Suzanne Brockmann - Tall, Dark and Devastating - Harvard's Education

“Sometimes.” Joe smiled. “But never in public, of course.”

They ran in silence for a while. The gravel crunching under their feet was the only sound.

“Is his father all right?” P.J. finally asked. “I didn’t see Harvard at all yesterday, and today he seems so preoccupied. Is anything wrong?” She tried to sound casual, as if she were just making conversation, as if she hadn’t spent a good hour in bed last night thinking about the man, wondering why he hadn’t been at dinner.

They’d only gone about a mile, but she was already soaked with perspiration. It was ridiculously humid today. The air clung to her, pressing against her skin like a damp blanket.

“His father’s doing well,” Joe told her. He gave her a long, appraising look. “H. has got some other personal stuff going on, though.”

P.J. quickly backpedaled. “I didn’t mean to pry.”

“No, your question was valid. He was uncharacteristically monosyllabic this morning,” he said. “Probably because it’s moving day.”

She tried not to ask, but she couldn’t stop herself. “Moving day?”

“H.’s parents are moving. I don’t want to put words in his mouth, but I think he feels bad that he’s not up there helping out. Not to mention that he’s pretty thrown by the fact that they’re leaving Massachusetts. For years his family lived in this really great old house overlooking the ocean near Boston. I went home with him a few times before his sisters started getting married and moving out. He has a really nice family—really warm, friendly people. He grew up in that house—it’s gotta hold a lot of memories for him.”

“He lived in one house almost his entire life? God, I moved five times in one year. And that was just the year I turned twelve.”

“I know what you mean. My mother and I were pros at filling out post office change of address cards, too. But H. lived in one place from the time he was a little kid until he left for college. Wild, huh?”

“And on top of that his parents are both still alive and together.” P.J. shook her head. “Doesn’t he know how lucky he is? Unless he’s got some deep, dark, dysfunctional secret that I don’t know about.”

“I don’t think so, but I’m not exactly qualified to answer that one. I think it’s probably best if Harvard got into those specifics with you himself, you know?”

“Of course,” she said quickly. “I wasn’t looking to put you on the spot.”

“Yeah, I know that,” he said easily. “And I didn’t mean to make it sound as if I was telling you to mind your own business. Because I wasn’t.”

P.J. had to laugh. “Whew—I’m glad we got that settled.”

“It’s just… I’m speculating here. I don’t want to mislead you in any way.”

“I know—and you’re not.” As he glanced at her again, P.J. felt compelled to add, “The Senior Chief and I are just friends.”

Joe Catalanotto just smiled.

“I’ve known H. almost as long as I’ve known Blue,” he told her after they’d run another mile or so in silence.

“Yeah, you told me you and Blue—Lieutenant McCoy—went through BUD/S together, right?” P.J. asked.

“Yeah, we were swim buddies.”

Swim buddies. That meant Joe Cat and Blue had been assigned to work together as they’d trained to become SEALs. From what P.J. knew of the rigorous special operations training, they’d had to become closer than blood brothers, relying on one man’s strengths to counter the other’s weaknesses, and vice versa. It was no wonder that after all those years of working side by side, the two men could communicate extensively with a single look.

“H. was in our graduating class,” Joe told her. “In fact, he was part of our boat team during Hell Week. A vital part.”

Funny, they were talking about Harvard again. Not that P.J. particularly minded.

“Who was his swim buddy?”

“Harvard’s swim buddy rang out—he quit—right before it was our turn to land our IBS on the rocks outside the Hotel Del Coronado.”

“IBS?”

“Inflatable Boat, Small.” Joe smiled. “And the word small is relative. It weighs about two hundred and fifty pounds and carries seven men. The boat team carries it everywhere throughout Hell Week. By the time we did the rock portage, we were down to only four men—all enlisted—and that thing was damn heavy. But we all made it through to the end.”

Enlisted? “You and Blue didn’t start out as officers?”

Joe picked up the pace. “Nope. We were both enlisted. Worked our way up from the mail room, so to speak.”

“Any idea why Harvard didn’t take that route?” she asked. She quickly added, “I’m just curious.”

The captain nodded but couldn’t hide his smile. “I guess he didn’t want to be an officer. I mean, he really didn’t want to. He was approached by OCS—the Officer’s Candidate School—so often, it got to be kind of a joke. In fact, during BUD/S, he was paired with a lieutenant, I think in an attempt to make him realize he was prime officer material.”

“But the lieutenant quit.”

“Yeah. Harvard took that pretty hard. He thought he should’ve been able to keep his swim buddy—Matt, I think his name was—from quitting. But it was more than clear to all of us that H. had been carrying this guy right from the start. Matt would’ve been out weeks earlier if he hadn’t been teamed up with H.”

“I guess even back then, Harvard was a team player,” P.J. mused. The entire front of her T-shirt was drenched with sweat, and her legs and lungs were starting to burn, but the captain showed no sign of slowing down.

“Exactly.” Joe wasn’t even slightly winded. “He hated feeling like he was letting Matt down. Except the truth was, Matt had been doing nothing but letting H. down from day one. Swim buddies have to balance out their strengths and weaknesses. It doesn’t work if one guy does all the giving and the other does nothing but take. You know, even though Harvard saw Matt’s ringing out as a personal failure, the rest of us recognized it for the blessing it was. God knows it’s hard enough to get through BUD/S. But it’s damn near impossible to do it with a drowning man strapped to your back.”

She could see Harvard way up ahead on the trail, still in the lead. He’d taken off his T-shirt, and his powerful muscles gleamed with sweat. He moved like a dancer, each step graceful and sure. He made running look effortless.

As Joe Cat cranked their speed up another few notches, P.J. found that it was getting harder to talk and run at the same time.

The captain kept his mouth tightly shut as they raced past first Schneider and Greene, then Tim Farber, but it wasn’t because he couldn’t talk. Once out of the other agents’ earshot, he turned to grin at her.

“My grandmother could outrun those guys.”

“How far are we going today?” P.J. asked as they passed the five-mile mark. Her words came out in gasps.

“However far H. wants to take us.”

Harvard didn’t look as if he were planning on stopping anytime soon. In fact, as P.J. watched, he punched up the speed.

“You know, I used to be faster than H.,” Joe told her. “But then he went and shaved his head and cut down on all that wind resistance.”

P.J. had to laugh.

“So I asked Ronnie, what do you think, should I shave my head, too, and she tells me no way. I say, why not? She’s always talking about how sexy Harvard is—about how women can’t stay away from him, and I’m thinking maybe I should go for that Mr. Clean look, too. So she tells me she likes my hair long, in what she calls romance-cover-model style. But I can’t stop thinking about that wind resistance thing, until she breaks the news to me that if I shaved my head, I wouldn’t look sexy. I’d look like a giant white big toe.”