by Rachel Lee
Her body remembered things, too: the way his hands felt sliding over her skin, cupping her breasts, grazing their peaks until she ached. The way his buttocks bunched under her hands when he thrust into her.
“Damn it, Burke,” she said aloud. “Quit it!” Two solid days of lovemaking and laughter, and she was greedy for more. Unbelievable.
It was with great relief that she heard Nickerson’s familiar knock on her door. Now maybe she would get her mind on work, where it belonged.
Nick carried a large envelope with him, as well as his usual folder, and he handed the envelope to her.
“For you, ma’am. It arrived just a couple minutes ago.”
Andrea recognized Dare’s office code in the return address block. “What now?” she wondered, then shrugged, setting it aside. It could wait until after Nick brought her up to date. “What do you have for me, Nick?”
“The usual.” He helped himself to coffee and took a seat. “Do you really want the litany?”
Andrea had to smile. “Photocopy it and give me a copy. What’s on your mind?”
“Did you hear what almost happened to MacLendon Saturday morning?”
Andrea was surprised that Dare’s visit to the BOQ wasn’t all over the base by now. The military grapevine usually worked better than this. “I heard. Somebody punctured his hydraulic lines.”
Nick nodded. “So he told you. I wondered if it was true.”
“Yes.”
“Begging your pardon, ma’am, but what the hell are we going to do about it?”
“I told him I was going to investigate whether he liked it or not.”
Nickerson nodded. “I’m glad you did, skipper. I don’t know who he called in to handle this mess, but I reckon it was OSI, and if you’ll excuse me for saying so, they ain’t accomplished diddly squat so far. I was going to ask for your permission to pursue an investigation on my own.”
“I was going to ask you to join me in mine.”
Nickerson smiled. “I’m with you all the way, Captain.”
Andrea reached for the envelope and cut it open. Inside, as she had half expected, was an incident report on the events of Saturday morning. A hand-written note was attached.
You said you were going ahead whether I wanted you to or not, so I thought you should have all the available information. Unfortunately I don’t have access to everything OSI may have learned, but everything we’ve been able to give them is here.
Andrea looked up. “It’s all here, Nick, everything MacLendon can put together about what happened. After I read it, I’ll pass it on to you, but I don’t want anyone else to see it or to know that you and I are investigating.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Nickerson looked satisfied as he rose. “I’ll get you a copy of the weekend incident report.”
Dare’s mood was, to put it mildly, crummy. He and the entire Wing were grounded as a result of Saturday’s events. No more flying until the culprit was found. The alert planes, the bombers that stood ready with weapons aboard, were surrounded by a tight cordon of security guards, some of whom were OSI. Dare had been angry enough on Saturday, but it was nothing compared to what he felt now at having his Wing’s operations hampered. One entire AAC bomb wing, an essential link in the nation’s defenses, had been brought to its knees by one or two crazies with a grudge. It was enough to make him crazy.
The higher-ups didn’t like it, either. He had been in some uncomfortable positions in his life, but never before had one so closely resembled the Iroquois torture of roasting a man alive over hot coals. He was under pressure from all directions, yet there wasn’t a damn thing he could personally do except ensure that AAC didn’t get another black eye by losing a plane and crew. OSI was doing what it could, eliminating suspects one by one, but nothing was moving fast enough to please anyone.
Wednesday afternoon brought the only bright spot to his entire week. During the early afternoon, Andrea called him.
“Colonel, if you can see your way to coming over here, I’d highly recommend it.”
Dare looked out his window at the blowing snow and frowned. “What is it?”
“I don’t want to spoil the surprise, sir, but you could classify this as a sort of public relations matter. A pleasant one.”
Well, he thought, it would give him an opportunity to see Andrea, even if only formally. Maybe he could even find a private minute with her to discuss the upcoming weekend.
“Give me twenty minutes, Captain.” It would take him almost that long to get into his cold weather gear. With the temperature at twenty-seven below and the wind blowing at forty to forty-five miles an hour, it was no day for cutting corners, even for a short trip.
Andrea was waiting for him in the front office of Security Police Headquarters. With her stood a wizened elderly man with a ramrod posture that belied his years. Throwing back his hood and peeling off his gloves, Dare strode toward them.
“You wanted to see me, Captain?”
“Yes, sir. Thank you for coming. Colonel, this is Mr. Selfridge. He farms up toward the Canadian border. Mr. Selfridge, Colonel MacLendon, commander of our base.”
Dare shook the old farmer’s hand, saying, “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Selfridge.”
Selfridge eyed him keenly and then gave an approving nod. “Reckon you’ve seen combat.”
“I have.”
“I was in South Korea, myself.”
Dare smiled. “Then it’s an honor to meet you. What can I do for you, Mr. Selfridge?”
“Not a thing,” said Selfridge, surprising him with a laugh. “Not a thing. Just have something to return to you.”
Perplexed, MacLendon looked at Andrea and saw the devil lights in her hazy green eyes. At once he felt the corner of his mouth lift in anticipation. Well, he could use a good joke.
“Mr. Selfridge,” Andrea said, “came to return some government property.”
“What’s that?” Dare asked, totally at sea now.
Andrea pointed to a box at her feet. “This, sir. Mr. Selfridge collected three more boxes as well.”
“They’re out in my truck,” Selfridge assured him.
Andrea’s eyes sparkled with humor, and Dare decided to go along with her. Squatting, he opened the top of the box and stared. It was filled with hair-fine, aluminum-coated glass fibers.
“This is chaff,” Dare said blankly.
“Yes, sir,” Andrea said gravely, betrayed by a faint tremor in her voice. “Four whole boxes of chaff.”
“Saw it fall off one of your planes,” Selfridge said. “Damn stuff went everywhere. Had a hell of a time collecting it all, but I think I got most of it.”
Dare froze in his squatting position and hastily covered his mouth with his hand, rubbing it as if lost in thought. He didn’t dare look at Andrea for fear he would be unable to contain his laughter. These fine little fibers, called chaff, were dispensed by aircraft in order to confuse radar. Millions upon millions of these dipoles were often expended in a single evasive maneuver, and they had absolutely no further value once they were emptied from their tubes. Dare almost couldn’t bear to think of Mr. Selfridge conscientiously collecting all these little hairs.
Dare cleared his throat. “Ah, Captain Burke?”
“Sir?”
“Why don’t you get a photographer over here. I want to thank Mr. Selfridge properly, and I’d like him to have a photograph as a mark of our appreciation.”
“Yes, sir.” Pivoting, Andrea strode up the hallway.
Slowly rising to his feet, Dare glanced at the two desk cops. That wasn’t a safe direction to look, either. From their wooden expressions, he gathered they were close to strangling on their suppressed laughter. The only place left to look was at Selfridge.
“I can’t imagine,” Dare said to the farmer, “how you ever found all these on the snow.”
“Twasn’t difficult to see them. They’re gray against the snow. It was the devil to collect ’em. Thought they might be secret, though, and I couldn’t see letting
them blow all over where anyone might find them.”
Dare managed a nod. “Why don’t we go to Captain Burke’s office and have some coffee while we wait for the photographer?”
“Let me get the other boxes of that stuff in here first.”
“That won’t be necessary. These two airmen will get them for you.” The two desk cops no longer looked like laughing, Dare saw. Satisfied, he escorted Selfridge to Andrea’s office. She was just hanging up the phone when the two men entered.
“The photographer’s on his way over, sir.”
“Good, good.” Smiling broadly, Dare ushered Selfridge to a chair. “Pour Mr. Selfridge some coffee, Captain.” He enjoyed the flash of irritation the order brought to her green eyes.
“What do you raise, Mr. Selfridge?” Dare asked while Andrea dealt with the coffee.
“Durum wheat. My boys do most of the work these days, but it don’t hardly seem fair to them. There ain’t much money in it, for sure. Not like there used to be. Time was a farmer could expect to make a fair living from the soil, but the price of seed and fertilizer’s shot to the moon.”
“It’s rough,” Dare agreed. “My dad and brothers ranch in Montana, over toward Kalispell, and it’s a struggle to make ends meet.”
Eventually—none too soon, in Dare’s estimation—the photographer showed up and snapped a photo of Dare and Selfridge as they shook hands in front of the U.S. flag. The desk sergeant was summoned to escort Selfridge back to his truck.
“You know, Mr. Selfridge,” Dare said as the farmer turned to leave, “it’s not often that I meet someone as honest and patriotic as you are. I don’t think one man in ten million would have gone to so much trouble to return that chaff. I’m truly honored to have met you.”
Selfridge actually blushed. “Just doing my duty, Colonel.”
When he and Andrea were alone, Dare turned to look at her, fully expecting to find her doubled over with laughter. He was astonished to find her regarding him with wide, dewy eyes.
“What’s wrong?” he asked. Damn, she looked as if she were about to weep, and he couldn’t stand the thought of Andrea weeping.
“Nothing.”
“Then why are you crying?”
“I’m not crying, sir. I never cry. You saw it. I didn’t know for sure if you would.”
“Saw what?”
“What an adorable, selfless, touching thing that man did. It was funny, of course, but only because we know how worthless that chaff is. What Selfridge did is beautiful. Can you imagine how many days he must have spent gathering that stuff?”
“My back aches at the thought.” More than his back ached, right now. His heart ached at the way she was looking at him. He couldn’t remember anybody ever having looked at him that way, as if he were the most wonderful man in the world. “Andrea, I—”
“Thank you for coming over here, Colonel,” she interrupted. “I felt he deserved some kind of recognition.”
“No problem. Andrea—”
“I just couldn’t send him all that way back without—”
Goaded by her evident determination to avoid personal conversation, Dare took matters into his own hands. Rounding her desk, he hauled her into his arms and kissed her into quivering submission. When she was finally clinging to him for support, he decided to risk trying to talk to her again.
“About this weekend, Andrea.” He sounded a little breathless himself, but that was okay. He wanted her to know what she did to him. Damn all these clothes!
“Yes, sir?”
“We’ve got to make plans.”
Her eyelids lifted a fraction, revealing just a glimpse of her green irises. “Plans?”
“Plans for the weekend,” he repeated patiently. “Damn it, Andrea, you can’t look at me like that and then tell me to get lost. I want to spend the weekend with you again.”
“Oh.” Blinking, she made an effort to gather her wits. Why not? she thought. She was already in so deep that one more weekend wouldn’t make a bit of difference.
A knock on the door jolted them apart. Andrea turned away from him.
“Burke, damn it, look at me and answer me.”
“That’s Nickerson,” she said breathlessly. “You make the plans and let me know.”
Relieved, Dare yielded a sigh. “Okay,” he said, just as Andrea called out, “Come on in, Nick.”
Dare exited swiftly, leaving Andrea and Nickerson to their meeting.
Nick, who’d stared after MacLendon, turned to look at Andrea, and his face went suddenly and totally wooden. From his unusual and utter lack of expression, Andrea guessed he’d somehow picked up on something in the atmosphere. Hell!
“We’ve got work to do, Nick,” she said abruptly.
“Yes, ma’am.”
He glanced at her and then away, but not before she caught the twinkle in his eye. Damn all nosy NCO’s, she thought irritably, and snatched up the report she wanted to discuss with him.
Chapter 12
In the early hours of Thursday morning, one of the alert planes caught fire. After recent events, no one doubted that the fire had been deliberately set, but the question no one could answer was how. Even under ordinary circumstances those planes were closely guarded, because their bomb bays were full of nuclear weapons. Lately, security around them had been so tight that Andrea would have said even a field mouse couldn’t have slipped past unnoticed.
“I want the s.o.b. who did this,” Andrea told Nick that morning as she sat bleary-eyed at her desk. “I’ve got one measly week left, and I want him before I leave.”
Nick stood at her window, hands on his narrow hips, and looked out at the bleak morning. The Security Force had gone on full alert the instant the fire was reported, and it had been a long night for everyone. He sighed now and rotated his shoulders to ease the tension.
“The fire marshal promised to call me as soon as he knows what caused the fire,” he said.
Andrea looked at his back. “But he said it was arson.”
“Thinks it was,” Nick said. “I expect he’s right. Merle knows what he’s doing. But he won’t commit himself till all the evidence is in.”
“Sensible,” Andrea admitted, rubbing the back of her neck. “Did he tell you how long that should be?”
“He hopes to know by sometime tomorrow. He’s in one hell of a hot seat, ma’am. Did you hear the news on the radio this morning?”
“You mean all the uproar in town because there were weapons on the plane? That’s the kind of noise politicians get paid to make. And, of course, the locals are nervous about it. Most people don’t understand how harmless an unarmed weapon is. As far as hot seats go, I think MacLendon’s must be the hottest.”
Nodding, Nickerson faced her. “I hear he’s talking to the news people and the city council this morning.”
“Probably. I really don’t know.” Sighing, Andrea stood and went to the file cabinet to pour another in an endless stream of cups of coffee. “I want the squadron to stay on full alert for the time being. And I’m going to activate the Pyramid tonight to make sure nobody’s ignoring our status.”
The Pyramid Alert System was an ingeniously simple system whereby each person on the pyramid telephoned the two persons below him to pass along information or to bring the squadron to full alert. In less than twenty minutes, Andrea’s entire four hundred man squadron could be communicated with individually. In only slightly more time, the base’s commander could bring the entire base to alert status through the same system.
“I guess that’s it for now, Nick,” she said after a moment, dismissing him. “When you go by Lieutenant Dolan’s office, stick your head in and tell him I’d like a word with him.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He departed, shutting the door quietly after him.
Poor Dare, Andrea thought as she settled behind her desk again. Closing her eyes, she leaned her head back against the chair and sighed. Between SAC HQ, the press, and the local politicians, he must really have his hands full. Through it all,
he would have to be courteous, concerned, understanding, and firm. Quite a recipe, especially for a man who’d had no more sleep than he had, thanks to last night’s events.
With her eyes closed, his image rose vividly in her mind, and now that there was no one to betray herself to, she admitted just how much she’d missed him this week. She went to bed at night longing for him and woke in the morning feeling empty because he wasn’t there. It was a ridiculous dependency, she told herself, especially since they’d only had three nights together. How could he have become a habit so fast? Why was it that after such a short time, such a brief acquaintance, a dozen times a day she wanted to turn to him to share some thought?
And only last night she’d awakened in the dark and mistaken the shape of a pillow for his shoulder. She didn’t like to remember how her throat had ached and her eyes had burned when she’d realized it was just a pillow.
Well, she told herself firmly, it didn’t matter. January thirtieth was fast approaching. Dare was clearly content to let the relationship end there, and after a time she would get over this ridiculous emotional reaction.
A knock on the door announced Lieutenant Dolan’s arrival, and Andrea straightened. “Come in,” she called in a brisk, businesslike voice, relieved to have the distraction of work.
“Still working, I see.”
It was after ten that evening when Andrea looked up to see Dare standing in the doorway of her office. Her neck was stiff from hours of hunching over lists that refused to shed any light on the case, and her eyes were red and burning.
Dare had never looked so good to her as he did now, leaning against the doorjamb. His unbuttoned parka revealed a blue sweater, and his fingers were tucked into the front pockets of snug, worn blue jeans.
