The Stealth Commandos Trilogy

by Suzanne Forster

  “That’s my price to find your fiancé,” he said, cutting into her thoughts. “I want another night. One night, all night, just you and me.”

  “What is this? Blackmail?”

  “Don’t be absurd.” His voice flared with heat. “If money was the object, we’d have settled this thing when you walked in the door. You blew into my life like a beautiful cyclone, Randy. You shook me up good, and then you disappeared without even saying good-bye. I told myself if I ever ran across you again, I’d teach you some manners. I should be able to do that in one night, don’t you think?”

  She kept waiting for that spark of amusement to light his eyes, the signal that told her he was playing, baiting her. But it didn’t come. His probing gaze drew up sensations she hadn’t felt in years, not since she was last with him. He was serious, she realized. He meant to hold her hostage for a night of sex. He meant to wreck her life!

  “You’re the one who’s absurd,” she cried. “I wouldn’t spend the night with you under any circumstances. The man who’s missing is my fiancé. I’m engaged to be married.”

  “Married to a man you don’t love.”

  He said the words with such conviction that Randy was startled. “What do you know about my relationship with Hugh?” she demanded.

  “All I know is you fell apart in my arms that night. You said love had destroyed your mother, and you’d never let a man do that to you. You told me you’d been jilted by some guy you thought was Prince Charming, and the only way to win with men was to keep them guessing. You swore you’d never marry for love.” He hesitated, drawing in a breath. “And then you seduced me.”

  “I did no such thing!” Randy tried her best to stare him down. She would have loved nothing better than to vaporize him on the spot, to reduce him to a heap of ashes.

  But he only crossed his arms, leaned against the wall behind him, and gazed at her with the casual assurance of a man who knew—and approved of—every shameful little secret she had.

  “I did not seduce you, dammit,” she whispered as if fearing someone might overhear them. “My hands slipped! And no wonder, the reckless way you drove that damn motorcycle! You had me perched on the back, hanging on for dear life. What was I supposed to do with my hands? Where was I supposed to put them?”

  He drew his thumb back and forth across his chin as if scratching an itch. “You found the right place, darlin’. Don’t ever let anybody tell you you aren’t good with your hands. You’re an artist.”

  “And you’re a bastard,” she breathed. “Why are you doing this to me? It was ten years ago. I’m not that person anymore. I never was that person! I don’t know what happened to me that night.” She clenched her lists, but her voice was almost pleading with him to understand. “I hate motorcycles!”

  “You didn’t appear reluctant to take a ride on mine.”

  “I was reluctant. I don’t know why I did it!”

  “I’ve got a pretty good idea.”

  “Don’t say it!” She held up her hand, her eyes colliding with his, sparks flying. But Randy had no intention of backing down this time. There was too much at risk. “I was distraught that night,” she insisted, forcing out the words.

  He lifted a shoulder. “Okay ... have it your way.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means you’re lucky I’m a boy scout. Otherwise, this could be the blackmail you accused me of. I’ve got plenty on you, sweetness, all of it amazing.” After a pregnant pause he pushed off the wall as though intending to leave. “But it isn’t blackmail. I haven’t sunk to that, yet. It’s pretty clear you don’t want to deal on my terms, so we don’t have a deal. If you change your mind, you know where to find me.”

  Once again Randy watched Geoff Dias make an exit, this time out of his own office. She followed him to the door as he pushed it open and strode toward a vintage black Porsche parked at the curb. Within seconds he’d tucked his oversize frame into the driver’s seat, keyed the ignition, and driven out of her life.

  Randy didn’t know whether to be relieved or angry. Everything he did provoked her, even the way he’d just let her off the hook. Boy scout? If he was a boy scout, then Attila the Hun must have been his den mother.

  Not knowing what else to do, she left his office. But as she started for her own car, she noticed the motorcycle he’d ridden the day before. It was parked in a stall between his office and the gym. She hesitated, feeling weak at the knees and hating the way her heart was knocking. The machine brought back so many memories, all of them frighteningly vivid. And all of them hot enough to make her want to spend the rest of her life in a cold shower.

  She approached the stall slowly, coming to a halt as soon as she got close enough to see what was painted on the bike’s gas tank. Emblazoned in hot pink was a broken valentine’s heart and just beneath it were the words SURRENDER BABY.

  If Randy had been clinging to a slender thread of hope that Geoff Dias wasn’t really her beautiful drifter, that thread had just snapped.

  Geoff wound the Porsche down through its gears, reining in the surging car as he took the freeway exit that spilled into the foothills of the Santa Monica mountains. The whine and grind of harnessed horsepower brought a stirring of satisfaction to his soul. It felt almost as good as the quivering responsiveness of the gears tick under his hand.

  He still got off on power and performance. There weren’t too many things that did it for him anymore. But powerful things, they interested him. More than that, he liked exercising the control that came with mastering power. Maybe that’s why she interested him. He’d meant it when he’d called her a pistol. He’d never met a hotter female, in every sense of the word. Her pain was as fiery as her passion.

  Something hit the windshield with a crack, distracting him. It sounded like a rock, but all he could see was a huge tumbleweed rolling down the street straight at him. He cranked the wheel hard, swerving to miss it. The Porsche shuddered and squealed, leaving streaks on the asphalt before he got the car straightened out.

  The devil winds were blowing again today, he realized, checking out the hilly terrain around him. Hot gusting Santa Anas moaned in the sycamores and whooshed through the car’s open windows, whipping at his hair. The air was saturated with the dense smells of sage, laurel, and road dust.

  Moments later he was traversing the narrow road that snaked toward his small house in the backwoods of Coldwater Canyon. As he took the curves, he was aware of another scent, her perfume still clinging to his sweatshirt. It was a hot fragrance, earthy and spicy, redolent of cloves.

  Yes, she did interest him.

  He turned the sports car into his gravel driveway and let himself out, stretching to his full height and working the kinks out of his muscles. The wind pulled at his clothing as he walked to the ranch-style house he’d bought after leaving the Pentagon several years ago. He’d had two partners in those days, both of whom he’d met in the Marines. He and Johnny Starhawk had been recruited into the Pentagon’s Recovery Operations Unit by Chase Beaudine, their job description being to free American hostages and POWs. The three of them had quickly made international headlines with their exploits. Geoff still carried a snapshot in his wallet of their celebration in a Greek taverna after their first successful mission. Chase and Johnny had both had the sense to retire after a few years and take up normal lives. Geoff was the only one still playing soldier.

  A stack of mail was piled up under the slot as he let himself into the house. Noticing a pale blue engraved envelope on top, he knelt and tore it open. His lips curved into a smile as he read the invitation to an anniversary party for Johnny Starhawk. Johnny and his wife, Honor, had been married a year.

  “One year?” Geoff’s laughter was husky with affection. “And that crazy SOB thought it wouldn’t last. Good for you, Johnny.”

  Crouched there, gazing at the invitation, Geoff was revisited by memories of both his former partners. Johnny had been a wild man in the Marines, driven by some inner rage none of his buddi
es understood, or dared ask about. Irish-Apache by birth, he had intuitive instincts and tracking abilities that had made him invaluable in recovery operations, but it was his keen intelligence, his analytical brilliance, that had ultimately led him to the career he’d been born for.

  Geoff wasn’t at all surprised that Johnny had become a high-powered attorney, but a happily married man? That did surprise him, especially since Johnny’s golden-girl bride had been the source of most of his rage. She’d betrayed him when they were young, and Johnny wasn’t a forgiving soul.

  Geoff fingered the invitation and smiled. He almost wished he could go to the party and see how they were doing. He’d had some firsthand experience with the volatile reconciliation that had led to their marriage. As far as he knew, no two people had had more reason to be together—or more heartbreak keeping them apart.

  As for Chase Beaudine, the hell-bent Marine who’d recruited Geoff into recovery operations, he was as thoroughly roped and hog-tied as a man could be these days. He had a couple of kids already and was turning his small cabin in the Wyoming foothills into a ranch. His redheaded wife, Annie, a tiny woman with a huge spirit, was the perfect match for a hard case like Beaudine.

  Geoff dropped the invitation back on the pile. A stab of something that must have been loneliness hit him as he thought about his two buddies, how they’d changed, how full and complete their lives must be now. He was happy for them, but maybe he was a little envious too.

  A tall can of beer from the refrigerator went a long way toward easing his pain. By the time he’d finished it, he wasn’t thinking about Chase and Johnny anymore. His mind had returned to its more recent preoccupation. Randy.

  He helped himself to another can of beer, then leaned against the closed refrigerator door, rubbing his thumb over the can’s condensation as he contemplated the mystery she presented. Women weren’t supposed to seduce men and disappear, that was a male thing. But it wasn’t just her knack for breathless seduction that made her so unforgettable. There was all the rest of it—the tears, the vulnerability, the way she clung to him, tucking her face into the hollow of his shoulder, making him want to ache with her heartrending sobs. She’d changed moods with dizzying speed that night, pounding on his chest one minute and railing at him for the sins of all men, and then before he could catch his balance, she was kissing him with more whimpering hunger and raw need than he’d ever known from a woman.

  Hell, yes, he was interested.

  He popped the beer can’s top and took a swig of the ice-cold brew, hardly tasting it. What man wouldn’t be interested in a beautiful woman who hit him like a cyclone and left him confused and gasping for air?

  A drop of sweat trickled down his forehead, and he wiped the moisture away, feeling the afternoon heat rise and thicken around him. It was going to be a hellacious night. The devil winds always kicked the thermometer up into the nineties, even in February. One of these years he’d have to get air-conditioning.

  He stripped off his threadbare sweatshirt with his free hand and tossed it as he strolled out of the kitchen. The garment landed on the hand-carved molding of the antique grandfather clock that had been passed down through his father’s side of the family. It was the only thing he wanted from his parents’ estate after their deaths. And sometimes, when the chimes rang out, he wished he hadn’t taken it. The sound was so damn forlorn.

  Needing to clear his thoughts, he walked through the cluttered living room and down the hallway toward the back porch sunroom he’d converted into a workout space. All distractions vanished when he entered the stark, monasterylike environment, all thoughts of the past, of women and sex. This was where he mastered errant impulses, anything that didn’t feed the source of his mental and physical powers. This was where he harnessed his own will.

  He stopped at the doorway long enough to set down the can of beer and remove his shoes before he stepped onto the braided hemp carpet. The room was bare of furnishings except for a low table holding an oriental board game of black and white stones and a two-inch metallic sphere suspended from the ceiling on a thin rope. The objects were meant to teach mental detachment and to train the intuition. A solid oak support beam stood in the center of the room.

  Geoff walked across the coarse hemp slowly, honing his concentration, gathering energy in the pit of his stomach. The oak beam was his sparring partner. It had broken his foot once, shattering countless bones. Over the years it had bruised and beaten him into submission until he’d found the part of himself that was the beam. Once he had mastered that part of himself, he’d mastered the beam.

  Surrender, baby, he thought softly.

  He stood very still, gazing at the beam until it appeared to move and undulate before his eyes. Feeding on the wood’s energy, he drew it into himself until the corresponding energy in the pit of his stomach imploded and surged through him.

  With a hissing sound, he leaped, whirled, and kicked, striking out savagely with his bare foot. A shock wave slammed through his body as he connected with the solid oak. He knew instantly that he’d hit wrong, with the top of his foot instead of the blade. The pain that shot up his leg was staggering, blinding.

  He dropped to his knees, letting the sharp throbs pierce him, willing himself to become the pain so that he could master it. There was no question in his mind what had gone wrong. His focus wasn’t perfectly honed. He wasn’t clear. He had freed himself of every conscious distraction except one. Her.

  The seductress in a virginal white wedding gown.

  She’d haunted his mind ever since that night. She was the one thing that he, who’d devoted his life to self-mastery, hadn’t been able to master. And the way she’d come back into his life, through a missing-persons ad to find her fiancé, was too dark an irony to be ignored.

  It had been years since he’d seen her in the flesh, but now that he’d found her again, he wasn’t going to be diverted. He had something in mind for Miranda Witherspoon, the blushing bride-to-be. Something befitting the occasion.

  A moment later he was on his feet, concentrating energy, gathering the storm inside him and locating its center, the eye of perfect stillness. A sound hissed through his teeth, snakelike. He kicked the post again, several times, perfectly, powerfully. As he felt the energy from his body reverberate through the wood, returning to its origins, a smile crossed his face. He was ready.

  Randy pressed the button on her intercom. “Did that last applicant leave yet?” she asked as Barb picked up the phone. They both knew who she was referring to. The mercenary she’d just interviewed could have been an escapee from San Quentin’s death row.

  “Only after I threatened to call in the military police,” Barb snapped. “Will you please stop interviewing these psychos. Randy? You’re endangering both our lives.”

  “What choice do I have, Barb? Hugh’s lost somewhere in South America and no one seems to care but me.” But Randy’s pleading tone did nothing to mollify her assistant.

  “You’ve already called the FBI, the State Department, the local police in Rio, and the consulate,” Barb pointed out. “They’re the experts on these things, for heaven’s sake. Why don’t you let them do their job?”

  “I only wish they would. My wedding is two weeks away!”

  “Well, just tell me one thing,” Barb shot back. “Are we doing this again tomorrow? Are we interviewing. Randy? Because if we are, I’m wearing a bullet-proof vest and crash helmet.”

  “I didn’t know you had a bullet-proof vest.”

  “Randy!”

  “Sorry, I was just trying to imagine it with your gold jewelry.” Randy winced as the receiver banged down. She rose from her chair, determined to find a replacement for Geoff Dias. She’d seen four applicants before noon, one of them an ex-priest who had seemed promising until she learned he was allergic to his own perspiration and had to avoid humid climates. The applicants she’d met after lunch had seemed more interested in replacing her fiancé than in finding him. The last one had insinuated he could make h
er forget about Hugh in ten seconds flat if she’d sit on his lap and play horsey.

  Maybe it was the Santa Ana winds, she thought, walking to her desk and picking up a framed picture of her and Hugh. Everyone got a little weird when the devil winds blew in. She traced the scrollwork on the antique silver frame with her fingers, touching the faint smile on her fiancé’s lean, bespectacled face. Hugh was such a serious man. Some even called him cheerless, but she’d never minded that about him. She’d always admired his drive, his single-minded desire to succeed. Everyone said they were an ideal match.

  Hugh Hargrove, she thought, where are you? Your timing stinks. Disappearing three weeks before your own wedding!

  Tears filled her eyes as she set the picture down. She was being unforgivably selfish, worrying about weddings when Hugh’s safety was in question. She ought to be pining for him, like any other fiancée would. But she’d never loved Hugh in that silly, senseless way that people do when the attraction is primarily physical. She’d never wanted to love a man that way.

  Her mother’s relationships had cured her of any desire for a grand passion. Edna was always caught up in some devastating physical attraction or other, and all it had gotten her for her trouble was a string of tragic affairs with men who caroused and couldn’t commit to anything but their own selfish needs. Randy had been devoted to her mother. She’d loved Edna dearly, but she’d promised herself she would not repeat Edna’s mistakes. She would never let a man become everything in her life, especially a dishonorable man.

  Randy’s intercom buzzed rudely. She picked up the phone to hear Barb announce that it was quitting time and she was leaving for the day. “Just so you know,” Barb said ominously. “I’m updating my resume.”

  Randy decided not to take the threat seriously as the phone clicked in her ear yet again. Barb had a dramatic nature. She was always mumbling and grumbling about something. Secretly, Randy was sympathetic to her assistant’s concerns. The thought of even one more interview appalled her too.

  Perhaps she should make the trip to Rio by herself.