Page 10 of ELITE Justice
Jonathan took in the man, from his greasy hair, long beard, dirty shirt, threadbare jeans, and duct-taped boots. “If you really were a SEAL, what happened to you, man?” Jonathan needed to know. How could one of America’s best warriors end up on the street? A junkie?
“Afuckinghanistan.” Kane’s single-word answer was enough.
Jonathan had spent enough time in the Middle East to know how badly someone could get hurt, but the man seemed uninjured, at least on the outside. Maybe he suffered from PTSD. Or maybe he’d jumped off the deep end and the Navy had booted his butt out.
At the rattle of wheels over tile, both men’s attention locked on Gwen.
Kane looked apologetically at her, and the mop she held in the bucket of soapy water. “I’ll be back to finish up after the Army stink is gone.”
“Hey, squid, don’t poke at the Army. Not all of us are dickwads,” Gwen chastised. “Besides, he was a Marine.”
“Fucking jarheads.” Kane flashed a smile at Gwen. “I’ll see you later, angel.” He stalked out of the diner and disappeared into the night.
Jonathan stepped up to the young woman waiting behind the cash register and handed her the bill as Gwen pushed the bucket back into the kitchen.
He needed to talk with her. He wanted answers. “Gwen.”
She glanced at him over her shoulder. “It’s not what you think.”
CHAPTER5
Gwen twistedoff the top of the salt shaker and refilled it without a thought to the task. Her mind was consumed with the fight last week between Jonathan and Kane. It wasn’t really a fight, more of an altercation. One minute she was so mad at them both she could spit nails, and the next she understood how it must have looked to Jonathan when she gave Kane the insulin shot.
Dealing drugs. No way in hell would she ever participate in or condone such actions. She’d taken an oath to save lives. Even though she was no longer actively nursing, she was able to give a friend a shot when he needed it. He’d entrusted her with the medicine necessary for him to stay alive and she’d do anything she could to help Kane.
He’d come to the diner in bad shape that night. Some kid on a skateboard had mistaken his insulin pump for a high-tech phone and yanked it away from him while he was checking his levels. The VA hospital had been too far away. The stupid man had walked over three miles to get to her. Of course, she’d taken care of him.
After she closed that night, she’d taken Kane to the Veteran’s hospital in downtown Dallas, almost twenty miles away. They’d kept him overnight to stabilize and reset his basal rates, establishing a baseline for the constant feed into his body. He was an old hand at the bolus doses used to cover the carbohydrates consumed during meals. Type 1 diabetes was a bitch, especially for a man living on the streets.
Kane was such a good man. He’d just been handed one bad piece of luck after another for over a year. She’d first met the SEAL in Afghanistan when his whole team had been brought into the secret USSOCOM base, seriously ill with some unknown disease. Sick as a dog, he’d been a true gentleman and a really good patient, not like some who passed through her emergency room. Men could be such needy babies.
Gwen moved on to the pepper shakers, needing to keep her hands busy. She only wished she could keep her mind off Jonathan. He’d seen the notes she was transcribing from the Middle Eastern boys’ conversations. They’d shown up several times a week, almost claiming the small diner as their place to get away from their parents and families. The more comfortable they’d become in the neighborhood restaurant, the more openly they spoke in their native dialect of Arab. Most often it was typical teenage bitching; parents, schoolwork, and the complicated English language. Every now and then, though, they would speak of the great plan.
Although she’d proudly worn the uniform of this country, she worried about telling anyone what she’d overheard. Would they believe her? Or think she was a kook? Or worse, that she was looking for attention and to stir up community discord?
Then there was the question of who to tell. She hadn’t seen the police chief since the day Bitsy showed her ass, verbally attacking Jonathan and Quin. She hoped that terrible display of bad judgment hadn’t put the chief off eating there ever again. Maybe she could go to police headquarters and meet with him. If she showed him her translations…but what if she was wrong? It’d been months since she was over there, and although she considered her Arabic good, she’d be the first to admit it wasn’t great.
Besides, maybe it was simply teenage boys boasting to make themselves bigger and seem more important to others.
Deep in her heart, though, she knew someone was planning something big and it could—nowould—hurt or even worse, kill, dozens of people. Maybe more. She might be able to stop it. But how?
Maybe I should just call the local FBI office, she considered as she topped off the last pepper shaker and screwed on the cap. She glanced around the table for the large sugar container. It must still be on the shelf.
Two minutes later, while searching deep in the closet-sized storage room for the sugar, a deep voice sliced through her.
“Evening, Jacki.” Jonathan’s baritone had snaked its way into her very being.
“Good evening, Mr. O’Neil.” Gwen could hear the smile in her waitress’s voice and the sound of a coffee cup hitting the counter. “Is this breakfast for you?”
“Yup.”
When he chuckled, Gwen almost fell over. It was the sexiest sound she’d heard in days.
No, months.
Okay, years.
She mentally shook her head. Since when did a chuckle sound sexy?
