by Cindy Dees
They landed in San Diego, barely three hours after he’d first snagged her. Even by his standards, things were moving fast. Poor Sophie must feel like she’d been caught up in a tornado. The Learjet taxied to a stop. Out his window he spied a car driving out onto the tarmac. He caught sight of the driver and swore under his breath. Crash Kazinsky. A surge of possessiveness roared through Brian’s gut.
Crash was a certified ladies’ man, and completely without scruples when it came to chasing skirts. His theory was that if he could lure a woman away from another man, then the other guy wasn’t taking proper care of her anyway. The last thing Brian needed right now was Crash hitting on Sophie and distracting her. Brian needed her attention focused solely on him. Hell, he wanted her attention focused solely on him.
“Let’s go, Hollywood.”
Sophie’s comment startled him. He blurted, “I beg your pardon?”
“Surely you know you look like a movie star.”
Heat rushed to his face. He mumbled, “Uhh, thanks,” and reached for the black duffel. “I’ll get your bag.”
She reached for it. “I can get it.”
“I’m sure you can. But I’ll carry it anyway.” He was being more surly than the moment required, dammit. He shifted the bag to his other shoulder, out of her reach. “Let’s go. Our ride’s waiting for us.”
Thankfully, Crash—Kyle was his real name, but Crash was his field handle—caught Brian’s hand signal to be silent and nodded, an eyebrow cocked questioningly. Unfortunately, there wasn’t a hand signal for “keep your paws off my woman and don’t even think about making time with her.” Maybe he ought to invent one. Crash sat up front, grinning like a damned crocodile in the rearview mirror the whole way out to North Island and through the city of Coronado.
Finally, they pulled up at a beach house on the Pacific Ocean. Literally. Out the living room window was nothing but an expanse of silver sand and blue water glittering in the late-afternoon sun. The starkly beautiful view lent the place a deceptive sense of isolation.
“Wow,” Sophie breathed.
Brian paused in the act of carrying her gear through the main room and upstairs to one of the two loft bedrooms. “Calls to a soul, doesn’t it?”
She shot him a surprised look over her shoulder. Whoops. Didn’t mean to say something so revealing, there. He turned his back and jogged up the stairs with her bag.
When he came down, she’d gone onto the deck and was leaning over the railing, gazing out to sea. The wind blew her cotton skirt against her body, and what the contours of the thin fabric didn’t reveal, the sun’s backlighting did. He cursed under his breath. Thank God, Scottie and Stoner were due here soon to keep him from doing something stupid like making a pass at her. At least both of them had some scruples when it came to messing with their teammates’ women.
Speaking of which, Scottie would be hungry as a horse when they got here. The boy was always hungry. Brian picked up the phone and, without dialing, spoke directly into the dial tone. “Riley here.”
The dial tone disappeared. “Go ahead.”
He recognized the no-nonsense voice of his boss, Major John Hollister. “Sir. The subject is in the safe house. How’s the audio?”
“All the microphones are five by five. Only one we haven’t gotten a sound check on is in the kitchen. If you could hop in there and give me a quick test count, we’re good to go.”
“Will do. Any chance you could send over some food?”
“Name your poison.”
“She looks like the type to go for Chinese.”
“I’ll have Scottie and Stoner bring some with them.”
“ETA on Fric and Frac?”
“Estimated time of arrival, thirty minutes plus however long it takes them to pick up supper. How’s she warming up to the plan?”
“Haven’t popped it on her yet. She still thinks she’s here just for a debrief. I’m easing her into it.”
“You know what you have to do.”
“Yes, sir.”
Brian hung up. Sighed. Went outside, leaned his elbows on the redwood rail and joined Sophie in her silent contemplation of the ocean. It was calm, with practically no waves. Just quiet ripples depositing momentary foam on the sand before retreating.
“How dangerous is Freddie?” she asked.
“He’s one of the scariest dudes on the planet. He’s killed dozens of people and masterminded who knows how many terrorist attacks around the world. It’s taken us years to get close enough to him figure out who he is.”
“It’s hard to imagine the sweet kid I knew turning into that. What happened to him?”
Brian shrugged. “Brainwashing, probably.”
“Must’ve been pretty intense to change him so completely.”
“The madrahsa—that’s a private religious school—he went to in Bhoukar is infamous for turning out fanatics.”
“That’s a shame. He was a really bright kid.”
“Yeah, well now he’s a really bright killer.”
They fell silent.
“Two of my teammates are going to be here soon. They’re bringing take-out. I figured nobody would feel like cooking tonight. As soon as they get here, we’ll begin.”
“Where is Freddie now?” she asked.
“Hiding in Bhoukar.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because a team of operatives called the Medusas are watching him around the clock.”
“If you’ve got a team that close to him, why don’t they just…neutralize…him?”
“He’s inside a large, partially underground compound. Unless he comes out, they can’t get a shot at him. Because he’s underground, we can’t just drop a bomb on his head. Plus, he’s surrounded by dozens of women and children. And contrary to popular belief, we military types do our best not to kill innocents.”
“What am I supposed to do to help?”
“All in good time.”
“Why isn’t now a good time to tell me everything?”
He frowned. She wasn’t ready to hear the real reason she was here, yet. Fortunately, a faint sound of bass voices drifted down the beach just then. He turned his head toward it automatically.
Sophie asked, “What’s that?”
“SEALs.”
“I didn’t know there were seals on these beaches. I’d have thought there were too many people for them to come ashore around here.”
He couldn’t help it. He laughed.
“What?” she demanded.
“Navy SEALs. As in Special Forces soldiers.”
“Oh.” Her cheeks turned pink.
What must it be like to be so completely ignorant of the world he lived in? The real world, as he usually thought of it—politically charged, violent and dangerous. Full of SEALs and men like him who dealt with it by meeting violence with violence. Regret stabbed him. He was the bastard who’d get to strip away her innocence. He swore under his breath.
The rhythmic song became a little louder. He recognized the tune as one of the filthier running songs the SEALs trained to. Singing helped regulate their breathing and keep them in step with one another. A grin twitched at the corners of his mouth. “You might want to go inside if you’re easily offended. The ditty they’re bellowing isn’t exactly fit for a lady’s ears.”
“Thanks for the warning, but I promise not to swoon.”
The formation came into view—two dozen men in camouflage pants, combat boots and olive-green T-shirts running through the surf at the edge of the ocean. The black T-shirted BUDs instructor running alongside the trainees raised a hand in greeting to Brian as they ran past. He waved back.
“Friend of yours?” Sophie murmured.
“Yeah. We go back a ways.”
“Ever work together?”
He looked over at her sharply. She did have a knack for asking questions with a buried edge. “Yeah. We’ve worked together.”
“Are you a SEAL?”
“Hell—pardon me—heck, no. I’m a ground
pounder. Army all the way.”
“So how did you end up working with a SEAL?”
One corner of his mouth turned up. “Us Army guys would say it was a piece of extremely bad luck.”
“A little inter-service rivalry?”
He shrugged. “Lucas Stone is in the Navy. He’s one of the men joining us tonight. And I gotta say, he’s one of the sharpest guys I’ve ever worked with. But don’t tell him I said that.”
She smiled. “What about the other one who’s joining us?”
“Scott Cash. He’s Army like me.”
She turned to face him more fully, leaning a hip on the railing. “I’m not under arrest, right?”
Foreboding slammed into him. He answered cautiously, “No.”
“Are you planning to arrest me at some point?”
“Of course not.”
“So I’m here purely voluntarily. Doing my civic duty.”
“Correct.” He was starting to get an inkling of where she was going. Dammit.
“Here’s the deal. You want me to tell you everything I know about Freddie Sollem. I’m not under any obligation to do so, however. I’m thinking that if you don’t tell me the rest of whatever it is you’re not telling me, I may suddenly develop big trouble with my memory. I mean, it was all a very long time ago and I was just a kid.”
He exhaled slowly. Straightened to his full height. Stared down at her piercingly. Then said grimly, “And there we were, getting along so well. I never have taken real well to threats, veiled or otherwise.”
To her credit, she stared back up at him defiantly and didn’t back down. Reluctant admiration for her guts flickered through him. Many a brave man had wilted under the stare he was leveling at her right now.
“And I never have taken real well to people not being square with me. What gives, Riley?”
Chapter 3
Sophie stared up expectantly at Riley. She had him over a barrel and they both knew it.
“Tell me about your knee injury,” he said abruptly.
She started. Now how in the world did he know about that? An unnerving sense of this man having invaded the most personal and private corners of her life crept over her. He’d already broken into her home. Handled her clothes. Her toothbrush, for goodness’ sake. A shade defensively, she retorted, “You’re the guys who did the top-secret background check on me. You tell me about it.”
Unaccountably, he grinned. More often than not, this guy reacted exactly the opposite of how she expected him to.
He said, “We know you crashed at the U.S. Junior National Ski Championships. Tore your left ACL and had surgery to repair it. Six months of physical therapy, but no sign of any attempt at a comeback to downhill skiing after that. From which we inferred you suffered a…” He paused, searching for a word.
“The phrase you’re looking for is ‘career-ending injury.’”
“Were we correct?”
“That I wrecked my knee skiing? Yes. That it was career-ending? I don’t know. I never went back to the slopes to find out.”
“Why not?” he demanded.
“Because I didn’t want to,” she shot back.
“Why not?”
Why not, indeed? Because the thought of standing at the top of a three-thousand-foot nearly vertical drop to a valley so far below that the people were mere specks made her break out in a cold sweat. Because the thought of seeing trees and moguls and icy downhill courses flying past her at seventy miles per hour made her want to throw up. Because the memory of hot needles of pain shooting through her knee from twenty different directions and the months of agonizing recovery had never really faded. Because she was afraid, dammit.
“What does my decision not to return to skiing have to do with Freddie Sollem?” she challenged. Even she heard the truculent edge in her voice, warning him off this subject.
He was dense and didn’t catch the hint, however. Or maybe he just ignored it. He plowed onward. “It actually has a great deal to do with Sollem. Please answer my question.”
“I thought you said you weren’t going to begin the interrogation until after supper.”
“Consider this your warm-up.”
She glared at him.
He stared back implacably.
The quiet, rhythmic whooshing of the ocean filled the silence between them, ebbing and flowing like the battle of wills ongoing between them.
“Your knee.” He finally prodded. “What’s its status now?”
“Why do you want to know?”
“Look. I’m not your enemy. I need to know, okay?”
“Not okay. Tell me why.”
“Because you may have occasion to do some exercising while you’re here, and I need to know how much it can take so you don’t hurt yourself.”
Sophie started violently as laughter erupted from the doorway behind them. A muscular African-American man stood there with several white, trapezoidal, take-out cartons in hand.
“She may have occasion to do some exercising, eh? Ripper, you crack me up.”
Riley spun, his shoulders hunched up in what looked like irritation. “Sophie, this is Lucas Stone. Stoner, say hello to Ms. Sophie Giovanni.”
“Pleased to meet you, ma’am.”
She smiled back at Lucas. Her first impression was that this man was sharp, sharp, sharp. Self-contained. Professional from the top of his head to the tips of his toes. If he were an opposing prosecutor in a trial, she’d quake in her boots. Juries would love this guy. He oozed integrity and charm.
Riley interjected a tad hastily, “I was just starting to explain things to Sophie. She and I agreed not to start the formal debriefing or go over any details of what’s going to happen while she’s here until after supper.”
“No,” she contradicted. “You were trying to cheat and find out how banged up my knee, before supper—and refusing to tell me why you want to know.”
Stoner looked back and forth between them, an amused glint in his eyes. “Sorry, man. My money’s on the lady.”
“Thanks for the support,” Riley retorted wryly.
Stone smiled at Sophie, sharing the joke with her companionably. “The chow mein’s getting cold. Shall we repair to the dining room and partake of the repast?”
She smiled back at his gallantry. “I’d love to. Hey, this porch is big enough to hold a table and chairs. Why don’t we eat out here?”
The two men exchanged quick glances, engaging in a silent conversation that took no more than a fraction of a second. Riley spoke up regretfully. “The sun’ll go down soon and it gets chilly fast in the evening. We’d better eat indoors.”
She frowned. His insistence on eating inside had nothing to do with the weather. Of that, she was sure. And then it hit her. Not only did her law firm always have a legal typist at depositions, but it also videotaped them. Tone of voice, a significant pause, uncomfortable or guilty body language, all could be critical to making or breaking a case. A transcript couldn’t capture those nuances. But a videotape could. There was a camera somewhere inside the house and they needed to keep her in front of it.
Without protest, she followed the two men inside. A third man was in the kitchen, scrounging up plates and utensils, and pouring glasses of iced tea.
Riley murmured from behind her, “Scottie, this is Sophie. Sophie, Scott Cash.”
She nodded. The red-haired man looked a few years younger than Brian and Lucas but every bit as buff physically. He looked over his shoulder. Paused. Turned around fully to give her a blatant up-and-down with dancing emerald eyes. And then broadly smiled his approval. Wow. He really knew how to make a girl feel good.
“Pleazhuh to meet you,” he said laughingly. His voice was thick with the round vowels and absent Rs of South Boston. His gaze drifted over her shoulder toward Riley behind her. “Looks like you nabbed yourself a spirited lass, bro.”
“Stuff it,” Riley bit out.
Sophie’s head whipped around and she studied her host closely. What had his knickers in such
a twist? He scowled, grabbed the plates and forks and stomped out of the kitchen. She and the other men followed him to the dining table, which happened to sit beside a floor-to-ceiling picture window that looked out upon the ocean.
The four of them dug into the cartons of food, and only desultory conversation broke the silence for a few minutes. The formation of SEALs ran back down the beach, still singing, as the sun hung low in the west.
“Have those guys been out running all this time?” she asked surprised. “It’s been over an hour since they went past the first time.”
The three men grinned at her. Riley answered, “Yeah, they were only out for a short jog today.”
“How far did they go?” she replied.
“Six or seven miles, I imagine.”
“In the sand?” she blurted. Ouch.
Riley glanced over at Stone, the Navy man. “Yeah. Those SEALs are pretty soft. Rangers would’ve run that far knee-deep in the ocean.”
A round of Army and Navy bashing ensued, and Sophie sat back, entertained by the easy camaraderie these men obviously shared. But trepidation built like a brick in her stomach as the food on the table steadily disappeared, marking the end of her reprieve. As much as she dreaded what was to come, the moment arrived when she couldn’t eat another bite. She pushed back her plate.
“Are you done?” Scottie asked her.
“Yes.”
Riley interjected, “If you want seconds, get them now, Sophie. Once Scottie goes on clean-up detail, there won’t be a single grain of rice left.”
The redhead shrugged, not denying the accusation. “I have a high metabolism.”
Brian retorted, “If that means you burn crazy amounts of calories chasing girls, I guess you’re right.”
A flurry of quick hand signals flashed back and forth between the men, followed by uproarious laughter. What the heck was that all about? Must be some guy-soldier thing. She shrugged and stood up to clear the plates.
“Sit,” Lucas told her firmly. “I’ll get those.”
“A man after my own heart. Great biceps and he does dishes. Do you fold laundry, too?”
