Delta Force Defender

by Carol Ericson

  She squeezed into the train with a mass of other people, grabbed a pole and spun around, her eyebrows snapping over her nose. “Take your hand off me.”

  Cam’s jaw dropped open and a rush of heat claimed his chest. He’d just saved the woman’s life, and this was the thanks he got?

  He wrapped his fingers around the pole above her hand and twisted his lips. “You’re welcome.”

  “I—I...” She shoved some wispy brown bangs out of her eyes, which blinked at him from behind a pair of glasses. “Yes, you’re the one who pulled me back. Thank you. But...”

  Lifting his eyebrows, he asked, “Yes?”

  “How do I know you’re not the one who was crowding me from behind in the first place?”

  “I wasn’t. That guy took off.”

  Martha’s eyes, a lighter brown than her hair, widened and her Adam’s apple bobbed in her delicate throat.

  His statement had scared but not surprised her, and he dipped his head to study her face for his next question. “Any reason for somebody to push you into the path of an oncoming train?”

  “No.” She pressed her lips together. “It was crowded. Everyone was moving forward. I don’t think that was an intentional push.”

  “It’s always crowded. Commuters don’t generally fall onto the tracks.”

  She shifted away from him, and the odor from the sweaty guy behind him immediately replaced the fresh scent that had clung to Martha, which had been the only thing making this tight squeeze bearable.

  “Well, thank you.” She tilted her chin up, along with her nose, and dismissed him.

  Looked like she’d perfected the art of dismissing obnoxious men, but Cam had a date with Miss Prissy-pants here, even if she didn’t know it.

  He left her in peace for the remainder of the ride, although her sidelong glances at him didn’t go unnoticed, and the knuckles of her hand gripping the pole had turned a decided shade of white. He’d planted a seed of suspicion in fertile ground.

  When the train jerked to a stop, forward and then backward, Martha peeled her hand from the pole, hitched her bag higher on her shoulder and scooted out of the car, with a brief nod in Cam’s direction.

  He exited the train and followed Martha up the stairs and out into the night air, its frigidity no match for Ms. Drake’s.

  Three blocks down from the station, she stopped in front of a crowded Georgetown bar, clutching her bag to her chest, and turned to face him.

  He sauntered toward her, then wedged his shoulder against the corner of the building, crossing his arms.

  “Why are you following me? I’m going to call the police.” She waved her cell phone at him.

  “We need to talk, Martha Drake.”

  She choked and pressed the phone to her heart. “Who are you? Are you the one who sent the skull and crossbones?”

  Skull and crossbones? That was a new one. He filed it away for future reference.

  He shrugged off the wall and straightened his spine. “I’m Sergeant Cam Sutton, US Army Delta Force, and you discovered some bogus emails that compromised my team leader, Major Rex Denver.”

  Martha’s expressive face went through several gyrations, and then she settled on suspicion, which seemed to be one of her favorites. “How do I know you’re telling the truth?”

  He pulled his wallet from his pocket and slipped out his military ID. He held it out to her between two fingers.

  She wasted no time snatching it from him and holding it close to her face, peering at it through her glasses. After perusing it for at least a minute, she handed it back to him. “Bogus emails?”

  “Major Denver never did any of those things in those emails—” he jabbed the corner of his ID card in the general direction of her nose “—and if you hadn’t turned them over to the Agency, Denver wouldn’t be in the trouble he is now.”

  “If I hadn’t...” She stamped one booted foot. “What did you expect me to do with them?”

  “We can’t keep talking out here. Let’s go inside.” He jerked his thumb toward the bar.

  Her gaze bounced to the large picture window of the bar over his shoulder and back to his face. The crowd inside must’ve reassured her because she dipped her head once.

  Cam circled around Martha and opened the door, holding it wide for her to pass through. As she did, he got another whiff of her fresh scent, which seemed to cling to her.

  DC office workers, unwinding at the end of the workweek, packed every inch of the horseshoe bar. They seemed more interested in socializing and watching the football game on the TVs over the bar than quiet conversation, leaving a few open tables toward the back of the room, near the restrooms.

  Cam placed his hand on the small of Martha’s back and steered her toward one of those tables. She’d twitched under his touch but didn’t shrug him off. He’d take that as a good sign.

  When he pulled out her chair, her eyes beneath her arched eyebrows jumped to his face, and she mumbled, “Thank you.”

  After he took his own seat across from her, he folded his arms and hunched over the table. “Why weren’t you surprised that somebody tried to push you onto the subway tracks?”

  Her nostrils flared, and then she pursed her lips. “I told you. I thought it was an accident. I still think so.”

  “Really?” He reached across the table so quickly she didn’t have time to pull back, and smoothed his thumb over the single line between her eyebrows. “Then why are you jumpier than a long-tailed cat in a roomful of rocking chairs.”

  Martha’s mouth hung open, and Cam didn’t know if it was because he’d presumed to touch her petal-soft skin, or because he’d laid on a thick Southern accent. That slack jaw made most people look stupid, but Martha couldn’t look stupid if she tried. It made her look—adorable.

  “Cat?” Her soft voice trailed off.

  “You know—long tails, rocking chairs going back and forth.” He hit the table with his flat hand, and she jumped. “Nervous, jittery. Don’t deny it.”

  A cocktail waitress dipped next to their table and tossed a couple of napkins in front of them. “What can I get you?”

  Cam plucked a plastic drink menu from a holder at the side of the table and tapped a picture of one of the featured bottles of beer. “I’ll have a bottle of this.”

  “I can’t just point at a picture.” Martha snatched the menu from his hand and flipped it over, studied it for what seemed like ten minutes and then asked about twenty questions about the chardonnays. When she finally tucked the menu back in its holder, she said, “I’ll have a glass of the house chardonnay.”

  When the waitress dived back into the crowd, Cam drummed his fingers on the table. He needed to start at the beginning with Martha. She clearly liked to take things in order.

  He took a deep breath and started again. “Can you tell me about those emails? Where they came from? What they said, exactly, or close to it?”

  “I should report you.” She flicked her fingers at him. “What are you doing in DC? Why aren’t you on duty?”

  Cam narrowed his eyes. She didn’t want to report him. Her voice had quavered, and she’d broken eye contact with him. If she’d turned those emails over so quickly, there shouldn’t be anything stopping her from turning him over—but she didn’t want to go there.

  “I’m on leave. I’m not here on any official business, just my own.” He crumpled the cocktail napkin in his fist. “Look, I know Major Rex Denver, and I know he’s innocent of these charges.”

  “He went AWOL.” She sniffed. “Running indicates guilt.”

  “Not always.” He smoothed out the napkin and traced the creases with the tip of his finger. “Not if you think there’s a conspiracy against you and you’re going to be railroaded.”

  “A conspiracy?” Her eyes widened and seemed to sparkle in the low light from the candle on the table.

&nb
sp; “Here you go.” The waitress set down their drinks and spun away before Cam could tell her to close out the tab and that he didn’t need a mug.

  He watched Martha over the bottle, as he tipped the beer down his throat. Maybe this night would be longer than he expected.

  “We think someone is framing Denver, and it started with those emails.”

  “We?”

  “The Delta Force team that Major Denver commanded. We were all—” he put down the bottle harder than he’d planned “—dragged in for interrogation. Do you know what that’s like? You’re doing your job, doing the right thing, and bam. They’re lookin’ at you like you’re vermin.”

  She nodded and took a big gulp from her wineglass. “I do know what that’s like. I turned over those emails and all of a sudden, I’m suspect. They’re checking out my communications, my files.”

  Cam’s pulse ticked faster. That’s why Martha was none too anxious to report him. They’d grilled her, too.

  “Exactly.” He touched the neck of his bottle to her glass and the pale liquid within shimmered and reflected in Martha’s eyes. Whiskey. Her eyes were the color of whiskey. And right now he was a little drunk just looking into them.

  Cam cleared his throat and rubbed his chin. “I don’t trust them, any of them. All I know is Denver is not guilty of those crimes, and I’m gonna prove it.”

  Martha took another sip of wine from her half-empty glass, her cheeks flushed like a rose stain on porcelain. “I’ll start at the beginning with the emails.”

  “Did the CIA determine where they came from?” He scooted forward in his seat.

  “I didn’t get all the details because why would they tell me anything? I’m just the one who discovered them and turned them over.” She cupped her glass in her two hands and rolled it between her palms. “They were looking at Dreadworm though, you know that hacking group?”

  He nodded, not wanting to interrupt her flow. This stuff had been bothering her for a while, and he just became her receptacle—a very willing one.

  “But I don’t know if they ever determined how my email inbox became the target, or at least they never told me. Dreadworm was just the messenger, anyway. The conduit for the message, if you will—and that message was that Major Rex Denver had been working with a terrorist group plotting against the United States.”

  Cam slammed his fist on the table, the tips of his ears burning.

  Martha held up her index finger. “But I noticed something strange about those emails.”

  “Yeah, they were filled with lies.”

  “Well, I don’t know about that, but it didn’t seem as if the person who composed the emails was a native English speaker.”

  Cam blinked his eyes and took another swig of beer. “Go on.”

  “If it were a foreign entity who sent those messages, why? Why would they care to warn US Intelligence about an American serviceman?”

  “Our allies would care.”

  “Why wouldn’t our allies just use regular channels to communicate with our military or even the CIA? But an unfriendly entity might have every reason to plant those stories about Denver.”

  “You’ve been thinking about this.”

  “It’s more than just the emails.” Martha waved her hand at the passing waitress. “Another round, please.”

  Cam cocked his head and took in Martha’s empty wineglass and flushed cheeks. She’d downed that pretty fast. Although even in low heels she stood taller than most men, she was as slim as a reed, and the booze seemed to have loosened her tongue and her attitude toward him. He’d take it.

  “More than emails?” He wrapped both hands around his bottle.

  She looked both ways in the crowded bar and hunched forward, wedging her chin in the palm of her hand. “I’m being followed.”

  “The guy on the subway platform.”

  “I don’t know.” She drew back from him...and her earlier pronouncement, and tucked a lock of silky hair behind her ear. “Nobody has ever made physical contact with me before. That push could’ve killed me.”

  The fear in her whiskey eyes plunged a knife in his gut. “Maybe it was just a warning, maybe a coincidence after all.”

  “You don’t believe that.”

  “How do you know you’re being followed?”

  “I can feel it, sense it.”

  He rolled his shoulders and thanked the waitress as she brought them their drinks. Maybe Martha was just paranoid. She’d been dwelling on those emails, and he didn’t blame her. They’d started a firestorm.

  “And then there’s the skull and crossbones.”

  He coughed and his beer fizzed in his nose. “You mentioned that before. Someone put a skull and crossbones on the emails?”

  “Not the original messages. Someone sent me an email, just this afternoon, with one of those animated gifs of a skull and crossbones—blinking eyes and chattering teeth.” She took a gulp from her new wineglass, and Cam placed his hand over her icy cold one.

  “Why is someone sending you threats? You obviously took the intended and hoped-for action. You turned over the emails and got Denver in a heap of trouble. Why the harassment?”

  “I—I do have an idea.”

  “I’m all ears.” He curled his fingers around her hand in encouragement. Why would anyone threaten Martha Drake, a by-the-book CIA translator worker bee who’d reacted exactly as the sender thought she would?

  “It might be because I copied all of the emails from my work computer to a flash drive, and now I have them at home.”

  Chapter Three

  Cam Sutton’s warm hand tightened around her fingers for a second. “Whoa. I bet the emailer wasn’t expecting you to do that. Why did you do that?”

  How could she explain it? She’d never done anything against the rules in her life. “I don’t know exactly. There was something about those emails that didn’t sit right with me.”

  “You said before that they might’ve been written by a foreigner.” Cam tapped his temple. “You’re a smart woman.”

  “I think it was the sentence structure and the word choice. Too formal or... I don’t know what.” She squared her shoulders and slipped her hand from Cam’s. “When I first reported the emails, I tried to tell my supervisor about my suspicions, but he brushed me off.”

  “I take it nobody at the CIA knows what you did with those emails?”

  “N-no.” She pulled her bottom teeth between her lips and traced the stem of her wineglass. Farah didn’t count, did she?

  “You seem unsure. Did you tell anyone you forwarded the messages to yourself at home?”

  “I didn’t tell anyone anything.”

  “If someone’s been following you and sending you poison-pen emails, somebody knows. Otherwise, they would’ve left you alone after verifying you’d turned over the messages.”

  “I don’t see how someone could know I have the emails.”

  He hunched forward, and his energy came off him in waves and engulfed her, sweeping her up in his world. “You seemed hesitant before. Do you think your supervisor might suspect you?”

  She snorted and took another swig of wine. “No way. If he did, he would’ve just reported me to security and gotten me fired...or worse. He wouldn’t be hiring people to shove me onto the train tracks.”

  “You’ve got a point.” He rubbed his hands together. “It has to be the party who sent the emails, the people who wanted to bring down Denver.”

  Her gaze dropped to his fingers drumming on the tabletop. “You’re glad someone’s after me.”

  “Wait. What?” He smacked his chest with the palm of his hand. “That’s dumb. I don’t want to see anyone hurt over this.”

  “No, but you tracked me down because I’m the one who initiated the fall of Major Denver, and you probably expected some CIA drone that you could bully and instead
you’ve discovered a chink in the story, a new twist you weren’t expecting.”

  He cocked his head, and a lock of hair curled over his temple. He shoved it out of the way like a man accustomed to a military cut and whistled. “Are you sure you’re just a translator and not an analyst?”

  “Just a translator? I know four languages in addition to English.” She ticked off her fingers. “Russian, German, French and Spanish.”

  “Okay, okay.” He held up his hands. “You also have a big chip on your shoulder.”

  “I do not.” She crossed her arms, covering her shoulders with her hands. “I’m just sick of being underestimated.”

  “Clearly.” He leveled a finger at her. “And that’s why you stole those emails.”

  “Are you sure you’re just a Delta Force grunt and not military intelligence?” She held her breath.

  He opened his mouth, snapped it shut and hit the table with his fist. Then he laughed, and what a laugh he had. A few heads turned at the loud guffaw.

  “Shush.” She kicked his foot under the table.

  “Did those spies pick the wrong CIA drone to mess with or what?” He shook his head. “Why do you think they targeted you?”

  “Honestly? I think they picked me because I have a reputation for following the rules. Everyone at work knows that.”

  “That’s kinda scary.”

  “What? Following rules? You’re in the military. You must do a lot of that.”

  “Not the rule-following, but the fact that the people who sent the emails knew that about you.” He rubbed his knuckles across the sandy-blond stubble on his chin. “Inside job? Some kind of bug?”

  “A few minutes ago you called them spies. Do you think this is some foreign entity or worse, a foreign country?”

  “I don’t know.” He tapped her wineglass. “Are you done? I want to see those emails.”

  “You mean, at my place?” Her heart fluttered. It was one thing talking to this hunky military guy in public, but bring him back to her town house?

  “You still don’t trust me?” He slumped in his seat and finished off his beer. “What can I do to remedy that?”