Point Blank Seal

Miguel’s eye twitched as he watched Jennifer pluck up the wineglass from the coffee table and carry it into the kitchen. She’d vowed never to drink like her mother, but he guessed a dead fiancé and raising a child on your own could change plans.

He pulled the electronic bug detector from the front pocket of his jeans and began scanning the living room. He’d gotten lucky with the size of this house.

It shouldn’t take him long to get through the house...and into the bedroom to see his son.

Jennifer rinsed her glass in the sink and turned toward him.

He put his finger to his lips and flicked the switch on his bug detector. He had it set to the display option. If there were any listening devices planted in Jennifer’s house, he wouldn’t want the sound of his bug sweeper to transmit to the people on the other end of the device.

Facing the wall, he waved the tracker from corner to corner, sweeping across the bookshelf. The listening device would most likely be in this area, across from the TV.

Miguel’s pulse jumped along with the squiggly red line on his tracker. He followed its lead and was rewarded with the gleam of a tiny mic wedged between two books.

He became aware of Jen hovering over his shoulder, and he jerked back. He pointed at the TV and then cupped his ear.

She dipped next to the coffee table and picked up the remote control. Aiming at the TV, she clicked, and the sound of a commercial jingle filled the small room.

Perfect. He plucked the listening device from its hiding place, and pinched it between his thumb and forefinger.

They’d hear a bunch of static on the other end and not much more. With the mic still squeezed between his two fingers, he mimed drinking a glass of water.

He didn’t remember Jennifer being very good at charades but she was catching on quickly to this game.

She scurried in the kitchen and filled a glass with water from the tap. When she put it down on the kitchen table, he dropped the device in the water.

Her blue eyes widened as she stared at the black spec settling at the bottom of the water glass. She parted her lips, but he shook his head and placed two fingers against them.

This might not be the only bug in the place. He continued his search by sweeping the kitchen, but beyond a few false reads from the microwave, he found nothing there.

Swallowing hard, he moved toward the hallway. He turned into the first room on the right and turned on the bathroom light. He gestured toward the sink, and Jennifer cranked on the water.

His throat tightened when he saw the yellow rubber duck on the edge of the tub and the cartoon fish on the shower curtain. He’d missed so damn much.

A familiar sharp pain lanced the back of his head and he dragged in a long breath. He had to stay focused if he didn’t want to miss even more of his son’s life.

With the bathroom clear, Miguel turned back into the hallway, holding his breath. He stepped into his son’s room, a gentle glow from a night-light illuminating a path to his bed.

Miguel followed the light and crouched next to his son’s bed. Pride and joy overwhelmed his senses, and he reached out and traced Mikey’s chubby cheek with the tip of his finger. He wanted to gather the boy in his arms and never let go, but he had unfinished business.

Jen had come up behind him and squeezed his shoulder.

He covered her hand with his own and squeezed back, hoping to convey all his regret and sorrow at not being here with her during her pregnancy and the first year and a half of Mikey’s life.

His nose stung, but he knew there would be no tears. He’d lost the ability to cry, but crouching here next to his son, inhaling the smell of his hair and skin, he knew he hadn’t lost the ability to feel.

That thought had been the one thing that terrified him during his months of captivity.

Miguel pushed to his feet and scanned this room with even more vigor than the others. The guys who’d planted that bug obviously hadn’t wanted to listen to the crying and fussing of a toddler.

Miguel shook his head at Jennifer and she straightened Mikey’s covers before leading him out of the room.

When he walked into Jen’s bedroom, the scent of her signature perfume hit him like a wave. Some nights he’d wake up in his cell smelling that fragrance. He knew it was a dream or hallucination at the time, but he’d wallowed in it anyway.

His gaze tripped over the king-size bed, and he momentarily squeezed his eyes shut. Had she shared that bed with anyone else since his...disappearance? He couldn’t hold that against her if she did. She had every right to move on with her life.

But the way she’d kissed him and clung to him outside gave him a selfish hope that she hadn’t.

He swept the room and got a hit. The blood boiled in his veins as he removed the device from a picture frame above her bed. He dropped that bug in the same glass of water and then finished his search of the rest of the house.

He tossed the bug detector on the kitchen counter and enfolded Jen in his arms again. “I’m just glad they didn’t plant a camera, or all of that would’ve been for nothing.”

She squirmed from his grasp and pressed her palms against his chest. “You’re going to tell me what’s going on, where you’ve been and why someone is bugging my house.” Her fingers curled into the material of his shirt. “Not that I’m not thrilled you’re back and safe, even if I am still pinching myself.”

He took both of her hands and kissed one wrist and then the other. “Let’s sit down.”

“Do you want something to drink? To eat?” She skimmed her hands down his sides. “You’ve lost weight.”

“I’ll just get some water.” He pushed aside the glass with the two bugs. “Not this glass.”

She filled a glass with water from a dispenser in the fridge and handed it to him. “Let’s talk.”

As he followed her to the sofa in the living room, his mind whirled with images from the past two years of his life. What could he tell her? What would she want to hear?

The truth? Nobody could bear that. He’d barely survived it.

Jennifer sat on the sofa, curling one leg beneath her. “Can you start at the beginning?”

He settled beside her and draped an arm around her shoulders. “God, it’s amazing to see you. Unbelievable.”

“How do you think I feel? At least you knew I was alive. You even knew about Mikey...somehow.” She threaded her fingers through his. “I thought—They told me you were dead.”

“I’m sorry.” He kissed the side of her head. “If I could take it all back, all those months, everything.”

“The beginning, Miguel.” She pursed her lips together in that schoolteacher way she had.

“We received some intel on Vlad. You remember I told you about him, right?”

“He was the sniper for the other side you guys kept coming up against until he disappeared from the field.”

“He seemed to have dropped off the face of the Earth. We thought he might be dead, but we heard chatter and then received specific intelligence that he was regrouping in the caves of Afghanistan, which seemed totally likely.”

“The last I heard from you was that you were going off on some assignment as a lone sniper, apart from your team.”

“That assignment was tracking Vlad to his hideaway. I was pulled off a mission with my own team to help this one.” He might be revealing classified information to Jen, but he didn’t give a damn. The navy, his brothers, had never turned their backs on him, but he couldn’t say the same for the shadowy intelligence agencies that called the shots.

“And it all went horribly wrong. The navy wouldn’t tell me much, but I knew others had died with you.” She bumped her knee against his. “Are they alive, too?”

“No. They’re all dead.”

She covered her eyes with one hand and sniffed. “So I’m the only one who gets the homecoming.”

Miguel closed his eyes and clearly saw the ambush of the other SEALs at the cave, the pop of the guns, the flash of the gunpowder.

“What happened to you, Miguel?”

His lips twisted. “Do you have a few days?”

She snuggled closer to him and rested her head on his chest. “I have all the time you need, mi amor.”

Smiling, he ruffled her soft hair. He’d been teaching her Spanish and she’d picked it up quickly, despite her atrocious accent.

“The mission went to hell. Someone set a trap. The SEAL team on the ground was ambushed and killed, and I was captured.”

Her back rose and fell with quick, panting breaths. “H-how long? How long were you a prisoner?”

“Just over eighteen months.”

She must’ve been doing the calculation in her head because her shoulders stiffened. She mumbled into his shirt. “Where have you been the past four to five months? Why didn’t you contact me?”

“Various hospitals, starting with the one in Germany, debriefing sessions, intelligence meetings.” He didn’t mention the psychiatric units. He didn’t want her pity.

She finally raised her head from his chest and met his gaze. “I’m sure you needed...treatment. I’m sure the navy and the CIA wanted to pick your brain. But those places didn’t have telephones?”

“No. Literally, no. None for me anyway.”

“They wouldn’t allow you to use the phone?”

“No.”

“And they wouldn’t notify me? Your father? Your brother? Miguel, your father...”

“I know he’s dead.” His nostrils flared. “They wanted you to go on believing I was dead, too. They still want you believing that.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Those bugs you found—is that the navy, the FBI, some intelligence agency I don’t need to know about?”

“It’s not the navy. At least the navy is not calling the shots on this one.”

“But you have reason to believe forces in the intelligence community broke into my home and planted listening devices?”

“Yes...maybe.” He didn’t know who was behind the sinister vibe he’d picked up at the debriefing center.

“Miguel, why? They should be treating you like the hero you are. They should be throwing you a ticker tape parade.”

“Part of it is the sensitive nature of the assignment. They never went public with it.”

“Part of it.” She smoothed a hand across the shirt she’d wrinkled earlier. “What’s the other part? Why wouldn’t they allow you to contact me?”

Running a hand through his hair, longer than he usually wore it, he said, “I don’t know.”

“They don’t know you’re here.”

“They don’t know where I am, but I’m sure they can make an educated guess that I’m coming here.”

“You spent eighteen months as a prisoner of war and now your own government wants to imprison you again?” Her cheeks flew red flags, indignation making her voice squeak.

“I don’t know what they want, but I wasn’t going to stick around anymore to find out.” Guilt stabbed at his gut. The FBI had warned him that he could be putting Jennifer in danger by showing up on her doorstep, but he was afraid she already was in danger and he knew he was the only one who could protect her.

She trailed her fingertips along his tense jaw beneath his new beard. “What did your captors do to you, Miguel?”

“Tried to get information out of me.” He rubbed a spot on his hip, still sore from the wounds he received from his captors.

“How?”

He thought he’d imagined the whispered question, spoken so softly, but the question lingered in Jen’s blue eyes.

If he told her everything would it be worse than she imagined? He gazed into those baby blues and a knot tightened in his gut. Never.

“It was rough, Jen, but I’m here. I survived it.” He brushed his lips across hers. “The thought of you gave me strength, pulled me through the most brutal moments of my captivity.”

“How did you know I’d be waiting for you? You must’ve figured the navy would tell me you died. You didn’t even know I was pregnant before you left. I didn’t know I was pregnant.”

“I tried not to think about it. Tried not to think of you moving on with someone else.” He scooped her hair away from her face, his fingers tightening involuntarily. “Have you?”

“Of course not.” Her lashes fluttering, she leaned in for the kiss he had waiting for her, and then she jerked back. “How did you know where I lived? How did you know about Mikey?”

“After the hospital in Germany, I went to a debriefing center near DC. I kept asking about you, kept asking for a phone. All they’d tell me was that you were okay and I needed to concentrate on getting better.” He ground his back teeth. “As if seeing you wouldn’t make me feel better immediately.”

She grabbed his hands. “Did you escape this center? Leave without their permission?”

“Yeah, but not before breaking into an office and looking at my file.” He pulled away from her and smacked a fist into his palm. “They didn’t even tell me I had a son.”

“A-are you AWOL or something?” Her gaze dropped to his clenched fist and then back to his face.

He shrugged, rolling his shoulders and flexing his fingers. “They debriefed me. It’s not like I’m going to confess anything to you about my captivity or about Vlad that I didn’t already spill to them.”

“But you’re not supposed to be here.”

He ran a hand across his mouth. “This is the only place I’m supposed to be.”

“I thought I was dreaming. I didn’t think I’d ever see you again—except in those dreams.”

He curled a hand around her neck and pulled her close, but before he could plant another kiss on her mouth, a crash resounded from the room next to them.

Then he smelled the smoke...and heard the screams of his son.

Chapter Three

Miguel bolted from the sofa and Jennifer lunged after him, tripping over the coffee table and banging her shin. The acrid smell of fire invaded her nostrils and terror ripped through her body like the jagged edge of a knife when she saw black smoke pouring out of Mikey’s bedroom.

“It’s Mikey’s room.”

Miguel charged into the smoke-filled room as Jennifer hung back coughing, her eyes watering. The heat from the flames licking at the drapes spiked her adrenaline, and she stumbled into the room after Miguel.

“Stay back, Jen. I’ve got him.”

Miguel emerged from the dark gray cloud, Mikey clutched against his chest. He slammed the door behind him.

“Get out. Get out of the house now—back door.”

She grabbed her phone on her way to the sliding glass door and gulped in the fresh air when she hit the patio. The smoke and fire from the front of the house hadn’t made it back here yet, hadn’t escaped from Mikey’s room.

She got on the phone with 9-1-1 while stroking the back of Mikey’s head as he sobbed against Miguel’s shoulder. After giving emergency services the details, she held out her arms and Miguel transferred Mikey to her.

Even amid the terror, she couldn’t help noticing how Mikey, in his fear, had clung to Miguel. She whispered in Mikey’s ear, “It’s okay. You’re okay now. Mommy’s here.”

She rested her chin on top of Mikey’s head and met Miguel’s gaze as he pulled her away from the house. “What was that?”

“As far as I can tell from the smell, it was a Molotov cocktail.”

“Meant for you? The FBI would go to those measures to get you back? Risk harming a child?”

Miguel cocked his head at the sound of sirens in the distance. “No, but who said I was being debriefed by the FBI?”

“You’re scaring me even more, if that’s possible.” She squeezed Mikey so tightly, he squirmed in her grasp. At least the FBI had some accountability, rules to follow, public exposure. But these shadowy black ops organizations? Who held them accountable?

The sirens wailed louder, and Jennifer pointed to the side of the house. “Should we meet them?”

Her neighbor Stephen called over the back fence, “Is that you, Jennifer? What’s going on?”

She yelled, “Fire in the front bedroom. Everyone’s okay. I think the fire department just got here.”

“Oh, my God. Mikey’s room?”

“Yes, but he’s fine. We’re going out front now.”

She led Miguel to the front of the house on the other side of where the fire was blazing.

Mikey lifted his head when they got to the street, now bathed in red light. Neighbors clustered on their porches in their pajamas. The firefighters started working before the trucks even came to a full stop.

Jennifer waved at a police officer getting out of his car, and he approached them.

“Is this your house, sir?”

Miguel pointed to her.

“I rent it. I live here with my son.”

“Is the boy okay?”

“Scared but not injured.” She shifted Mikey to her other hip.

“What happened?”

She felt Miguel stiffen beside her. They hadn’t discussed what to tell the authorities. The truth?

“I—I’m not sure. We were talking in the living room, heard a crash from the front bedroom window and smelled smoke. I heard my son cry out, and my...friend went into the room and grabbed him. We all ran outside to the back of the house then, and I called 9-1-1.”

“A crash, like a broken window?”

Miguel cleared his throat. “Like somebody threw something through the window.”

The cop narrowed his eyes. “You know anyone who would do something like that, ma’am?”

“Of course not.”

Taking out a notebook, the officer asked for their names.

Jennifer didn’t blink an eye when she heard Miguel identify himself as Mike Esteban.

As they continued talking to the police officer, the firefighters seemed to be making short work of the fire that had engulfed Mikey’s bedroom, where flames were shooting up to the roof through the broken window.

Mikey squirmed in her arms, kicking his legs against her hip.

“We need to stay here, Mikey.”

“Do you want me to take him to watch? He seems interested, not scared.”

Miguel hadn’t even formally met Mikey yet. This was his first real contact with his son, and it couldn’t be more disastrous.

With her throat tight, she spilled an all-too-willing Mikey into Miguel’s outstretched arms and murmured, “He likes action. He’s his father’s son.”

Miguel wandered to the other side of the house where Mikey could get a good look at the firefighters at work.

“Ms. Lynch, is that the boy’s father?”

“N-no.”

“Where’s the boy’s father?”

Was the officer trying to imply some former husband had a motive for firebombing her house? A case of jealousy while she enjoyed the company of another man?

“His father’s dead.”

“I’m sorry.” He scratched his chin. “If what you heard is accurate, this sounds like a deliberate act. The arson investigators will do a full analysis, but I’m just trying to get as much information as I can from you to assist them.”

“I understand. I’m a fifth-grade teacher at Richmond Elementary. I don’t have any enemies that I know of and no irate parents that would go to these lengths.”

“You never know what lengths people will go to—until they do.”

Jennifer crossed her arms and shivered. “I suppose I’d better call the rental management company and let them know what happened.”

The cop looked up from writing in his notebook, peering over her head at the house. “You won’t be staying here tonight.”

About an hour later, the fire chief on the scene allowed her to go into the house to collect some of her things.

Miguel joined her inside the house, a sleeping Mikey nestled against his shoulder.

She touched Mikey’s cheek. “Thanks for sitting in the car with him while I talked to the police and firefighters and called the rental agency. You even got him to sleep.”

“After the excitement of watching the firefighters at work, he conked out.” With one finger, Miguel pushed a lock of dark hair from Mikey’s forehead. “He’s incredible.”

“You can put him on my bed while I pack up some of my stuff. The fire didn’t get much farther than Mikey’s room, but I’m going to have to replace his clothes. What the fire didn’t destroy, the water did.”

“It’s just stuff.” Miguel walked past her into the bedroom and put Mikey’s head on the pillow.

A firefighter called into the house from the front door. “Folks, you’re going to have to hurry it up.”

“Just a few more minutes.” She wheeled a suitcase from her closet and shoveled clothes into it. She dumped Mikey’s dirty clothes from the laundry basket into a plastic bag and shoved that into the suitcase.

When she came out of the bathroom with a bag of toiletries, Miguel was on his knees by the side of the bed studying Mikey’s face, stroking his hand with one finger.

Her nose tingled. Miguel’s introduction to his son might not have been ideal, but Mikey had his father back and that’s all that mattered.

“I’m ready. Did you come in a car?”

“It’s a few blocks away.” He slipped his arms beneath Mikey. “You can give me a ride to my rental and then follow me to my motel.”

“I didn’t even ask where you were staying.”

“I think we had other things to talk about. The motel is here in Austin.” Miguel put a finger to his lips, as they walked into the living room where the firefighter still hovered at the front door.

“Everything okay, folks?”

“Not perfect, but we’re all safe.” Jennifer grabbed her phone and laptop from the kitchen counter, and then shoved the computer into her school bag.

She still had to show up for class tomorrow and get through two more days of school.

With one arm still holding Mikey, Miguel took her bag from her and slung it over his shoulder.

When they got to her car, Miguel placed Mikey in his car seat and she buckled him in. “This takes some practice.”

“I want to learn everything. I want to do everything, everything I missed.”

She slammed the back door of the car and kissed Miguel. “Thanks for getting Mikey out of that room.”

“We got lucky. That was a small Molotov cocktail, never really exploded and didn’t project far into the bedroom.”

“We’ll be in touch, ma’am.”

She jerked her head to the side to acknowledge the firefighter. Had he heard Miguel? Did it matter? One of the firefighters had already mentioned something about a Molotov cocktail.

They weren’t the suspects here.

She drove Miguel to his car a few blocks away and then followed him to his motel near the university.

He waved her into a parking spot in front of the two-story building while he swung into a space in a lot at the end of the building.

She waited in the car until he walked up to it. Then she released the trunk and he hauled out her suitcase and school bag.

She followed him to his room on the first level, carrying Mikey in her arms. She eyed the king-size bed and put Mikey in the middle of it.

The motel room had a little kitchenette and Jennifer wedged her back against the counter, folding her arms. “Now that we have some privacy, what do you think happened back there? Who’s responsible?”

Miguel collapsed in a chair, his legs stretched out in front of him. She’d noticed the weight loss before, but his gaunt face and lanky appearance really hit her. Miguel had played baseball in college and had kept himself in peak condition throughout his navy SEAL training and beyond. The months in captivity had taken their toll on his body. What about his mind? How did anyone go through that without requiring psychological help to recover? Was that why the people in DC hadn’t wanted him to leave?

He ran his knuckles along his jaw, which now sported a scruffy beard. “I don’t think that was the government.”

“You don’t think? Would a government agency toss a Molotov cocktail into a child’s bedroom?” She pressed her folded arms against her belly and the knots forming there.

“The FBI? No.”

“But you weren’t being debriefed by the FBI, were you? Or the CIA?”

“No.”

“Would this...other agency do something like that?”

“That room in the front of the house could’ve been any room. Maybe Mikey wasn’t the target.”