Everything in me tells me to jump at this. Do you mind if I take twenty-four hours to give you an answer?”
“No, not at all,” Dahm said. He stood and stretched his six-four athletic frame. “Are you ready for dessert?”
“Sure.”
“Great. I’ll be right back.”
Dahm then disappeared into the house.
Fung was sipping his wine when Roberto suddenly appeared, ripped like a swimmer and wearing nothing but a Speedo and a smile.
“Roberto?” Fung was confused.
The tall Brazilian laid a familiar hand on Fung’s shoulder. “I hope you’re hungry, because I’m the dessert.”
Fung set his wineglass down.
Roberto stepped toward the edge of the infinity pool just a few feet away.
“Care to join me?” He pulled off his swimsuit.
Fung leered at the marbled Adonis standing in front of him. His confusion melted into lust.
How could Dahm possibly know about Roberto, his favorite?
He couldn’t, could he?
No.
But CHIBI could.
“Yeah. A swim sounds delicious.”
67
ALEXANDRIA, VIRGINIA
Jack sat on his couch, staring into space, a half-finished beer warm in his hand. What had happened in the Baltic a few days ago still gripped him like a waking nightmare.
Lying on his back in the frigid sea, numb from the cold and exhausted, he had closed his eyes and surrendered to the sleep overwhelming him, knowing he’d never wake again in this life.
But here he was now, very much awake and alive. His nerves were frayed and his heart shattered. Rage, grief, and guilt were numbing him as badly as the Baltic had that night. Liliana’s terrified face disappearing into the merciless gloom looped endlessly in his mind’s eye. For a moment in the hospital bed at the Polish clinic, he imagined he really had died and the image repeating in his mind was his own personal Hell.
A knock on his front door broke the loop and got him off the couch.
“Hey, kid. Mind if I come in?”
John Clark stood in the doorway. Just slightly taller than Jack but with a leaner frame, the former SEAL was his boss at The Campus and also a close friend. The seventy-something-year-old man still trained with the team he led, which explained why he looked twenty years younger than he actually was.
Jack’s body language said Go away. He motioned him in with his bottle anyway.
“Yeah. Sure. Come in.”
Clark saw the beer. “I’ll have what you’re having.”
Jack shuffled toward the kitchen. He pulled a bottle out of the fridge and handed it to Clark.
Clark popped the top and clinked his bottle against Jack’s bottle. “I heard you checked out fine on your physical.” He took a swig.
“That’s what the doctor said.”
“You look good. Tired, maybe.”
“Didn’t sleep much last night. Otherwise, I’m good to go.”
“You mind telling that to your old man? He called me today.”
Jack’s eyes narrowed. “I sent him a text.”
“Not the same thing. In fact, your folks were hoping you’d stop by. They’d love to put their arms around your neck and see for themselves.”
Jack headed back toward the front room and fell onto the couch. Clark took a chair and another swig of beer.
“It’s one thing to not call your dad, but you really should call your mom. Trust me on this.”
Jack shook his head, frustrated. The President of the United States dispatched one of the finest warriors this country has ever produced just to get him to call his mommy?
“They know I’m okay. I’m just not ready to talk.” He looked Clark straight in the eye. “To anybody.”
Clark ignored him. “I get it, kid. I read the report Lisanne put together. You’re lucky to be alive.”
Lisanne’s debrief chilled Clark to the bone when he read it. Jack should be dead. If that Polish fisherman had repaired his motor ten minutes earlier and headed back to port, he would have missed Jack entirely. Covering him in blankets, the fisherman got Jack to a clinic on shore just in time. They pumped him with warm saline solution and got his body temperature back to normal before any permanent damage was sustained.
“You should be grateful to the Man Upstairs, Jack. Not sulking around the apartment feeling sorry for yourself.”
Jack’s jaw clenched. “You don’t know what happened that night.”
“Enlighten me.”
“The only reason I’m alive isn’t luck. It’s the fact that the bastard knew I worked for Gerry Hendley.”
“How’d they find out?”
“Liliana must have told them to save my life.”
“It worked.”
“But it didn’t save hers.”
“That’s not on you. You did everything you could, including risking your own life to save hers.”
“You don’t understand—”
“The hell I don’t.”
During the war, Clark had been forced to stand by and