by Cindy Gerard
It wasn’t much of a plan. It was more like a desperate marriage of guesswork and necessity. They were grasping at straws here but the options were few and far between. They had only a scant few days to ferret out the information they needed to find the facility manufacturing the E-bomb, disrupt the delivery of said bomb and stop the attack on the United States, get Stephanie out from under the gun, and oh yeah, find and expose the traitor.
He’d worry about getting them out of there alive when the time came.
“I’m going to take a shower,” he said abruptly. “Unless you want to join me again—and believe me, you’re more than welcome—you might want to close the door on your way out.”
Myriad emotions flickered in her eyes. Longing. Indecision. Regret.
Resolve finally won out and she turned and left the room.
He stood in the shower until the water ran cold. When he finally opened the door to the bedroom, the lights were out. A sliver of moonlight gilded the slight form under the covers on the far side of the bed.
He crawled into the big king, crossed his arms beneath his head, and stared at the ceiling, listening to her breathe. Knowing she was awake, knowing she wanted him to think she was sleeping.
He lay there. Stared into the dark.
He was home. After fifteen years, he was home.
A hollow emptiness suddenly consumed him. An emptiness he hadn’t let himself feel since he was a lost boy crying in the dark for his family.
23
Even before Stephanie and Joe crossed the Potomac last night, it had seemed like they’d driven for hours when Joe turned west on 66, then veered off onto 81 and finally onto a secondary road. Time, like reality, had become distorted when Stephanie’s life became the stuff of those spy novels she’d devoured as a girl.
Be careful what you wish for.
Yeah, she thought, staring at the ceiling of a rustic cabin nestled in the woods somewhere in rural Bath County in southwest Virginia. Be careful what you wish for, you just might get it. People were trying to kill her because she was helping to stop a terrorist plot and expose a traitor. Bullets and bad guys came with the territory, unless she and Joe could outrun and outsmart them.
So far, so good. They’d arrived at this out-of-the-way spot in the earliest part of the morning, awakening a grumpy innkeeper who’d given Joe the keys to the little cabin at the far end of the trail.
“It’s as far from the road as he had available,” Joe had said as he’d opened the door and stood aside for Stephanie to enter.
She’d been too exhausted to take much more than a cursory glance at the worn pine floors and slightly shabby furniture before she’d used the bathroom and collapsed on the first bed she saw.
That had to have been a while ago, she thought, because sunlight from a low-hanging sun streamed in through a small double-hung window. Outside she could see the green of trees swaying in a summer breeze. Inside, she smelled bacon. And coffee.
Joe.
Feeling like death warmed over, she slogged her way out of the bed and stumbled into the main area of the cabin—which consisted of the living room, dining area, and kitchen—to see him, standing in those sexy bare feet again and wearing nothing but a pair of soft faded jeans and a few droplets of water from what must have been a recent shower.
His back was to her as he cooked, which worked out just fine because she was fascinated by that broad, bare back and by the tattoo that ran from the nape of his neck to the spot on his spine where it disappeared beneath the waistband of his jeans.
The tattoo was a mix of cobalt blues, scarlet reds, powder whites, and rusty golds. It snaked sinuously down his backbone, all sleek knots and vibrant strokes.
A ribbon, she realized. A red, white, and blue ribbon braided with letters and numbers and—oh God.
“Bryan.”
She hadn’t realized she’d spoken out loud until he twisted around, saw her standing there.
“Bryan,” she repeated, walking toward him. “Bryan’s name is on your back.”
Not just Bryan’s, she realized when she reached him and touched her finger to her brother’s name. There were many names, many dates—a dozen at least—and she felt her heart stumble when she recognized the date that Bryan had died.
Joe turned slowly so he was facing her. He looked self-conscious and somber and apologetic. “I wanted to make certain no one ever forgot,” he said, watching her face.
“All of them? You lost all of them?”
He clenched his jaw, looked over her head, and she knew he saw the horror of the deaths of each and every one of the men who had been his brothers in arms.
“I’ll go put a shirt on,” he said, and started to move away.
She stopped him with a hand on his arm. “You are so much more than meets the eye,” she whispered, then wrapped her arms around his waist and held him. Just held him, to let him know that he didn’t have to carry that burden of pain alone.
His arms came around her slowly. He lowered his cheek to the top of her head, breathed deep. For the longest time they just stood that way, holding on, holding tight, sharing a moment of reassurance that although those brave men he’d memorialized were dead, the two of them were alive.
“The bacon is going to burn,” he said finally.
“Well, we can’t have that,” she said with a smile and reluctantly pulled away. “I need a shower.”
“Watch the hot water faucet. It’s very sensitive.”
She nodded, turned to go.
“Wait.” He stopped her, held a finger in the air that said hold on, then rummaged around in the cabinets. “We don’t want that cast getting wet.”
He produced a plastic bread wrapper and a roll of silver tape, then fit the wrapper over her hand and taped it on so that the water couldn’t seep through to her cast.
It made her smile. “Yet one more use for duct tape. Bry used to carry a roll with him everywhere he went.”
“You say that like everyone doesn’t.”
Oh, my God, would you look at that smile, she thought, grinning back at him. Who knew.
“Like I said. There is so much more to you than meets the eye.”
“Take your shower,” he advised, looking self-conscious again. “The eggs will be done when you come out.”
“So you figure we’re going to be here awhile?” Stephanie nodded toward the counter where Joe had unloaded a couple sacks full of groceries he’d apparently gone out and bought while she’d been sleeping. She’d finished off the last of her breakfast, which was actually an early afternoon lunch. Now she sat at the small pine dining table sipping her coffee, wearing a white terry-cloth robe she’d found hanging on the back of the bathroom door.
“Hard to tell.” Joe stared at his coffee mug, absently running the pad of his thumb over the lip. “I figured better safe than sorry and the less we go out, the less chance of being spotted.”
“Did I dream it or did you call someone while we were on the road last night?”
“Sherwood. I let him know what happened at the safe house. He was going to send a team out to, well, clean up, and see if they could get any leads from the, ah…”
“Bodies,” she finished for him. “Got it.”
She was responsible for one of those bodies.
“Don’t think about it,” he said. She brought her head up as she blocked out that horrible picture of lifeless eyes and blood everywhere. “Don’t think about it,” he repeated.
She nodded. She didn’t want to think about it. She didn’t want to think about anything but tomorrow or the day after when all of this would hopefully be behind her.
“This is good,” she said, finishing off her breakfast. “Do all you guys cook this well?”
“Colter burns everything he touches. Savage knows his way around a grill but that’s about it for him. But yeah, the rest of us cook.”
“Good to know.” She lifted a coffee mug to her lips. “You’re a handy man to have around, Joe Green.”
Fo
r God’s sake, she was running for her life, but she couldn’t seem to stop herself from flirting with this man. Maybe it was a derivative of gallows humor catching up with her. Maybe her mind just couldn’t take any more terror and flirting with Joe Green was simply an excellent diversion.
Or maybe he was just a very special man.
Last night at the safe house, when she’d kissed him … she kept thinking about it. In the shower, knowing he was just in the other room—God, she kept hoping he’d strip off those jeans and join her.
That wasn’t her. She wasn’t ruled by her libido.
At least she hadn’t been until she’d kissed him.
To be continued.
He’d made her a promise. On the backside of a blistering kiss, he’d promised that he wasn’t nearly through with her. When she looked up and met his eyes, she could see that he was thinking about that promise now, too.
When he realized she’d caught him staring, however, he shot up from the table and busied himself gathering up their dirty plates. “How’s the wrist?”
Okay. How did she interpret this? Was he having second thoughts? Did he think that she was? Because he clearly didn’t want to go there, she followed his lead.
“It feels pretty good today.”
He shot her a doubtful look.
“Really. Look. The swelling in my fingers is almost totally gone. And I even managed to rinse out my … um … underwear,” she finally finished, then wished she’d never brought her underwear into the conversation. Oh, well. He’d know it soon enough anyway since her bra and panties were hanging over the shower curtain rod drip-drying.
“Just the same,” he said, his back to her as he ran water in the sink, “it would be smart to ice it again.”
The man was in misery. He could no longer look at her. Which meant one of two things. Either he was embarrassed by the talk of women’s undies—and she hardly thought a man who faced death for a living would be taken down by a few scraps of satin and lace—or he was having a hard time keeping his hands off of her.
She decided to go with door number two. And she also decided to give him some time to get used to the idea of what now seemed inevitable between them.
Besides, she needed to get back to work. Too many people were depending on her.
“I don’t suppose there’s such a thing as Internet access here.”
“I made sure there was when I booked the cabin.”
She should have known. “I’ll get to work, then.”
A couple of hours later, Stephanie said, “You know, something has been bothering me about this from the beginning. I couldn’t figure out how the Russian connection fit in. I mean, the Afghans and the Russians have been enemies for years.”
“So you’re wondering why U.S. specs for E-bomb technology were found in Taliban hands and apparently about to be shipped to Russia,” Joe concluded.
“Exactly. It doesn’t make sense. So I’m thinking we were off on that one.”
“What does make sense?” Joe asked, apparently sensing she’d figured it out.
“Something that got lost in the rush to get Rafe and B.J. to Colombia. Remember that even though it was only a month or so ago that those specs turned up in Afghanistan, the encrypted communiqués that Alan Hendricks had deleted dated back over a year. All of them mentioned the E-bomb technology.”
“So, you’re thinking—what? That it was just a fluke that the specs were on that truck?”
She nodded her head slowly. “Yeah. I’m thinking the specs have probably been passed around to the highest bidder for over a year now. And for most rogue nations, the specs are worthless. They don’t have the facilities or the manpower or the money to tackle a project that complex.”
“You now feel the Russian connection is irrelevant?”
She shook her head. “No. The Russian connection is very relevant. Just for a different reason. Look at this.”
She showed him her notes. “Do you recognize any of these terms?”
He read through the list. “Looks like a parts list.”
“Exactly. I did a web search. They’re submarine parts. All shipped from Russia to Colombia.”
“What the hell?” His brows knit together in momentary confusion before it hit him. He shot up from his chair. “The bastards plan to deploy the E-bomb from a sub—with the parts coming from Russia. Jesus. It makes perfect sense,” he said, scrubbing a hand over his head. “Other than funneling them through Mexico, do you know the preferred method of smuggling drugs into the U.S. from Colombia?”
“I’m guessing submarine?” she said. She felt dizzy; her head was spinning.
“Exactly. The same type of sub they use to smuggle coke would be perfect for delivery and deployment of an E-bomb. It’s the ultimate stealth weapon. Underwater, no radar profile; above water, still no radar profile unless someone gets lucky and is flying over with an airplane that has look-down radar. And these subs the Colombian drug cartel uses to transport coke are often smaller and can fit into places that our attack boats can’t.”
Stephanie felt her blood run cold. “With the stealth subs transporting the E-bombs and the Black Ruby stealth device cloaking them once they’re deployed, our surface-to-air defensive missiles don’t have a chance to intercept them.”
Joe paced back and forth, stopped abruptly. “Rafe, B.J., and the BOIs—they’re looking in the wrong place. They won’t find the manufacturing facility in Medellín. Find the sub; find the bomb. It’s got to be in a seaport city. Cartagena, maybe. Possibly Barranquilla—”
“Or any one of a dozen cities along the Colombian coast,” Stephanie interrupted. “I need to get back to work on the coded messages. There’s got to be a reference somewhere, something to point us to the right port.”
“In the meantime, we’ve got to get this info to Crystal so she can relay it to the guys. Between her and Nate and the crew, hopefully they can get it to Rafe and B.J.”
“Before it’s too late,” Stephanie added unnecessarily. Joe and everyone else associated with this op knew that the clock was ticking like a bomb.
“Nothing,” Stephanie said after three more long, frustrating hours of combing through the coded messages. “If there’s a reference to the location of the facility, I missed it.”
Joe wasn’t buying that. He’d seen how hard she worked, how thorough she was. And how exhausted she was as she lay her head on the table.
“You didn’t miss anything,” he assured her. “You fine-tooth-combed each and every message. The information just isn’t there.”
“I need to go over it all again.”
“No,” he said with a forceful scowl when she straightened in the wooden chair and dragged the hair back from her eyes. “You do not.”
She propped an elbow on the table, rested her head in her good hand. “I can’t just sit here and do nothing while they’re flying blind down there.”
“Flying blind is one of their favorite things to do,” he said, trying to get her to ease up on herself. “If these guys aren’t outnumbered and outgunned and fumbling around in the dark, they just don’t have any fun.”
“Fun?”
“What? You think we do this for the money?”
Finally she smiled. “So what you’re saying is that you’re all loose cannons.”
He spun a chair around backward, straddled it, and crossed his arms over the chair back. “I’ll let you in on a little secret. There are many who maintain that BOI stands for something other than Black Ops, Inc.”
“Okay, I’ll bite,” she said when he didn’t elaborate. “What do they say it stands for?”
“Black’s Obnoxious Idiots.”
A bigger smile. Soft and sweet and finally, not quite so tense.
“The guys know how to handle themselves,” he assured her. “B.J., too. And you read Crystal’s response when we e-mailed her. She’ll get hold of them. She’d already made contact with B.J., right? At least B.J. had made contact with her. The woman is resourceful. She’ll figu
re out how to reach Crystal again. In the meantime, you’ve given them something to go on. You’ve done what you needed to do. The rest is up to them.”
“Okay. You’ve convinced me. They’re going to be okay.”
Still, he saw the lingering fear in her eyes.
“My money is always on them.”
Her valiant determination to believe damn near broke his heart. He was so out of his element around her. He always had been. From the first moment he’d set eyes on Bry’s kid sister ten years ago, he’d been trying to figure out why it felt like his bell had been rung, cracked, and de-clappered all in one righteous peal. It was like he didn’t have any defense mechanism in play or had no contingency plan to help him deal with the things he felt just looking at her.
