Troubleshooters - Into The Night Part 18

As Charlie headed upstairs, thunder rolled in the distance. Vince had turned on CNN to get the latest on the war but she never watched past the headlines. All she needed to know was that the terrorists hadn't killed anyone else today.

As far as the details of the conflict went, well, back in the 1940s, she'd had enough details of war to last her a lifetime.

People died in war. That was the most important detail, and one that the news seemed to gloss over today. War wasn't this clean, tidy affair that CNN was seemingly reporting. It was filled with death and destruction. It was bombs falling and shards of metal screaming through the air and smoke and blood and fear and grown men screaming with pain.

It was waking up in the middle of the night to the sound of a Marine who was barely old enough to go into a nightclub shouting about getting to cover. It was about finding him panicked and completely disoriented underneath the bed.

All because they were having a thunderstorm in a city thousands of miles from the front lines.

Charlie now turned around and went back down the stairs. The book she was reading was out on the kitchen table, and she picked it up as she went past. Thunder rolled again, louder this time as she went into the den.

Vince looked up and saw her there. He knew why she'd come back downstairs and his smile was still a little embarra.s.sed. After all these years. "I'm okay," he said.

"I know." Charlie sat down next to him on the couch and squeezed his knee. He took her hand in his and, bringing it up to his lips, he kissed her as he watched the sports news.

He was okay.

She was the one who would remember forever that on July 17, 1964, Vince had finally been able to sit through a thunderstorm without getting tense. Sure, he'd always tried to hide it, and he did a good job, too. But for all those years after the war, he'd never been able to fool her.

And forget about the storms that crashed overhead in the middle of the night. For years, Vince had woken up disoriented and confused. She'd gotten into the habit of turning on the light at the first little rumble of distant thunder.

Sixty years later, and he still woke up and stayed up until the storm was through.

She gently disengaged her ringers from his and reached over and turned on the lamp that sat on the end table. It made the room just a little bit brighter. "Mind if read?"

" 'Course not."

Sixty years.

Charlie settled on the couch so that her shoulder touched Vince's as she opened her book and pretended to focus on the story.

Nearly sixty years of holding on to him, of holding his hand, without making it obvious that that was what she was doing.

Charlie prayed every day that the fighting in this new war didn't escalate, that sixty years from today wouldn't find countless old women still worried about all those formerly young men who had served this country at such a personal cost. Of course, nowadays the young women were going, too. Who would hold their hands sixty years from now?

What a price to pay for freedom. All those years of life, irrevocably shaped by the sights and sounds of war.

And although the years flew by, some memories simply never faded.

That was as true for her as it was for Vince.

Charlie remembered that first time as if it were yesterday.

She'd sat up in the dark of the tiny extra bedroom in the house she shared with Edna Fletcher, awakened from a restless sleep by the sound of shouting.

"Not here! Not here! G.o.d d.a.m.n it, go back! Goa" For the love of G.o.d, don't you understand? You won't clear the G.o.dd.a.m.n reef!"

It was Vince.

Lightning flickered behind the curtains and thunder crashed again, deafeningly loud. The hot spell they'd been having for the past few days had brought them an electrical storm, despite the fact that it was only January.

"Noooooooooooo!" Vince shouted so loud and so long, Charlotte was out of the bed and down the hall almost before she knew it, running for his room. "They're drowning! Don't you see?"

She grabbed the light switch and cranked, but the power had gone out.

"Vince?" Lightning illuminated the empty bed. She tried to look around the room, but the flash faded too quickly. "Vince, where are you?"

Thunder cracked again, shaking the house.

"Get down! Dear G.o.d, keep your head down! They're throwing everything at us that they can!"

Charlotte crouched next to the bed and peered into the darkness underneath. Lightning flared and there was Vince, his eyes wild in his gaunt face, his dark hair a mess.

He grabbed her, and she shrieked as he pulled her onto the floor and yanked her underneath the bed with him. As the thunder roared, he rolled on top of her.

As thin as he'd seemed as she'd cared for him this past week, he was bigger than she was. In fact, from this perspective, he didn't feel frail at all. On the contrary, he was quite solid and heavy. And unquestionably male.

"Stop," she said, even though part of her had been starving for years for this very type of physical intimacy, for a body to cling to, to hold close, for someone else's strong arm tightly wrapped around her. "Get off me!"

But he didn't move. He tucked his head down close to hers. "Stay down!"

He was covering her from an imaginary barrage of sh.e.l.ls, she realized. He was trying to protect her. This wasn't even remotely about s.e.x.

"Vincent, it's just a thunderstorm." His ear was right by her mouth so she spoke as quietly and calmly as she possibly could, considering that her heart was racing.

She'd jumped from bed so quickly, she'd neglected to put on her robe. And she was lying there now, on the floor beneath him, in only her thin flannel nightie, which had ridden way up as he'd pulled her under the bed. She could feel his bare legs, warm against hers.

"Jesus G.o.d, Ray, keep your f.u.c.king head down!" His voice broke. His language should have shocked her, but it wasn't half as shocking as the raw pain and horror in his voice. "Oh, G.o.d, why didn't you keep your head down? Medic! I need a medic! Where the f.u.c.k is the medic?"

Charlotte did the only thing she could do. She put her arms around him and held him as tightly as he was holding her.

"Vince," she said. "Vincent. Listen to me. It's Charlotte Fletcher. Not Ray, Charlotte. We're safe. We're in Was.h.i.+ngton, and this is just a thunderstorm."

"Charlotte?" Edna called.

"Under the bed, Mother," Charlotte called. "Get candles! Bring as many candles up as you possibly can! Please hurry!"

"Where's Ray?" Vince asked. He was breathing hard, as if he'd run for miles. Or as if he were trying desperately not to cry.

"I don't know," she told him. "But I do know he's not here. Not now. You're here, Vince, and I'm here, and Mother Fletcher just went downstairs to fetch some light. You're in our house in Was.h.i.+ngton, D.C., and we're all safe. No one's shooting at us."

Light came into the room. Charlotte couldn't see the door from her vantage point under the bed, but she suspected Edna had simply grabbed the candlesticks from the dining room sideboard and set them here on the oak dresser.

"I'll get more," Edna said.

The light was faint and it flickered, but it cut through the darkness.

"Open your eyes," Charlotte commanded Vince.

He did, but she still wasn't sure if he could really see her yet. Lightning flashed again, but it was less jarring with the candles already lighting the walls.

Still, he tensed and ducked his head, pulling her closer to him, too, when the thunder came. It was less earthshaking this timea"the storm was starting to move off, thank G.o.d.

"It's thunder," she said again, her face pressed against his neck. He was hot and he smelled like her soap. "Just thunder."

The sound of Mother Fletcher's footsteps hurrying up the stairs heralded the arrival of more candles, more light.

"Put at least one on the floor, please," Charlotte called. And then, alleluia, there was more light.

"Oh, dear," Edna said. Charlotte caught a glimpse of her mother-in-law's pale face as she peered under the bed.

"He thinks the thunder is sh.e.l.ling. He thinks we're under attack," she explained, her own face heating at the idea of what this must look like from Edna's perspective.

"How can I help?" Edna asked. She actually lay down on her stomach, on the chilly floor, in order to get closer, bless her.

"I don't know," Charlotte admitted. "I was hoping the light would help."

Edna pushed the candle even closer. "Young man, look at me. Look and see where you are," she ordered in that no-nonsense voice that had surely kept James hopping when he was a child.

It may have been Edna's stentorian tones, or the light from the candle burning right beside them, but this tune when Vince lifted his head, Charlotte knew he was on his way back.

As Edna rea.s.sured him that the war hadn't yet come to 84 Chestnut Street in Was.h.i.+ngton, D.C., he looked at Edna, looked at the candle, looked at the bed frame above them. And then he looked at Charlotte.

She saw the exact moment he realized exactly where he was and that she was lying beneath him. The parade of emotions that crossed his so-expressive face would have been funny if she hadn't felt like crying in sheer relief.

Shock, horror, disbelief, embarra.s.sment. Desire. She saw clearly from his eyes that she now wasn't the only one who was intensely aware of the way their bare legs were intertwined.

"Please tell me I didn't hurt you," he whispered as he quickly pushed himself off of her.

"You were trying to save me," she rea.s.sured him. Funny, but she didn't seem able to do more than whisper, either. She cleared her throat. "My dignity is slightly bruised, but that's the extent of any damage. However, I suspect we've irrevocably crossed over to that place where it's not just acceptable but rather necessary now to address each other by our given names."

He laughed at that, as she'd hoped he would. But then his face crumpled, just like that of the little boy who lived in the house next door, and he started to cry.

He tried to pull farther away, but this tune she was the one who reached for him and wouldn't let him go.

There was nothing to say, nothing to do but hold him and cry, too. From all that he'd said tonight, she could begin to imagine the nightmare hea"and thousands of other American boysa"had lived through. And perhaps worst of all, she could begin to imagine what it had been like at Pearl Harbor when the j.a.panese had attacked. When James had died.

They both cried until they were exhausted, until Vince fell asleep. And then Charlotte cried some more.

And when she next looked up, light was coming in through the windows. She'd fallen asleep right there, in Vince's arms, on the floor beneath the very bed she'd once shared with James.

Edna was long gone, and the candles had all burned out.

Vince was sleeping, and she gently pulled free from his embrace and crawled out from under the bed.

By all rights she should have felt terrible, staying up so late, crying as hard as she had, and then sleeping on the hardwood floor. Every muscle in her body should have ached. Every bone should have felt bruised. Her head should have pounded.

But as she slipped out of the room to get ready to go to work, she couldn't remember the last time she'd had a better sleep.

Muldoon had had the evening from h.e.l.l.

Mrs. Tucker had followed him into the grocery store.

It was like something out of a bad movie, and he'd had to dash down the dog food aisle to escape out the loading dock.

On his way home, desperate for a beer, he'd stopped into the Ladybug Lounge and come across a sailor going head to head with some bikers in the parking lot.

It took a full hour to get that straightened out.

He drove the kid back to the base, and then somehow found himself outside of the Hotel del Coronado, where Joan was staying.

He still wanted that beer, but more than a beer, he wanted to talk to Joan. Who wasn't answering her cell phone.

Muldoon used his own phone to call the hotel's main number as he walked toward the lobby. Thunder had been rumbling for the past hour or so and a sharp crack made the skies open. He ran, but it was hopeless. By the time he reached the hotel, he was soaked.

The front desk patched him through to her room, but she wasn't there. After four rings her voice mail picked up.

He didn't leave a message because he wasn't sure what to say. Hi, I'm really not stalking you. Really. It's just that I can't seem to spend more than a couple of hours without desperately wanting to see you again.

That would go over well.

There was a hotel directory in the lobby, and he stopped and dripped for a moment in front of it, attempting to get his bearings. There were several different bars in the Del. The Palm Court had piano music, but the Babc.o.c.k and Story bar had jazz guitar.

Joan was definitely the guitar type. He headed for the B&S.

Come on, Joan. Be there.

He stopped just inside the bar in part to let his eyes adjust to the dim lighting, in part in an effort to dry off a bit more, but mostly because he had absolutely no clue what he was going to say if he did find her there.

How about, You aren't going to believe everything that's happened since I walked you back to your car this evening.

Of course, that didn't explain what he was doing here at the Del.

I called your room, but you weren't there, and since I was driving past, I figured I might as well go out into the pouring rain to see if I could find you, because I have had one unbelievably freaky evening and all I want to do is look into your eyes and tell you about it and laugh. And then I want you to invite me back to your room so we can spend about seven hours straight having incredible, screaming monkey s.e.x.

That last part might not go over so well, despite the fact that he now realized he'd gotten out of his truck not entirely in search of a beer.

No, a beer would certainly be nice, but it would be completely unnecessary if Joan were to appear before him and hold out her hand to lead him up to her hotel room.

And then, as if on cue, there she was.

He'd been squinting through the darkness at all the little tables that dotted the room, but she was sitting right there at the bar, sipping some kind of frozen drink from a straw.

And laughing into some other man's eyes.

Muldoon used the mirror behind the bar to get a better look at the man's face. He wasn't anyone he knew. In fact, the guy was wearing a business suit. He was in his fifties and was overweight and bald, but whatever he was telling Joan had her complete attention.

As he watched, something the bald guy said made Joan crack up. The man laughed along with her, and the sound of their two voices floating over the jazz guitar was enough to make Muldoon crazy.