“Of course not. I’m just rubbing my bloodshot, hungover eyes.”
“Ah.”
“Crying is for dainty little ladies who lie around on fainting couches and wave their lace hankies at their maids. And in case you haven’t noticed, I’m neither dainty nor little. I don’t own a lace hanky. So I assure you, I never cry.”
“Good.”
She sniffed. “You’re like every other guy, aren’t you? You claim you can’t stand to see a woman cry. You don’t mind making them cry, but once you drive them to it you go all helpless and brain-dead and run the other way.”
“My only concern is the mission.”
“So why pretend that you care whether or not I was crying?”
“Because if your vision is blurry, you wouldn’t be able to see El Gato.”
She turned to stare at him.
Tyler continued to watch the plaza. He steeled himself for another rant. Instead, she did something completely unexpected. She laughed.
It was a wonderful laugh. Rich and uninhibited, even if it was partly at her own expense. She was letting him glimpse the woman beneath the prickly hide, and he wanted to see more of her. He wished now that he could have pulled her into his arms. Not simply to feel her body against his again, but to feel her.
Her laughter tapered off. She shook her head, then sucked in her breath, stilled quickly and pressed her palm against her forehead. “Well, Sergeant Tyler Matheson,” she said, “even though you’re a man, you’ve got one thing in your favor.”
“What?”
“When you decide to use a woman, at least you’re honest about it.”
There was no safe response he could make to that, so Tyler fell back on the classic male reply. He grunted.
Emily propped her elbows on the table and rested her chin on her hands. A tour group was heading across the plaza from her hotel. They were making slow progress, since a few of them were stopping to haggle with the marketplace vendors. There weren’t many left. One of the farmers sold his final bunch of bananas and started pushing his wheelbarrow away. She watched him for a while to ensure he wasn’t El Gato, then shifted her concentration to the tour group.
With the exception of the guide, who was a young Hispanic woman, everyone had white hair and varying shades of sunburns. The only male among them was close to six feet tall and as thin as a rail.
If things had gone differently this morning, she might have been on that tour. She’d seen an advertisement for it in the hotel lobby. They would be following a walking route that would touch on the main attractions of the Old City, beginning with the Governor’s Palace. But they wouldn’t be able to go into the family wing where she’d been, or to see what she had. The tourists looked uncomfortably hot out in the sun, too. Although she wasn’t about to admit it to Tyler, being on this stakeout wasn’t entirely unpleasant. The table he had chosen in this café was in the shade, and a breeze had come up that relieved the humidity. She could smell the tang of the sea, as well as a heady mix of flowers and citrus fruit. Or was that Tyler’s lime aftershave?
It was interesting that in spite of his finger-combing approach to styling his hair, he’d taken the time to shave before he’d gone out tracking assassins this morning. Perhaps he limited himself to one grooming task a day. Shaving a face like his couldn’t have been easy to accomplish without nicks, given the squareness of his jaw and the depth of the creases that framed his mouth. His chin had the hint of a cleft, too. She wondered whether she’d feel a trace of beard stubble if she pressed her thumb to the center of the cleft, or maybe trailed her fingertips along those dramatic hollows beneath his cheekbones.
She shifted her chair farther away from his. It didn’t help. She was still more aware of him than she wanted to be. Which was understandable, since there was so much of him.
He had to be at least six foot three, maybe four. From what she could see of his arms, there didn’t appear to be an ounce of fat on him. His muscles were taut and well-defined. A haze of dark blond hair softened the contours of his forearms and the backs of his hands. She’d already felt how strong his grip was, yet his fingers were slender. Long. Supple. She imagined they would be gentle if he stroked her instead of grasped.
She gritted her teeth as her body reacted to the memory of his touch. It had been adrenaline, she reminded herself, not attraction. The idea that she could be attracted to any man right now was absurd. Like a burn victim ripping off the bandages from her fingers because she couldn’t wait to play with matches again.
Emily searched for something caustic to say to reinforce the distance between them. It had been working for her so far.
Yet nothing came. It was tough to hang on to her anger. Especially when Tyler remained so calm. He was dealing with her words the same way he’d dealt with the blows she’d given him in her hotel room. Instead of retaliating, he let her flail until she realized that she wasn’t getting anywhere.
He must have frustrated the hell out of his sisters.
“Affirmative,” he said. “Still clear, Miss Wright?”
He’d been checking in regularly with his team, so she was getting accustomed to his one-sided conversations. She nodded. “I don’t see him.”
He said a few more words, then tapped his finger against his shirt near the side of his waist. It’s where she assumed the control for his microphone was located.
A silence fell between them. It wasn’t what she’d call companionable. More like a temporary cease-fire. The breeze stirred her hair. She gathered what had come loose, lifted it off her neck and redid her ponytail. “How much longer now?” she asked.
“You should see the lead car any minute.”
She looked past the market stalls to the west side of the plaza where a narrow road emerged from between the hotel and the courthouse. She would have had a good view of it from her hotel balcony.
Which was why the assassin had been there. He would have had a clear shot at the car carrying the envoy. While Emily had been stumbling around in the shower and venting her grievances with men, a killer had cold-bloodedly been preparing to end someone’s life. Reminding herself of that fact did help put her own troubles into perspective.
“Don’t worry,” Tyler said. “We’re almost done.”
Of course, he’d think she was anxious to be finished with this task. She’d done nothing but complain about it. She cleared her throat. “About what you said earlier…”
“When?”
“Before we left the palace. You made a crack about me wanting to save a life if the person was female. I just need you to know that I wouldn’t like to see anyone hurt, male or female.”
The corners of his mouth softened. It wasn’t a smile, only the promise of one. “I figured that, or you would have left by now.”
“I do want to help you stop this guy. I was just feeling cranky enough to give you a hard time.”
“No problem. I could see you were only blowing off steam.”
“Your sisters taught you well.”
“Yeah. How’s your headache?”
“It’s getting better.”
“Good.”
The breeze stirred another whiff of his aftershave. She searched for something else to distract her. “This envoy you’re protecting. What’s her name?”
He paused, as if weighing how much to tell her. “Helen Haggerty.”
“Haggerty,” she repeated. “Any relation to General Haggerty, hero of Desert Storm?”
“He was her father.”
“Ah, now I get it.”
“Get what?”
“That’s why the army was sent to play bodyguard. Because she’s Hurricane Haggerty’s daughter.” He grunted.
“But I still don’t get why you’re using these cloak-and-dagger tactics. Unless you really don’t trust the local authorities.” She tipped her head toward a pair of policemen in dark blue uniforms who were walking past the palace gates. “Is that it?”
“I just follow orders, ma’am.”
“This visit from the envoy must be really important. What’s going on? Why does someone want to kill her?”
“You ask a lot of questions.”
“It’s an occupational hazard.”
“What do you do for a living?” he asked.
“I’m between jobs right now, as they say, thanks to the scuzzball. That’s one of the reasons the money issue is so important to me. You might think it’s petty for me to worry about that, considering the serious stuff going on here, but I don’t have extra to pay for room repairs or new clothes. Once I get back to the States I’ll need to…” She trailed off.
Tyler leaned toward her. “Did you see something?”
She shook her head. Another chunk of hair sprang out of her ponytail but she ignored it. If she wasn’t afraid of rekindling her headache, she’d be tempted to smack herself in the forehead.
Because of Christopher, she didn’t want to trust any man. Her knee-jerk reaction to anything a male said or did was to resist. She’d been picking fights with Tyler out of principle. She’d been too busy nursing her temper and feeling sorry for herself to think of the big picture. Or to see what was right under her nose.
Yes, she was unemployed, but she’d always regarded her job at the Packenham Observer as temporary. That was why Christopher had talked her out of it so easily. She’d wanted to do something better, something more challenging. More…important.
Like a story about a clandestine military operation to stop an international assassin?
Her pulse did a fluttering hop, then accelerated into a flat-out run. The last remnants of fog cleared from her brain, as if she’d suddenly awakened. Or more to the point, sobered up.
Good God! Why hadn’t she seen this sooner? What Tyler had brought her into was as far removed from accounts of town council meetings and county fairs as she could get. Until now, her most exciting story had been an exposé of the faulty radar gun that was churning out a profit for the local speed trap.
This wasn’t an infringement on her vacation. It was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. It could open doors for her at every major paper in the Midwest. Instead of being unemployed when she got home, she could have a story to peddle that would kick-start her career.
She yanked off her sunglasses and looked at Tyler. So far, neither he nor Major Redinger had been willing to answer her questions. That was going to change.
“You’re sure you don’t notice anything?” he asked.
She leaned closer until she could see the rim of cerulean around his irises. “You’re using me.”
“What?”
“It’s okay. You already admitted it. You need my help.”
“Where are you going with this?”
“Establishing the ground rules. You’re using me, so I’m going to use you.” She reached forward, intending to press her index finger against the spot near his waist.
He caught her hand. “What are you doing?”
“How do you turn on your mic?”
“Why?”
“I want to say something to Major Redinger.”
He pinned her hand flat to the table beneath his. “Say it to me.”
It was hard to think clearly when he was this close. She tried breathing through her mouth so she wasn’t quite so conscious of his scent. “I’m willing to cooperate with you and your team for as long as you need me. In return, I want your guarantee that you’ll give me an exclusive on this story.”
“What story?”
For the first time since she’d thrown Christopher’s ring down his garbage chute, Emily actually smiled. “That, Sergeant Matheson, is what I intend to find out.”
Chapter 3
Tyler reached the top of the stairs, pushed aside a sheet of plastic and ducked his head beneath the low door frame that led to the servants’ quarters. The restoration work in this area of the Governor’s Palace had been suspended in order to provide Eagle Squadron with an operations base for the duration of their mission in Rocama. The location was ideal, since the back staircases that had been designed for the servants’ use gave the team ready access to both the floor that held the room assigned to the envoy and the courtyard at the heart of the palace complex. The low ceilings, the crumbling plaster on the walls and the stacks of paint cans in a few of the corners didn’t bother anyone. As field headquarters went, the conditions were downright luxurious.
Tyler followed the sound of voices to the room he was sharing with Jack and Duncan. Kurt and Gonzo were presently shadowing the envoy and would stay with her until she was settled in her suite. The group of palace guards who would take over from there had been handpicked by the Rocaman president and had also been screened by Duncan’s pals back at Intelligence. There was no question of their loyalty. The rest of the team would be relaxing while they could.
“I’ll give you five to one odds the major won’t go for it,” Jack said, shucking off his vest. He laced his fingers together and stretched his arms over his head until his back popped.
“No bet, Doc.” Duncan withdrew the spare magazines from his pockets and returned them to the stack in the steel ammo box. “We all know Redinger’s not going to agree.”
Tyler emptied his own pockets, adding to the stack of ammunition. “Emily can be persistent.”
Duncan chuckled. “That’s one way to put it.”
“Hey, junior,” Jack said. “You still got both ears? Sure she didn’t chew one off?”
“I’ve got no problem with my hearing, Doc. You’re confusing me with senior citizens like you.”
“But jeez, a reporter,” Jack persisted. “Why couldn’t you crash in on a Mob accountant or maybe a mime? Someone who knows how to keep quiet?”
Tyler had been thinking along the same lines himself. A reporter. He should have guessed, considering how many questions Emily liked to ask. She had an ease with language that was exceptional, even for a woman. She seemed naturally curious, as well as determined, two qualities that would be useful to a journalist.
But she was bound to be disappointed. Duncan was right. The major would never allow her to publish any story about this mission, no matter how much she argued. It wasn’t merely an issue of national security, it was a matter of their personal safety. Eagle Squadron relied on remaining anonymous. They operated under the radar. Most of their missions were accomplished before anyone realized they’d been there.
Still, part of him would be sorry to see the last of her. Emily was stimulating company. He was coming to enjoy her banter. It was evidence of her quick mind. He wondered what her ex-husband had done to make her so angry. Or maybe he had been a fiancé. Whoever had given her the ring she’d worn, Tyler had little doubt that she’d been the one to break off the relationship. He couldn’t imagine any man willingly letting a spitfire like her go.
“Funny you should mention quiet, Doc,” Tyler said, “considering that female you were in charge of on the mission last fall.”
Jack grinned. “Which one do you mean? As I recall, there were two.”
“The little one with the good lungs.”
Duncan tapped the side of his head. “Yeah, my ears have been ringing since we got back. That kid could shatter glass.”
Jack went to his duffel bag and pulled out a small digital camera. “That reminds me. The pipsqueak got another tooth. Want to see the pictures?”
Duncan groaned while Tyler laughed. “Have mercy. No more. Please.”
“Eva bought her this teething ring you can fill with cold water,” Jack said, turning the camera display toward them. “See? It helps, but what the kid really needs is a steak.”
“Now I know why Kurt and Gonzo wanted to take the first shift,” Duncan said.
Jack had clicked through at least two dozen photos of his fiancée’s daughter and her new tooth when Chief Warrant Officer Esposito stuck his head into the room. Light gleamed from his bald pate. “The major wants to see you, Matheson.”
Tyler’s smile vanished. He wasn’t looking forward to this. The guys had merely ra
zzed him about involving a journalist, but they’d known it had just been back luck. It could have happened to any of them. The major, however, wouldn’t see any humor in the situation. Though Mitchell Redinger had been known to bend the rules occasionally for the sake of his men, he rarely loosened up. He lived and breathed the job.
Tyler went down the hall to a room that smelled heavily of fresh paint. It was larger than the others so it was being used as the communications and briefing room. Esposito settled on a stool in front of a shelf of electronic equipment. Redinger was leaning over a square table, his hands braced on either side of what appeared to be a blueprint of the palace. He waved Tyler forward. “There’s a small bedroom on the same floor as the suite assigned to the envoy. It has no phone, and the closest access to the outside is through the stairwell that we’re already monitoring. We’ve put her in there.”
“Ms. Haggerty?”
“No, Emily Wright.”
“I don’t understand, sir.”
Redinger straightened and the blueprint rolled shut. “It should keep her out of the way.”
Tyler cleared his throat. “I’m not sure that confining her will work, Major.”
“Confining her?”
“She’s a resourceful woman, and she would resist any attempt to restrict her movements.”
“I noticed. She’s also very astute. She’s already put more pieces together concerning this mission than she should have. That could present a serious problem unless we take measures immediately.”
“I realize that we can’t give Miss Wright what she wants, but I don’t believe she would present a security risk. She’s intelligent enough to understand the harm she could do by publicizing our activities.”
“She not only understands the harm, she understands that she has a powerful bargaining chip because of it.”
“Imprisoning her won’t win her cooperation.”
Redinger lifted one eyebrow. “You misunderstood, Sergeant. We’re not imprisoning her, we’re embedding her.”
“Sir?”
“Apart from her separate sleeping quarters, she will be participating in all our daily activities.”
Accidental Commando Page 4
