Forget Me Not (23 page)

A rock garden. Like the one she'd torn from the magazine in Dr. Terrien's office. How on earth had Gabe guessed that she wanted a rock garden?

He answered her question by holding up the crinkled article that had inspired her. It must have fallen out of her purse at some point. "Do you want it to look just like this?" he asked, indicating the picture. "We can do it any way you want," he added, full of enthusiasm.

"This is fine," she replied, unnerved that he'd picked up on her unspoken desires, let alone acted on them. Leila, whom she'd just had lunch with, had to be right. No one would go to such great lengths unless he was trying to win a war. Gabe was used to winning. He'd do anything to earn himself a permanent place in her life.

We'll see,
she thought, eyeing their arrangement dazedly. She wasn't as naive as she once was.

And yet, another side of her watched with burgeoning hope as Gabe picked up two rocks and set them at angles to each other, eyeing the picture to be certain that he'd got the angle right. There wasn't any hint of guile in his earnest expression. Sweat rolled from his shaggy hairline over the curve of his jaw. His yellow T-shirt clung to him.

She pictured the scars hidden under the damp fabric. How could the abuse he'd suffered at the hands of the enemy made him more generous? If it had been she who'd endured such horror, it would have left her disillusioned, bitter, angry with the world.

These changes in Gabe had to be temporary at best. Once he recalled his nightmare in its entirety, he would surely grow angry and embittered. He would focus his energies on seeking revenge and, in the process, forget about his family.

It was inevitable. She needed to brace herself. Falling in love with this half-finished version of Gabe would be a serious mistake.

Keeping notably silent, she stepped past the working pair and up the stairs, guilt chasing her the entire way.

Six of the eight men in first squad, Echo Platoon, crowded around the kitchen table in Luther Lindstrom's kitchen. Among those absent were Lieutenant Commander Jason Miller, uninvited, and PO3 Rodriguez, the newest member, who was otherwise occupied.

Luther's fiancee flitted around the men, clearly in her element as she placed aromatic cookies before them and filled their glasses with milk, beer, or Coke. The men muttered their thanks, ignoring her as much as it was possible to ignore a pair of lush breasts thrust in their faces or her silky dark hair brushing their shoulders.

Teddy "Bear" Brewbaker broke the ice by bringing up a common complaint: Miller's penchant for penny-pinching. "He calls it wasting ammo," he groused, setting down his beer with a thud. "What's a kill house for if we're not going to shoot it up? Christ, all he worries about is what it'll cost to replace the thing."

The men shook their heads in unanimous disgust and added in their two cents. Then they all looked expectantly at Gabe, who had requested this get-together.

Gabe gave Luther a meaningful look and tipped his head in Veronica's direction.

"Ronnie, we're going to need some privacy," Luther called rather hesitantly. SEAL business was strictly confidential.

She clucked her tongue in annoyance and abandoned a cookie sheet in the sink, wiping her hands on her apron as she flounced out of the room.

Gabe took a deep breath, keenly aware of the silence that had fallen over the table. "Er, I don't know how much the master chief has told you guys..."

One look at their blank expressions and it was clear that the answer was
nothing.
Sebastian was the soul of discretion.

"All right, here's the deal," he continued, pitching his voice low. "I want to know about the night I disappeared. I want to know what the hell went wrong."

Westy McCaffrey shared a look with Teddy, before fixing his laser-blue eyes on Gabe and taking it upon himself to answer the question. "There were just four of us on the mission, sir—you, me, Teddy, and the XO. We had to lift four SAMs from a warehouse in Pyongyang. It was a perfect setup. Dark as Hades, no activity in the port We took an SDV into the harbor," he added, making reference to the SEAL Delivery Vehicle, a miniature wet sub too small to be picked up by radar, and swam ashore. We'd carted off three of the SAMs when we started taking on fire. There were shooters in the catwalks overhead—how they got there, we don't know. They started shooting up the place, and either they were lousy shots or they only wanted to scare us off. No one took a hit, but Miller ordered a retreat."

Gabe held up his hand for a moment to assimilate what he'd heard. Visions flickered through his mind, dimming before he had a chance to view them clearly. "Hold up a minute. Who were the shooters?" he wanted to know.

Westy and Teddy shook their heads. "Don't know, sir," Teddy said. "We never got a good look at them. They were all hidden, which makes us think they were there before we arrived—that's what freaks me out."

"So what made them wait to start shooting?"

The men shook their heads, no one the wiser.

"I have a theory," Sebastian spoke up suddenly, and the men turned expectant gazes his way. "At the time of this mission," he reminded them, "weapons were disappearing faster than we could get to them. And it wasn't just Echo Platoon or SEAL Team Twelve who came up empty-handed. It happened to other operations, too. SEALs inserted to interdict weapons shipments and the weapons were already gone. Someone was beating us to the punch."

Thoughtful silence followed the master chief's observation.

Gabe swung his attention back to Westy. "What happened once the shooting started?" he wanted to know.

Westy looked like Satan himself when he frowned, a trait that made him a natural for infiltrating terrorists. "We pulled back under Miller's orders and were dropping into the water when I noticed you weren't on the XO's buddy line," he continued. "I signed to him—
Where's LT?
He motioned for me to keep moving. Once we got to the SDV, Miller said you wanted to stay with the missile. That sounded like something you'd do, sir, especially given the situation Master Chief just described. Strange thing is neither Teddy nor I heard you say it over our headsets."

Teddy nodded to corroborate Westy's story. All the men looked at Gabe, wondering if he'd volunteered to stay behind or if Miller had somehow ditched him and why?

"We tried to make radio contact with you but we couldn't. All of a sudden, kaboom! The whole fucking warehouse went up in a ball of fire," Westy finished, glowering.

"We couldn't believe it," Teddy added, shock still lingering in his dark eyes even after a year's time.

"Teddy thinks it was detonated," Westy added, pinning his blue gaze on the explosives specialist.

"Talk to me, Bear," Gabe pressed, wiping clammy palms on his blue jeans. His heart was thudding fast. He'd been there, damn it. He ought to recall what had happened.

"It's just my opinion, sir," the black man admitted. "Yes, there was oil all over the place and bullets being fired, and that alone could have caused a fire. But the explosion that took out the building looked rigged to me. It went
boom,
boom, boom
in a perfect line, like the place was rigged with C-4, two pounds of it at least."

A thoughtful silence descended over the group as each man pondered the growing list of questions: who were the other men in the warehouse? Not the native population, surely, who wouldn't have sacrificed their own warehouse or the goods inside it. It had to have been outsiders like themselves, men determined to cover up clandestine activities.

Gabe threw out the million-dollar question. "What happened to the fourth missile?" he wanted to know.

"Disappeared," said Teddy.

"No trace of it when we reconned the next night," Vinny added, letting Gabe know that the others had been called in at that point. "There was nothing there."

They all gazed solemnly at Gabe, and he could just imagine the gut-wrenching despair they'd experienced thinking their mission had gone awry, believing they'd lost one of their own.

"Fuck, sir, we had to sift through the ashes to look for you," Westy recalled, his voice raw with remembered agony. "Wait a minute, we did find something. We found your tooth!" he added, clearly just remembering. "Master Chief, what happened to the tooth?"

Sebastian León sat forward. "It was used to ID Jaguar," he replied, a glimmer of speculation in his dark eyes.

Gabe slid his tongue into the empty slot at the side of his mouth. Relief tickled his lungs, prompting him to throw back his head and laugh. His men got a clear glimpse of where his tooth had once been. "Oh, Jesus," Gabe sighed, wiping a tear of mirth from the corner of his eye. He didn't reveal to them how he'd agonized over the loss of that tooth. "Someone must have knocked me out and maybe dragged my ass out of there before the place blew," he conjectured.

The men muttered their thoughts out loud until Master Chief held up a hand for silence. "Listen up," he said, causing the table to fall quiet. "No one talks about this with anyone," he advised, meeting each of their gazes, one by one.

Gabe looked away, suddenly self-conscious. Sebastian was repeating the caution that Forrester had relayed to Gabe and Gabe, in turn, had shared with his master chief before their meeting today. The men would follow Sebastian's orders without question and without need for explanation.

"What we need to discover," the master chief continued, "is whether Miller had anything to do with Jaguar's disappearance. Keep your ears to the ground and your eyes open. Report anything unusual to me or to Jaguar."

He paused a thoughtful moment before adding, "Someone may be trying to terminate him before his memory comes back." To the dumbstruck squad members, he relayed the story of Gabe's close encounter with the police car.

Gabe bore their startled looks as stoically as possible. A part of him still fretted that he'd made the whole thing up. Not a single patrol car at the Sandbridge Police Station had shown any damage done to the passenger's side mirror.

"We weren't satisfied at the hearing a year ago," Sebastian recalled. "Jaguar should not have disappeared on us. I don't like it when history repeats itself. We learn from our mistakes. We protect our own."

"Hear, hear," muttered Westy.

Sebastian spent the next few minutes outlining the need for caution. The men would take turns guarding Gabe's back, sitting in a parked car outside the house at night, playing sentinel on his deck by day.

Gabe's stomach burned with secret shame. He wanted to insist that he could protect his family, but could he? More than once now, Helen had sneaked up on him without him even noticing. He'd been too caught up in dealing with the memories coming back to him. "Hold up, Master Chief," he interrupted. "We're going out of town tomorrow," he recalled. "I'll call you when I get back."

Sebastian gave him a considering look. Reaching under his pantleg, he released the Velcro strap of a gun holster and handed both the holster and the gun to Gabe. "Take this with you," he implored.

In the holster was a Glock 23, a semiautomatic, registered in Sebastian's name, no doubt. Master Chief was going out on a limb to give it to him. Gabe accepted the offering, noting the weight of the weapon with a feeling of premonition. He nodded gratefully and strapped the weapon to his own calf.

With Gabe's situation tentatively resolved, the men passed the next half hour reminiscing. To Gabe's gratification, he recalled most of the episodes rehashed, including various missions during Operation Iraqi Freedom.

"When was that?" Gabe asked with a tingle of excitement.

" 'Bout two years ago."

"No, it was like eighteen months."

"I remember it," he marveled, relief rushing through him. Piece by piece, his past was coming back to him. If only the most important links would fall into place!

A half hour later, they tramped toward the door. Gabe was last in line. To his astonishment, Veronica slipped out of the darkened corridor and coiled her arms around his waist. "Welcome home, Jaguar," she murmured, her tone intimate.

He froze, shocked by the feel of her breasts against his back. At that same instant, Luther ducked through the doorway. He drew up short to see his fiancee's arms around Gabe's midsection. "Veronica!" he said sharply, his tone reflecting shock.

Her arms fell away. Sending a wary look at the hulking junior lieutenant, Gabe continued wordlessly out the door, his thoughts tripping over themselves. The feel of Veronica's breasts, firm with the implants she touted, had prompted a memory he wished he could forget. He'd been with Veronica. But that was before Helen, he was certain of it. It'd been a long time ago, when he first came to Dam Neck.

Luther escorted him all the way to Sebastian's car. Wary of his silence, Gabe darted him a look. Thankfully the younger man didn't look jealous, only thoughtful. Knowing how smart Luther was, surely it was only a matter of time before he called off his engagement.

The setting sun painted Sebastian's primer-covered Ford a rusty orange. As Gabe reached for the door handle, Luther put a hand on his shoulder, startling him. "Glad to have you back, sir," he said with sincerity. "Can't wait to have you on the team again."

"Thanks, Luther," said Gabe. He felt the need to say more, to offer the younger man advice, but the words stuck in his throat.

As he slipped into Sebastian's car, he let out a breath of relief.

Sebastian cut him a curious look.

"How long has Luther been engaged?" Gabe wanted to know.

"Two months." Sebastian backed the car up. "I'm praying his vision clears before he screws his life up."

"Amen to that," said Gabe. Marriage was tough enough, even with a partner who was faithful. He was doing everything within his power to illustrate his devotion to Helen, and still she'd given him no hope that she'd changed her mind about separating.

But he wasn't throwing in the towel just yet.

Helen prepared to set the table, giving only half her attention to her mother's soliloquy. Ingrid Troy required a minimum of feedback to keep a conversation flowing. So far, Helen's lack of response had gone unnoticed.