Tiffani and Winters finally broke the kiss and she put her head against his chest. Her back was to the door. Winters opened his eyes and saw Melvin and Marc standing there in front of him. He blanched, but the director made a gesture with his hands that said, “It’s all right. It’s your business, not ours.”
Melvin and Marc considerately waited several seconds so that it would look as if they had not arrived until after the kiss. The commander patted Tiffani on the shoulder and turned her around in a fatherly manner. “Great show, Commander,” Melvin said as he walked into the room. “And another super performance from you too, young lady.” He paused. Marc smiled his compliments and Tiffani unconsciously straightened out her dress. “There’s a Lieutenant Todd waiting outside for you, Commander,” Melvin added. “He says it’s urgent. He asked me to tell you to hurry.”
Winters face was creased with wrinkles. What in the world is he doing here? he thought. It’s after ten o’clock on a Saturday night. “Thanks, Melvin,” he answered. “Tell him I’ll be out in a few minutes.”
The director and his friend turned and left the dressing room. Tiffani reached over for the lit cigarette, whose ash had grown so long it had nearly fallen out of the ashtray. She inhaled and handed it to Winters. “Did they see us kissing?” she asked anxiously
“No,” lied Winters. But already he was realizing how untenable his fantasy was. Precious Tiffani, he thought. My teenage lover. We were lucky. But we cannot kid ourselves. We will be seen eventually. He looked into her eyes and saw the flame of adolescent passion. Again he felt the surge in his loins. He reached down and pulled her forcefully to him. And if the wrong person sees us, he thought as his lips tingled with her kiss, there is no limit to my risk.
Winters threw his cigarette down on the ground and stomped it out. He shook his head in disbelief. “You are telling me that you have taken those three into custody? And you’re holding them at the base?”
Lieutenant Todd was confused. “But sir, don’t you understand? We have an entire set of photographs. In three of them you can clearly see the missile. And there are other pictures that show the black guy in some kind of underwater structure down there in the ocean. Just as I had guessed. What more could we possibly need? We also caught them, red-handed no less, coming back from a dive with fifty pounds of gold bars in their backpacks. Fifty pounds!”
Commander Winters turned around and went back in the theater. “Go back to the base, Lieutenant,” he said disgustedly. “I’ll be there in five minutes.”
It was apparent that Melvin and Marc were just waiting for Tiffani and the commander before they locked up the theater and went to the party. “Can you take her over, Melvin?” he asked. “There’s a big mess out at the base tonight and it looks as if I will have to straighten it out.” The conversation with Todd had been sobering for Winters on at least two levels. First, it had reminded him that there was a real world out there, outside of the theater, a world that would not look kindly on a forty-three-year-old Navy commander having a sexual relationship with a seventeen-year-old high school student. Secondly, Todd’s astonishing announcement that he had indeed detained three civilians, one of whom was a well-known reporter, jolted the commander into realizing that his preoccupation with Tiffani had affected his work. I should never have let this thing get so far out of control, he thought. From here on out that lieutenant makes no move that I don’t personally approve.
“I’m sorry, Tiffani,” he said in a fatherly voice. He gave her an ambiguous hug and a light kiss on the top of her head. “I’ll come to the party as soon as I can.”
“Hurry or you’ll miss the champagne,” Tiffani said with a smile. Melvin turned off the lights in the theater. The four of them walked out the door.
Winters had parked down the street almost a block away. He waved to Tiffani as she climbed into Melvin’s car. I wonder if you will ever know, young lady, he thought. Know how close I came tonight to throwing everything away. In his mind’s eye it was twenty-four years before, on a cold night outside of Philadelphia, and he had just gone berserk and virtually raped Joanna Carr. Winters started his Pontiac and eased into the street. It would be so easy, he thought. Just one time to forget the rules and constraints. To dive into the water without looking first. He remembered his pact with God after he had spent the night with Joanna. So You kept Your part of the bargain. I guess And I became an officer and a gentleman. And a killer.
He winced. He turned the car past the swank Miyako Gardens and headed for the base. With great effort he forced himself to stop thinking about Tiffani and Joanna and sex. It’s not enough that I have this trial with Tiffani. At the same time I am assigned a redneck lieutenant who runs roughshod over civilians in his attempt to prove some cockamamie . . .
Commander Winters stopped at a signal. Slowly, the full impact of what Todd had told him began to sink in. Jesus. I may be in trouble too. Unlawful entry. Wrongful detention. They’ll throw the book at Todd . . . He eased his car through the intersection. He mechanically put a cigarette in his mouth and lit it. So I should be apologetic. But shit. That Dawson woman is a reporter. Bad bad news.
He had arrived at the base. He waved to the security guard and drove on to where Todd had said they were keeping the trio. Winters stopped in front of a plain white building situated on a small hill about fifteen feet above the street level. A nervous Lieutenant Roberto Ramirez was waiting at the edge of the road. He was holding two large, thick envelopes in his hands. Ramirez turned and called something toward the front door. Todd came out in a moment. He locked the door carefully, came down the steps, and walked toward the other two officers. Ramirez was already showing the photographs to Commander Winters when Todd joined them. The three men had a short but animated discussion.
“So what happened after you received my message?” Carol turned to the other two as soon as Todd disappeared out the door. They had not had many chances to talk in private since Todd and Ramirez had taken them into custody in the parking lot at the Pelican Resort.
“Troy was ready to split,” Nick laughed. “But I thought your warning only referred to the robot sentry. And since he had been quiet for several minutes, I figured we were already safe. I was still really pissed off about the second bag of gold bars. So I hurried back over to the gate.
“I was concentrating so hard on finding a way to pull the bag through the opening that I must have been oblivious to everything else. Suddenly I felt Troy jerk me backwards. Maybe a second later two or three sharks, one definitely a mako, slammed hard into the gate. I was certain the gate was going to fall into pieces.”
“Those sharks were really nasty, angel,” Troy interjected. “And stupid too. The big one must have banged against the gate a dozen times before he gave up.”
“The buoyancy bag with the gold bars was immediately ripped to shreds by the crazy sharks. They may even have swallowed most of the bars themselves. It was not fun being that close to them.” Nick shuddered. “When I close my eyes I can still see that mako’s teeth three feet away from me. I’ll probably have bad dreams for years.”
“I pulled Nick toward the ocean. I didn’t want any part of those mean bastards and I didn’t trust the gate to remain intact in case they launched another attack. We made it out in record time. Of course, neither of us expected to be greeted by the U.S. Navy when we returned to the station wagon.” Troy paused. “This Todd character, what’s his problem any way? He sure thinks he’s a bad ass. Is he just pissed because the professor decked him last night?”
Carol smiled. She reached her left hand over and put it on Nick’s leg just above the knee. Her hand remained there while she was talking. “Todd is one of the naval engineers trying to find the lost missile. I’m certain that he and his men must have been responsible for the break-ins at Nick’s apartment and my hotel room. Otherwise they wouldn’t have detained us.”
“What grounds do they have for holding us?” Nick inquired. He dropped his hand down and wrapped it around Carol’s. “It’s not against the law to have gold bars in a backpack. Don’t we have rights as citizens that prevent this kind of thing?”