Light Up the Night (17 page)

The table was too long to waste time going around. He placed a palm in the middle and vaulted across. He moved fast and quiet, careful to not mask further sounds Trisha might make in her flight with his own. Through the kitchen door, past a startled cook who gave a small cry as he raced through her domain.

Back door. But even as he reached for it, he knew that was wrong. He'd heard a rattle that would have been the old brass knob, but nothing that matched the glass-paned door being slammed. It had been a heavier door, farther away, that he'd heard as he'd entered the kitchen of shining tile and steel.

He cut right into a long back hall. The change of sound in his footfalls as he shifted from linoleum to old wood was right. There were a half-dozen doors, rooms, cellars, servants' quarters, but it was the second to last door on the left. A floor mat in front of the door had been skidded sideways. He was out the back door and knew he was no more than fifty feet behind his quarry.

But full night had fallen and he was on unscouted terrain.

To his right, one of those inflatable pool domes, clearly accessed by the last door in the long hall. To his left, a formal garden. Straight ahead would be her direction. He blinked hard several times to force more blood to his eyes so they'd adapt from light to dark faster—which never seemed to help much, but he did it anyway—and cocked his head to watch out of the corner of his eyes to make the best use of the heightened light sensitivity of peripheral vision.

The night was quiet. A bat flitted by on its night patrol. Cars along a distant road. Dylan O'Malley had mentioned how they still held sixty acres of the original farmstead, making this one of the largest properties remaining in all of Milton, other than the city park that had been donated to the town by an earlier generation of O'Malleys as a tax write-off.

Bill dropped down a steep grassy slope and pulled to a halt along the verge of an orchard that filled what appeared to be a small, bowl-shaped valley. Houses perched along the upper edge, but no lights reached here. It was pitch black under the trees. Looking up, he could see a hint of the sky through some of the highest branches. The leaves had started to drop, so he listened.

Ahead and to the left he heard a soft rustle of running footsteps. Fast and light, but not silent.

Bill followed in starts and stops, moving quietly, then waiting to hear the next sign of where Trisha might have gone.

Even without being able to see the stars, he could tell that she was circling. She must know he was there.

“Stop following me!” He heard the result of the sobs that had ripped at her throat as she shouted at him through the darkness.

Thirty yards at two o'clock.

“Damn you, Billy! Just leave me alone.”

Twenty-five at three o'clock. “What do you mean SOAR threw you out?” He kept his voice soft and faced to his left so that he'd sound farther away and in a slightly different direction.

“I don't want to talk about it. Can't you figure that out inside that thick SEAL head of yours?” It had worked and she'd made a wrong turn. Now fifteen yards to his right.

“That's why you showed up in Vermont.” He lowered his voice's pitch as much as he could to decrease its directionality, this time speaking in another direction.

“Well, I sure as hell wasn't going to come here. I can't believe you brought me here.”

Let her blame him, if that made it easier for her.

He took a gamble. He ducked his head behind a particularly thick tree trunk and spoke toward what would be her left. The tree would block the sound of his voice except to one side, making her think he was much farther in that direction.

“I'm glad you showed up for whatever reason.” Then he moved quickly in the opposite direction. Walking silently through dead leaves wasn't the easiest thing in the world, but SEALs weren't trained only in how to do easy tasks.

Twenty yards, he should be past where she would move to continue away from his voice. Then he leaned against a tree trunk and waited in the darkest part of the shadow. He held his breath. The night had gotten cold, and he didn't want a hint of the white vapor he'd exhale to give him away.

“I was glad to be there for you.” Trisha was speaking to herself in little more than a whisper. She passed not three feet from his hiding place, heading deeper into the orchard.

“I couldn't have done it without you.” He too kept his voice a whisper.

“Shit!” She jumped about two feet straight up, then stopped moving and turned to face him, her white face the barest outline in the darkness. “Damn you, Billy.” She thumped a fist on his chest, but it didn't have any real energy behind it.

He smoothed a hand down her shoulder, partly to reassure her and partly so he could grab her if she jackrabbited away again when he asked his question.

“Now what's this about being tossed out of SOAR?”

***

Trisha wished she could cut out her tongue. She'd also like to know how Billy had found her. She'd been so sure he was headed north. She'd half hoped to lead him into the small marsh there. Maybe he'd get slowed down in the mud and lose track of her. Maybe he'd become mired and never find her again.

Instead he stood there at the center of the orchard, leaning against the old oak she'd been planning to climb into. She'd spent hundreds, probably thousands, of hours up that tree as a kid, reading books, listening to music, whatever. The center tree in the old untended cherry orchard had been her haven throughout her youth, the ground beneath its spreading branches stamped clear of any growth by unending hours of martial arts and weapons practice.

And somehow Billy had known exactly where to find her.

“I oughta pelt you with pinecones or something.” She kicked the ground, hoping to find some even though it was a cherry orchard. Not even any acorns. The gray squirrels had already collected those for the winter.

“No, what you ‘oughta' do is answer my question.”

She rubbed at her arms. “I'm freezing.”

“No dice. I don't have a jacket either, and I'm not giving you my shirt. If we go back to the house, you'll find some other thing to delay answering. So, you stand here and freeze until you've answered the damn question.”

Trisha scrubbed at her face and resisted the urge to scream. It wouldn't help. Neither would running. She might know her way around these woods better than she did around her Little Bird, but she'd never lose a SEAL. She folded her arms tightly across her chest and hugged herself for warmth.

And she'd be damned if she was going to cry in front of him. If she did, he would probably see it in the dark with whatever special, top secret, X-ray vision trick they'd taught him that had let him find her on her home ground. No help for it, so she said it fast, hoping that would make it hurt less.

“I'm not a team player. Lola Maloney says she can't use someone who doesn't play all nice by her cute little rules.” Saying it made it hurt even more.

“Okay, now what did she really say?” Rather than being cold or commanding or pissed like she deserved, Billy's voice was actually tinged with humor. It kind of shamed her because he'd always played straight arrow with her.

“You aren't supposed to know me that well.”

His shadow might have shrugged. Her eyes were slowly adapting to the pitch dark. His outline was as solid as the tree he leaned against.

“She gave me a week off duty to consider whether I wanted to return to SOAR and play her way or get tossed back to the Screaming Eagles. Highest recommendations, of course.” Like that mattered. Everyone would know she couldn't hack SOAR. Including Emily Beale. Even though she was out of the Army now, Emily would find out, and Trisha didn't know if she could live with that. But she didn't know if she could hack SOAR, either.

Billy settled to sit down under the tree. She copied him, a scant yard between them, pulling her knees to her chest and wrapping her arms around them for warmth.

“You always ran with the same gang?”

Not a question she'd been expecting. “With Vinny's crew, yeah, until he screwed up and a Chinese Tong burned him down. I guess I was mostly out by then anyway, though I kept up the martial arts he'd started me in.”

“But you could leave whenever you wanted, come here to this place? This tree?”

She could. Damn, he knew her too well. She didn't bother to answer.

“You missed something.” Billy's voice warmed the night a tiny bit. “Something I'd looked for in Detroit, then Chicago. You missed really belonging to something.”

“I belong to the Army.”

“No.”

His single word felt like he'd slapped her with it, though he'd said it quietly. Her cheeks flared with the heat of anger. But his calm voice cut her off before she could think of what to do with the fiery heat.

“I think that the Army has been a game to you. A good one. Great training that you clearly thrive on and gobble up whole. Cool toys like that chopper of yours that you fly so damn well. Getting back at your parents was probably your initial reason to join, but it's served you well. A game that went real for the first time when you were shot.”

“Damn, Dr. William, what do I owe you for this session?”

“Straight answers.”

A different heat roared to her cheeks. She didn't trust her voice, so she just nodded once, hoping he could see it.

“You've got to know what you're fighting for. You're a goddamn magician in the Little Bird. Everyone agrees. One of the best soldiers on the planet thinks you are truly exceptional, while I can barely winhis acknowledgment.”

“No!” Trisha cut him off. “No, don't think that. I've never seen Michael so impressed with another soldier. He's certainly never let anyone else in on an otherwise Delta-only mission before, at least not that I've seen. I mean, there were forty seasoned U.S. Rangers from the 75th Airborne aboard and you're the one he took on the mission. He talks even less than you do, but he thinks you're something special. Really.”

Billy was quiet for a while, digesting that. She'd learned to appreciate and understand his silences. She'd found it irritating at first, but finally relabeled it “processing internally” in her head. That seemed to fit and give her the patience to accept it.

“That aside.”

Processing completed. She smiled to herself in the dark.

“The subject here is you. Why do you think the BUD/S course takes twenty-four weeks? They're not teaching us to be a team. They're making it so that we can't be anything else. Every person who fails, other than during the first four weeks who just can't hack the physical challenge, fails because they can't accept their place in a team.”

“So, I have to give up who I am and play nice?” Even though she tried to make it sound funny, it didn't.

“Do you think that's all I've done?”

It wasn't all Billy had done. It wasn't anything he'd done in the least. Lieutenant William Bruce was the most amazing man she'd ever met. More unique and individual than anyone she'd ever known. And yet he'd blended into Michael's team that rainy night on the oil tanker as if it was the most natural thing in the world. It didn't make him any less Billy the SEAL.

Now that she thought of it, she tried to imagine the other women she'd flown with in some sort of Army cookie-cutter form. Emily Beale and Lola, Kee and Connie, Amy Patterson and Claudia Casperson coming up through training now. She'd flown with incredible women who all somehow managed to fit in where they were.

But how was she supposed to do that?

“What the hell are we doing here?” A bare whisper was all she could manage, and even that raked at her aching throat.

“We don't know yet.” Billy's voice was soft in the night, filled with sympathy and a confidence she'd completely lost somewhere in the dark.

Trisha's dad had stopped after twenty laps, half a mile. The broad plastic canopy allowed the morning sunlight to wash over the pool but held the cool autumn morning at bay.

Trisha had pushed herself to fifty laps before dragging herself out to dangle her legs in the pool while they burned with the lactic acid buildup of such a long swim. It's what she deserved for trying to keep up with a SEAL for the first twenty laps.

And he was still out there. A hundred laps would get him three miles, and he showed little sign of slowing before then.

“He's good.” Her father settled beside her, dipping his own feet in beside her.

She wanted to say, “Navy SEAL, Dad. Duh!” But instead she said, “He is,” and left it at that. He'd taken care of her last night, carrying her back to the house after she'd wept herself sick. And he'd been there in the morning, sleeping on the carpet beside her bed. Leaving her to sleep alone when she'd been too vulnerable and wrecked to make any rational choices.

She and her father sat side by side watching Billy do another couple of laps in silence. The broad, inflatable dome of tan-and blue-patterned vinyl arcing above the pool was almost completely unlike an artificial sky. At least the fall sunshine filtered through the material, making a nice, even light. The wide border of concrete sported lounge chairs, an “outdoor” shower, and even a small changing cabana, well stocked with fresh robes, towels, and sunscreen. Though she'd never understood the last as the dome was supposed to be UV opaque.

“He treating you well?”

She glanced over at her father but couldn't read his expression. He was staring out at the water, not in Billy's direction, just up the empty lane before them, the smooth surface broken by the ripples of Billy's passage.

“We actually haven't been together very long, but, yeah, he is.” Together. Were they together? Team Billy and Trisha? How long before she blew that up too? Well, she hadn't killed it last night despite her best efforts. Though it was pretty clear that she'd have to play it straight with Billy forever more or he was gone.

Again a couple laps of silence. Her father was such a weird contrast, so gregarious in business, yet he almost never spoke at home. Processing internally like Billy? Or maybe trying to build up courage to deal with his hyper-reactive daughter?

“What's your question, Dad?”

He waited another half lap before responding. “That thing you said last night. About failing out. Is that true? It doesn't sound like you.”

The bitter response she had locked and loaded for fire died at that last comment. “What do you mean, it doesn't sound like me?”

“Well, you do everything you set out to do. I've talked to other parents, both clients and friends. No one else's kid has so many trophies they can't even fit them in their room, no matter what sport.”

Trisha didn't even know he'd noticed.

“Most of them are just following in their father's footsteps or totally screwing up their lives, like we thought you were in Southie, or getting quietly married.”

“Like Mom wants me to do.”

“She's just afraid.”

“Afraid?”

Her father actually laughed aloud at Trisha's shock. He looked good laughing. She could see for a moment the handsome man with the easy smile that seemed to be everyone's friend but hers. That his mother always claimed to love so much.

“Okay, you're in your twenties now.”

“Twenty-eight.”

“Fine, you should be old enough to understand this. Pretend that you have a kid who insists on doing the absolute scariest thing you can imagine, every single time you turn around. Do you remember when you were five and we took you skiing?”

“Sure, the black diamond trail up at Stowe. You've told that story so many times at so many parties that I don't know if it's my memory or not.”

“What you don't know is that it was only your third time skiing. We were on the beginner Toll Road Trail and you turned down Hayride before I could stop you. You tumbled and rolled down half the slope. I thought you'd be broken or dead at the bottom by the time I got there. I dug you out of the snowbank that had finally stopped you, and you asked, in that little girl's voice of yours, to go again because you didn't get it right yet. You were the most terrifying child I can imagine.”

That was a new spin on it compared to, “She was skiing black diamond slopes by the time she was five. Surprised she didn't kill herself.” Especially as she'd always seen it as a comment on how incompetent she was as a teen. What a disappointment she'd become after such a promising start.

For herself, she'd never been pleased with her skiing skill. Not even in her teens was she as good as others going by her, even though she often skied the double black diamond slopes by that point. The family didn't go often enough for her to get really good, but she'd always taken it as her not being good enough.

“Waterskiing, horse jumping, that gang in Southie, even the detective I hired couldn't keep up with them”—first she'd heard of that—“all of those martial arts competitions, helicopters, the Army… You are more than your mother knows what to do with. Or me. Every bad match she tries to make for you is just a desperate lifeline she's throwing out to try and keep you safe. It's a habit she had to form from the moment you crawled right off edge of the front porch, and now she can't break it. So, I'll ask you for her sake since she can't phrase the question in a way you can stand to hear. Are you being safe?”

Trisha thought about the three black-and-blue marks from being shot, only now faded enough to not draw a comment, and the technical that had had her chopper in its sights.

“Not as safe as I should be. That's what's got me in trouble.”

“That's what scares us so much.”

***

Trisha watched Billy sitting on the bottom of the pool. Her father had left for work before Billy had finished his laps, the last one down and back, fifty meters entirely underwater. Then he'd swum out to the deep end and treaded water while he hyperventilated before sinking out of sight.

The surface water slowly settled across the pool. With no wind to stir it, it was soon glassy smooth.

She could see him now. Sitting on the bottom, his left arm raised in front of him where she knew he wore his big diver's watch, though she couldn't quite make it out through ten feet of water.

Counting her heartbeats, she kept track of the time going by, fifty-seven beats per minute at rest. Two minutes. Three. No bubbles.

She tried to imagine not serving alongside people like Billy and Michael and all the others.

And she didn't like it one bit. Whatever trade-offs she had to make, she knew that much.

Billy rose out of the water so quietly that she barely heard the drops of water plinking from his hair down into the water. He surfaced after four minutes and fifteen seconds not two feet beyond her knees. He pulled in a slow, deep breath and let it out just as silently despite how his lungs must be burning.

“What are you thinking there, hotshot?”

She leaned forward to brush a thumb over the scar down his cheek.

“I'm thinking I know why we came. I'm ready to go back.”

He did nothing big. No acknowledgment beyond a simple nod at such a big decision. Then he pulled her down into the water beside him and kissed her.