An Officer and a Gentleman
Page 1
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Praise for New York Times and USA TODAY bestselling author Rachel Lee
“Lee is an evocative writer with the ability to effectively build suspense…”
—RT Book Reviews
“A suspenseful edge-of-the-seat read.”
—Publishers Weekly on Caught
“A highly complex thriller…deft use of dialogue.”
—Publishers Weekly on Wildcard
Praise for USA TODAY bestselling author Merline Lovelace
“Merline Lovelace rocks! Like Nora Roberts, she delivers top-rate suspense with great characters, rich atmosphere and a crackling plot!”
—New York Times and USA TODAY bestselling author Mary Jo Putney
“Lovelace’s many fans have come to expect her signature strong, brave, resourceful heroines and she doesn’t disappoint.”
—Booklist
New York Times and USA TODAY Bestselling Author
RACHEL LEE
An Officer and a Gentleman
CONTENTS
AN OFFICER AND A GENTLEMAN
Rachel Lee
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
NIGHT OF THE JAGUAR
Merline Lovelace
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
AN OFFICER AND A GENTLEMAN
New York Times and USA TODAY Bestselling Author
Rachel Lee
RACHEL LEE
was hooked on writing by the age of twelve, and practiced her craft as she moved from place to place all over the United States. This New York Times bestselling author now resides in Florida and has the joy of writing full-time. Her bestselling Conard County series (see www.conardcounty.com) has won the hearts of readers worldwide, and it’s no wonder, given her own approach to life and love. As she says, “Life is the biggest romantic adventure of all—and if you’re open and aware, the most marvelous things are just waiting to be discovered.”
To Mom, for nagging me into this.
I will miss you always even though
I know you’re only one whisper away.
Chapter 1
“You okay, cowboy?” The voice was cool, light.
Alisdair MacLendon’s eyes snapped open. Blue lights flashed intermittently, giving an unearthly look to the youthful face that was bent over him. Too young to shave, MacLendon thought groggily, and nobody calls me cowboy, least of all some snotty kid.
Moving was a mistake. Shooting stars slashed across his vision, and some idiot with a jackhammer started trying to take a chunk out of the side of his skull.
“Hey! Cowboy!” The kid’s light voice became sharper. “Open those eyes. Tell me where it hurts.”
“My head, damn it!” His eyes flew open again. Nobody called him cowboy.
“Sergeant!” The light voice took on authority as the kid called to someone Alisdair couldn’t see. “We’ve got a head injury over here. What have you got?”
“This idiot wasn’t wearing his seat belt. He’s got the windshield in his face. Can’t tell about the rest.”
“Radio the hospital.”
The youthful face turned back to MacLendon, who was thinking that if he puked now it would be perfect. What had happened? Oh, yeah, some turkey in a blue hot rod had run the stop sign at about ninety miles an hour. He remembered the sickening thud as his head slammed into the door stanchion.
“Just going to check you out a little, cowboy,” the kid said, voice pitched soothingly. Fingers moved through his hair lightly, feeling the side of his head.
“Ouch!” The fingers found the place where the jackhammer was working.
“You’re gonna have one hell of a goose egg,” the kid said. “Does anything else hurt?”
“No.”
The kid backed off a little, squatting. For the first time MacLendon was able to identify the components of an Air Force security police uniform: nylon winter jacket, beret, holstered gun. Captain’s bars winking at the shoulders. Captain’s bars? This kid was too young.
“You cold?” the too-young captain asked. “I’m afraid we don’t have any blankets, but the ambulance will be here in a couple of minutes.”
“I’m okay.” If okay was a knife in the brain, spots before the eyes, and a heaving stomach. “What’s a captain doing on patrol?” he asked. Anything to keep from thinking about his discomfort.
A grin, a one-shouldered shrug. “Keeps the troops on their toes if I show up at odd hours. Midnight on Friday seemed like a good time to pull a little inspection.”
This baby-faced captain was a man right after MacLendon’s own heart. And God, he must be getting older than he thought if a captain looked like a baby to him. He closed his eyes against a sudden wave of nausea.
“Hey, cowboy!” The voice sharpened. “Stay awake. Talk to me!”
“I’m not a cowboy, damn it!” His sudden glare was convincing enough to cause the captain to blink.
“Sorry. Sure are dressed like one, though.” Cool eyes took in his jeans, boots, and shearling jacket. “Could’ve sworn that was a Stetson over there on the seat.”
Spunky young idiot, MacLendon thought, and in spite of his irritation and pain and wooziness, a corner of his thin mouth twitched. He wondered if he should tell this youngster who he was, then decided against it. He would enjoy it a whole lot more when he felt better.
The young head tilted. “I hear the ambulance, sir. Two more minutes.” Leaning forward over him, the captain reached to release the seat belt.
Something soft pressed against MacLendon’s chin, and he drew a sharp breath.
“Did I hurt you?” The captain’s concern was swift.
Ever afterward, MacLendon wondered what had caused him to say something so outrageous and could only conclude that he’d been more rattled by the accident than he thought. He said, “You have breasts.”
The captain blinked, and then a quirky, humorous grin spread across her face. “Yes, sir,” she said smartly. “Standard female issue, one pair.”
God, MacLendon thought, closing his eyes. This captain was going to be a handful. He could see it coming.
Suddenly a radio crackled. “Alpha Tango Niner.”
The captain stood up and reached for the radio that hung on her left hip. Security cops ate with them, slept with them, and all but showered with them.
“Alpha Tango N
iner,” she said.
“Intruder alert at Zulu Bravo,” said a tinny voice.
“Charlie? This is Captain Burke. Alert the team. What have you got?”
“An alarm. No visual yet.”
“Roger. I’m tied up at a traffic accident for a couple more minutes, but I should reach Zulu Bravo in fifteen to twenty minutes. You know the drill.”
Flashing red lights joined the flashing blue ones of the security truck. Captain Burke turned and was saying something, but MacLendon couldn’t make it out. The nausea in his stomach suddenly roared into his ears, and the last pinprick of light disappeared into utter darkness.
The row of B-52 bombers were hulking eerily in the pinkish light of mercury vapor lamps that turned their camouflage colors into muddy shadows. Looking like monstrous science fiction mosquitoes, their sleek bodies faced the runway. The long wings sagged beneath their own weight, saved from touching the tarmac only by the wheels attached to the undersides of the wing tanks. As the planes rolled down the runway, however, those wings would lift and the planes would no longer look awkward. Soaring, these birds became elegant creatures of the air.
Captain Andrea Burke never ceased to marvel that anything so ungainly could fly. The B-52 pilots claimed utter faith in their planes. Like the Flying Fortresses of World World II, the B-52s could limp home even with massive damage, and having seen some of that damage, Andrea Burke could well believe the stories she’d heard. More than once during her Air Force career, she’d seen one of these bombers land safely with an injury that would have toppled a commercial airliner from the skies.
They were old, they were creaky, many of their parts now had to be manufactured by their repair crews, and they were being replaced by the latest marvels. Like old horses about to be sent to pasture, they had served well and faithfully. With their passing, Andrea thought, an era would end. Since earliest childhood, she’d watched these babies fly. Soon they would fly no more.
“It has to be a fault in the security system, Captain,” Sergeant Halliday told her, breaking into her thoughts. “There’s absolutely no evidence that someone crossed the perimeter.”
Andrea’s men had searched every nook and cranny of the controlled area in the last three hours, and she was inclined to agree with Halliday’s assessment. A sensor had been tripped, setting off an alarm at the monitor station, but a lot of things could trip a sensor, from debris blowing in the ceaseless North Dakota wind to a voltage drop.
It was nearly four in the morning, and Andrea very badly wanted to rub her eyes. Refusing to let her growing fatigue show, however, she repressed the urge. “What if someone was leaving the area, rather than entering?”
Sergeant Halliday was Andrea’s electronic security expert. A man around her own age of twenty-eight, Halliday had joined the Air Force at seventeen and promptly displayed an awesome genius for anything through which electricity flowed. He was tall, painfully thin, and even more painfully shy—except when he talked about electronics. Then, and only then, he acknowledged no superior.
“Well, ma’am,” he said easily in his lazy Georgia drawl, “if that’s the case, we’ve got serious trouble. That means someone gained access to a controlled area without tripping any of the security systems. To do that, they’d either have to know the system inside out, or they’d have to pass the sentries. Either way, it’s not good.”
“That’s what I figured.” Andrea leaned back against the wall and looked out again at the hulking B-52s. “Well, I think we’re safe in saying there’re no unauthorized personnel in the area now.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Halliday’s eyes were faded-looking behind his thick glasses.
“So find me a fault in the system, Halliday. Pin it down so I can get my butt into bed.” She tempered the words with a faint smile, and Halliday returned it.
“You got it, Captain.” Bending again to his terminals and displays, Halliday continued his diagnostics.
“Do you know anything about the new commander we’re getting?” he asked as he worked.
“Only what everyone else has heard, I guess,” Andrea replied. “I hear he flew bombers in hot zones all over the globe, that he’s some kind of hotshot jet jockey—some even say he was in the Thunderbirds—and that he’s up for brigadier general.”
“That’s what I hear, too. I suppose he’ll stick his nose into everything.”
“That’s his job,” Andrea replied noncommittally. Privately, she wasn’t looking forward to the change of command any more than anyone else.
He would be the commander of the base’s host organization, and as such he was very definitely top dog. The personality of the man on top had repercussions all the way down the ladder. As commander of Security Forces on the base, Andrea reported directly to him, as did almost all the other commanders on base. Their current commander had been content to let his subordinates do their jobs. The new man might have very different ideas.
“We’ll survive, Halliday,” she said after a moment. “Frankly, I’ll start surviving a heck of a lot better when the change of command ceremony is over. I hate those affairs.”
Halliday glanced up with a grin. “You could always get sick.”
“Great first impression.” Returning her gaze to the planes outside, she fell into uneasy reflection. Not everyone would be pleased to find one of his commanders was a woman. Command opportunities were limited, and despite the equal opportunity environment of the Air Force, those opportunities were even more severely limited for women.
“Captain?” Once again Halliday’s voice called her from thought. “I think I found it. Looks like an equipment failure.”
Andrea straightened and pulled her beret into place. “Thanks, Halliday. How long will it take to pinpoint?”
He shrugged. “Maybe a couple of hours.”
“Okay. I’ll tell the sentries to stay sharp in the meantime. Call me when you’ve got it repaired.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
When, Andrea found herself wondering, was the last time she’d gotten a decent night’s sleep? Being a squadron commander was something like being a mother, a priest, a judge and a jury all rolled up in one, and there was no such thing as an eight-hour day or an uninterrupted night. She loved her work, but sometimes she thought she just ought to move a cot into her office and catnap round the clock in fifteen-minute snatches.
The predawn air of late October was cold, presaging the coming North Dakota winter. Almost time for survival gear again, she thought. Not since she graduated from the Academy six years ago had she seen anything approaching a warm climate. The wind nipped at her ears and tugged at her beret as she trudged to her blue security patrol pickup truck. Always the wind. She couldn’t remember when it had ever stopped.
When Andrea Burke finally collapsed on her bed in the BOQ, Bachelor Officers’ Quarters, it was five-thirty in the morning. She spared just enough time to shed her jacket, boots and pistol, and then fell fully clothed across the blankets. Like it or not, she was going to have to go to the office today and write a report. So much for Saturday. But first a couple of hours of blessed sleep.
She was just spiraling down into the reaches of a warm place where alerts didn’t exist when the phone rang. Cursing vigorously, she rolled over and considered not answering it. Business would come crackling over the radio on her night table, not over the phone. Groaning, she picked up the receiver anyway. You never knew.
“Burke.”
“Captain, this is Sergeant Nickerson.”
Nickerson. The auto accident. She’d sent the sergeant to the hospital to clean up the details while she raced over to the airfield.
“Shoot,” she said, rubbing her eyes.
“I thought you should know,” he said. “That guy who was in the vehicle that was hit?”
“Yeah, the cowboy. What about him?”
“Ma’am, he ain’t no cowboy. He’s a bird colonel, name of Alisdair MacLendon. Captain, he’s our new commander.”
The expletive that escaped Andre
a’s lips was both unladylike and expressive. Nickerson chuckled.
“Thought you should know, ma’am,” he said again, and rang off.
For the moment, all hope of sleep was forgotten. The new commanding officer, so of course she had called him cowboy. And naturally she had managed to shove her chest into his face, making it unalterably certain that he was aware of her sex, which was one thing she absolutely didn’t allow to intrude on her job.
Well, she was just too damn tired to worry about it now. That knock on the head would keep him cooped up in the hospital for a couple of days, anyhow. In the meantime, she had to sleep.
The groan that escaped her this time was satisfied, as her head landed on the soft pillow. Nor was sleep shy. It caught her instantly in a warm embrace.
Noon found Andrea staring at her bleary-eyed face in the mirror. She’d always looked a little like Huck Finn, with her reddish blond hair and the smattering of golden freckles across her nose and cheeks. Her short haircut did nothing to dispel the illusion.
Sticking her tongue out at herself, she turned from the mirror and headed for the door. Today she was off duty, and dropping by the office to write a report didn’t mean she had to wear a uniform. The people in her squadron had gotten used to the sight of her in her Air Force Academy sweat suit and jogging shoes. She’d grown up as the middle child in a family with six boys, and it was easier for her to be one of the guys than anything else. Pretty soon, everybody who was around her for a while realized she was just that: one of the guys.
Picking up her radio, she stepped through the door and set out at an easy jog.
The front office at the Security Forces Headquarters building was at its usual Saturday afternoon ebb. The radio crackled with quiet static: two cops sat drinking coffee and looking bored. Andrea trotted past them with a nod.