Sweetheart for the SEAL Page 7

  “I just hope they get to safety, that’s all. I keep imagining something horrible happening,” I sigh, shaking my head. “Thank you for coming over, by the way. You didn’t have to.”

  Jake looks positively glowy at my appreciation. He takes a step closer, which makes me feel oddly uncomfortable. I have no logical reason to fear him. After all, he has been my next-door neighbor for close to a year now, and we were friends back in high school. In fact, he was Duncan’s best friend. The two of them played team sports together all the time. When I dated Duncan, Jake often tagged along. I don’t think it was ever much of a third wheel situation, though. I always did my best to include him so it wasn’t awkward.

  “Of course, I came over. I wouldn’t just leave you here stranded alone. That’s more Duncan’s bag, huh?” he jokes rather harshly. I stiffen up, frowning.

  “Well, he did show up out of nowhere to help me,” I point out.

  A flicker of something dark crosses Jake’s face, and my heart skips a beat. I have never seen him as a combative or even assertive person. He’s just an old friend who has drifted apart from me a little over the years. Just a neighbor who waves at me when we check our mail or returns my packages when they get sent to the wrong address. But there’s something in Jake’s eyes right now that chills me to the very bone.

  “Well, I mean, he did leave you four years ago,” Jake says coldly.

  I blink in surprise at the stark statement. “He didn’t leave me. He just... left. It was an amicable breakup. It was mutual,” I explain softly. Dakota pokes her head out from around the corner, looking at me with wide green eyes. I can tell she’s confused, trying to put two and two together. She doesn’t know Duncan. She barely knows Jake. But even she can sense that this conversation is heading down a shadowy path.

  I don’t want her to hear any of this, so I give her a smile and say, “Hey sweetie, can you go back to the bathroom where it’s safe? Mr. Johnson and I are going to have a grown-up conversation in the kitchen, okay?”

  Kota nods balefully. “Okay, Mommy,” she answers in a small voice. I ruffle her hair as she passes by, toddling down the hall to the bathroom. As soon as the door is shut, I turn back to Jake and jerk my head toward the kitchen so he can follow. He smiles almost deviously. Like this is what he’s been hoping for all along.

  To get me alone.

  As soon as we step into the kitchen, Jake corners me, slowly walking me back against the kitchen counter. I notice for the first time that he’s much taller and broader than I am. He’s not as thick and muscular as Duncan, but he’s definitely got a leg up over me. I swallow hard, hoping that the warning sirens blaring in the back of my mind are just misguided. But when he starts talking in a low, growly voice, I know something is very wrong.

  “You know, I have been watching you over the past several months,” he says, smiling.

  A pit starts to form in my stomach. “Oh? Uh, have you?” I ask, startled.

  He nods slowly. “Yes. I wanted to keep an eye on you and… the little one.”

  “Wow. Well, that is very kind of you, but it’s not necessary. I’ve got everything under control here. I don’t need someone to watch over me,” I explain as politely as I can.

  Jake doesn’t falter for a second, walking me back so that I’m pinned against the counter. I can feel his body heat radiating off of him. I can smell his slightly musty breath. His eyes bore into mine deeply, like he’s trying to read my mind or something.

  “No, you do need me. You’ve always needed me, even though you’ve never realized it yourself. Ever since high school, you’ve been ignoring me. Pretending I don’t exist. I moved here so I could be closer to you, Crystal. I thought that once we were next door to each other you couldn’t ignore me anymore. But you... you’re so oblivious,” Jake growls.

  “Jake, please stop. You’re freaking me out,” I murmur.

  “Oh, am I?” he says, raising an eyebrow but not backing off an inch. “Well, then, that’s an improvement. At least you’re noticing me now. Is that all it takes? To get Duncan out of the way first?”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” I ask, glaring at him.

  He glares right back and goads me, “Come on, Crystal. Like you don’t know. Don’t play stupid with me. You and I both know that this has been simmering for a long, long time. Duncan left you. Abandoned you and Dakota. He left to go play hero in some foreign land. But me? I stuck around. I stayed close. I turned down jobs in other cities just to stay here with you. I knew that if I left, there would be no one around to keep tabs on you. And with that sweet little girl you’ve got here—”

  “Don’t you talk about my daughter,” I interrupt tersely between gritted teeth.

  Jake looks mildly taken aback, like he never expected to get a rise out of me. Then the surprise fades to smug satisfaction. “Ooh. There’s a little glimpse of the spitfire I knew you were all along. Underneath that sugar-sweet, prudish facade, you’re a little spicy, aren’t you? There’s a tiger lurking inside this little pussycat, and I’m going to be the one to wake it up.”

  “Yeah, right,” I scoff. “You may have watched me all this time like a damn stalker, but you don’t know me, Jake. You never knew me. And you never, ever will.”

  “Shut up!” he snarls, suddenly grabbing me by the arms and hoisting me up onto the counter. I yelp and try to wriggle out of his grasp, but he quickly pins me there, leaning in close to whisper in my ear. “I’ve done my time. I’ve been so, so patient with you, Crystal. Waiting for you to notice me, to realize who you truly belong to. Duncan’s gone. I’m here. Him showing up to try to play hero again changes nothing, and I’m getting really damn tired of waiting for you to wake up. So I’m going to have to wake you up by force. I didn’t want it to be this way, but you’ve given me no other choice.”

  The storm rages on overhead, the winds howling like a distant banshee while Jake dives forward to kiss me. I yank my head to one side so that he misses, his lips landing on my cheek instead. But this refusal only seems to stoke his fire. He grabs my thighs and squeezes them as his teeth graze the ticklish skin of my neck. I try to jerk away, but he hooks his fingers through my belt loops and holds me still, attempting to pull down my shorts with one hand while his other hand snakes up underneath my purple t-shirt.

  “No!” I gasp, torn between wanting to yell for help and not wanting my innocent daughter to get caught up in this. I bite my lip to keep from screaming as I do my best to knee him in the chest. But he’s too fast, too tough for me. Jake is too big, and he overpowers me easily. Tears spring to my eyes as he begins to touch my skin, his hand slipping up under my shorts. There is nobody coming to save me. My hero already showed up and left.

  Then, I just happen to glance over and see a peanut-butter-encrusted blade of a knife lying on the stack of dishes in the sink. Without a second thought, my hand darts out and grabs it. Just as Jake is rearing back to unzip his jeans, I brandish the knife out in front of me, my arm shaking as I stare him down with pure terror.

  He stops short and holds his hands up, glaring first at the knife, then up at me. He grits his teeth, almost sneering at me in his anger.

  “You bitch,” he snarls.

  “Don’t you touch me ever again,” I mumble, fighting back tears so I can look tougher and more resilient than I feel. There’s a long pause while he sizes me up, trying to decide whether or not I’m worth the trouble. Then, finally, he rolls his eyes and takes a step back.

  “Fine. Not today. I get it. The storm’s got you all worked up. You wouldn’t be any fun for me right now, anyway. That’s okay. I’ve waited this long, I can wait a little longer,” Jake says, with an almost chilling degree of casualness. He smooths down his shirt and zips his jeans back up, shrugging. A shark-like grin spreads across his face.

  “Another time, then, hmm?” he murmurs. “Don’t worry. I’ll make it special.”

  And with that, he stalks out of the kitchen, leaving me sitting on the counter in total shock, still grip
ping the knife. My whole body is paralyzed with fear. Slowly, with my hand trembling violently, I set the knife back down in the sink. I swipe my hands over my eyes to dry my tears and take a long, slow deep breath. I hear the door open and shut, and I let out a sigh of relief.

  I can’t let Dakota see me like this. She’s so intuitive, she’ll know immediately something is wrong, and I just need to catch my breath and come to terms with what happened. It’s another several minutes before I can even force myself to move, I’m so overwhelmed with shock.

  I can’t believe it. The guy I’ve known since high school, Duncan’s own best friend. My neighbor. The sweet, popular, quiet guy who tagged along on a lot of our teenage adventures. I never saw it coming. I never expected him to turn out to be a viper in disguise.

  He’s been watching me. A chill runs down my spine. All this time, I’ve thought I was safe. I assumed everything was normal. But all along, there has been a secret sleeper agent living right next door, just waiting for the right occasion to trap me. I wrack my brain, wondering why the hell he’s never tried anything until now. I’ve been home alone so many nights, just Dakota and me. I make sure to keep the window blinds shut. I keep my doors locked constantly.

  A jolt shakes my whole body. Maybe that’s it: he just needed an easy way in. Offering to stay with me while Duncan left was just his way of circumventing the locks. There is a predator in my home, and I let him in.

  Finally, I manage to slide down off the counter, although my legs still feel as wobbly as jello, and I start to make my way toward the hallway to go join Kota and make sure she’s not too freaked out by the storm. But when I look down the hall toward the bathroom, my heart stops.

  The door is open. I can see right into the bathroom, and my daughter isn’t there.

  “No,” I mumble, swiveling around to limp numbly back toward the front of the house. “No, no, no.” I feel like I’m inside a nightmare, like I’m wading through molasses. I can’t go any faster, and the world around me is melting away. My heart is pounding so fast that it’s hard to breathe. Every neuron in my brain is screaming with panic and dread. As I’m coming around the corner to the entryway, my whole world starts to fall apart.

  The front door is closed. I heard it open and shut, right after… right after Jake…

  “Dakota?” I call out, my voice trembling.

  There’s no reply.

  I wait a moment, frozen with fear and confusion, my mind not working. The house is silent. The storm howls and crashes outside. I don’t even have to check the rooms to know my daughter isn’t in them. She’s not in the house. She is... somewhere else.

  “Dakota!” I cry, throwing open the door just to be confronted with rain pelting my face and body, the water rushing up my front steps to splash into my home. Shielding my eyes from the rain, I look around in complete horror. There’s no one in sight. Not Jake. Not Dakota. Not a single soul. The flood waters have completely surrounded my townhouse, and they’re rising even higher by the second.

  “He took her,” I gasp breathlessly, feeling faint as my breaths rip raggedly and painfully through my body. I press a hand over my heart, struggling to stay upright as the world around me comes crashing down. “He took my baby!” I scream, crumpling to the filthy, wet ground.

  Duncan

  “This is easily the worst storm any of us have ever seen,” says the seaman as I watch them load up the last of the three kids in a secure jeep to take them back to the mainland. “The news is going to be all over this fiasco before the storm is even over.”

  Almost as soon as I flashed my ID, the whole group sprang into action. I may not technically have authority over these guys, but my reputation seems to precede me. Weston raises a hand to wave goodbye to me, and I wave back at him before the door gets closed and a couple of the Coast Guardsmen start driving them to the mainland and to safety. They'll be far safer with them in that military vehicle than with me in anything I'm going to be driving in the near future, I imagine. They got in touch with their parents, who it turns out have been hovering at the other Coast Guard blockade at the bridge, trying to get in and find their kids.

  “And why wasn't the news all over it in time for these people to get to safety?” I ask, crossing my arms.

  “Took everyone by surprise,” he replies, shaking his head. “This thing was supposed to be small. It just picked up speed and strength out of nowhere. Now it's the fucking apocalypse, and it caught us all with our pants down.”

  “What's the situation on the mainland?”

  “Bad,” he says simply. “Flooding and fires everywhere. Traffic pile ups. Imagine what's going on here but with about ten times as many people. We're doing everything we can, and that's the most I can say.”

  “Keep it up,” I say, giving him an encouraging nod. “We need as many men and women like you all out here on the ground.”

  “You're really heading back into that nightmare, aren't you?” he asks, looking at me uncertainly. “Look, I won't stop you, but officially speaking, I can't let you leave here.”

  “Then I slipped away when you weren't looking,” I suggest, already heading back to Crystal’s car. I turn my back on him and get back into the little vehicle, turning the engine on and watching the Guardsman shake his head in disbelief as I pull out and turn around, driving headfirst into the inky blackness ahead of me.

  Lightning seems to boom every few minutes, sometimes in such quick succession that I'd think a bombing raid was going on, if I didn't know better.

  I don't see the looters in the same spot as before when I drive by. I'm almost disappointed. Being able to teach those bastards who scared the kids a lesson wound be some much needed stress relief right about now.

  The drive back to the townhouse is a lot less harrowing, thanks to the simple fact that three small lives aren't depending on me anymore. I still have to wind through a few yards and in paved roads along the way, because the waters are getting higher, and Crystal’s car is even less suited to fording little rivers of flood water than my rental SUV was. Getting Crystal, Kota, and Jake out of here is going to be an issue, but I'm already formulating a route, watching out for places that look like they'll be less flooded than others in a few more minutes, maybe an hour.

  The best case scenario is that I convince the three of them to stay put and bunker down until we see a break of some kind, even if it's just the slightest reprieve in the storm. I hate being apart from Crystal and her daughter, but I’m glad Jake showed up when he did. It makes me feel a bit less like I abandoned them, and helps keep my nerves steady.

  Jake was always sturdy in a crisis. I tried to talk him into joining up with me a few times, but he always had different plans. I guess that’s why we never kept in touch. In high school, we got along fine, but after graduation, we were just too different to find much common ground.

  I can feel the wind threatening to blow the car around if I lose control of it for just a second, and that isn't helped by the fact that the rain is so intense that hesitating for any moment could leave the car submerged in too much water.

  As if on cue at that thought, I pull up to the townhouse to find the floodwaters rising too high to cross in this little car. I curse and pull up to the highest ground I can find, then get out and lock the car up. I can't promise it will be safe, but it's better than guaranteeing that it will get flooded if I try to get it closer to the townhouse.

  I wade into the water and slosh across to the door, hurrying up to it and shaking some of the water off me. Not that it makes much of a difference, with the rain pouring down.

  But as soon as I put my hand on the door, I feel it.

  Something is wrong.

  I burst into the house and look around, and when the sound of sobbing reaches my ears, my whole body goes on high alert. It's Crystal. I turn and see her huddled against the wall on the floor not far from the entrance, curled up into a ball and shaking.

  “Crystal!” I say in a low, comforting tone as I stoop down to scoop her i
nto my arms. She falls into them naturally, as if on reflex. I slide my strong hands around her and hug her close to me as her whole body shudders, and my eyes widen as I feel her trembling. “Crystal, what’s wrong? What happened? Where’s Jake?”

  “She’s gone!” Crystal’s words are mumbled and half-stifled by choking sobs, but I can make those two words out through the mess. I look down at her and try to get her to look up at me, but she’s inconsolable.

  My heart leaps to my throat. “Crystal, I need you to take deep, slow breaths. I’m here. Breathe. It’s going to be okay. What happened?”

  “He took her!” she manages. Her face is swollen and red, and tears are streaming down her face. Finally, she looks up at me through eyes I can barely see through the tears and her puffy eyelids, and the sight of her breaks my heart. Crystal has always been so full of light and life that seeing her like this makes me feel some of the pain she’s experiencing. It’s agonizing, and even more so not knowing what to do about it. “Jake took Kota!”

  The words hit me like lightning.

  “What do you mean, took her? What happened, Crystal?”

  But she just stammers the same thing over and over again, clearly in shock. I pick her up carefully and carry her to the couch, where I set her down and kneel in front of her. I’m so tall that I’m still on eye-level with her. She’s still trembling and sobbing, but the movement seems to have done something to snap her out of her heartbroken haze, and she starts trying to get a hold of herself. I have training for crisis situations, but not much of it covers how to console someone who’s in the middle of a panic attack. I have to rely on instinct.

  So I take her hands in mine and squeeze them softly, letting my thumb stroke over the tops of her hands as I speak as comfortingly as I can.

  “The other kids are safe. The Coast Guard is taking care of them. Your car made it through with no problems. I’m here. That’s it, slow, deep breaths. Focus on my eyes, something you can center yourself on. Anything. There we go. Can you tell me what happened?”