LITMIR.BIZ

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all made it back to California in one piece.

      Veronica smiled, but it was a little too bright and a touch too brittle. “Well,” she said. “Joe’s expecting you. He’s down on the beach.”

      “Thanks.” Lucky squeezed her hand before he released it.

      “Should I set extra plates for dinner?” Veronica asked evenly.

      Lucky exchanged a look with Bobby. The captain had called them to this meeting on their pagers, sending them an urgent code. Whatever was up was important. Despite the fact that they’d only been home a day and a half, chances were they’d be going wheels-up again within the next few hours. And knowing the way Joe Catalanotto liked to lead from the front, it was more than likely he’d be shipping out with them. It seemed, however, that he hadn’t mentioned anything about that to his wife.

      “I don’t think so, Ronnie,” Bobby told her gently.

      “Probably not this time. It really smells great, though. Those cooking lessons are paying off, huh?”

      “I was working all day,” she told him ruefully. “Joe made the stew.”

      Damn. The captain’s wife may have been beautiful, smart and sexy as hell, but the woman was a menace in the kitchen.

      “Are you sure you can’t stay?” she added. “There’s plenty and it’s quite good. There’s no way Joe and Frankie and I can possibly eat all of it.”

      “Something’s come up. I think the captain’s planning to take us kids out on another field trip,” Wes told her before either Bobby or Lucky could muzzle him. Mr. Insensitive and Completely Oblivious. “So, yeah, we’re sure we can’t stay.”

      “Well,” Veronica said tightly. “Off for another month, are you? Thanks for letting me know, although that’s something that would’ve been nice to hear from Joe.”

      Double damn. Lucky cringed. “Ron, honest, I don’t know what’s up. If he didn’t mention anything to you, well, maybe we’re not going anywhere.”

      Veronica visibly composed herself. And sighed as she looked up into their somewhat panicked faces. “Don’t look at me like that,” she chided them. “I’m stronger than you think. I knew what I was getting before I married him. I don’t have to like it when Joe leaves—isn’t that what you SEALs always say? I don’t have to like it, I just have to do it. Just take care of him for me, all right?”

      She was pretending to hang tough, but her lower lip trembled an infinitesimal amount, giving her away. “Go,” she said. “He’s waiting. And you can tell him he doesn’t have to worry about breaking the terrible news to me anymore.”

      Lucky followed Bobby and Wes out the kitchen door but hesitated on the deck, looking in through the window to watch her set only two places at the kitchen table—for herself and Frankie, her toddler son—still trying not to cry.

      Lucky knew by the time Joe came back to the house, she’d be perfectly composed and probably even smiling.

      Veronica’s acceptance of Joe’s career was a rare thing. SEALs had a divorce rate that was off the scale, in part because many of their wives simply couldn’t take the strain of being left behind again and again and again, waiting and worrying.

      “I’m never getting married,” Lucky murmured to Wes as they went down the steps that led to the beach.

      “You and me, Luck,” Wes agreed. “Unless Ronnie decides to leave the captain. Or am I already too late? Have you already started marking your territory in a big circle around her? No offense, Lieutenant, sir, but that kiss was just a little too friendly.”

      Lucky was stung. “I was just saying hello. I’d never—”

      “You’d never what, O’Donlon?” All six feet and four dangerous inches of Joe Cat materialized from the mist that was blowing in off the Pacific. One second they were alone and the next he was breathing down their necks. How the hell could a man built like a professional football player do that?

      “I’d never hit on your wife,” Lucky told his captain bluntly. There was no point in trying to hide the truth from Joe Cat. Somehow he’d find out—if he didn’t already know. That’s why he was the captain. “I’d never, ever, ever hit on Ronnie.” Lucky shot Wes a disbelieving look. “I can’t believe you think I’d do something that low, Skelly. My feelings are seriously hurt—”

      “What’s happening, Captain?” Bobby interrupted.

      Joe Cat motioned towards the ocean. “We need to walk,” he told them. “We really should be talking in a secured room, but getting one would raise too many eyebrows, and that’s the last thing I want to do.”

      Whatever this was, it was bigger than Lucky had imagined. He stopped giving Wes dirty looks and focused on what the captain was saying.

      But Joe was silent until they were next to the breaking surf. The beach was deserted and misty, the setting sun hidden behind clouds.

      “I’ve been doing some work for Admiral Robinson,” Joe Cat finally told them, his voice low. “Acting as a liaison for one of his longhairs who’s out on a black op for the admiral’s Gray Group.”

      Longhair was the name given to any SEAL who might need to blend in with a dangerous and motley crowd of terrorists and mercenaries at any given moment. He had to go on top-secret, extremely covert “black” operations, where a man with a military haircut would stick out like a sore thumb. And once that man stuck out, he would be one very dead sore thumb.

      So these covert op SEALs got tattoos. They pierced their ears. They didn’t shave for weeks on end. They dressed in what would have been known as “grunge” in the early nineties. And they grew their hair very, very long.

      Of course, when it came to longhairs, the captain should talk. He wore his own hair in a thick, dark braid down his back. When he shook his hair out, he looked like a pirate or maybe a really wild rock star—and absolutely nothing like a highly decorated, extremely well-respected captain in Uncle Sam’s Navy.

      “The admiral’s off doing diplo-duty in a place where it’s impossible to get a secured telephone line,” Joe Cat told them curtly. “I can’t even report to him that as of twenty-four hours ago, his SEAL missed his weekly check-in. And frankly, I’m concerned. Apparently this guy’s better than a clock when it comes to check-ins. So I’ve got to go out to New Mexico to try and track him down, and I need a team to watch my six.”

      New Mexico? What the…?

      The captain looked at Bob, then Wes, then Lucky. “I’m looking for volunteers here. This will be a black op as well—completely off the record, no paperwork, no acknowledgement of the situation by any of the top brass. If you choose to come along, you’ll be paid, but not in the usual way. In fact, you’ll have to take leave so your whereabouts can’t be traced.”

      It sounded like some serious fun. “Count me in, Skipper,” Lucky said, and Bobby and Wes were only nanoseconds behind him.

      Their captain nodded. “Thanks,” he said quietly.

      “Who’s the little lost SEAL we’re tracking down?” Wes asked. “Anyone we know?”

      “Yeah,” Joe said. “You worked with him six months ago. Lt. Mitchell Shaw.”

      “Oh, man,” Bobby said in his basso profundo, voicing exactly what Lucky was thinking. “He’s gonna be hard to find if he doesn’t want to be found, Cat. He’s a chameleon—good with disguises. The admiral once told me that he nearly pulled the hair off a little old lady, thinking she was Mitch under cover.”

      “What’s a Gray Group operative doing in New Mexico?” Lucky asked.

      “This is top-secret information I’m about to give you,” Joe told them seriously. “It goes no further than the four of us, understood?”

      “Yes, sir.”

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