Betrayal (5 page)

“Hey! Evan.”

He looked up to see Ron Nolan standing in the doorway that led back to the dormitory where his men slept. He had written his letter sitting in muted light at a table in the otherwise empty mess hall. Now he’d just finished addressing his envelope and put his pen down, nodding in acknowledgment. “Sir.”

Nolan stepped into the room. “Hey, haven’t we already been over this? You’re Evan, I’m Ron. What are you, twenty-five?”

“Twenty-seven.”

“Well, I’m thirty-eight. Give me a break. You call me ‘sir,’ I feel old. I feel old, I get mean. I get mean, I kill people. Then you’d be to blame. It’s a vicious circle and it would all be your fault.”

The last words he’d written to Tara still with him, Evan had to force his face into a tolerant smile. “You’d just kill somebody at random?”

Nolan was up to the table by now, grinning. “It’s been known to happen. It’s not pretty. You want a beer?”

Evan had a nagging feeling that this recreational drinking could become a slippery slope. It would make the second time he’d had alcohol since his arrival over here. But then really, he thought, what the fuck. With everything else that was going on over here, who really cared? Nevertheless, he took a half-swing at reluctance. “We’re not supposed to drink,” he said.

“Oh, right, I forgot.” Nolan cocked his head. “Are you fucking kidding me? Somebody here gonna bust you? You’re in charge here, dude.”

“I know. I’m thinking about my men.”

“What’s that, like a mantra with you? You see that in a movie or something? I don’t see any of your guys around who are going to be scandalized. They won’t even see. Don’t be a dweeb. I’ll get you a beer.”

“One.” Evan was talking to his back as he turned.

“Okay. For starters.” Nolan walked back into the kitchen, opened an enormous double-doored refrigerator, and returned carrying two bottles of Budweiser. Twisting off the top of one, he slid it down the length of the table to where Evan stopped it and brought it to his lips. When he finished his first sip, Nolan was sitting across from him. “There’s e-mail out here, you know.” He pointed at the envelope. “Mom or girlfriend?”

“Ex-girlfriend. I e-mailed her all during training and she never answered. It’s too goddamn easy to hit Delete. Or change your address. So now I write letters.” He shrugged. “Stupid, but maybe some kind of physical connection.”

“If she’s your ex-girlfriend, why are you writing her?”

“I don’t know. It’s probably a waste of time. I’m an idiot.” He took another pull at his beer. “I’d just like to know if she’s even getting these damn letters.”

“So that’s not the first one?”

“It’s like, the tenth.”

“And she hasn’t written back? Not even once?”

“It was a pretty bad fight. We disagreed about the war.”

“People don’t break up over that.”

“We did.” He looked across the table. “But then sometimes I think maybe something’s happened to her. I can’t believe she won’t write me back. Maybe she’s not getting them. If she’s read ’em, I know she’d…maybe she died, or something happened and she can’t…”

“Can’t what?”

“I don’t know.”

Nolan spun his bottle slowly. “Dude,” he said. “No offense, but you’re sounding a little pathetic. Here you are laying your life on the line every day. You got bigger fish to fry.”

“Yeah. I know.” He slugged down a mouthful. “I know.”

“You want to just give it up.”

“If I heard from her, maybe it’d be easier.”

“You
are
hearing from her. Think about it.”

“Yeah, you’re right. I know you’re right.” He tipped up his bottle and drained it.

Nolan got up and went back into the kitchen, returned with another round, twisted off Evan’s cap, and passed it across to him as he sat down. “So where’d you go to school?”

“Santa Clara.”

“College boy, huh?” At Evan’s shrug, Nolan went on. “Hey, no crime in that. I went two years to Berkeley. Couldn’t stand the place, though, so I went out and enlisted. Made the SEALs and life got good. You finish?”

“Yep.”

“What’d you do after?”

“Became a cop.”

Nolan cracked a grin and nodded. “I had a feeling you were a cop.”

“Why’s that?”

“You look like a cop.”

“I know a lot of cops who don’t look like me.”

“You know what you’re looking for, I bet they do.” Nolan drank, his grin in place. “It’s how you walk, how you carry yourself. You’re a big guy. You keep yourself in good shape. I would have guessed a cop. Here’s to good cops everywhere.”

Nolan straightened up, raised a flat palm, and Evan reached up and slapped it hard enough that the clap rang in the empty room. Back down on his seat, Nolan raised his bottle and the two men clinked them together and drank them down in one long gulp.

When Nolan got back with the next round and they’d clinked again, he pointed down at the letter, still on the table between them. “You in touch with anybody else back home who can talk to her, find out what’s happening?”

“Not really. This place isn’t the best for communication, maybe you’ve noticed.”

“You got family?”

“Yeah, but…what am I supposed to do? Ask my brother or my mother to go see if Tara’s okay? That’d just be weird. She’d think I was stalking her or something.”

“Well.” Nolan tipped up his beer again. “Here’s the deal. I’m flying back to San Fran tomorrow. You give me that letter, I’ll go put the damn thing right in her hand, ask her if she’s read the other ones. Find out the story. Be back here in two weeks.”

“You’re going home. What for?”

He waved away the question. “Just some logistics stupidity for Jack. Office problems. Show a presence and make sure the staff is on board with the big picture. We get either one of these new contracts, we’re going to need a new building back at home.” He shrugged. “Business stuff. But the point is I’ll have plenty of time to drive down to Redwood City. Suss out what’s going on with your babe.”

“Ex-babe.”

“Whatever.” He reached out and turned the envelope around, looked down, and read, “Tara Wheatley. Cute name anyway.”

“Cute girl,” Evan said.

“I believe you.”

“You really wouldn’t mind going down and giving her the envelope?”

Nolan spread his hands expansively. “Hey! Dude. Please. Forget about it. It’s done.”

R
ON
N
OLAN SAT ON THE TOP STEP
of the shaded outdoor stairway that led to the second landing at the Edgewood Apartments in Redwood City, California. The shade came courtesy of a brace of giant magnolia trees that stood sentinel over the entrance to the apartment complex.

An hour ago, at about five o’clock, he’d climbed the steps and rung the doorbell at 2C, but no one had answered. He could have called first and made an appointment—Tara Wheatley was listed in the phone book—but he thought it would be better if he just showed up and delivered the letter in person. He didn’t want to give her the option of saying she wouldn’t see him, didn’t care if she ever got another letter from Evan. That would have complicated the whole thing. It was better to simply show up and complete the mission.

He wasn’t in any hurry. He’d give it an hour or two and if she didn’t come home in that time, he’d come back either later tonight or tomorrow. Evan had told him that this time of the summer, she was probably spending most days in her classroom, preparing it for the start of the school year. Tara taught sixth grade at St. Charles, a Catholic school in the next town. Evan assumed that she wasn’t dating anybody else, at least not yet, so he was reasonably sure she’d be around by dinnertime most nights, if everything was still okay with her—if she wasn’t hurt or sick, or dead.

So Nolan waited, comfortable on the hard stone step. The weather was really ideal, an afternoon floral scent from the gardenia hedge overlying the auto exhaust from the busy street, the fresh-cut-grass smell from the lawn below him, a faint whiff of chlorine from the complex’s pool, a corner of which was visible off to his left. If he closed his eyes, Nolan could almost fool himself that he was back for a moment in high school. People were laughing and splashing down at the pool, and the disembodied sounds combined with the softness of the air to lull him after a while, carrying him away from what had become his real world of dust and duty, danger and death.

Like the trained animal he was, he came back to immediate full consciousness as a new vibration from the steps registered with his psyche. He looked down and saw a woman in a simple two-piece blue bathing suit stopped now on the third step, turned away from him, exchanging some banter with other friends who’d obviously just left the pool too. From the shade of her wet hair, he imagined it would be blond when it dried. A thick fall of it hung down her back to a little below the halter strap. She’d hooked a finger through her beach towel and thrown it carelessly over one shoulder. Nolan’s eyes swept over the length of her body and he saw nothing about it he didn’t like. Her skin was the color of honey.

He shifted on his step to get a better look just as she turned and glanced up at him. Catching him in the act, she shot him a brief complicitous smile that was neither embarrassed nor inviting, then quickly went back to the good-bye to her friends. One of them left her with some parting remark that Nolan didn’t quite hear, but her spike of carefree laughter carried up to him. He hadn’t heard a sound like that in a while.

Then she was coming up the stairs toward him.

Nolan stood up. He was wearing black shoes, pressed khakis, and a tucked-in camo shirt. He was holding Evan’s letter in his hand. Suddenly she stopped halfway up, all trace of humor suddenly washed from her face. As tears welled in her eyes, she brought her hand up to her mouth. “Oh, my God,” she said. “It’s not Evan, is it? Tell me it’s not Evan.”

Realizing what she must be thinking—that he was the Army’s messenger sent to inform her of Evan’s death in Iraq—Nolan held out a reassuring hand and said, “Evan’s fine. Completely fine. I’m sorry if I startled you. You must be Tara.”

Still knocked out of her equilibrium, she nodded. “Yes. But…this is about Evan?”

Down below, one of her male friends called up to her. “Tara? Everything okay?”

It gave her an instant to collect herself. Turning, she waved. “I’m fine. It’s okay.” Coming back to Nolan, her voice had firmed up. “Who are you, then? What are you doing here? You had me thinking Evan had been killed.”

“I’m sorry. My name’s Ron Nolan. I’m a friend of Evan’s over there. I should have realized what I’d look like waiting here for you to show up. I’m sorry.”

“Okay, you’re sorry.” She pointed at the envelope he held. “What’s that, then?”

“It’s a letter that Evan asked me to hand-deliver to you. He was worried about you.”

“Why would he worry about me? He’s the one in the war zone.”

“Well, he hasn’t received any letters back from you.”

“That’s right. That’s because I haven’t written any. We broke up. Maybe he didn’t tell you that. What does he want me to say?”

“I don’t know.” Nolan held the envelope out to her. “I’m just the messenger here. My job is to give you this last letter and then to tell Evan that you’re all right.”

“I’m fine.”

“Yes, I can see that. You want to take this?”

She didn’t move.

He waited, the envelope in his outstretched hand, looking at her, taken by her remarkable face. Her hair was pulled back; it revealed a clear, wide forehead. She’d just come from swimming, so there was no makeup to cover the landscape of pale freckles under her widely spaced glacier-blue eyes that spilled over onto well-defined cheekbones. Even without lipstick, her mouth looked slightly bruised.

Nolan forced himself to look away. It took a serious effort.

Tara looked down at the envelope. “Does he think I haven’t gotten his other letters?” she asked. Her shoulders settled as something seemed to give in her. “I don’t want to start again with him. Doesn’t he see that? It’s never going to work.”

“Because you disagree about the war?”

“It’s not just that.”

“No?”

“No. Why do you ask that?”

“Because he seems to think it is. Just about the war, I mean. Although I told him, and I’ll tell you the same thing, people who love each other don’t break up over that.”

“Over agreeing about whether or not killing people is the way to solve the world’s problems? Oh yes, they do, I think.”

Neither of them moved.

“And I didn’t say that I loved him,” she said.

Cocking his head, he said, “When you thought I was here to tell you he was dead, it seemed like you cared about him more than a little bit.”

“You can care about someone without either loving them or wanting them to die. Don’t you think that’s possible?”

“Sure.” The woman was beautiful, but Nolan thought that a little attitude check wouldn’t hurt her. “Anything’s possible,” he said. “For example, it’s possible that you might even change your mind someday about the people who are risking their lives to guarantee your freedom.”

He’d clearly hit a nerve. Her whole face went dark. “That’s not fair,” she said. “I have nothing but respect for the military.”

His mouth smiled, but his eyes didn’t follow. “Sure you do,” he said. “You just wouldn’t want to marry one.”

“Besides,” she went on, “this war isn’t about guaranteeing anyone’s freedom. It’s just about oil.”

Nolan shook his head. As though fighting for oil or anything you needed was wrong. He looked down at his hand and held it out. “Are you going to take this letter or not?”

Her mouth set in a hard line, she stared at the thing as though it were alive and could bite her. And perhaps in some sense it could. At last, she shook her head. “I don’t think so. I haven’t even opened any of the others. I’m not going to start reading them now.”

He nodded again as though she’d verified something for him.

“What does that look mean?”

“Nothing. There was no look.”

“Yes, there was. And it meant something.”

“Okay. You said you weren’t going to start reading Evan’s letters now. I guess the look meant, ‘Spoken like someone who’s afraid that if she gets some facts about what she’s already decided on, she might change her mind.’”

Perhaps suddenly aware that she was standing arguing with a man while she was wearing less than her everyday underwear, she pulled the towel up over her shoulders and held both ends of it closed over her breasts. Her voice went soft and low in anger. “I’m not afraid of getting facts, Mister…what is it again?”

“Nolan. Ron Nolan.”

“All right, Mr. Nolan…”

“Ron, okay?” Again, he grinned, taunting her.

“Okay, Ron.” He’d gotten her heated up, which was his intention. “For your information, as a matter of fact I do have all the facts I need about Evan and about this stupid war in Iraq. And I don’t need his letters to make me feel sorry for him. He made the decision to go over there. He decided to leave me and do that. Now I’ve moved on and he can’t just think he’s going to explain his way out of it and if I’d just understand how hard it was for him, then somehow we’d get back together. I’m not going to do that.”

“No. I can see that.” Nolan held out the letter again. “Last chance.” When she didn’t move to take it, Nolan slipped it into the pocket of his shirt and said, “I’ll tell Evan you’re in fine health. Excuse me. Nice to have met you.” Moving past her, he started down the steps.

When he got to the bottom, she spoke. “Mr. Nolan. Ron.”

Turning, he looked up at her. “I’m not against the military,” she said. “I’m against Evan being in this war. There’s a difference.”

Nolan raised his hand in a salute. “Yes, ma’am,” he said. “If you say so.”

A
T SEVEN-THIRTY,
he rang her doorbell again.

She answered the door in tennis shoes, a pair of running shorts, and a black Nike tank top. Her hair back in a ponytail. She still hadn’t put on any makeup and it looked as though she’d been crying.

“I’m not going to read that letter,” she said first thing. “I already told you.”

“Yes, you did. I’m not here for that.”

“Well…what?”

“Well, pretty clearly you’re not with Evan anymore. I thought maybe you’d like to go get a drink somewhere.”

She crossed her arms. “You’re asking me on a date?”

“I’m asking if you’d like to go get a drink or something. Not that big a commitment.”

“I thought I made it clear how I feel about getting involved with military people.”

“You did, which would break my heart if I were a military person. Which, fortunately, I’m not.”

“But you said you were with Evan over there?”

“I am. But I’m a civilian. I work for Allstrong Security. Evan’s based with our headquarters group. I’m back home on assignment here for a couple of weeks and tonight I’m looking at dinner all by myself, which isn’t my favorite.”

“So, as a last resort…”

“Not exactly that, but we had a couple of issues we could have fun talking about if we left Evan out of it.” He looked around behind her into her apartment. “It doesn’t look like you’ve got much of a party going here anyway.”

“No.” She sighed.

Sensing that she was weakening, he asked, “Have you eaten?”

“No.”

“You can pick the place,” he said. “Anywhere you want, sky’s the limit.”

Sighing again, she broke a weak smile and nodded. “That’s a nice offer. Eating by myself isn’t my favorite, either, and I’ve been doing a lot of that.” She met his eyes, then looked away, wrestling with the decision.

“I don’t want to have another fight about this war or about Evan.”

“I don’t want to fight either. I just want to put myself on the outside of some good food and drink.”

“That does sound good.” She gave it another second or two, then stepped back a bit, holding the door open for him. “You want to come in and sit down a minute, I’ll go put on some clothes.”

S
HE PICKED AN UNDERSTATED
and very good Italian place on Laurel Street in San Carlos, maybe a mile from her apartment, a car ride short enough to preclude much in the way of conversation. Nolan, usually voluble in any situation, found himself somewhat tongue-tied from the minute she walked out of her hallway in low heels and the classic simple black spaghetti-strap dress. She wore a gold necklace that held a single black pearl, and matching earrings. She’d put her hair up, revealing a graceful neck, showcasing the face in relief.

Neither the bathing suit she’d been wearing when he’d met her nor the tank top, tennis shoes, and running shorts when she’d opened the door tonight had prepared him for the sophistication that she now exhibited. Before, of course, she’d been pretty enough to attract him—good-looking California-girl cheerleader—but now something in her style bespoke a worldliness and maturity that, frankly, intimidated him. Nolan’s style, and his plan for that matter, had been to tease her about her political leanings and beliefs, wear her down, get her laughing and eventually tipsy, bed her, and report back to Evan that he was lucky she hadn’t read his letters or written back—she wasn’t worth the trouble.

Now, ten minutes of silence on the drive over pretty much shattered that plan. Try as he might, and as much as he might have wanted, he wasn’t going to be able to take her that lightly. It wasn’t just the bare fact of her substantial beauty, but a seriousness, a gravitas, that he couldn’t remember ever having encountered before in the women he’d known.

Handing his keys to the valet in front of the restaurant, Nolan noticed that Tara remained seated, her hands clasped in her lap. A test? Would he be a chivalrous gentleman if he opened the door, or would that make him a chauvinist pig? He hadn’t worried about a social nicety like that in ten years, and now suddenly he badly wanted to make the right decision, to look good in her eyes. But his only option was to be who he was, and his parents had raised him to have old-fashioned manners, so he came around and got her door for her. She rewarded him with a small smile in which, inordinately pleased, he read approval.

The tuxedoed maître d’ knew who she was, at least by looks. He greeted her familiarly, kissed her hand, nodded at Nolan with respect and perhaps a soupçon of envy, and led them to a private banquette in the back. Lighting in the place was dim, with pinpoint lights onto the tables to facilitate reading the menu. Tara ordered an Italian-sounding white wine he’d never heard of and he asked for a Beefeater martini up.