LITMIR.BIZ

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his brother and his best friend were dead.

      CHAPTER THREE

      BY THE TIME MITZI RETURNED to the office, Calhoun had showered and changed into combat utilities. She tucked her hat and handbag back into the bottom drawer, along with the prescription of birth control she’d picked up at the VA, and settled in at her desk.

      She didn’t know if he could still run a five-minute mile, but she knew the word can’t was not in his vocabulary.

      Unfortunately that stubborn streak extended to his personal relationships, as well. Come mid-afternoon she wanted to scream at him out of frustration. She’d never quite understood the term deafening silence until now. Everything left unsaid over the past eighteen months lingered in the air like the half-eaten egg salad sandwich she’d tossed out at lunch.

      If they were going to work together they’d have to learn to communicate again. She’d been wrong to reject his offer of a truce.

      But she’d be damned if she’d tell him that.

      “School’s out,” she said with a nod toward the pedestrian traffic outside. Within minutes two girls, trying to look much older than their seventeen or eighteen years, walked through the door.

      The pair stopped in front of Bruce’s desk while he continued to do whatever it was he was doing at his computer. Mitzi was pretty sure his emails to his old command had little to do with recruiting.

      “May I help you?” he asked after a while.

      “Hi.” Swallowed up by an oversize varsity letterman’s jacket, the first to speak wore a cheer skirt and cropped top underneath. Mitzi didn’t know her name, but the other girl was Kelly Casey. Kelly had on jeans and layered T-shirts. She carried drumsticks and hid behind her schoolbooks.

      Mitzi could relate to the band geek. She’d been one. As well as captain of the swim team. What she’d never been was a cheerleader. Or a blonde.

      She’d never seen the two together before. They made an odd pair.

      “Hi, Heather,” Bruce responded without inflection.

      Heather took that as an invitation to perch on his desk and Mitzi got a glimpse of the name on the back of the jacket. Calhoun.

      So that’s how they knew each other.

      Heather must be Keith’s girlfriend.

      “So are you, like, a Marine?” Heather picked up Bruce’s stapler and played with it until he took it from her and set it out of her reach.

      “I am a Marine.”

      “Did you, like, fight in the war or whatever?”

      “Whatever,” he agreed. Calhoun stood up so that he towered over the two girls. “Excuse me, ladies. I’m busy right now.” Heather shrugged. Whatever.

      Kelly followed her to the door before turning around. “Will you tell Keith we were here?” Her cheeks, already pink from the winterlike weather outside, brightened. “And that I can’t tutor him this Saturday. I have to work.”

      Calhoun offered a curt nod. Mitzi frowned after the departing pair, then at him.

      “What?” he demanded.

      “Whatever.” She shrugged. “Be careful.”

      “Of those two?”

      “The last recruiter is gone because he gave in to temptation. Seventeen may be legal in this state, but there’s a very fine line—”

      “You know me better than that.”

      “It’s not you I’m worried about.” That uniform and all that brooding silence could be hard for a young girl to resist. Mitzi propped herself against his desk and picked up his stapler. “Don’t you remember what it was like to be seventeen?”

      At seventeen he’d been her whole world.

      “No,” he denied, taking the stapler from her. The brush of his hand took her by surprise. Every scarred knuckle, every callus on his palm were as familiar to her as the memory of his touch.

      “Me, either,” she lied. Heaven help her, she wasn’t seventeen anymore and it was hard for her to resist.

      Lest she forget, when she was twenty-four he’d brought that world crashing down.

      She crossed the room and picked up the folder with his travel orders. “Here,” she said, handing it to him. “You left this on a chair and it wound up on my desk.”

      “Sorry about that.”

      “Not a problem,” she said, heading back to her desk.

      “Did you read them?” He sounded curious, not angry.

      His curiosity intrigued her. “Your orders are none of my business, Gunny.”

      “I just thought you should know I’m only here temporarily.”

      It sounded like a warning not to get her hopes up. She knew better. “I guessed as much.”

      “Once my detachment gets back to The Boathouse, I’ll be joining them. I’ll have to pass a physical fitness test first. But as soon as they call…” He shrugged.

      He’d be gone. Back in the line of fire.

      Not a matter of if, but when.

      The Boathouse was a modern space-aged building tucked into the boat basin at Camp Pendleton in San Diego. If his recon unit wasn’t there they could be almost anywhere.

      Which was obviously where he wanted to be.

      Anywhere but here.

      “It’s what you wanted.” Was it petty of her not to be happy for him? Even if he got himself killed just to prove he was worthy of being called a Marine?

      “Hey,” Keith called out, coming through the door, basketball tucked under his arm. “I hear there’s a new Marine Corps recruiter in town. Where do I sign?”

      “Over my dead body,” Bruce declared.

      “I’m serious.” Keith approached the desk and Mitzi retreated to her side of the room.

      “So am I.” Bruce stood with his hands on his hips. A dozen cold calls his first day down the list of high school seniors and not a single lead, then in walks his eighteen-year-old brother ready to sign on the dotted line.

      As if he was ever going to let that happen.

      Keith dropped into the chair opposite Bruce’s desk, put his basketball and backpack at his feet. “Seriously,” he said, kicking back, with his size thirteens up on Bruce’s desk. “I want to join the Corps.”

      “Seriously.” Bruce knocked Keith’s feet to the floor, then sat where they’d been. “You’re going to college.”

      “College is an expensive waste of time.”

      “Coach says your scholarship prospects are good.”

      “Yeah, so?”

      “So you’re going.”

      “You didn’t.”

      Bruce crossed his arms. “And look where it got me.”

      “I don’t see what’s so bad about being you.”

      “Then you’re not looking hard enough.”

      “It’s family tradition. You—”

      “Didn’t have the same opportunities you have. And sure as hell didn’t have your grades. You’re a smart kid—act like it.”

      “I’m sick of school.” Keith pushed to his feet, full of restless energy. They were roughly the same height now. When had the kid shot up those last few inches? “I’m sick and tired of people telling me what I can and

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