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love to meet you for Christmas,” she told him. “And you’re right. We
should
wait.”
    And there they stood, staring at each other.
    Rosie held out her hand.
    Frank took it.
    And together, Rosie’s laughter wrapping around them both, they ran for the stairs.

T HOUGHTS ON
W HEN F RANK M ET R OSIE
    It was originally my intention to write only lighthearted stories using popular characters in the Troubleshooters series—and in “When Frank Met Rosie,” I did neither. I mean, Frank O’Leary …?
    Not exactly winning popularity contests among readers, probably because the man is dead, killed in a terrorist attack in a hotel lobby in
Over the Edge
.
    That’s the book, remember, where SEAL Team Sixteen goes to dangerous Kazbekistan to participate in the takedown of a commercial airliner that has been hijacked by terrorists.
    At the time I was writing
OTE
, I purposely chose to kill off Frank for a number of reasons—the first being that someone needed to die. I wanted to make sure that my readers understood how dangerous K-stan was. It’s a fact that SEALs put their lives on the line all the time, as do all of our servicemen and -women. And it’s also a fact that people die serving our country. This was the third book in the series. It was, I felt, time for casualties.
    Okay, so I could’ve killed off anyone—it didn’t
have
to be Frank. But it
did
have to be one of SEAL Team Sixteen’s snipers. See, I wanted a reason for FBI agent (and former Navy sharpshooter extraordinaire) Alyssa Locke to actively take part in the takedown of the hijacked plane. As a point-of-view character, I wanted Alyssa to move from her role as observer to that of shooter.
    Now, instead of killing Frank, I could’ve killed DukeJefferson, who was also a sniper. But I’d only just introduced the Duke in
Over the Edge
. Killing a brand-new character wouldn’t have had the same impact on readers as killing an established one. And thus, I found myself eyeing Frank O’Leary. Frank was the perfect character to kill. (Remember, I made this choice long before I wrote the short story you just read!) I’d used his name in a number of books, but I hadn’t spent much time and page space letting readers truly know who he was. I’d revealed that he was a sniper, and he was laconic, and very little else. Killing Frank wouldn’t have been as devastating to readers as killing off a more established character such as WildCard Karmody would have been. And yet, killing Frank was guaranteed to be way more powerful than killing off a stranger such as the Duke.
    So Frank got his pink slip. So to speak.
    So there it was, and there I was.
    Years later.
    Summer, 2006.
    And I’m wandering around my office, aware that I’d promised readers that my website countdown to
Into the Storm
, where this story first appeared, would include a collection of short stories featuring Troubleshooters series characters, knowing that sooner or later I’d have to get my butt into the chair in front of my computer and start writing.
    But Frank O’Leary wouldn’t stop haunting me. I couldn’t
not
write his story. The man just wouldn’t leave me alone.
    It’s going to sound for a second as if I’m completely changing the subject, but I’m not. See, a few years ago, my editor went to France on vacation and visited the site of the most famous D-Day ever—the WWII Allied invasion of the beach at Normandy. She brought photos back with her, and I was struck by the rows and rows and rows of crosses and Stars of David that marked thegraves of the American servicemen who fell in that deadly battle. They stretch out, in a field there in France, as far as the eye can see.
    Each one of those markers is a life lost. Each one of those markers signifies a family and friends who mourned the loss of a loved one—a son, a brother, a buddy, a husband—forever gone. It was hard for me not to well up with tears as I looked at those photographs. It’s been more than sixty years since