Uncle Sarge

A rush of blessedly cold air hit him as he stepped inside and looked around. The office could have passed for something out of Mickey Spillane except for a profusion of houseplants cluttering every surface. The anteroom appeared to be empty, but the door to the rear was open.

“I’ll be with you in a minute,” a decidedly feminine voice said from somewhere. The floor?

“Okay, fine,” Rich said, for lack of anything else, as a woman with long, dark brown hair peeked up from behind the reception desk.

This must be the secretary, he presumed, and as the woman rose, Rich decided that she definitely did not look like someone out of Mickey Spillane. Her face was perfectly ordinary, like the girl next door. Her shape was anything but, in spite of the fact that she hid it behind a demure, cotton dress.

“May I help you?” she asked as she smoothed out the dress that did nothing to disguise curves that would make a showgirl proud.

“I’m looking for a woman,” Rich said.

“This is a detective agency, not an escort service,” the receptionist replied primly, and Rich amended his original description. She looked like a Sunday school teacher.

Rich blew out an impatient breath. “My sister. I’m looking for my sister,” he clarified. “Look, if you’ll just let me speak to the detective, I’ll explain what I want, and be out of your way.” He wasn’t sure what she’d been doing on the floor, but she was obviously annoyed at being interrupted and was taking it out on him.

“Mr. King’s out. Go on in the office and wait.”

Shrugging, Rich complied. There had been other detective agencies listed in the phone book, but this one had the smallest ad. He figured it meant that they were either really good, or really cheap. Considering a tech sergeant’s pay scale, even with jump pay and his other hazard bonuses, he hoped they were both. And when he’d asked around, he’d learned it was run by a former member of his unit who was now retired. Any time he could give a former combat controller his business, he tried to do it.

JENNIFER BISHOP sank back to the floor and fanned her face with her hands. That hunk of man was hot enough to melt the iceberg that had sunk the Titanic. He had to be six-foot-six if he was an inch, and his broad chest stretched the knit fabric of his navy Polo shirt. His shoulders were so wide that he surely must have had to turn sideways to come through the door.

No, she told herself. She was here to work, not drool over a man. Even if he did look like someone off of…what? The cover of a romance novel? She’d just come out of a relationship that ought to have put her off men forever. So, why was she getting hot flashes over this stranger?

She brushed the rest of the potting soil she’d spilled into a pile, reached for her minivac and vacuumed it up. Maybe it didn’t fit the normal image of a private detective’s office to be cluttered with houseplants, but then she wasn’t a normal private detective. And she always whiled away slow periods by tending her plants.

Jennifer dusted her hands off and put the vacuum away. Then she drew a couple of deep breaths for good measure. Al King, her boss, was on vacation, and she was holding down the fort. Al had a military retirement to augment his income, but hers depended on whatever work they could get. With Al gone, she hoped to drum up a client or two of her own.

She took another deep breath, pasted an efficient look on her face and stepped into the office she shared with Al.

The guy hadn’t gotten any smaller in the ninety seconds since she’d last seen him. He seemed to fill the room, and she wondered if the spindly, ladder-back chair that looked almost comical under his huge body would continue to hold him up. A vision of the chair shattering and dumping him to the floor flitted through her mind and pushed away some of her nervousness.

“Thank you for waiting,” she said as she seated herself at Al’s desk across from the Adonis. No, Adonis did not fit this incredible hulk. He looked more like a man from the fjords of Scandinavia than the isles of Greece. There was a lean hardness to his face, but with ice blue eyes, a golden tan and sun-bleached hair, he needed only a name like Olaf Olsen to finish the picture.

“You? You’re the detective?” The man sat up straighter, inhaled and seemed to suck the oxygen right out of the room.

“I’m one of them,” she said, fudging the facts only a tiny bit. “Jennifer Bishop. As I said before, Al King is out.” She didn’t add that he’d be gone for the rest of the month on a fishing expedition to Alaska to escape the heat and humidity of August in Florida.

“Oh. I get it. Bishop and King. Checkmate.”

Score one for him. Not many people took the two names and made the chess connection. She didn’t tell him that Al had bought the business from a guy who did surveillance in divorce cases. Considering the way the name worked to his advantage, Al had kept it. “Yes,” she said. “And you are…?”

The man offered his hand. “Rich Larsen.”

So, she wasn’t so far off with the Olsen thing. Then he closed his huge hand over hers, and her brain ceased to function.

He held her hand in his firm grip long enough for Jennifer to feel light-headed and to be certain his fingerprints were branded permanently on her hand. She drew in a sharp breath and let go.

“Pleased to meet you, Mr. Larsen,” she said when her breath returned. “Now, how can we help you?” Jennifer could see that he had doubts about her, and she really couldn’t blame him.

After all, until a few months ago, she’d merely been the receptionist helping with the computer research. But, she’d studied, taken the exam, and she was now a licensed investigator. Funny, she didn’t feel any different.

“I’m trying to find my sister,” he said again.

“And how did you lose her?” Maybe she was being flippant, but she had to lighten it up. Jennifer couldn’t see how a brawny guy like him could lose track of anything. He looked too together, too…male. She shook that notion away.

His blue eyes clouded. “We were in foster care. When I turned eighteen, I left to join the air force. She still had to finish high school. We kept in touch for a year or two, but when I got stationed overseas she wanted to go with me. Nothing I could say would convince her that a two-stripe airman was not authorized to take dependents. She thought I didn’t want her. I wrote to her, tried to explain, but she didn’t write back, and finally my letters started coming back marked, ‘Moved—no forwarding address.’” He drew in a deep breath.

“I called and found out that the number for the foster family we’d lived with had been changed, and I knew I’d pretty much reached a dead end. By that time, Sherry was old enough to have graduated. I guess she got a job and started taking care of herself, but I haven’t heard from her since. That was seven years ago.”

He’d made other attempts to locate her through the years, but he’d never had the time or the resources to do it right. This time he was serious.

“Why look now?”

He had expected that question, and it was easy enough to answer. “This is the first time I’ve been close enough to do anything about it. And the first time in a long time that my life has slowed down enough to follow through.”

With special tactics training and assignments in both Bosnia and Kosovo, he’d just not had the time to do it. But after he’d attended the funeral for Dave Krukshank, who had been killed in that training accident, Rich had begun to see how empty his life had been. And he’d begun to think about his own mortality. If he died, who would mourn for him?

He didn’t think he’d ever have a family of his own, but maybe Sherry would. Rich looked too much like his abusive father, and he didn’t want to put any other children through what he’d been through as a child. He was big, he was strong, he was well trained. He could use what he had to save the world. But, he didn’t dare dream about a family of his own.

Rich had hopes that world events would not intrude for a while, or at least that he wouldn’t be required to participate in them. He’d been on the fast track far too long. He needed time to breathe.

“You’re from Fort Walton Beach, then?” She started to write on a yellow pad.

“No, Val-P,” he said, referring to Valparaiso, a town just to the east of sprawling Eglin Air Force Base—the huge military installation that dwarfed Hurlburt, where he was assigned.

Jennifer looked up from the pad. “I sure don’t want to send away a paying customer, but have you tried to find her yourself? Surely, you have friends in common. Other relatives?”

Rich shook his head. “Sherry’s my only family. I tried looking myself, but nothing panned out. Called the high school. Looked in the phone book. Directory assistance. Everything I could think of. Even found a listing for the Parkers, our foster family. They haven’t heard from her in years.” He blew out a long, tired breath. “I came up with zip. That’s why I’m here. Hell, I don’t even know if she’s still in the area.”

He slumped back into the uncomfortable, straight-backed chair, and it creaked with the added weight.

Jennifer smiled. “It sounds like you’ve made a good start, but there are still some avenues I can try.”

He sat up straighter. “Like what?”

“Mostly computer stuff. You’d be surprised what you can find online if you know where to look. If you can give me some basic information about your sister, I should be able to track her down.”

She asked several questions, jotted down the answers, took his address and phone number, then put down her pen. “I’ll start working on this right away, Mr. Larsen.”

“Tech Sergeant,” he corrected, then smiled. “Rich.” He started to offer his hand again, then remembered the jolt he’d gotten the last time. He stuck it in his pocket, instead. “I’ll wait to hear from you.”

He got up and headed for the door. Turning and looking back over his shoulder, he smiled. She didn’t look like much of a detective, but maybe she could do the computer search thing. Besides, she did have an ex-combat controller for a partner. “Thanks. I hope you’ll have something for me soon.”

JENNIFER couldn’t believe her first case had been as easy as this. She’d spent an afternoon on the computer, searching through data bases, and had come up with the information Rich—Tech Sergeant Larsen, she reminded herself—wanted. She wavered between waiting a little longer to make it look as though she’d worked harder, or calling him right away.

She called.

She wouldn’t have charged him for the extra time anyway, but she knew how much he’d wanted to find his sister. He hadn’t said so, but she’d seen the wistful look in his blue eyes when he’d spoken about her.