Over the Edge by Suzanne Brockmann

and Stan had to laugh at himself for even daring to think the thought. Teri Howe. Hitting on him.

    Right.

    It was a typical male response. She was just being friendly, and he’d instantly jumped to the conclusion that sex was involved.

    He’d thought he was better than that. But apparently not.

    “You look a little tired,” she said. And no, there was no promise of hot sex in her eyes, only warmth of a completely different kind.

    She was being nice, and he . . . Damn, he must look worse than he usually did. But how did one politely mention that? No thanks, Lieutenant, I’m not tired, just butt ugly.

    Except he was tired, and once this transport touched ground, he was going to be running nonstop. Lieutenant Paoletti and the team’s language specialist, Johnny Nilsson, were a few hours behind them—not that they’d wait for L.T. and Nils to get started. In a situation like this, you just never knew when getting a few hours ahead of the game could save lives.

    “Maybe you should try to catch a nap,” Teri suggested. “I had a . . . good friend who was a SEAL. He served in Vietnam, and he used to talk about how part of the training included learning to take something he called combat naps. He told me if he could shut his eyes, even for ten minutes, it could make a big difference.”

    A good friend, huh?

    The way she’d said it implied that whoever this guy was, he’d been far more than just a friend. But someone who did time in ’Nam had to be in their fifties. Or older.

    “ ‘Nam, huh?” Stan said, wanting to know more, hating the idea of her hooked up with someone that old, someone who wasn’t her equal in every way. “My father served three tours over there. Regular Navy.”

    “Career?” she asked.

    He nodded. “Yeah. Master Chief Stanley Wolchonok Senior. He retired just a few years ago.”

    “He must be proud of you.” She said it so wistfully.

    “He is. We’re not, you know, particularly close, but he was the one who urged me to join the SEAL Teams.” His father had told him how hard it would be to get in—and oh, by the way, he was convinced Stan Junior had what it took to make it. Coming from the old bastard, that had meant a hell of a lot, particularly in those dark years right after his mother had died.

    “How about you? Your father still alive?” he asked Teri, watching her eyes, wanting to know about her father, dreading to hear what she might tell him.

    Maybe he was wrong, but he’d gotten the sense that somewhere, sometime, someone had really damaged her. He’d learned through his experiences as a senior chief, dealing in particular with the younger enlisted men, that more often than not if there was emotional damage, there was a father or mother lurking in the past who’d failed the first commandment of parenting—thou shalt not take thine own bad shit out on thy defenseless and trusting child.

    “You mentioned your mother was living back east,” he continued.

    “Yeah, she’s in Massachusetts—Cambridge. A literature professor at Harvard. As far as my dad . . .” The plane lurched and she looked away from him, out the window, assessing the cloud coverage below and the potential for turbulence with the calmly practiced glance of an experienced pilot.

    She turned back to him and forced a smile. “This sounds awful, but I don’t know if George Howe’s still alive. He left before I turned two, and the few times I tried to get in touch with him starting when I was in middle school, he was so uninterested, I . . .” She laughed, embarrassed. “I kind of came to the conclusion that he was merely the guy my mother was married to when I was born. A handy name to put on the birth certificate. She was . . . adventurous, and it was the early ’70s, and . . .” She shrugged. “I’ve asked her, and she insisted George was my father, but still . . . I don’t believe her.”

    She was trying so hard to sound as if it didn’t really matter to her, one way or