheart. Eat breakfast together, never go to bed angry, grow old—” A lump the size of Gibraltar lodged in his throat. He took a sip of coffee.

“It’s been two years.”

“I promised your mom breakfast. On the third of every month, we celebrate our anniversary with muffins and coffee from the cafe where we met.” The ritual started when Luke came home from duty and he was still hanging onto it even though Soli was deep in the ground.

“I didn’t know,” she whispered.

“Of course not. I sneak out while you’re asleep and tip-toe in before you wake,” he laughed. “I guess I blew it today.” Then he remembered the stopped watch. “Oh sh…sugar you’re going to be late for school.”

“Don’t worry. I can ride with Jenna.”

“Worry? I’ll have a stroke. Jenna just passed the driver’s test. I’m taking you to school.”

“You’ll never make it in time.”

“I’ll make it.”

“You can’t get another speeding ticket, Dad. Do you know how lame traffic school is? Nothing but losers. That’s what Jenna says, she hated it. No way. I’ll catch the bus.”

The filthy, germ-ridden bus? Hell, no. “See you in ten.”

Hanging up, he took a bite of the scone and chased it with a sip of coffee. The sweet surprise clashed with his expectations of dark roasted black java. He’d sipped the vanilla latte by mistake. Grimacing, he poured it out on the greenest plot in the cemetery—Soli’s.