CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
I was stunned. J.D. was missing, and it didn’t sound as if she had left her condo willingly. She wouldn’t have left a coffeepot on, nor would she have left her gun out in plain sight. It always went into the safe when she got home and only came out when she was headed for work.
I didn’t know what to do. J.D. was more than a friend. She had become an important part of my life in the few short months since she’d come to the key. I sat, my mind wandering, afraid that I was somehow responsible for whatever had happened to her.
“Matt,” said Jock, “Gear up, buddy. Lock and load. We’re going to find her.”
“I don’t know if I have the energy, Jock.”
“The Army didn’t give you the Distinguished Service Cross back in Vietnam for sitting on a sofa and staring at the bay. Off and on. Isn’t that the old Army saying? ‘Off your ass and on your feet.’”
I laughed sourly. “Yeah, and ‘drop your cocks and grab your socks.’ You have a plan?”
“Not yet. We’ll figure it out as soon as you stop feeling sorry for yourself. Then we’ll go get the bastards and bring J.D. home.”
Jock was the most deadly serious man I’d ever known. When his country or his friends were in peril, he was a force of reckoning. The only way to stop him was to kill him. And a lot of men had tried to do just that. None of them had survived the encounter.
I mentally shook myself, like an old dog just out of a bath. Jock was right. We didn’t have time for me to sit around mired in self-doubt. There was another old army saying that fit the situation. “Mount up,” I said, and we began to draw up a plan to slay the dragons and rescue Fair Guinevere.