not going to accept anything short of active duty,” he said bluntly. “I’m not going to teach.”
There was compassion and regret in the bigger man’s dark eyes. “I’m sorry,” Joe said quietly.
Frisco glared up at the clock that was set into the wall. It was nearly noon. Two more hours, and he’d have to pack up his things and leave. Two more hours, and he wouldn’t be a Navy SEAL, temporarily off the active duty list, recovering from a serious injury. In two hours he’d be former Navy SEAL Lt. Alan Francisco. In two hours, he’d be a civilian, with nowhere to go, nothing to do.
Anger hit him hard in the gut. Five years ago, it was a sensation he’d rarely felt. He’d been calm, he’d been cool. But nowadays, he rarely felt anything besides anger.
But wait. He did have somewhere to go. The anger eased up a bit. Frisco had kept up the payments on his little condo in San Felipe, the low-rent town outside of the naval base. But…once he arrived in San Felipe, then what? He would, indeed, have nothing to do.
Nothing to do was worse than nowhere to go. What was he going to do? Sit around all day, watching TV and collecting disability checks? The anger was back, this time lodging in his throat, choking him.
“I can’t afford to continue the kind of physical therapy I’ve been doing here at the hospital,” Frisco said, trying to keep his desperation from sounding in his voice.
“Maybe you should listen to Steve,” Joe said, “and give your leg a rest.”
Easy for Joe to say. Joe was going to stand up and walk out of this hospital without a cane, without a limp, without his entire life shattered. Joe was going to go back to the home he shared with his beautiful wife—who was pregnant with their first child. He was going to have dinner with Veronica, and later he’d probably make love to her and fall asleep with her in his arms. And in the morning, Joe was going to get up, go for a run, shower, shave and get dressed, and go into work as the commanding officer of SEAL Team Ten’s Alpha Squad.
Joe had everything.
Frisco had an empty condo in a bad part of town.
“Congratulations about the baby, man,” Frisco said, trying as hard as he could to actually mean it. Then he limped out of the room.
There was a light on in condo 2C.
Mia Summerton stopped in the parking lot, her arms straining from the weight of her grocery bags, and looked up at the window of the second-floor condo that was next to her own. Apartment 2C had remained empty and dark for so many years, Mia had started to believe that its owner would never come home.
But that owner—whoever he was—was home tonight.
Mia knew that the owner of 2C was, indeed, a “he.” She got a better grip on the handles of her cloth bags and started for the outside cement stairs that led up to the second story and her own condo. His name was Lt. Alan Francisco, U.S.N., Ret. She’d seen his name in the condo association owner’s directory, and on the scattered pieces of junk mail that made it past the post office’s forwarding system.
As far as Mia could figure out, her closest neighbor was a retired naval officer. With no more than his name and rank to go on, she had left the rest to her imagination. He was probably an older man, maybe even elderly. He had possibly served during the Second World War. Or perhaps he’d seen action in Korea or Vietnam.
Whatever the case, Mia was eager to meet him. Next September, her tenth graders were going to be studying American history, from the stock market crash through to the end of the Vietnam conflict. With any luck, Lt. Alan Francisco, U.S.N., Ret., would be willing to come in and talk to her class, tell his story, bring the war he’d served in down to a personal level.
And that was the problem with studying war. Until it could be understood on a personal level, it couldn’t be understood at all.
Mia unlocked her own condo and carried her groceries inside, closing the door behind her with her foot. She quickly put the food away and stored her cloth grocery bags in the tiny broom closet. She glanced at herself in the mirror and adjusted and straightened the high ponytail that held her long, dark hair off her neck.
Then she went back outside, onto the open-air corridor that connected all of the second-floor units in the complex.
The figures on the door, 2C, were slightly rusted, but they still managed to reflect the floodlights from the courtyard, even through the screen. Not allowing herself time to feel nervous or shy, Mia pressed the doorbell.
She heard the buzzer inside of the apartment. The living room curtains were open and the light was on inside, so she peeked in.
Architecturally, it was the mirror image of her own unit. A small living room connected to a tiny dining area, which turned a corner and connected to a galley kitchen. Another short hallway led back from the living room to two small bedrooms and a bath. It was exactly the same as her place, except the layout of the rooms faced the opposite direction.
His furniture was an exact opposite of Mia’s, too. Mia had decorated her living room with bamboo and airy, light colors. Lieutenant Francisco’s was filled with faintly shabby-looking mismatched pieces of dark furniture. His couch was a dark green plaid, and the slipcovers were fraying badly. His carpeting was the same forest green that Mia’s had been when she’d first moved in, three years ago. She’d replaced hers immediately.
Mia rang the bell again. Still no answer. She opened the screen and knocked loudly on the door, thinking if Lieutenant Francisco was an elderly man, he might be hard of hearing….
“Looking for someone in particular?”
Mia spun around, startled, and the screen door banged shut, but there was no one behind her.
“I’m down here.”
The voice carried up from the courtyard, and sure enough, there was a man standing in the shadows. Mia moved to the railing.
“I’m looking for Lieutenant Francisco,” she said.
He stepped forward, into the light. “Well, aren’t you lucky? You found him.”
Mia was staring. She knew she was staring, but she couldn’t help herself.
Lt. Alan Francisco, U.S.N., Ret., was no elderly, little man. He was only slightly older than she was—in his early thirties at the most. He was young and tall and built like a tank. The sleeveless shirt he was wearing revealed muscular shoulders and arms, and did very little to cover his powerful-looking chest.
His hair was dark blond and cut short, in an almost boxlike military style. His jaw was square, too, his features rugged and harshly, commandingly handsome. Mia couldn’t see what color his eyes were—only that they were intense, and that he examined her as carefully as she studied him.
He took another step forward, and Mia realized he limped and leaned heavily on a cane.
“Did you want something besides a look at me?’ he asked.
His legs were still in the shadows, but his arms were in the light. And he had tattoos. One on each arm. An anchor on one arm, and something
