Force of Nature Read online

  “Y’look like shit,” Cosmo finally said. At times, he spoke as if he were charged a hefty fee for every word he used, creating contractions that didn’t really exist.

  “Cos, believe me, I feel like shit,” Robin admitted as he climbed into the truck, setting his pack on the floor at his feet.

  “Sure you want to do this?” Cosmo got in behind the wheel.

  “Yes. Shooting starts in just a few months.” A fact that scared the crap out of him. Was he really ready to open a movie? A lot of people were counting on the fact that Robin Chadwick could be a bankable box-office draw.

  Cosmo sat there, on the other side of the truck’s cab, just looking at him.

  Holy crap, that made him uncomfortable. Dude should have been a priest or a CIA operative. His mind-reading ability—or at least his ability to make it seem as if he could read minds—was off the charts. How the hell did he do that?

  Finally, Cos looked away. He put his truck in gear and pulled out onto the street. He didn’t say anything else, not for a good long while. It wasn’t until he was signaling for the turnoff into the navy base that he even glanced over at Robin again. “Janey’s worried about you.”

  Robin sighed. “Janey’s always worried about—”

  “I am, too.” Cosmo broke the bank, putting forth two entire sentences. “I’m not sure you should take this role, Rob.”

  Robin bristled. “You don’t think I can play a SEAL?”

  “This training is intense. You’re not in the kind of physical condition you need to be in, to—”

  “I can do this,” Robin said. “I’m going to do this.” Like he was going to turn down half a million dollars and a chance to work with Oscar-winning director Victor Strauss? “This movie puts me onto an entirely new level. After this, I’m a star.”

  “You’re already a star.”

  “No, I’m not. I’m a flavor. Yeah, I’ve lasted longer than a month, but Riptide puts me on the map.”

  Cosmo glanced at him. “Riptide?”

  “Yeah. That’s the new title they’re going with—this week, anyway,” Robin told him. “My character gets framed for a botched assassination attempt on the U.S. President. I pretty much get caught up in this situation that I can’t escape from. Riptide—get it? But the bad guys have no idea who I am or what I’m capable of doing. I pretty much kick their asses and clear my name and save POTUS from a second assassination attempt. Plus I get the girl.” There was always a girl—a love interest—in a movie like this.

  Cosmo shot him another look, but said nothing.

  “It’s a popcorn movie,” Robin continued. “It’ll be my face on the one sheets. If I do it right and it opens big, I’m a star.” And if it didn’t open big, or if he somehow screwed it up by being indiscreet…

  “So that’s what you want,” Cosmo said with another of those penetrating looks. “To be a star.”

  “Yes,” Robin said, gazing out the window so he didn’t have to see Cosmo’s disbelief. But he didn’t need to see it to feel it. “It’s what I want that I can have, okay? So just…zip it. Not everyone gets to have the kind of relationship you have with Janey. So just…don’t go there. Please.”

  Cosmo, of course, wasn’t about to say anything. In fact, he didn’t speak again until he’d parked in the lot outside a single-story building, among a variety of cars, trucks, and SUVs that screamed alpha male.

  As they both got out of Cos’s truck, he gave Robin the most matter-of-fact warning in history. “This training is going to break your balls.”

  “Well, gee golly,” Robin said, hefting the strap of his pack up onto his shoulder. “Whatever are we waiting for?”

  Annie Dugan was sick and tired of late-night emergency phone calls.

  For months she’d lived on the brink of disaster, cursing the inevitable. She was a prisoner of the specter of approaching death, trapped in a corner yet still fighting like hell against the odds—for someone who, in the end, had gone and quit on her.

  Pam’s funeral was lovely, of course. Pam had made all the arrangements herself, in advance, and her parents were there to see that it went off without a glitch. Annie had sat in the back of the church, too tired and still too angry at her best friend to cry.

  The house—a rustic New Hampshire farmhouse that Pam had renovated with her artistic flair two years before she was diagnosed as inoperable—sold almost immediately, mere hours after the hospice bed was removed from the front parlor.

  It had felt as if it were all happening too quickly to Annie, but in her heart she knew it was a good thing. As much as she’d loved that house, as much as she thought of it as a home, it wasn’t her home and she didn’t want to stay.

  Annie had gone back to Boston. Templar, Brick and Smith hired her back, just as they said they would. Eunice Templar, known throughout the business world as the Dragonlady, had gotten tears in her eyes when Annie had explained she couldn’t just take a month’s leave of absence, that she was moving to New Hampshire for an indeterminate amount of time so that her best friend, Pam, could live out her last months at home, instead of in a hospital, surrounded by strangers.

  After Pam died, Annie went back to work at the accounting firm. She found an apartment in Newton, and took her furniture and business suits and shoes out of storage.

  This was when, the hospice coordinator and the grief counselors had all said, she would slowly but surely find her life returning to normal. It would take time, though. She should be patient. Expect bumps in the road.

  It would feel strange at first, going back to work in a cubicle, after spending so much time outside. It would feel surreal, even. Almost as if she’d never left, as if the past few months hadn’t happened.

  She should continue with counseling, they’d told her, so she dutifully went. Once a week, as part of her new/old routine.

  But it had been months now, and still none of it seemed even remotely familiar—at least not until the phone rang tonight, interrupting Jon Stewart, at a quarter after eleven.

  It was Celeste Harris, the woman who had bought Pam’s house, and she was clearly distressed. Pam’s dog, Pierre, a tiny mutt, part poodle, part mystery, had run away from his new home with Pam’s mom and had shown up again, in Celeste’s backyard. She’d tried to coax him inside, tempting him with food, but he’d shied away. It was cold out and getting colder. She’d called the town dogcatcher, but he couldn’t make it out there until the morning.

  Celeste was afraid that would be too late—that Pierre would freeze to death by then.

  So she’d called Annie, hoping she could help.

  And here Annie was. Heading to the rescue. North on Route 3. Shivering as her car took forever to warm up in the cold New England night.

  She’d called Pam’s mother, who reported Pierre had run away a full week ago—she hadn’t wanted to bother Annie with that bad news. That dog was such a trial. Always hiding under the desk in the kitchen. Refusing food. Pooping at night on the dining-room floor.

  Pam, who’d arranged every detail before she’d done the unspeakable, had made sure Pierre would go to live with her cousin Clive, of whom the little dog had grudgingly approved. But when Clive was offered a promotion and a move to his firm’s London office, Pierre went to live with Pam’s mom.

  It was nearly 1 A.M. when Annie turned off the road and onto the crushed gravel of the drive that led back to Pam’s house. Pam’s former house.

  The lights were still on, both porches lit up. The kitchen windows glowed, too, and the back screen opened with a familiar screech as Annie parked and got out of her car.

  “Thank you for coming.” Celeste came out onto the back porch, followed by her two daughters.

  Pam would’ve loved the fact that children were living in her house. She wouldn’t have loved the hatchet job they’d done on her beloved mountain laurels, though.

  “He’s over by the garbage pails,” the younger girl announced. “Alongside the garage.”

  “It’s a barn, dimwit,” her older si
ster loftily corrected her.

  “Yeah, but we keep our car there, so it’s also a garage, stupid.”

  “Girls,” their mother chastised.

  Annie was already heading—slowly, carefully—around the side of the barn. “Pierre,” she whispered, very softly.

  Pierre had had a painful past, Pam had once told Annie as she snuggled the little dog in her arms, his head possessively on her shoulder. Long before Pam had met Pierre at the animal shelter, someone had neglected and even beaten him. It was hard for him to trust anyone, but he’d finally bonded with Pam. She’d told him, every day, that no one was going to hurt him, not ever again.

  “Pierre, it’s me,” Annie whispered now. Not that he’d ever deigned to give her his attention before. Of course, back then, Pam was always there—his goddess, his all.

  She heard him before she saw him—the tinkling of his tags as he shifted and then…He poked his head out into the dim light, wariness in his brown eyes.

  He was almost unrecognizable. His hair was matted and dirty. And he was skinny. Skinnier. And shivering from the cold.

  “Hey, puppy boy,” Annie said softly, using Pam’s pet names for him as she crouched down and held out her hand for him to sniff. “Hey, good dog. Everything’s okay. No one’s going to hurt you…”

  To her complete surprise, he didn’t hesitate. His tail even wagged slightly as he came out of his hiding place and licked her outstretched hand. Looking over his shoulder, as if to make sure that she was going to follow him, he trotted out onto the driveway and over to her car.

  Annie stopped short. Did he really want…?

  “Wow, she likes you,” the littler girl said, admiration in her voice. “She doesn’t like us very much.”

  “He doesn’t like you,” her older sister pointed out. “Probably because you can’t tell the difference between a girl dog and a boy dog.”

  Pierre looked at Annie, looked at the car, and then back at Annie, as if to say, What are you waiting for?

  “I can’t have a dog in my apartment,” Annie said, as if he could actually understand her words. “Plus, I work full-time…”

  Celeste opened the screen door. “Why don’t you come inside?” she invited Annie. “Both of you. It’s too late to drive back to Boston tonight. You can stay over on the couch and we can figure out a plan of action in the morning.”

  The thought of going into Pam’s house was both appealing and dreadful. But it was late, and Annie was exhausted. “Thanks,” she said.

  Amazingly, Pierre didn’t protest as she scooped him up. She followed the smaller of the girls inside, and…It was beyond weird.

  Because it wasn’t even remotely Pam’s house anymore.

  They’d repainted the walls, muting Pam’s bright colors. And their furniture was vastly different from Pam’s wicker and white painted wood. It was faux Colonial now—all dark veneers and copper drawer-pulls.

  It smelled different, too.

  “Bathroom’s down the hall, second door on the left,” Celeste said. “Of course, you know that. I’ll be right back with some blankets.”

  She disappeared, shooing her daughters along to bed, leaving Annie and Pierre alone in the living room.

  “I can’t have a dog,” Annie told him again, but he put his head down, right on her shoulder, the way he used to do with Pam, and he sighed. His entire little body shook with his exhale, and the crazy thing was that Annie felt what he was feeling, too.

  If it wasn’t quite contentment, it was pretty darn close.

  It was oddly familiar.

  Vaguely normal and very right, in spite of the freaky abnormality of their surroundings, in spite of Pierre’s unfortunate aroma.

  It was far more normal and right than she’d ever felt in her cubicle in Templar, Brick and Smith. Even before Pam got sick.

  Celeste came back with an armload of bedding. “Worse come to worst, the dogcatcher’ll be here in the morning. I know it’s not the best solution, but at least the dog’ll be warm in the pound. He’ll have food…”

  “I’m keeping him,” Annie told her.

  “But you said your apartment—”

  “I didn’t really like it there,” she admitted. She didn’t particularly like her job, either. Or Boston’s relentless cold—the winters that lasted for nearly half the year. “Thanks for your hospitality, but I’m awake enough to drive. We’re going home.”

  “Are you sure?” Celeste asked, following her to the kitchen door. “Because it’s really not an imposition—”

  “I’m sure,” Annie told her. “Thanks again.”

  The gravel crunched under her boots as she took Pierre to her car. He didn’t seem anxious as she set him down on the passenger seat. He just made himself comfortable, watching her expectantly.

  Annie sat behind the wheel, started the engine. “Well,” she said to the dog as she backed into the turnaround and headed down the drive, “now we just have to figure out where exactly home is.”

  His team leader, Peggy Ryan, hated him.

  It was an inane thing for FBI agent Jules Cassidy to be thinking, considering that a shooter had suddenly opened fire on the crowd of law enforcement personnel, all of whom had just rushed out from their protective cover behind half a dozen police cars.

  But to be fair, this entire situation was drenched in extra crazy. It reeked of some serious what-the-fuck, too, starting with the cozy-looking little Cape-style house, located here on what should have been a peaceful suburban D.C. street.

  The catastrophuck began ten hours ago, when the report of a hostage situation first came in. Jules’s counterterrorist team had gotten a call because the hostage taker was a well-known bubba—a wanted terrorist of the homegrown variety.

  They were told that—as best they could allege—there were three hostages being held by that lone HT in this unassuming little house with its flower gardens and white picket fence. As a full variety of police and FBI teams arrived on the scene, surrounding the structure and setting up the cars as a barricade to keep them all safely outside of Bubba’s rifle range, negotiations had been started.

  After hours of standoff, to Jules’s complete and utter surprise, the bubba had surrendered.

  He came out of the house and into the yard with his hands up and empty—no weapon in sight.

  At which point, Peggy gave the order to take him into custody. She and the local police chief—a bear of a man named Peeler—led the charge into the yard as Jules and the rest of the team headed for the house to see to the safety of the hostages.

  The game was finally over.

  Except, not so fast there, you.

  Apparently, the real game was just beginning.

  Because no, that wasn’t just one shooter firing at them from that Cape, making them scatter. There were at least two. Crap, make that three. As Jules looked up at the house, he counted, yes, three different shooters—all firing rifles from the second-story dormer windows.

  “What the hell…?” Jules’s FBI team member Deb Erlanger said it all as she and Yashi and George scrambled, pulling Jules with them, back behind one of the state police cruisers.

  “Our radio’s hit,” Yashi announced.

  Of course it was.

  It was times like this that reinforced the importance of law enforcement personnel giving heavier weight to the presence of the word allegedly in the facts surrounding the decision-making process. Allegedly was a lot like assume, but in this case it didn’t just make asses out of their team leaders, it made people dead.

  Apparently, there wasn’t one hostage taker and three hostages. Instead there were at least three hostile gunmen, apparently all determined to commit suicide-by-SWAT-team, while taking as many FBI and police with them as possible.

  From Jules’s new proximity, he could see that Chief Peeler had been shot. How badly he was wounded, Jules didn’t know, but Peeler lay motionless in the Cape’s front yard, protected only marginally by the garden’s flimsy picket fence.

  All but one of
the shooters had what looked to be terrible aim—a clue that probably meant two of the three were amateurs.

  Most of the FBI and police had made it safely back to cover behind the cars, with limited casualties—except for Peggy Ryan, who hated Jules and was pinned down in the yard, behind a small outcropping of rocks. She was plastered flat against the ground, weapon drawn, halfway between Peeler’s sprawled body and the full cover of a neighbor’s garden shed.

  She’d dropped her radio. Jules could see it near Peeler’s leg.

  “Center window,” Jules told Yashi, Deb, and George as he reached into the cruiser and grabbed the medical kit. He was going to take it with him just in case he and Peeler got pinned behind Peggy’s rock. “Whoever’s up there’s the only one who can shoot worth shit. Focus your fire there. Keep it up until I get the chief back behind that shed.”

  George expressed his incredulity. “You’re going to move Peeler?”

  Yashi had a far more pertinent question. He held up his regulation sidearm. “Range on this thing’s too short. It won’t—”

  “Just do it,” Jules ordered. With luck, it would cause the shooters to take cover. It was hard to aim and shoot to kill whilst ducking.

  “Yessir.”

  “Now!” Jules said, and medical kit slung over his shoulder, his own weapon out, he ran out into the street, toward the yard. Deb and Yashi and George’s sidearms roared behind him, and as he headed straight into what could potentially be a hail of bullets from the holed-up gunmen, he realized he’d blown the perfect opportunity to say, Cover me, I’m going in.

  Bullets from the shooters in the house hit the ground around him, sending puffs of dirt into the air. But there was no turning back now.

  Jules fired his own weapon—not easy to do while running full out—aiming as best he could for that center window. He slid to a stop in the grass near Chief Peeler, tearing out the knee of his pants. Dang, this was his favorite suit, but perspective was important here. Last time he’d looked, Men’s Wearhouse didn’t sell internal organs.

  The chief, however, hadn’t been as lucky. He was lying with his head in a pool of blood. Expecting the worst, Jules felt for a pulse. To his surprise, he found it, steady and strong—and he realized that the chief had merely been grazed. A bullet had creased his hairline, over his left ear, hence the copious bleeding. It had knocked him out, but the man was alive.