Page 21 of Fast Justice

“That’s a good point, Pops.”

“Another pearl of wisdom I’m passing on to you while I’m still here and have all my mental faculties.”

“You don’t have all your mental faculties,” Gram called out somewhere in the background. “You haven’t had them all for years.”

“When I said strong, I didn’t mean in the form of a sharp tongue,” Pops complained to Mal.

The familiar banter between them, the bond that had been forged by nearly fifty years of marriage, set off a twinge in Mal’s chest. They were both in their eighties now. He could lose them at any time, and even though he was a grown man with his own life hundreds of miles away from them, he wasn’t ready to lose either of them. They were all the family he had, aside from his teammates.

“How is everybody on your team?” Pops asked.

“Great. Busy.” FAST Bravo kept a breakneck pace in training and operational tempo. They had to, to remain sharp and ready to deploy at a moment’s notice.

Sometimes the constant grind wore on him, although it wasn’t much different from when he’d been in the SEAL Teams. Their mission profile was different now but the skill sets were mostly the same, and they operated in maritime conditions often. “Well, actually, one of our guys had to fly home yesterday to see his mom. She’s got advanced MS and he doesn’t know how much longer she has.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. Gram and I will say a prayer for her.”

“He’d appreciate that.” He paused. “It got me thinking about how short our time on earth is.”

“The lord has a plan for us all. He calls us home in his own time.”

“Yeah.” Pops’s unshakable faith was one of the things Mal most admired about him. He even envied it a little. A faith that strong would have been a comfort to have in those long, horrible and lonely months after his mother passed away. Though he’d done his prayers and bible study and gone to church, he’d never believed in the same way Pops and Gram did. “Can I talk to Gram for a bit?”

“Sure. Hang on.”

Gram came on the line and instantly demanded whether he was eating right, taking care of himself, and whether or not he was seeing a nice girl yet. “I’m not getting any younger, Malcolm. I’d like to see my great-grandbabies before I die.”

“I’ll get right on that, Gram,” he said in a wry voice, but of course it made him think of Rowan. So far she was the only woman who he could see himself marrying and having a family with one day. So babies weren’t even on the distant horizon for him now.

“Only after you find a good woman and enter the holy state of matrimony, young man. If you ever got a woman pregnant outside of wedlock I’d make you sorry you were ever born.”

The threat made him smile, because he understood she was completely serious. There had been a time when that kind of threat made him roll his eyes and think his grandparents were uptight, religious zealots. There had been a time when he couldn’t wait to be of age so he could move away and have the freedom he craved. Now he missed them like hell and wished he got to see them more often.

Funny how life worked sometimes. It didn’t matter that he was thirty-four years old. He was her baby and always would be. “Yes, ma’am.”

His phone beeped with an incoming call. Seeing it was his commander, he ended the conversation with Gram. “Sorry, I have to take this. As soon as my schedule clears up a bit, I’ll see when I can come up for a visit.”

“We’d love that. You take care, now. Love you.”

“Love you too.” He ended the call and picked up Taggart’s. “Sir.”

“Freeman. I just got a call from the U.S. Attorney’s office.”

Mal’s attention sharpened at Taggart’s grim tone and he turned away from the window. “And?”

“There was an explosion outside the building about half an hour ago. They think it was a car bomb.”

His stomach grabbed. “Anyone hurt?”

“Yes. Rowan Stewart’s brother.”

Shit. “What happened?”

“He’d dropped in to visit her and was about to return her rental car for her. He was fifty feet from it when it detonated.”

Jesus Christ. “Is he alive?”

“As far as I know. They were transporting him to the hospital when I got the call.”

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