The Recruiter (A Thriller) (11 page)

Petty Officer Julie Giacalone sits back in her chair after Samuel leaves. She breathes a deep sigh.
Damn, he’s good looking,
she thinks, then,
get a grip.
She’s a professional. An officer. Since when did she start lusting after men under her? No pun intended.

Since I haven’t gotten laid in the last six months,
she answers herself. It’s not how she normally is. Growing up, she was always a tomboy, with four older brothers; that goes without saying. And she’s always been tough, strong, and . . . well, not to put too fine a point on it, she’s always had balls. And a lot of guys are intimidated by that.

Samuel doesn’t seem like the type to be intimidated.

Stop it!

Julie gets up from her desk and paces around her small office. But Christ, he’s so good looking. The dark hair, the blue eyes. And a great lean, hard body.

Oh, I am hopeless,
she thinks.

The best thing about her left knee exploding is that it is, in fact, her
left
knee. Not the right. Which means she can drive, as long as the car is an automatic. And tonight, that small fact seems like a minor fucking miracle. For it affords her the opportunity to escape. Although not the escape of the proportion she’d like.

The ride home from the hospital had been a silent one. Beth had the sense her mother wanted to say something, but what was the point? Beth didn’t want to hear it anyway. She had turned on the car’s tinny radio, loud enough to prevent any talk.

Now Beth drives to a fast food place, grabs a burger and fries, and then heads out of town. She has no destination. She just wants to go. To get away from the house, her mother, the failed ambitions. Everything that Lake Orion now represents to her.

The truth is, she is still somewhat traumatized by her mother’s collapse. The image of her sprawled out on the living room carpet, the pale waxiness of her skin. The paper-dry feel of her lips as she did mouth-to-mouth. It turns Beth’s stomach to think of it, and a stab of fear pierces her insides.

Some days she hates her mother, hates how she let Beth’s father’s death destroy her. Stories Beth has read make tragedy somehow romantic, the heroine longing for the man she’ll always love. But there’s no romanticism in what Beth’s mother is doing.

For a brief moment, Beth wonders what would have happened if her mother had died. As much as she despises what her mother has done and is doing, she doesn’t want her to die. Beth just wants to get away from her.

So for now, she’s content with just driving.

Her mother’s car is a beat-up, piece-of-crap Chevy Cavalier with an engine slightly more powerful than a lawnmower’s. Despite its paltry horsepower, it sucks gas as if it were a V-10. The brakes are almost useless, the radio barely works, and the shocks are completely gone.

But it gets her where she wants to go.

And tonight, she just wants to go.

Beth turns onto Highway 23, which heads east. The night is cool, but not too cold. She rolls down the window and lets the brisk air beat at her, cleansing the smell of the hospital from her nostrils.

The road takes her toward small towns like Chilton and Two Rivers, Menominee and Sterling Springs. The highway dead-ends in Lake St. Clair, the buffer between Lake Huron and Lake Ontario.

She doesn’t pick the route purposely, it just seems to be where the road is funneling her. Her thoughts race as the feeling of movement pleases her. It’s a rare moment of pleasure. She realizes she desperately misses basketball. It used to be that when things troubled her, she would head to the gym, and shoot the fucking lights out. She was the all-time gym rat of Lake Orion. Saturdays, Sundays, it didn’t matter. You could find her launching bombs from well past the three-point line—hell, she shot from behind where the NBA three-point line would be. Sometimes she’d stand fifteen feet from the wall and bang the ball against the white painted cement blocks. Over and over, firing pass after pass until her arms ached and her palms were threatening to bleed.

Now, driving out of Lake Orion, she realizes how much she misses that temple. How much her psyche has suffered from not being able to shoot, pass, and dribble. She misses the big, open space of the gymnasium where she could let her thoughts roam as her body was busy with the task of technique.

It was her therapy.

A car zooms by Beth and honks at her as it passes. Beth feels a surge of anger, but it just as quickly dies. Beth drops a hand to the thick brace. It feels tight, and beneath it, her skin is wet with sweat, and it itches. This is what it’s like, she thinks, to be old.

Suddenly, her mind revolts at the thought. She stomps on the accelerator, and the Cavalier does nothing. She presses her foot all the way to the floor and slowly the car builds speed. She zooms along Highway 23. Where is he and what should she do if she finds him? Flip him off? Force him off the road and whack him with her crutch?

Who cares? She just wants to compete. She wants to fight. She’s not dead.

Come on,
she urges the car. Soon she’s nearing a hundred miles an hour. The car is shimmying and shaking, its metal screaming in agony. It feels like she’s doing two hundred miles an hour.

Beth careens over the top of the hill, nearly leaving the ground, and as she roars down the hill, she can see the road stretching out in front of her.

It’s completely empty.

The car is nowhere.

She eases off the accelerator, and the car slowly heads back toward fifty-five. Suddenly, Beth feels stupid.
Beyond
stupid. Does she have a death wish? The Cavalier shouldn’t even really be taken out of town, let alone taken over sixty-five. What is she doing?

Beth sees a sign for a convenience store ahead, and she pulls over. Her hands are shaking. Cold sweat dampens her forehead.

She leans her forehead against the steering wheel, the engine ticking. The tears come fast and furiously. She doesn’t know how long she stays like that, but eventually, she regains control of her breathing. Beth manages to get out of the Cavalier and goes inside the convenience store. She gets a Coke. Her mouth is dry; the fear over what she just did has left her dry inside. Stupid. Absolutely stupid.

She realizes she needs Peter.

Beth climbs into the car, fires it up, and pulls back onto the highway, heading east.

She is a virgin. One of the few in her class. Not that everyone talks about it openly. A lot do, but a lot don’t too. And most assume that she and Peter have slept together, but they haven’t. And suddenly, she doesn’t want to be a virgin. She wants to feel alive.

It has to be just right,
she thinks. And she knows where she wants it to happen. A smile slowly spreads across her face. It will be perfect. She heads east, toward Lake St. Clair. Eventually, the highway spills out into a suburban neighborhood, and there’s one dead-end cul-de-sac where Peter took her nearly a year ago, after they’d started dating. They’d had their first serious talk there.

Now Beth wants to go there. See if it’s like she remembered. Tomorrow, she’ll bring Peter there.

He won’t know what hit him.

“How is she?”

The party at Chad Cleveland’s house is in full swing. Chad Cleveland is the backup center on the Lake Orion boys team and the offspring of two people who have plenty of money but no sense of parental obligation. They left for the weekend, leaving the house in the very capable hands of their fun-loving son. The party started out with mostly Lake Orion kids, but soon, friends from neighboring towns began showing up, and then Peter found himself face to face with the Tank. The very girl who took Beth’s scholarship and played a big part in blowing out her knee.

Peter leans in closer to her. “What?” he says.

“I said, how is she? Beth? How is she doing?”

Peter, slightly drunk, can smell the girl’s perfume. It’s light, not as flowery as Beth’s. It’s almost a touch masculine. A tendril of her hair brushes his cheek, and his body responds. He realizes he’s had way too much to drink.

“She’s fucking miserable.” Why pull punches? He leans back and looks at the Tank. “Just awful,” he continues. He doesn’t know her—why sugarcoat it? He even wants to add something about how she shouldn’t feel guilty, that it was an accident…but goddamn it, Beth is completely fucked. Despite the happy buzz the booze is giving him, he can feel enough to remember what Beth is going through.

“It was…” the Tank begins. “It was just…terrible. I just went for the ball and then I heard that horrible…pop…” She shakes her head, and Peter can see that the remorse is genuine. He looks at her a bit more closely He’s touched by the honest sympathy he sees on her face, which, looking now, he sees as very pretty. In fact, she’s got deep, compassionate brown eyes, soft skin, and lips that he thinks would taste like sugar—

Whoa
, he tells himself. Maybe he’s had more to drink than he realizes. He’s in love with Beth. Well, not in love with her, but he loves her, more like a friend. They’ve shared a lot together, but he’s going to Marquette. Things will be hard, and he’s a realist. It’s just not going to last.

He just hasn’t told Beth yet.

I’m such a shit
, he thinks.

At the same time, his gaze lingers on the Tank—no, her name is Vanessa—and he lets it run down her firm body, the big full breasts. Much bigger than Beth’s.

You shit
, he thinks.

Peter’s glass is topped off by a buddy, and he drains half of it. The Tank is saying something else to him, but he can’t hear her. He leans and this time slips an arm around her waist. She responds by doing the same to him. The house is shaking with the sound of rock music. It rips through Peter’s body and, combined with the booze, fills him with a sudden burst of manic energy.

He puts his lips tightly against the Tank’s ear.

“You want to go somewhere quieter?”

She responds by pulling him toward the front door.

Beth feels herself swept away by the fantasy. It seems like the thought of sleeping with Peter has changed everything. It’s not that she thinks it’s the answer to her problems, not by any means. But it’s as if the decision to lose her virginity, to cement their relationship has given her a tentative foothold on her future.

The sky has gotten even darker, and the first stars of the night are appearing. The wind has picked up, and it batters the car as Beth pulls into the Metro Beach Park. She drives past the empty swimming pool, the swing sets rusting in the open field.

The cul-de-sac is on the northern edge of the park, a small plateau accessible by a small service road. Most people who come to the park never learn about its existence.

Beth pulls the Cavalier into the service drive and follows the road as it swerves toward the lake. The trees clear and suddenly Beth is captivated by the sight of Lake St. Clair, the moon casting a shaft of light over the whitecaps beating against the shore.

The parking spaces are really nothing more than small, rectangular clearings in the brush, butting up to the edge of the plateau. There is just enough room to maneuver a vehicle into the spaces, and enough room, as well as foliage, between the spaces to afford privacy.

Beth pulls the Cavalier into a spot and puts the car in park. The heater is kicking out a steady stream of heat, and the car feels cozy. It feels good to be here. She turns the radio off and cracks the window, listens for the sound of the waves crashing into the shore. The soothing sound greets her, and she sinks deeper into her seat. Beth looks out over the water, moved by the sight of it, the sheer expansiveness. Someone told her that a big body of water can make any person’s troubles seems small. Lake St. Clair has always done that for her.

Especially this spot.

Oh, Peter.
She imagines his face. The strong jaw, the goofy smile. She wonders what it will be like. How he’ll be.

He’ll be great,
she thinks.

A small seed of doubt springs to life in her mind. Is she making a mistake? Is she rushing it because of her injury?

No, she tells herself firmly. Peter has already committed to her. That night in her room when he told her about the scholarship, he said he wanted to make it work. She’s going to sleep with him because she loves him.

And because she’s ready.

Besides, she’d always been the one who didn’t want to take the relationship further. Maybe Peter isn’t aware of just how strong her commitment to him really is.

Well, after she tells him what she has in mind, that will change everything. She shifts in her chair, and a shooting pain slashes through her knee. She groans, realizes she’ll have to get out of the car and change position. She shuts off the Cavalier, jams the keys in her pocket, opens the door, and leverages herself out.

The cold wind takes her breath away, and she instantly misses the warmth of the car.

She shuts the car door and hobbles to the edge of the plateau. It’s beautiful. Cold, but absolutely beautiful. The open water speaks to her, and her body is flooded with peaceful rhythms.

She walks along the edge of the plateau, seeing more of the lake with each step. She passes several parking spaces.

They’re empty.

A loon calls from the lake, and Beth tries to pick it out of the black, choppy water. Impossible.

Beth senses movement behind her and turns.

One of the spaces has a car parked in it.

No, not a car, she corrects herself.

An SUV. A Ford SUV, to be exact. An Explorer.

Like Peter’s.

Beth turns and is about to continue walking when she looks back at the Explorer. It does look like Peter’s. It’s the same color. But it couldn’t be him. What would he be doing here? Did he hear about what happened to her mother? Did he come looking for her? If so, why would he be parked—

It’s not Peter. Beth takes a step away from the Explorer, but again she stops herself.

Without looking at the Ford, Beth closes her eyes and pictures Peter’s Explorer. There’s something in the back window. What is it? A little decal. Some kind of race. A cross-country ski race that his father does every year. What is it called? She thinks. The Trekker! That’s it.

Beth opens her eyes and takes a few steps toward the Explorer.

Her knee is aching, and her heart is racing.
Please don’t be there,
she thinks.
Please, please, please don’t be there.

When she’s close enough, she raises her eyes, and like lasers, they lock on to the decal in the bottom right corner of the Explorer’s back window.

Trekker!
it reads.

Beth stands stock still.

No.

A slow, sick feeling spreads through her stomach.

She takes a step. And then another. And another.

She is three feet away from the side of the Explorer when she stops. The earth seems to be tilting this way and that. The stars seem to swirl above her, and the wind pushes her forward.

A last thought enters her mind before she steps up to the window, a penitent going before the executioner, and looks inside.

Please, Peter.

You’re all I’ve got left.