SEAL Firsts Page 23

  Well, she knew the answer to that one. She didn’t expect it would hurt this much, though.

  “How long will you be out?” Christy asked, not wanting to know the answer.

  “Not long. About two weeks. First week I will be in hospital. Next week I must be home and then I can go back, although the doctors want me to be off for a month. Mon Dieu! I can’t be gone that long.”

  “Do you have anyone in training now?”

  “Yes, I have two very nice girls. But they are young, ma chère. Very young.”

  And what am I at twenty-six? Am I old now?

  “They work for me while going to college. Neither one of them wants to go into the business.”

  “Ah. I see.”

  “Cheríe,” Madame M began softly, “have you ever thought about returning to San Francisco?”

  “Not really.” Christy’s stomach clenched up. She knew there was an offer coming she would have difficulty declining, but also knew she would.

  “Would you consider coming to help out while I am infirmed, and then possibly taking over the shop some day? I would be happy to give it to you, if it became too much for me to handle. I am not a young woman any longer, you know.”

  That told Christy the “surgery” was more serious than she was letting on. But she had to be honest.

  “Madame, there is no future for me there. I wanted a fresh start.”

  “I understand. I think the difference between an older woman and a younger one is an older one knows how to think practically. Young ones always go looking for love and think that will save them. The cost is too great, cheríe. Take it from me.”

  Christy knew exactly what Madame as saying.

  “There are lots of attractive, older men who frequent my shop, and several of them ask about you. I think even one or two have come in just to see you. They could make your life comfortable and aren’t so bad to look at, either. Money can heal a lot of loneliness.”

  But not for me. There isn’t enough money in the world to heal my wound. I have to do this myself.

  “Have I offended, ma chère?”

  “No, Madame. I take no offense. I just am not interested. Can I think about this for a day or so? When is your surgery?”

  “Two days. Not to worry, I have already begun to tell people the store will close for two weeks. Perhaps this is why I have been so busy lately.” Madame giggled like a little girl.

  Christy saw another phone call was coming in. “Madame, I must go. I’ll think seriously about it and then will call you back later tonight. Is that all right?”

  “Call me tomorrow?”

  Christy pushed the button for the next call, but had just missed it. She hit redial. A crusty voice answered on the other end.

  “Security.”

  “Jerry, is that you?” Christy asked.

  “Oh, yes. This is Ms. Nelson?”

  “Jerry, it’s Christy. Is there something wrong?”

  He cleared his throat. “Uh, Ms. Nelson,” he started, ignoring her comment, “we’ve gotten some complaints, and the Co-op Association has asked me to call you about it.”

  “Complaints? Complaints about me?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “I’m sorry, I don’t understand. What complaints?”

  “You know about Marla?”

  “Yes, the police were here today.”

  “Seems there’s a sort of criminal element hanging around here since you moved in.”

  Christy felt like throwing the phone through the opened sliding glass door to shatter on the ground below.

  “I had a chance encounter with someone…I met a man who…” Everything she started to say was wrong. “The police and the Sheriff’s Department have questioned me about someone I met quite by accident.” She remembered the feel of Kyle’s hard body against hers as he immobilized her knees, her wrists. The smell of his faint cologne, the way his kisses tasted, the words he whispered in her ears—everything came flooding back to her.

  “See, Ms. Nelson…”

  “Christy. Please, Jerry, are you interrogating me too? You know who I am, what I’m about.”

  “Look, I need this job. They just want me to deliver a message. They’re going to take a vote. I have no say in the matter. Some of the older folks are staying elsewhere. They’re afraid to even return back here.”

  “I see. But this isn’t anything I’ve caused.”

  “The police have been asking questions about you everywhere. It makes folks uncomfortable.”

  “Jerry, you know me.”

  “Like I said, I have no say so here. It’s up to the Association, and they have the right to ask someone to leave if that person is attracting a criminal element.” He sighed and then gave her the punch she was expecting. “They’re going to vote in two days. I’m supposed to let you know they will probably be asking you to leave and that you should prepare yourself accordingly.”

  “They can do that?”

  “Come on, Ch…er… Ms. Nelson. You know they can. Or they can make it expensive for you if you fight them. You’re a Realtor. You know the CC&R’s.”

  “But what would I do? Can they force me to sell?”

  “No, but they can bar you from living here.”

  And there it was. Suddenly the place Kyle thought she was safest at had turned out to be the place she had to leave—might have to leave.

  That made Madame M’s offer more attractive. Only question was, would she be able to come back here? Some day?

  Chapter 28

  Sergeant Mayfield looked at the flashing line on his phone that indicated he had voicemail. He hated voicemail. Reminded him of how he’d spent most of his days behind a desk. Maria would have liked the fact he was now out of harm’s way more often than not, but there was that part of him the Navy hadn’t drilled out of him, about wanting to be where the action was. That’s why he’d wanted to fly jets, but he couldn’t pass the vision tests.

  He’d gone to BUD/S too, but didn’t make it past Hell Week. He wondered how his life would have changed if he could have stuck with it. But he’d had a good life, even though he and Maria had never had kids. Although his current work wasn’t the SEALs, he took some pride in seeing to it that young recruits turned out to be fine cops. Honest cops. And he’d seen a few of the other kind, dirty cops, where just one or two bad apples could demoralize a whole battalion. Never thought he’d have to look over his shoulder, but he learned he had to be careful. Everywhere.

  Having the desk job gave him the occasional chance to right a wrong that had been done, either by one of his own or a member of the public, or on behalf of someone who’d been victimized by the system. He didn’t know why, but he felt Kyle Lansdowne wasn’t one of the bad guys. Christy Nelson believed in the Team guy. Mayfield saw it in her body language, as well as in her eyes. And those eyes were not the naïve doe eyes of someone with nothing upstairs. This girl was quality. Someone he knew Maria would have wanted him to find. Not this young, of course, but someone who had the same strength.

  So it was a pleasant coincidence that the voicemail message was from Miss Nelson herself.

  “I’m going to leave San Diego for a couple of weeks. I can still be reached on my cell.” There was a pause. He could tell she didn’t want to leave the message. And it wasn’t really for him.

  “You never told me I had to check in with you, but you seemed the only one I could trust.”

  Mayfield wondered what was up with that. Whom else had she talked to? He’d have to ask Jones, Theissen, and Woodward if they’d done a second round of questioning. He doubted it, though.

  “A friend of mine is sick in San Francisco, and I’m going to go there and run her shop while she’s recovering. I’ll be staying at a little cottage at 484 Stanyan Street. My cell is the best way to reach me, though.” She left her cell number and hung up.

  He smiled. San Francisco brought wonderful memories of the honeymoon he and Maria had there, back in the late eighties. He could have lived there, but Ma
ria didn’t want to be far from her family in Mexico. Even after many of them came to the States or had died, his career was in full swing in San Diego, and then he was the one who didn’t want to move.

  He marked down Christy’s new address on his vest pocket notebook, then programmed her number into his cell in case she called back. He didn’t want to leave a written copy of that around. For some reason, he felt protective of her.

  The second voicemail was from a Chief Petty Officer Timmons, Kyle’s boss.

  “Got a couple of things I need to discuss, off the record. If you don’t mind calling me back on my cell…”

  Now that was interesting, he thought. He knew he was about to find out for sure whether Kyle was a good guy or a bad guy.

  They’d agreed to meet at Jimmy’s. Mayfield knew it well, although not entirely on nostalgic terms like some of its patrons. He’d done his share of arrests for drunk and disorderly conduct, but mostly he’d cleaned up the civilian garbage and let the Navy take care of theirs. But there was always some guy who thought he was better and stronger than a soft-spoken SEAL who shied away from local conflict. All the same, there was a limit, Mayfield knew. And once that line was crossed, well, someone would go to the hospital, and it usually wasn’t the swab.

  That’s why this situation bothered him so much. Bodies. Not your normal Navy incident. So Mr. Lansdowne was either a very misunderstood guy or one hell of a bad dude. Either way, this was messy. Too messy for a guy who needed his pension to retire on in five years.

  But, he’d always taken the high road. And Maria had often reminded him why she’d married him: he always did the right thing, even if it wasn’t always the smartest in terms of his career advancement. True to her word, her last words to him were, “I love you. I will miss you May Day.” She knew he loved to hear her call him this. Her private name for him, stemming back to the first time she’d seen him. She’d told him she knew instantly her life would never be the same afterwards.

  God, I miss you too, Maria. But he’d promised her he wouldn’t mope around. He wished they’d had children. She was insistent it was something wrong with her, but he had his doubts. He’d figured it was something related to his Navy service. She never once complained about being “unfulfilled” like other women would say on TV. If it was a burden to her, she carried it alone.

  But he wished something of her remained. Just something.

  Soft rock and roll was playing on a radio back in a dark corner. Posters and pictures of Teams on the beach and in Africa, original artwork, and T-shirts signed by Teams all adorned the lower part of the walls. Above all the memorabilia and posters, now occupying both sides of the narrow bar, were row upon row of flags with pictures underneath them. “Fallen Heroes,” the sign read. As he studied the faces in the mostly black and white photos, he noted how good looking almost every single one of those men were. And how young. Heck, they looked like kids he’d played football with in high school. Kids he could have had.

  But that was because he was in his fifties, and war was a young man’s sport. And these young, brave men had given their lives so he could have a desk job in the sunny warm weather of San Diego, so he could finish out his life in comfort and retire to contemplate the death of his wife. So he could have a future he wasn’t exactly sure he wanted anymore. But because they gave up theirs, he would do the best he could.

  Timmons looked like he sounded on the phone, gnarly and mostly grumpy, with a ruddy pockmarked complexion and beefy hands with sausage fingers. His biceps and shoulders hovered like the guns they were, perched over rock-hard abs. He didn’t seem to be the kind of man you wanted to be around when he wasn’t having a good day. Mayfield shook hands with him and realized that, under different circumstances, they could have been brothers. Mayfield’s fingers got crushed in the vise grip Timmons delivered without flinching or straining a muscle.

  “Thanks for coming, Mayfield,” Timmons said while he hailed the waitress. “I know you’re busy, so I’ll buy you a burger and a beer if you’ll share one with me.”

  “No thanks. I had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich at my desk. And I don’t drink on duty.” Mayfield studied the bluish purple bags under Timmons’s eyes.

  “We gotta talk,” Timmons said after he ordered a cheeseburger and fries to go with the beer he had started. He nodded to two muscled young men who walked in and took up a seat at the bar to watch a game on the big-screen monitor.

  “I’ve never had a SEAL turn rogue. I’ve trained some crazy-assed men, though.”

  Mayfield nodded and sipped on a diet Coke the waitress brought.

  “Despite what the papers have said, I don’t think there’s been more than a handful. Certainly nothing like any of the other branches,” Mayfield replied.

  “None of these special ops guys go evil, but they do get snagged with money problems occasionally. Compromised, but not often. I worry about the ones who almost get through the training and then quit. Not because they can’t do it—they quit sometimes because they decide they don’t want to. And there’s no shame in that. There are a few where the training just picks a scab, opens up an old wound, and they are so filled with hate they can’t function and are never the same. We get only a few a year. And it’s the part of the training I don’t care for. Letting those young guys loose on society.”

  “Those guys become my problem,” Mayfield said.

  “I’m sure they do.”

  “So you called me over this afternoon to apologize?”

  Timmons chuckled and cocked his head, as if regarding Mayfield’s casual demeanor. “I met you once before, you know?”

  “Sorry. Don’t remember.”

  “You’d come by to pick your wife up at the hospital where my kid was. Your wife took real good care of my Cassie when she fell from a horse and broke her arm.”

  That had been another irony. Maria had worked as a nurse on the children’s ward. It was difficult for her when she lost one of her charges, Mayfield thought, almost as bad as losing one of her own. He didn’t remember meeting Timmons.

  “I’m sure she did a great job. She was known for it.”

  Timmons looked up at him quickly. “Was?”

  “She died almost a year ago.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  “Don’t be. Got almost thirty years with her. I’m the lucky one.”

  Timmons mumbled something before he took another sip of his beer. Mayfield got the impression his marriage wasn’t as special. But the man had a kid. And that was something he could take pride in. And live for.

  “We could sit here and reminisce, but there are people after someone you and I both know will need help if he’s to get out of this jam,” said Mayfield.

  “So you believe Kyle.” It was more of a statement than a question.

  “Never met him. But I saw his lady. She’s a nice package. Perfect for him.”

  “And I’ve never met her. I’m sorry to say he’s had to distance himself from her,” Timmons said flatly.

  “I know about it. She told me the same.”

  Mayfield looked at the walls around them, the history of the lives lost and lives lived to the maximum, the rush of history and years of joy, years of pain. There they were, two men with very different tastes, needs, and desires, on two different career paths. But both with the same focus.

  To get Kyle out of this mess. And find his Team buddy.

  And like members of his team years ago when he was running little boats down the beach, Mayfield knew the team he and Timmons had set up today was dependent on both of them giving their all for the cause.

  And that would be the only way any of them would survive.

  Chapter 29

  The drive from San Diego to San Francisco was easy, especially since Christy decided to break the monotony of the nine-hour trek by listening to a book on tape. It was a steamy romance by one of her favorite authors. She was in tears when she pulled up for gas mid-way, as she had just listened to a breakup scene. She kne
w the reason the story had affected her more than it might have ordinarily. Kyle was probably history, a not-too-pleasant part of her past, when he should have been the best part of her future.

  She couldn’t stop herself from missing him and felt her wound get deeper the more she thought about it.

  Four hours later, when she arrived in San Francisco at the huge house on Stanyan Street, she felt a part of her had arrived home. Tom Bergeron kept this place for clients he entertained who came from outside the country. He’d agreed to let Christy stay there until she got herself settled—whatever that meant.

  Tom was one of the handsomest older men she had ever met. He frequented Madame M’s shop, which had become kind of a liaison between eligible men and the young ladies looking for them. That was part of the service Madame loved: being a matchmaker. Everyone on the Peninsula knew Madame liked to keep her customers paired with partners who liked expensive lingerie and a healthy sex life. It was, after all, good for business.

  Tom was in his mid-fifties, had graying hair, a trim physique, and a nice, soft-spoken, well-educated style. He could afford the finer things in life. He’d made no secret he liked Christy, but he had just married a former model and had a lavish yacht wedding on the San Francisco Bay. Over the three years Christy had worked at the shop, she would hold up little frilly things he bought for some of his gorgeous, high-profile girlfriends, and later, his beautiful wife. But he always flirted with Christy, making her blush. She actually enjoyed it.

  “You’re a good girl, Christy. I hope you find someone who will treat you like the lady you are,” he’d said one day as she wrapped a lacy purple bra and thong set in matching purple tissue. When she’d looked up into his cool blue eyes, she’d known he would be someone she might have broken the rules for. Maybe marrying an older man could work, she’d thought that day.

  But then she’d realized that was folly. She wanted a family.

  Since Tom was now happily married, staying at his cottage behind the main house on Stanyan Street didn’t pose a problem for her. Though she didn’t need it, the thought of having a protector was a pleasant one. She trusted Tom.