True Valor (6 page)

Detective Scott Reece walked down the hall to look at the bedroom. Her brother’s friend from childhood was a police officer for the Hampton Roads communities, and he’d been prompt in answering her page. “Five burglaries in the last two months, three of them your clients. Not so unusual when you consider your clients are primarily single, collect expensive stereo equipment, and the news of their deployment is advertised in the local newspaper. When was the last time you were here?”

She followed him into the bedroom where the dresser drawers remained half open, pulled off their tracks and shoved back at odd angles. “Two days ago, midafternoon. I watered the plants and fed his turtle.” The burglar hadn’t bothered to take the turtle.

“Do you have the list of belongings and photographs of the apartment?”

“Terri is bringing the file from the office.” Jill prepared for this kind of crisis with every client—burglary, fire, and storm damage. Making sure possessions were inventoried and that there was adequate insurance coverage was part of the process of taking on a new client.

Tyler had elected not to be told about something like this, but rather have her simply deal with it for him. She couldn’t blame him. He was working on the
GW
flight deck, and he didn’t need to be distracted from his job by something stateside that he could do nothing about. Tyler’s insurance was up-to-date. As soon as the settlement amount was known, she’d get started replacing and repairing the damage to give him the best possible news on return. Where was she going to find replacement speakers?

“It will be the same routine as last time. We’ll dust for prints, talk to neighbors, inventory what’s missing.” Outside the apartment, two officers had already begun the canvass of the building residents to see if anyone had observed something unusual. “We’ll get him, Jill,” Scott said. “Something stolen will turn up and give us a lead. It doesn’t make sense that he’s keeping everything he’s taken. He’s selling it somewhere.”

Jill wished she believed him. He’d said the same thing after the last two break-ins at clients’ homes. She knew he was working the cases hard, but she had clients to protect and she needed the man stopped today, not tomorrow.

Scott led the way back to the living room. The burglar had run something sharp along the hallway wall, scraping the paint. Car keys probably; the same senseless damage someone would do in a parking lot out of boredom. “Same man?” she asked.

“It looks like it.” He walked over to check the timer being used to control the room lights. “Six p.m. on, 10 p.m. off?”

“A few minutes off the hour, and the radio in the bedroom comes on about ten thirty.”

“All your clients have something similar?”

“Yes. I’ve double-checked locks, set lights on timers, made sure drapes were drawn.” She paced over to the window. When she had first arrived, she had pushed open the doorway, juggling her briefcase and the mail she picked up for Tyler. She had glanced in the living room and felt like someone had punched her. “Are you sure it’s not related to my clients?”

“I’ve run all your clients’ addresses and didn’t find a pattern. This looks like another target of opportunity. Have you called the insurance agent yet?”

“He’s coming.”

“Then go get yourself a cup of coffee at the corner deli, take a walk, and blow off the stress while you let me do my job. There was nothing you could have done to prevent this.”

She turned from the window. “I suppose.”

“Why don’t you tell Bruce?”

She’d tell Wolf before she’d tell Bruce; her brother would just overreact. “No.”

“He has a right to know this is going on.”

“He’s overseas. He can’t do anything about it from there, and I don’t want to add this kind of worry.”

“Brothers are supposed to worry.” Scott pulled out his notebook and a pen. “It would be good for you to start taking a few precautions. Bring Bruce’s Labrador to work with you when you visit clients’ homes.”

“Is that necessary?”

“Dogs sense trouble. Do it for a few weeks while we figure out who this guy is.”

She nodded, accepting she needed to do something. Three burglaries were three too many when she was the one discovering them. She missed Bruce; she missed Grace. And Wolf—she’d never realized how big a hole his absence would make in her life until he wasn’t around.

Five

* * *

USS
GEORGE WASHINGTON
(CVN 73)

M
EDITERRANEAN
S
EA
OFF
THE
C
OAST
OF
T
URKEY

The stateroom was hot. Grace shed her flight suit and pulled on a T-shirt and shorts. It was a small room for six women to share, three bunk beds on one wall, lockers and small desks on the other. Her roommates were two pilots and three electronic countermeasure specialists who flew in the Prowler’s backseats to handle the intricacies of navigation and electronic jamming. By combining personal effects, the six of them had been able to squeeze in a semblance of a bookshelf and a music collection.

Grace stretched out on the lower, middle bunk, her one spot of personal space for this six-month deployment. She had two feet of clearance to the bunk above, enough to turn over without hitting her head if she was careful and a width that meant she would tumble onto the floor if she woke and turned without realizing where she was. The mattress could hardly be called comfortable, but exhaustion changed her definition of acceptable. Whenever possible she tried to catch a few minutes of quiet time before a mission in order to separate everything that had gone before during the day from the reality of what was coming.

Out of long habit she set her watch alarm for twenty minutes before she settled her head back. At this point in a sea tour, making the assumption she wouldn’t fall asleep the moment her body relaxed was a mistake. The pillow had a new pillowcase and it still smelled faintly of Downy. She had brought six pillowcases, folded and sealed in plastic bags, so that she would have a new one not washed in shipboard laundry available for each month.

There was an inch-wide red ribbon stretched taut under the frame of the bunk above her. A letter she was writing to Jill was tucked under the ribbon on the left side. A white envelope addressed to her with a scripted
B
in the return address corner was tucked on the right. It was from Bruce. It had taken three weeks for the letter to get from wherever he was stationed back to the U.S. and then through channels to catch up with the carrier group to her. She had read the letter so many times it was close to falling apart. She fingered the envelope and tugged it down to read again.

Gracie ~

Wolf tells me you prefer Gracie and that you’re afraid of heights. Instinct tells me he’s probably exaggerating a bit over the heights and stating his preference for your name. Feel free to correct both.

This note is to tell you that Wolf is fine. I don’t want you to worry when you hear what happened. I’ve noticed the way you bite your lip when watching Wolf do his I’m-invincible imitation.

He’s not invincible.

Some idiot (me) made the mistake of assuming Wolf would weave left like a smart man instead of right. We were playing some basketball and—long story. He’s got an interesting looking eye. The swelling isn’t bad and his sight is fine; it’s just colorful. Two SEALs against two PJs—okay, it wasn’t the smartest decision we’ve ever made to kill some time, but at least it was basketball and not something more interesting.

Did you know Wolf carries your picture? He used to pull it out when he needed cover to say he already had a lady in his life. I personally think it’s just because he likes to let it be known he’s got good taste. He loves you, Grace. A lot. (Lately he’s been pulling out Jill’s picture to make his point. That’s not as easy to take as yours, but I’m working on it.)

The SEALs won the game. Wolf is gloating and crowing and making me miserable. What do you have on him that I could use to level the accounts a bit? I’d owe you one.

Yours, Bruce

Bruce wrote a nice letter; it made her smile. In prior tours she had been so busy just figuring out carrier life that homesickness never had a chance to settle in. Now she was older, tired, and sea life had a sense of routine to it. When she stopped and caught her breath, there was a new sense of loneliness. She wondered about what was going on in Jill’s life, and she worried about Wolf. Lately she’d been thinking about Bruce too. The letter was a blessing.

Had he received her reply? She hadn’t been sure how to answer it and in the end had just picked up a pen and written her first impressions.

Her watch alarm sounded. Grace checked the time. She had a mission briefing in fifteen minutes. It was just as well. She’d lie here in her bunk and puzzle about Bruce. He had the same dilemma she did of juggling a stateside life while being gone for long periods of time, and yet it appeared he’d figured out how to be comfortable with his life. He’d come to the deployment party, sat by the pool, content and in no hurry. She envied him that.

Lord, I decided no more regrets, just wise decisions. Bruce—he’s a nice guy. Watching him with Jill over the years sealed that conclusion. I made the decision to answer his note with more openness than I normally would have. Did I make a mistake in my reply?

NATO FORWARD OPERATING LOCATION

T
URKEY
/I
RAQ
B
ORDER

Someone had mailed him chocolates. Bruce looked with regret at the mess of melted chocolate with bumps of nuts and square-cut caramels. The sugar hadn’t crystallized; it was new chocolate. It had pooled at the left edge of the candy box and hardened there. A swirl of green from a mint-flavored chocolate ran through it.

He looked at the packing. The box was from a candy shop in Indiana. It had traveled halfway around the world to find him.

“Another one?”

Bruce moved so his partner could get past him in the small tent. “I told you there was a reason Alaska would make a better deployment.” He cracked the chocolate mass to pull free the envelope that had been inside the candy box tucked in a plastic bag. He handed the candy to Rich.

Striker opened the letter. The handwriting was shaky and had the elegance of someone from a former generation who had learned to write in beautiful script. Since it didn’t look like a letter from a twentysomething, bubbly, blue-eyed blonde who couldn’t write in paragraphs, he set the note aside to read and answer later. He’d made a rule about the bubbly blondes who lately sent the bulk of his mail—he didn’t answer them. Writing back just encouraged them.

Rich took out his pocketknife. “We can shave it into edible chunks.”

“Sanitize that thing first.”

Rich tugged open the pocket of his cammies and retrieved his lighter. He sterilized the blade.

Mail for most military men was their lifeline. For Bruce it had become something of a problem. “I wish they would start writing you.” Rich was wealthy, good-looking, a first generation American born of European immigrants. His partner should be the one getting this deluge of mail, not him.

Rich used his hot knife to melt through the chocolate and break off a chunk. “You’re the legend.”

“You were at that rescue too.” That rescue in the Gulf was beginning to haunt him. Yes, he’d rescued the boy and it had been pretty dramatic footage. But while he’d spun in the air hoisting out the boy, his partner had been on the deck securing the captain.

“I’m smart. You’re dumb. You got your picture taken,” Rich replied, reaching down to see how much mail was in the burlap sack emblazoned with the warning
Property of the Air Force Postmaster
. “You’d think they were writing Santa Claus.”

“I wish I could find that reporter and make him eat his dictionary for calling me an eligible bachelor.” Bruce nudged the sack with his boot. “Quit laughing at me and help.”

The picture of him dangling in the air under the massive Seahawk helicopter with the kid swallowed against his uniform had shown up not only in the newspapers but now in the popular entertainment magazines. The story of the rescue grew with every retelling the reporters did.

The least the postmaster could do was lose his forwarding location for a few weeks to stop this deluge. “You ducked the AP reporter and left me like a sitting duck. I thought you were my partner.”

“I am in things that count. Your life was boring. I helped you out.”

“Your definition of help is interesting.”

Rich waved a letter. “This one is good. You’re to come to dinner next month.” Rich moved the page closer to his face to make out the writing. “I think this is her e-mail address. It’s smudged with lipstick.”

“Trash.” He had long ago gotten over the disquiet of tossing mail without a reply.

The tent flap was pushed back. “So this is where you two disappeared. I thought you were coming to watch CNN.”

“Wolf, get in here. You’re recruited to open mail.”

“I might get a paper cut.”

“Sit.”

The Navy SEAL awkwardly folded himself into a chair not designed for a man his size. The boredom of afternoons on deployment never changed. There might be action coming tonight, but all the preparations were over and they had a few hours to kill.

Wolf picked up a letter and tore open the end. He dumped the contents out. “This one is kind of cute.” Wolf turned the picture for his consideration.