Never Forget: A Novella in the Echo Platoon Series by Marliss Melton

fascinating face with its subtle lines of suffering and too much sun. “I’m so sorry. He couldn’t have been very old,” she guessed.
    “Sixty-six,” he confirmed. “He’d delivered produce all his life, since boyhood. His father, my grandfather, fled Poland during World War II. Dziadek started the family business, and my father took it over. I still have the van he used to drive.”
    She nodded, remembering how he’d loaned it to Bronco the previous fall.
    “They would pick up the fruits and vegetables from farms all over New Jersey and bring them to grocers in Orange. Dad did that for fifty years. All his life, he talked about where he would live when he retired—out in the country somewhere. He saved every penny he could. When my mother was killed in a train wreck, he was compensated by Amtrak, and he invested that money, intending to buy a farmhouse and renovate it. But he never got the chance. All the pollution blowing in from Newark had given him lung cancer. He died only six months after he was diagnosed.”
    His gruff tone inspired her sympathy, bringing tears to her eyes. “I’m so sorry,” she murmured. She looked around. “And now you’ve made his dream come true.”
    He acknowledged her statement with a bittersweet smile. “With a little twist of my own.”
    The urge to lean across the table and kiss him got the better of her. She’d been wanting to know what it would feel like, so why not just do it?
    As she inclined her face toward his, Curtis burst into the house through the mudroom with the dog in tow.
    “Hey, I have an idea,” he said excitedly.
    Rusty cast him a tolerant look. “What’s that?”
    “Draco thinks, with all the guys here, that we’re going on a mission. That’s why he’s so pumped up. These dogs are made to work. So let’s give him a job and plant some explosives in the woods. I’ll bet you he can find them!”
    Explosives? Maya started to protest the idea, but Rusty cut her off.
    “That’s actually a really good idea.”
    “It is?” she asked.
    He shot out of his chair. “I know some guys who’d love to help. Come on, let’s go ask them.”
    Feeling forgotten, Maya just sat in her chair.
    Rusty disappeared into the mudroom, then doubled back. “You coming?” he asked.
    “Sure.” She chugged a few sips of her water and got up to follow.
    “ A LL RIGHT, MEN, listen up.”
    The command in Rusty’s voice inspired Maya’s immediate respect. His tone beckoned rather than bullied. The man about to serve the volleyball tucked it under his arm as all eyes swung toward Rusty, and all mouths snapped shut. He had their undivided attention.
    “We’re going to put the dog through a training exercise—bury weapons in the woods and see if he can find them.” Crossing to a wooden storage bench, he withdrew a container full of tennis balls. Pulling the lid off, he upended the balls into the bench, emptying the bucket.
    “Anyone willing to surrender a weapon, just drop it in here. If the dog finds the cache within half an hour, we’ll tap a keg of beer tonight. If not, you’ll wait until the weekend.”
    He carried the bucket to the middle of the yard and, holding onto the lid, backed away from it. “Your call, of course.”
    Maya watched as the men looked at each other, waiting for someone to make the first move. Where were these weapons supposed to come from?
    Turning his back on the bucket, Rusty walked in her direction while sending her a wink. “Be right back,” he said, continuing toward the oversized shed beyond the parked cars.
    Savoring the wink, which conveyed a deeper intimacy between them than what they’d shared up until now, she watched him walk away. From his broad shoulders to his tight butt encased in denim shorts to the well-formed calf muscles that bunched and released, his physical aspect filled her with desire.
    From the corner of her eye, she noted several men approaching the bucket with pistols in their hands. Her eyes widened at the