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Risen To The Top CHAPTER 109
It was a dusty day as the silver plane nosed down through billowy clouds on its way to kiss the ruined earth. A united gasp went up from passengers as they saw the raw, brown, smoking soil that would normally be covered in patchwork patterns of an industrious agricultural people. But what was missing was the green. Sean clenched his jaw, grinding ice, and rocked to the loud metallic music of selection number seven on the in-flight radio. He held his breath.Looks like a flooded and bombed-out valley.He wasn’t used to seeing Alaska look like a wasteland. Wastelands got you killed or killed your friends. They never healed. Nobody loved them.He stared down at the remains, and, as incredible as it was, he still loved this place.He’d never felt alone before. Completely alone. He’d missed so much, being away on deployments, but he had always had home to come back to. Even as he clowned around on new york, home was always
Risen To The Top CHAPTER 110
Tori Hoades turned down the tree-lined street of her old neighborhood, past endless Spanish-style mansions protected by red tiled roofs and manicured front lawns worthy of any world class PGA course. It had been three months, and she needed to be back home. This time, she needed to see her parents—especially her dad. It had bothered her when he’d sounded somewhat distracted on the phone when she called him yesterday, informing them of the visit. Was there something wrong?How stupid.Although she was twenty-four, she was still trying please him, as she had her whole life. Her mother never interfered with this strong father-daughter bond, so Tori enjoyed almost unlimited access to him. They shared an open and frank relationship.Am I running to them or running away from new york? It didn’t matter, she decided. She just needed to be home.But Tori also knew lately there were dark, private places where Dr. Hoades chased
Risen To The Top CHAPTER 111
Sean drove the mclauren, onto base without uttering a word. Phoenix was safely kenneled, as he had been during the flight home. His incessant barking was background music to Sean. He’d take the dog to the vet today, and start working on someone to look after him while he was overseas.Monique would have been the obvious choice, but not now. He was reluctant to face the attractive tattoo artist, even though she was easy about asking what was on his mind. Something had shifted. The sobering reality of being utterly alone was hard to get used to. Sorrow hung like a black cape over his shoulders. He wished he could just go to sleep and not wake up.But then, who would feed Phoenix? Had the mutt saved him from himself?The guard at the shack wasn’t Dorian, or any of the other regulars. The kid looked like he was all of seventeen, and Sean didn’t have the heart to mess with him.“Thank you for your service, Mister,” the boy
Risen To The Top CHAPTER 112
Sean hadn’t been so summarily dusted off since he’d asked Her Highness Homecoming Queen Sherry Baxter to go with him to the prom. She’d laughed in his face, and his buddies on the basketball team wouldn’t stop taunting him either. He’d spend most of his senior year trying to forget the incident.It felt like that now. No family, no home. He was walking around like a stranger in his own clothes. Ordered to meet with people who could care less about him or the military. In less than six hours since returning from Alaska, everything had changed.He was faced with the stone-cold eyes of the Doc’s daughter, eyes the old Sean would normally have been only too happy to warm up. She was strong, and he usually enjoyed the challenge of being with a woman with a backbone. He wanted to introduce her to the intense fire that lived inside him until she showed him her soft side. He knew she had a soft side. He could feel it already.But he wasn’t
Risen To The Top CHAPTER 113
The next morning, Tori woke up to the bright sunshine of new york. She lay in bed, lazily watching the patterns on the ceiling. She heard her father leave for work, heard her mother leave for a tennis date with her girlfriends.Tori stayed busy all morning, cleaning her room, sorting through things she’d left behind when she went off to school. She condensed all her keepsakes into one box. The rest went out to the trash. She looked at ghengis, her tabby cat, curled up next to Morgan on her bed. Some day her favorite teenage toy would have to go, too. But she wasn’t ready yet to do that to the faithful companion who had listened to all her preteen secrets about the boys she liked and hoped to kiss some day. And besides, Morgan kept ghengis company while she was away, in a strange dog and cat thing.It felt good to say goodbye to part of her past. Get rid of things that no longer meant anything to her, get rid of her prepubescent idea that life an
Risen To The Top CHAPTER 114
Fuck me. What was I thinking?Sean rounded the turn and almost clipped a vintage Datsun convertible driven by a blonde in a sun visor.Fucking hate this part of town. Rich people are useless. Clueless.He looked upon row after row of professionally landscaped front yards, lawns looking like they were trimmed with scissors, blooming plants framing arched windows in courtyards behind stucco-fenced walls. Just about every home had some variety of bisque-colored tiled roofs. Lots of BMWs, Mercedes, Jags and even Bentleys.Don’t belong here. Never did. Don’t want to come back. Ever.Sean decided he’d just tell Timmons the family had refused all contact. It was partially true, after all. The ladies would have gone along with his visit, but Dr. Hoades, no, he would forever be on the wrong side of anything to do with the military and the special forces in particular.That man doesn’t deserve the sacrifice hi
Risen To The Top CHAPTER 115
* * *The bar attendance was slow tonight, since it wasn’t a weekend. Above the bar were pictures of fallen soldiers, the dates and locations of their demise. When he was first on the Teams, he didn’t like to look at them. He was surprised when, like most the other Team guys who hung out there, he got so that he liked looking at them, paying his respects. God willing, if he should have to pay that ultimate sacrifice, there would be some young newbie Team guy staring up at his picture, toasting him with a beer, or, as in his case, a mineral water.Sean’s eyes stung. Maybe there was too much cigarette smoke tonight. He winced and looked over the sparse crowd. No sign of Alex and the others yet, so he ordered his regular mineral water with lots of ice and lime and leaned against the bar. A big screen TV was tuned to a basketball game he had no interest in watching.He fished a couple sugar packets from the counter, along with a small
Risen To The Top CHAPTER 116
* * *Tori couldn’t believe what they’d just done. On a public beach, in front of God-knew-anyone-who-happened-to-walk-by. Would she have noticed? Would he?Where the heck is your pride, your common sense? You don’t even know this guy.She’d never done this before, and recognized the risky behavior as a warning. But, in spite of her training, now she wanted more. He’d come into her, thrilling her insides with danger. She’d been sure she wouldn’t let a man touch her for months after her near-rape at the University. And now she came begging for it. Literally hanging all over him.What were you thinking? She counted the months; no, it had been a couple of years since she’d had any kind of sexual relationship. She had friends, but casual sex wasn’t part of her DNA. Somehow, she felt he might feel the same way.Not smart. He could be an axe murderer for all you know. A little voice in her chest told her