Jameson (In the Company of Snipers Book 22) Page 4

  Why the hell would we?

  “After your father, Mr. Stewart.” Her bright eyes sparkled as she soothed the old liar’s ruffled feathers. “Think of it this way, by honoring him, we’ve also honored you.”

  Like hell. Gramps was a man worth honoring. But Mel was… nothing.

  Right on cue, he groused. “Don’t seem quite fair, me being his real granddaddy and all, but…” He lifted both shoulders as if he were insulted but would get over it. “Guess it’ll have to do.”

  You bet your ass it will do. You were never a father, and you’re not a grandfather now.

  “Boss, we’re heading out,” Rory said, his arm tight around Ember’s waist, still standing between her and Mel.

  “Thanks for the whisky. That was damned nice.”

  “I left another fifth on your desk for when you get back. Enjoy these first days with your fam—”

  “Whisky?” Mel nearly broke his crepey neck when he dropped Kelsey’s hand and twisted around. “You guys been celebrating without me? What kind ya got? Is it the good stuff?”

  And wasn’t that just the truest picture of good old Grandpa Mel? Ignoring the loveliest lady in the world and the precious grandson he claimed he came to see, at the mere whisper of liquor.

  “It’s gone,” Alex put as much sarcasm into the two words as he could.

  “Oh, no, it’s not. Look, Alex. There’s enough left for one tiny swallow. Pour your dad a drink. I’d love to get to know you better,” Kelsey told Mel sincerely.

  Damn it to hell! Alex wished Kelsey would go to sleep and stop sabotaging him!

  When Mel beamed at her kindness, Alex knew exactly what the old goat was thinking. He’d snagged another hapless sucker.

  “Later, Boss,” Zack rumbled as he headed out. He, Mark, and Libby were the last to leave. But Mark had stopped at the doorway, his head canted as he listened to whatever Libby was saying. His dark eyes turned expressive. He nodded, then waved Zack off.

  Back in the room, Mark carried the chair Beau had vacated to the other side of the bed, and gestured for Libby to take a seat. Which she did, a knowing glimmer in her eyes. Bless her heart. She didn’t want Mel there any more than Alex did.

  “Why don’t you and your old man go down to the cafeteria and catch up, Boss?” Mark offered as he stood behind his wife, his fingers on the back of her chair. “We won’t stay long.”

  “Good idea.” Alex set a heavy hand on Mel’s shoulder. His ragged coat felt grimy to the touch. Slept in. For the first time, he wondered if his dad truly were homeless. Or if this was just another ruse, another con. He hated putting Kelsey in the position of having to choose his feelings over his dad’s. He should’ve told her about Mel a long time ago. Wished he had.

  “Come on, Dad.” Sarcasm had never felt more justified. “Let’s go get a cup of coffee.” Then I’m showing you the door, and you’d better stay gone this time.

  “Goodbye for now,” Kelsey said tiredly. “See you soon, Mr. Stewart.”

  “Oh, please call me Mel, Sissy,” he all but gushed.

  And Alex wanted to puke. Mel used to call Abigail Sissy when he came home drunk.

  Kelsey granted him one of her sweetest smiles. “Of course, Mel. Tomorrow then.”

  “You betcha,” he replied, the cunning old toad.

  Libby followed up with a polite but measured, “It was nice meeting you, sir.”

  He tipped a finger to his forehead and the hat he didn’t have. “Nice meeting you, too, pretty lady.”

  Mark said nothing. He didn’t have to. He knew the tricks and ploys of absentee, disengaged fathers, who’d never once showed up unless there was something in it for them. Mark had suffered a lifetime of neglect at his dad’s hand. When he’d joined the Corps, he’d finally discovered that he wasn’t the broken one. John Houston was. Still was today.

  Alex turned his back on Mel and bowed his forehead to Kelsey’s. “I’ll be right back, sweetheart,” he promised as he kissed her mouth. “Keep our son warm.”

  Her lips were soft and sweet as if she hadn’t just endured a long night of labor and a C-section. A sigh escaped. “Don’t worry about us; we’ll be fine. You deserve time with your dad.”

  “No,” he breathed into her face. “I don’t deserve what he’s doing here, and neither do you or our kids. This is not a family reunion, Kelsey. This is goodbye.”

  “But he’s your father,” she whispered, her brown eyes pleading for him to be the better man she knew he could be.

  He shook his head, not going down that dead-end road again. He’d been a nice kid and an obedient son before. Too often. Mom, Gramps, and Gram had been kind and considerate, too. More than Mel had ever deserved. It hadn’t worked then; it wouldn’t now. This guy was one rank cup of cold, bitter coffee, and Alex was only going to spit him out on the curb.

  “Stay with her until I get back?” he asked Mark and Libby.

  “Sure thing,” Mark answered easily. “It’s no trouble. JayJay’s thrilled Lexie’s sleeping over again tonight. They’re making s’mores in the microwave right now.”

  “And JayJay knows the recipe to make pink popcorn,” Libby added slyly. “You should see our living room. It’s one big tent city full of giggling little girls.”

  “Lexie?” Mel asked, his head cranking between Libby and Kelsey. “You mean…? I got a baby granddaughter, too?”

  Alex snaked an unwilling arm around his dad’s neck and all but shoved him out the door. Lifting his other arm over his head, he waved goodbye to the room as he dragged his old man into the hall and said, “No, Mel, you’ve got distant relatives, and it’s time for you to go.”

  As expected, Mel elbowed out of Alex’s stronghold the second Kelsey’s door shut behind him. “I’ve got family, you son of a bitch, and you can’t keep me from seeing them.”

  And enough! Alex bullied his father away from Kelsey’s door, down the hall to the elevator. “Don’t call Mom a bitch, you asshole! And I can and will keep you away from my family. You walked away from yours. All of us. From Mom!” Alex rolled his shoulders, fighting for a modicum of restraint. “Where the hell have you been all these years? Why are you here now? What do you want?”

  Mel stiffened his hairy chin and rolled one shoulder. He thumbed the bulbous end of his nose as if he were some kind of prizefighter. He was—the loser kind.

  “I been places, you little fucker. Important places. Not like you ever cared.”

  By then Alex was glaring down at the bastard. He was bigger, taller, and his shoulders were wider than the man who’d made his childhood hell. He was also meaner than he’d ever been as a nine-year-old. And smarter. “For once we agree. I don’t give a shit where you’ve been, and don’t ever call my wife Sissy!”

  “Why not? She’s pretty enough. She looks like a Sissy.”

  Pretty enough? “Because that’s what you called Mom! Or did you forget her, too? Or is that what you call all your girls? That’s it, isn’t it? Calling your whores Sissy made it easy to keep track of the one you were with.” That actually made perfect sense. Mel had other women. Alex knew that for sure. He’d hid the secret from his mom because by then, she’d been sick and hadn’t needed more crap in her life. Cancer and Mel were crap enough.

  “I call ’em all Sissy because—”

  “You know what? I don’t give a shit! How much do you want?” Alex jerked his wallet out of his rear pocket. “Fifty? A hundred? Two? How much will it cost me to get rid of you?”

  Mel’s brittle gaze zeroed in on the bills in the wallet. His tongue flicked his upper lip like the snake he was. “I don’t need your money, boy. Fact, I don’t need nuthin’ from you. Just stopped by to say hey.”

  “Hey,” Alex spat.

  “Fine then.” Mel’s startling blue eyes fell to the tiled floor between them. “’S just that…”

  Everything inside Alex turned to stone. Here it comes. He’s going to tell me he’s got cancer. Or two months to live for some v
ague reason. Or another bullshit story he thinks will force me to take him in. Not happening.

  Mel stuck his hand out. “Never mind. You got a nice little family, son, and Sissy, err, I mean, Kelsey, looks happy. Just wanted to catch up on good old times with my boy.”

  “I’m not your boy, and we’ve got no good old times to catch up on. Do you even know I was married before? Were you there after my first wife and daughter were killed in a car wreck while I was deployed? Hell, no! Where were you when I buried them, huh? Did you give a shit when Gram died from a broken heart after I buried Sara and Abby? You weren’t even there when I buried your own mother. For the love of God! You don’t get to just walk back into my life like you belong. You lost that right years ago. The fuckin’ day you walked out!” Alex raked a hand over his head. God, he was pissed.

  “You’re sure a selfish bastard.”

  “Learned from the best, didn’t I?”

  “I’m outta here.”

  “Don’t let the door hit your ass on the way out.”

  Mel shuffled into the waiting elevator, and Alex joined him. The ride down was dead silent, but finally, they were in the hospital lobby. Mel headed straight to the wide glass exit doors, and Alex was damned glad to see him go. Yes, he was a pitiful sight with his head down, and for certain, he’d slept in those wrinkled clothes. The sides of his dirty shoes were broken down and his jeans were worn and tattered. Those clothes and that ratty jacket were probably all he owned.

  But Alex truly did not care. Abigail was the one he’d wished could’ve been here today. Not Mel. She was the one he adored. She’d been a saint, a long-suffering angel who’d made the mistake of falling for a foul-mouthed swabbie out of Norfolk. A sailor who’d done more harm than good to the people he’d declared he loved. Lies. All lies. Good riddance.

  Abigail had passed years ago, long before Alex had ever thought of marriage or adulting. Long before Gramps and Gram died. He’d been nine when he’d lost his mom, and the memory still hurt. But he felt nothing for the man he’d lost the next day. Melvin Stewart had only ever been a lousy husband and a worse father. A loser. He shirked responsibility then, still did today.

  Not like a motherless nine-year-old kid would’ve been better off with Mel in his life. Truth was, Alex had done just fine after he’d been dumped at Gramps’ farm in West Virginia, three days before Abigail’s funeral. But for that brief time with Mel, those couple days it took Abigail to die, that stupid nine-year-old had actually believed he’d be going home to live with his dad. That they’d, somehow, become a real father and son team. A family. That Mel would finally care.

  Not so. Mel was there when Abigail died, but he wasn’t at the cemetery when Alex and his grandparents went back to Norfolk to lay her to rest. From that moment on, Alex hadn’t wasted a minute thinking about his old man. He’d learned the hardest way possible. Mel had nothing to offer anyone. Not a goddamned thing.

  Standing at Abigail’s grave that blustery winter day had left one of those sucking black holes in that foolish nine-year-old boy’s heart. That was the day Alex turned to Gramps for the comfort and fatherly support he’d never gotten from Mel. Was also the day Patrick Bradley Stewart finally had a son he could count on. Alex and Gramps were inseparable from that day forward.

  His paternal grandfather was former Navy, like Mel, but he was one of those injured survivors from the WWII battle at Iwo Jima in the Pacific. Unlike Mel, Gramps was the real deal. He might’ve been a drunk when he’d come home after the war, but he’d never laid a hand on Gram, Abigail, or Alex. Never called them names, never said a mean word to anyone. Never embarrassed or humiliated his grandson like Mel had so often done. Hard-working and truly one of the best from the greatest generation, Gramps was the man who’d taught Alex to play baseball, the slickest way to skin beaver without damaging the pelts, and how to be silent when tracking elusive white-tailed deer. Gramps also taught Alex how to stand up to bullies and how to bank coal stoves in winter. He taught his grandson to be a man, and Alex adored Gramps still today.

  Yes, he’d definitely liked the bottle. He was an Irishman and the Irish loved their whisky. But when he drank, he was a cheerful drunk, who’d boisterously declared he’d just needed a nip now and again to chase what he’d called ‘the ghosts’ away. That was Alex’s first experience with post-traumatic stress, aka shell shock, battle fatigue, and soldier’s heart. All those worthless euphemisms that didn’t do squat to help a guy.

  But his mom…? Abigail would forever be the ache in his heart that wouldn’t go away.

  She’d lived a sad, miserable life of neglect and abuse, broken dreams and lost chances. Yet she’d sat with every light on in their shabby house on Iowa Street, Norfolk, Virginia, waiting for Mel to come home when he’d promised. She’d kept his suppers warm, even bought a bottle of wine now and then to celebrate his shore leave.

  But the ass usually never showed. If he did, it was always too little and too late. He’d stumble in after midnight, and he’d stink of cigarette smoke, hard liquor, and another woman’s perfume. He’d been loud-mouthed and mean, quick to slap Abigail, just as quick to call her a liar if she challenged him. By then, he would’ve squandered the rent and grocery money away, and he’d be too tired to do anything around the house but empty that bottle of wine and pass out. And Alex had wished he’d never come home.

  To help his mom, he’d gotten a paper route when he’d turned seven. Gramps told him someone had to be the man of the family. So Alex stepped up, never thought twice, and never looked back.

  Gramps might’ve had bad dreams, but his only child was a living nightmare. Which was why Alex knew Mel was pulling a con now. He just didn’t know what the old bastard was really after. But he meant to find out. Being the ass he was, Alex watched his useless excuse for a father cross the street and disappear into the parking lot.

  Yet his gut was telling him he’d missed something. Telling Kelsey what he’d just done would be difficult enough, but why’d he feel as if he hadn’t seen the last of Mel? Because historically, that was how the old bastard worked. He said one thing, then did another. He got your hopes up, then jerked the rug out from under you. Mel was the culmination of more unrealized expectations and childish heartbreaks than Alex could count.

  Retrieving his cell from his rear pocket, he watched the parking lot, as he thumbed the senior agent he’d left with Kelsey. He had three: Mark Houston, Harley Mortimer, and David Tao. But of the three, Mark was the natural leader and prone to be in the office more than the other two, which made him Alex’s right-hand man.

  “Hey, Boss, what’s up?”

  “Please step into the hall, so the women won’t—”

  “Already done. Go ahead.”

  “Need you to check Navy records and verify—”

  “The comment about Mel being in Mogadishu? Already pulled his USN record while the girls were chatting. Sorry, Boss, but your old man was never a SEAL, nor was he in Somalia. He was dishonorably discharged with less than two years of service. He spent most of that in the old brig at Norfolk. I’m looking at a long list of assault charges, drunk and disorderly, and petty thefts. Small time stuff. Nothing too violent. Just enough to get him kicked out of the Navy.”

  “Son of a bitch,” Alex hissed, embarrassed that the secret he’d kept close to his chest for so many years was now public knowledge. He’d stopped watching the front door and had come to a full stop at the elevator that would take him back up to Maternity and Delivery. Mel’s dishonorable discharge made everything so much worse. No wonder he’d never come home. Those charges would’ve earned him total forfeiture of pay and allowances.

  “No worries, Alex. My dad’s convinced farming dirt’s more important than getting to know his five granddaughters.”

  “He still hasn’t come for a visit?”

  “Don’t think he ever will. Libby and I call monthly, but he’s never going to change. Honestly, I’m ready to call it quits. It’s hard holding a conversat
ion with someone who grunts and growls like you’ve offended him by calling. JayJay won’t talk with him anymore when we call. She says he always hurts her feelings.”

  Alex looked at the floor, his shoulders heaving with disgust. “At least you and Libby tried.”

  “Sounds like you did, too.”

  “Yeah, well…” He rolled the first nine years of misplaced regret and boyish-devotion for a man who’d only cared about himself, off his shoulders. “I need you to trace his whereabouts over the last few years. He’s up to something.”

  “You bet. I’ll handle it as soon as I get in the office. Today.”

  “And find out who the hell volunteered my home address and whereabouts.”

  “You do remember Mother’s back. All Mel had to say was that he was your dad, and she would’ve been an open book.”

  “Damn.” Alex dug the heel of his free hand into his eye socket behind which a migraine was just starting. Mark was spot on. Mother liked to talk, and she’d always been nosey. He wondered what else Mel knew now, and how he’d found TEAM HQ in the first place. Alex didn’t advertise, and unless a person knew where to look, there was no street-side signage that indicated a covert business resided in Alexandria.

  Mother, real name Sasha Kennedy, had become another problem all together. She’d taken a lengthy hiatus after her daughter Dempsey’s death. But when she’d come back from her South Pacific vacay, she hadn’t been the same person. Right out of the gate, she’d told Alex she’d only stay on if he made her a partner. She honestly believed her elite financial status made that promotion from office assistant to deputy director obvious. Alex disagreed. Not only had she hidden her extreme wealth from The TEAM, including her so-called best friend, Ember Dennison, Mother had also hidden the fact that she had a severely handicapped teenage daughter. While Mother had been intimately involved in every other TEAM member’s personal tragedies, successes, and lives, she’d kept hers secret.

  The revelation about Dempsey had come to light recently. By then, the young woman had been dying, and The TEAM hadn’t yet recovered from the depth of Mother’s betrayal. Also, she’d never served, and that was a hard stop for Alex. Just because she was good with computers and video games did not make her a better warrior than Mark, Harley, or Ember. They knew what it meant to put their lives on the line. Mother knew how to hack encrypted codes and create successful computer games. Her genius had made her wealthy and Alex appreciated her skillset. But when it came to running The TEAM, Alex demanded loyalty, and Mother had let him down.