A Forever Kind of Hero

by Marie Ferrarella

She knew exactly what he was referring to. And she had her own reasons for not giving in. “Why, because I don’t take instructions during lovemaking?”

  There was no explaining what was in his heart—why Megan’s refusal rankled him the way it did. He couldn’t even form the words satisfactorily in his own mind.

  He took a deep breath, looking away. “Something like that,” he muttered.

  Megan wanted to tell him. She wanted to let him know that he had touched something. Something that made her afraid. Something that had been so paralyzed within her that she had believed it was gone altogether. She wanted to let him know that calling him by his first name, no matter how insignificant it might sound, would let him completely into her world and give him a powerful hold over her.

  But she couldn’t explain. The words wouldn’t come, because the words would make her weak. A target for pain. She refused to be a target.

  And yet, there was something in his eyes. Something that wouldn’t let her turn away, either. Tom, confused, she touched his shoulder.

  “What?”

  Megan nearly turned away then, but that would have been the safer thing to do. So, because it had always been the way she’d lived her life, she ventured out onto the tightrope, if only for a second. If only for a view.

  “If it could be anyone,” she confessed enigmatically, “it would be you.”

  He looked into her eyes and understood. But knew, too, that she needed the cloak of ambiguity in order to survive the words, the feeling. “Bureau teach you to talk in code?”

  She smiled then. “Bureau taught me never to lead with my chin.”

  “This chin?” He nibbled on it.

  Desire sprang up from a hidden well, refreshed. Eager. Wanting.

  “Yes,” she said with difficulty.

  “Just wanted to get my bearings straight.”

  His lips moved to her ear, his breath sending shivers through her. She felt his desire growing as she heard his breath shorten.

  She drew his hands to her breasts. “You’re always forgetting your map,” she reminded him.

  He rubbed his thumb along her hardening tips. “That’s because real men don’t need directions on how to get somewhere. They just know.”

  There was no question in her mind, as she arched into him, that he was just that. A real man.

  Chapter 15

  “Okay, this is it, everybody. We’re on!” Garrett gave the order to mobilize into the walkie-talkie he was holding.

  On the monitor in front of him, Velasquez and his men were walking out of the suite one floor above. After an entire day of inertia, things were finally beginning to move.

  “About time,” Harris responded on the other end.

  It was, Garrett thought as he watched the men leave the suite. Way past time. If they pulled this off and arrested Velasquez with the goods, the drug dealer’s fall was fifteen years overdue. The last five years had been spent trying to set a trap that would catch not only the little fish, but the bigger one as well. Until now, Velasquez had always managed to elude them at the last minute.

  Not this time, Garrett swore to himself.

  Overconfidence, he reasoned, had made the drug dealer careless about the little details. And it was the little details that always tripped them up.

  Garrett could feel it in his bones. Tonight was the night that Andy, and all the others who had succumbed to the lure of the drugs Velasquez pushed, would finally have their revenge.

  Switching off the walkie-talkie so he could talk to her in private, Garrett turned toward Megan. There was no time to dwell on the last twelve hours. No time to relive any of the moments they’d spent in each other’s arms, keeping not only boredom at bay, but time and thought as well.

  There was only enough time to issue a terse warning.

  “I want you to be careful.” His eyes narrowed as he saw her chin rise. He was beginning to know the signs. “And don’t give me any of your invinciblewoman garbage, understand? You can get shot just like everyone else. Once they’re all out, give it ten minutes and then go get Kathy. There should only be one man left.”

  A movement on the screen drew Megan’s attention back to the monitor.

  “I don’t think that’s possible.” Megan set her mouth grimly as she pointed to the monitor. One of Velasquez’s men was herding Kathy out before him. “Why would he take her?” There wasn’t going to be any need for a courier. “What do you think it means?”

  From the information the DEA had gathered, Kathy Teasdale was the newest member of Velasquez’s inner circle. Her parents were easily the wealthiest; Velasquez had to know that.

  This had the smell of ransom about it. Garrett didn’t like it. “It means that he thinks something’s up. She’s his insurance.”

  The last man out closed the door. By Megan’s count, that only left one man in the suite with the other three girls—just as Garrett had speculated.

  “Insurance against what?”

  “Us.” It was the only logical assumption. “Maybe he thinks the DEA knows.”

  That didn’t make sense to her. Velasquez had already called off the exchange twice. “But then why go through with it at all? Why not just switch to another location again?”

  “His supplier’s getting irritated with this game of musical cities, and Velasquez isn’t sure whether we know or not Besides, word has it his supply’s drying up, and he needs this to stay in business.” Frustrated by this added complication, Garrett threw up his hands. “Look, if I could second-guess him, he’d be ours by now.”

  Curbing his temper, Garrett switched the walkie-talkie on again. “All units, Velasquez has a young girl with him. Looks like she’s a hostage. Exercise caution. We’d like to get her out alive if possible.”

  If possible.

  The phrase leaped out at Megan and burned itself into her brain. She placed a hand on the walkie-talkie. “Make it possible,” she ordered.

  He drew the walkie-talkie away, switching it off. “I’ll do what I can, Megan. It’s the best I can promise.”

  When Garrett started for the door, she fell into place beside him. “Looks like we’re riding together to the end on this one.”

  Garrett stopped dead. “Megan—”

  “Don’t ‘Megan’ me,” she cautioned. There was no room for debate, and no time. “I go with you or behind you—but I go, understand?”

  He understood, all right. Understood that the woman was pigheaded beyond belief. “She’s a client, Megan. There’s no reason to put your life on the line—”

  Megan knew he didn’t believe it for a minute. “She’s a fourteen-year-old girl, and probably scared out of her mind. If she were Andy—?”

  She didn’t have to finish.

  Exasperated, Garrett waved her forward. It was either that, he thought, or lock her in the closet. He had to admit that, for a split second, he entertained the latter solution and found more than a little pleasure in the image.

  “C’mon, we’re running out of time.”

  Megan pulled the seat belt tightly around her. “Do you know where we’re going?”

  Garrett was once more in the driver’s seat. The department had secured a vehicle for him that accommodated his long frame, and the subcompact had been returned to the rental agency by another operative with far less field experience.

  Garrett slanted an icy look in her direction. This time, he’d made sure he double-checked directions before starting out. This was far too important for him to risk getting tripped up by even the slightest detail.

  “Yes, I know where we’re going. It’s a private airstrip just outside Reno. The drugs are coming in via a private jet that belongs to a very prominent socialite who finds running on the wrong side of the law a great way to get thrills.”

  He’d hoped that Visalia, the Colombian drug lord who was on the other end of this exchange, would come along, but the man had wisely opted to send someone else in his place.

  Some other time, Garrett promised himself silently.
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  “We can’t get our hands on the main supplier—he’s still in Colombia somewhere. But we can break off a few of his tentacles. And we can nail Velasquez.” The last was said with relish.

  The lights of the city were behind them. Megan looked out on the darkening road, wondering what was going through Kathy’s mind. Was she scared? Had she lost all hope of seeing her parents again? With effort, Megan put the questions aside.

  “Isn’t that rather ironic?” she asked. She saw him raise a brow. “Velasquez going to an airport when he’s afraid of flying?”

  He shrugged. “He’s not looking to fly the plane. He’s looking to get richer from its cargo. I don’t know about ironic, but I do know this is way overdue.”

  She could smell the tension in the air. Adrenaline began building within her. She saw nothing ahead but the road, made brighter by the twin beams coming from Garrett’s headlights.

  “You’re sure your men are on the scene?”

  “In every conceivable position,” he assured her. With a day’s warning, they’d been able to infiltrate the area. “And one of our operatives is even an attendant on the incoming flight. That’s how we knew where and when.”

  “You’ve got everything covered, then.” She tried to calm the edgy feeling that was starting to build within her.

  “Nothing is ever covered,” he told her, voicing her own sentiments. She saw Garrett’s hands tighten on the steering wheel. “Velasquez was in our grasp two years ago and managed to wiggle through. We couldn’t capture him. As always, Velasquez got away, and someone else took the fall.”

  She heard the barely controlled anger in his voice. “You’ll get him.”

  The simple prophesy made him smile. “Optimism? Coming from you?”

  “Not optimism—just fact,” she countered. “You’re too good at what you do not to bring him down eventually.” And when he did, she thought, then what? “What are you going to do afterwards?”

  “Afterwards?” Garrett wasn’t sure what she was getting at.

  Megan nodded, looking straight ahead. She didn’t want him to realize just how interested she was in his answer. “After Velasquez ceases to be the driving force in your life.”

  Garrett didn’t care for the way that sounded, or the way she said it. But he would have been less than honest with himself if he didn’t admit that it was true. Bringing Velasquez to justice had been his only focus for a great deal of his adulthood. Once that was accomplished, hard as it was to realize, there would be a hole in his life.

  But, “I haven’t given it much thought,” was all he said to her.

  Megan believed him. He hadn’t thought about the fact that capturing Velasquez would be the first step toward his leading a normal life, or that he could finally begin to heal.

  She said nothing. She’d come as close to asking Garrett about their future—his and hers—as she was going to. If he couldn’t take the hint, then she wasn’t going to push it.

  A mile away from the airstrip, Garrett turned off the car’s headlights. Afraid that one of Velasquez’s people might have stumbled onto their frequency, the walkie-talkies were dormant. Communication was limited to watching tracking blips on a portable computer’s screen. The blips, Garrett told Megan, represented his agents’ positions around the airport.

  She was familiar with the program. “If you can have this,” she whispered to him, “can’t Velasquez?”

  “Not with our modifications,” he assured her. “It’s too technical to explain.”

  But computers were her passion as well as her field of expertise. “Try me,” she encouraged.

  They heard the roar of a duel-engine plane in the distance. He stopped the car. “That would be the delivery. I’ll have to explain it to you some other time.”

  Some other time. It was a throwaway phrase, yet, in her heart, she wanted to believe that he had said it in good faith. That there was to be a “some other time” for them.

  Annoyed that she was allowing herself to be distracted, Megan got out of the car and focused on the area around them.

  The airstrip was just up ahead, and on it a hangar that housed a handful of private airplanes belonging to the area’s wealthy vacationers. Megan wondered how many of Garrett’s people were on the premises, and if they would be enough.

  It didn’t take much to figure out that Velasquez had chosen the airstrip for the exchange because it was so isolated and seemed to eliminate the possibility of a surprise attack. But by the same token, there was nowhere for him and his men to flee if an attack managed to be launched.

  At least, Megan thought, moving behind Garrett through the high foliage, it sounded good in theory.

  Aside from the plane that was coming into view and the two limousines waiting for it on the ground, she didn’t see anyone. “Where are your people?”

  “There,” he assured her.

  She hoped that he wasn’t bluffing.

  Surrounded by his people, Velasquez kept a tight human wall around him. And right before him, like a talisman with which he mocked them, was Kathy.

  Joining Harris and Langtree on the far end of the hangar, Megan took the long-range binoculars that Harris offered her. On the ground, bound, gagged and unconscious, was one of the two sentries that Velasquez had posted on this side of the hangar. The other, Langtree had told Garrett, had been “taken care of.”

  Megan trained the binoculars on Kathy. The girl looked terrified. “That bastard’s handcuffed to her,” Megan realized. She lowered the binoculars and looked at Garrett. “What’s he trying to do?”

  “Stay alive.”

  There was no way that this was going to go down without gunfire. And that worried Garrett. Always before, he’d been able to hone in on the activity alone. His agents were all able-bodied, each capable of taking care of himself. But he’d brought an unknown into this mix. He’d brought Megan, whom he’d never watched under fire. Whom he didn’t want to see under fire.

  Having her here interfered with his concentration.

  As the plane touched down not far from the limousines, Velasquez and his people began to walk toward it. The engines grew silent.

  Show time, thought Garrett.

  “You stay here,” Garrett ordered Megan. Before she could protest, he was walking toward the other end of the hangar—and Velasquez. Garrett unholstered his gun, aiming it toward the drug dealer. “This is the DEA,” he announced. “You’re all under arrest. Surrender your weapons.” Instantly, men began to scramble out of cover, moving into the open, around the men by the limousines. “Otherwise, you won’t get off this field alive.”

  Velasquez’s response was to open fire. Gunfire echoed in the midnight air, mingling with the sounds of screams coming from Kathy and the woman who had just gotten off the plane. The socialite seemed to suddenly realize the penalty for dabbling on the dark side; panicked, she raced back into the plane.

  Taking out her own weapon, Megan zigzagged to Garrett as the latter sought cover behind a plane. “Is that how it’s done?” Her flippant tone camouflaged the slight quaver in her voice. When the first shot rang out, she’d thought that he’d been hit.

  “I told you to stay back,” he growled at her.

  “I don’t work for you, Wichita, remember?” Pressing against the side of the plane, she saved her ammunition. She couldn’t hit anything from this distance. “How are we going to get Kathy away from him?”

  “We’re going to have to bring him down. It’s the only way. There’s too much blood on his hands—he’s not about to allow her to walk.” They heard the sound of an engine starting up, and he remembered the socialite. “Damn it, she’s going to try to take off. Langtree!” he called over to the man. “Can you hit the fuel tank?”

  It was only then that Megan realized the other agent had a rifle in his hand.

  “I can try!” the man called back.

  More rounds were exchanged. The plane began taxiing.

  “McKenna, get one of your men in there with a car!” he sh
outed. “Block the pilot’s way. If he can’t taxi, he can’t fly.”

  “What are you doing?” Megan demanded, trying to grab Garrett’s arm as he left the cover of the plane.

  “Taking a calculated risk.” He shook her off. “Velasquez!” Garrett called out calmly, raising his voice above the sound of the engine. “You and your men can still walk off this field alive. Hand over your weapons. Anything is better than death.”

  The fool was going to walk right in front of Velasquez, Megan thought, her heart pounding. The next minute, she was hurrying after him, refusing to think her actions through. There wasn’t time.

  “All right, you’ve made your point,” Velasquez allowed amiably.

  From where Megan stood, she saw that the man had edged his way closer to the plane. He could sprint to it from where he was. When faced with being taken prisoner, fear of flying apparently took a back seat. She kept her eyes on him, afraid to even blink.

  “No use dying here tonight. Not when there is so much to live for.” He glanced toward the men around him. “You heard the man—put down your weapons.”

  “Too easy,” Garrett murmured loudly enough for only Megan to hear.

  But slowly, as the clatter of weapons being thrown down was heard, men began moving forward, their hands raised.

  Garrett walked over to Velasquez. Well dressed, with an acquired air of refinement, he hardly looked as if he were responsible for so much misery. But he was. And underneath the fine manners and finer clothes was the heart of a jackal. “You, too, Velasquez, raise your hands.”

  “I am handcuffed to this lovely girl,” Velasquez protested, holding his hand up and pointing to the link. Kathy whimpered. “The keys—they are in my pocket.” Velasquez’s smile widened as he looked at Garrett. “With your permission?”

  “You have to think I’m a fool.”

  But even as Garrett moved closer to the other man to get the keys himself, Velasquez pulled out his gun.

  Seeing the glint of the gun barrel, Megan hurled herself at Velasquez, grabbing for his arm. Two shots, going wild, went off in quick succession, before he pulled his hand free, turning his weapon on Megan.