Masters at Arms - By Kallypso Masters Page 0,2

He’d been deployed, of course. As always, she’d handled everything perfectly. Except she hadn’t told him. Said she was afraid he’d be upset about the car. Hell, he didn’t give a shit about the fucking car. He’d just been worried when he heard how close she’d come to being killed.

All of the times she’d needed him—from when she’d held their stillborn son in her arms in 1991 to when she’d fought her last rounds of chemo and radiation this past summer—he’d been fighting battles elsewhere. Long deployments in too many hot spots in the world had come before her more often than he’d wanted. Hell, he’d barely made it home in time to watch her die.

Joni, I’m so fucking lost without you.

He blinked against the burning in his eyes. After her burial, Adam spent two weeks locked in a Minneapolis motel room trying to dig a hole deep enough to bury his sorrows. He’d only wound up in a drunken stupor, not unlike that wino’s over in the corner. Joni had told him to lay off the bottle twenty years ago because his excessive drinking scared her. Her father had been an alcoholic. He’d wanted her to be proud of him and had quit for her.

Until now. In the past couple weeks, there’d been a few nights where he’d come out of his stupor clutching a bottle of scotch to his chest.

A lousy substitute for Joni.

But, if he hadn’t been due back at Camp Pendleton in five days, he’d still be in that hell-hole motel—or buried six feet under beside Joni. He remembered how close he’d come one night, staring down the barrel of his pistol.

He shuddered and looked around the still-crowded station. He’d been here for several hours waiting for his next connection. With holiday travel in full swing, Adam had known he wouldn’t have managed to hop a seat on a flight in time to get to Pendleton by Monday. Maybe if he’d sobered up sooner. No matter. This weekend, the clientele in bus stations better suited his foul mood. They wouldn’t bother him and he fucking sure wouldn’t bother them. The last thing he wanted right now was a chatty companion asking if he was headed home to be with family.

He had no family anymore.

Adam leaned forward and held his aching head in his hands. He sure as hell hoped he’d lose the aftereffects of this binge before he got back on base. The colonel would bust his chops if he saw him like this. Adam knew he had a lot of eager young men and women looking to him to set an example, too.

He just didn’t give a shit about anything or anyone right now, and didn’t know when he would again.

“Can I get you something to eat?”

Adam looked up, squinting at the throbbing in his temples caused by the fluorescent lighting. Yeah, blame the lights. He saw a lanky black man in pimped-out orange pants and a Robin’s egg-blue shirt talking to a teenage girl seated across from him. She must have just sat down a few minutes ago, because he’d have noticed her before with her spiked neon pink hair and the most god-awful amount of makeup around her eyes.

Despite the bravado of her flashy hairstyle and all-black Goth outfit, her wide-eyed gaze darted to the pimp, then away. When he slid into the empty seat next to her, she leaned away from him in small degrees, as if not wanting to offend him by just getting up and moving. When the dickwad reached out to touch her hair, she squeezed her blue eyes shut and shrank into the chair.

Little girl lost.

Don’t let him scare you.

Adam’s attention shifted to the dickwad. No, Dickwad—with a capital D.

“No, thanks. I already ate,” she answered in a high-pitched squeak.

Don’t be polite. Tell him to go fuck himself, hon.

“How about a drink? There’s a liquor store around the corner.” He took her elbow, and she shook him off.

“No!”

Better.

“Thanks, anyway, but I’m waiting for my bus to New York.”

Aw, honey, don’t go and tell him your plans.

“That where you live?”

“No. I, um, have a job waiting.” She looked away.

Shit. A runaway. The girl barely looked fifteen under all that makeup. Adam sat up straighter, ignoring the pounding in his head. If that sorry bastard touched her again, he’d ice him like a salmon.

Don’t forget, you have your own bus to catch. He didn’t need to be playing hero and winding up doing jail time for assaulting the jerk.

The runaway