by Rachel Lee
“Give it up, Andrea,” he said roughly. “You’re out of here in a little over a week. It won’t be your problem anymore.”
“It’s my problem right now, sir.”
“It’s the OSI’s problem.”
“They don’t seem to be getting very far with it.”
He looked tired, too, she noticed. And angry and frustrated. The lines of his face seemed to have grown deeper just since yesterday. She resisted a totally feminine and totally ridiculous impulse to smooth them away. Or soothe them away.
“Got any coffee?”
“I just brewed a fresh pot.” She watched him lever himself away from the door frame and stride to the coffeepot on top of her filing cabinet. She’d forgotten how big he was, just since yesterday. How tall and lean and hard he was. She always felt a clenching thrill when she saw him for the first time after an absence, however brief. Why was that?
Her eyes never left him as he filled a cup and settled into one of the chairs facing her desk. He crossed his legs loosely, one ankle on the opposite knee, and leaned back, rubbing his eyes wearily.
“The guy doesn’t leave a trail,” he said. “Not a hint or a sign of what he’s up to. What’s the point of all this if he doesn’t get the satisfaction of telling somebody why?”
“Maybe he gets all the satisfaction he needs just from doing it. Or maybe he’s saving up his explanations for some grand finale.”
“That thought’s cost me some sleep, I can tell you.” He sipped the coffee and grimaced. “I’ve swallowed enough coffee today to float a battleship. At this rate I’ll have an ulcer in a week.”
Andrea opened her desk drawer and pulled out a bottle of antacids. She tossed them to him. “Help yourself.”
“You, too, huh? Thanks.”
“I keep thinking I’m missing something that’s as plain as the nose on my face,” Andrea remarked. “Like I’ve got all the puzzle pieces but I just can’t see how to fit them together.”
“Well, if you’re right that I’m the target, he’s doing a damn fine job. My career’s getting more tenuous with every passing minute.”
“But why, Dare? You’ve done everything you can to stop him.”
He shrugged. “The buck stops here, as they say. They’re starting to ask some tough questions at the top, like why the devil everything’s gone to hell in a handbasket since I took command here.”
Andrea ached for him. “Everything has not gone to hell since you took command. Everything is just fine, except for some loony, and you can’t be responsible for loonies.”
“That’s not how it looks if you’re sitting up at AAC headquarters and one of your bases is all but out of commission, and the guy in charge out there isn’t doing diddly about it.”
“That’s not fair!”
“Who said life was fair?”
“Who said it shouldn’t be?”
A faint smile came to Dare’s mouth, lifting the corners slightly, as he took in the pugnacious set of Andrea’s chin.
“I need a drink,” was all he said, but he was thinking how badly he needed her in his arms right now, needed to feel her warmth and the gentleness she kept so well hidden.
Andrea pulled open yet another drawer and retrieved two glasses and a bottle of whiskey, setting them down on the desk between them. “So drink,” she said.
“Prepared for all eventualities, I see,” he remarked as he poured the liquid into the glasses.
“Yes, sir. We try.” She rose and started to pace around her office, unaware that Dare spared a few moments to admire her bottom in her regulation Air Force slacks.
“What have we got?” she asked rhetorically a few minutes later. “I was shot by somebody who was evidently trying to get through the perimeter fence. That doesn’t fit with the rest of it.”
“Why not?” Suddenly he looked over his shoulder at the door to her office. “Andrea, maybe I’m paranoid, but if you want to discuss this mess in any detail, maybe you should close your office door.”
“There’s plenty of reason to be paranoid lately.” She even glanced into the hallway before closing her door and, after a moment’s hesitation, locking it.
“So what doesn’t fit about you being shot?”
Andrea perched on the edge of the desk and rubbed the back of her neck. “It’s not just me being shot that doesn’t fit. It’s that at this point I’m not sure our loony is an intentional murderer.”
“Why not? Want me to rub your neck for you?”
Andrea looked at him, her green eyes growing smoky. “Maybe later,” she said. “I don’t think too clearly when you touch me, and right now I want to think.”
There was no way he could repress the grin that seemed to rise from the tips of his toes and banish his fatigue. From Andrea that was one hell of an admission. The lady admitted very little, he’d learned.
“I’m having trouble with the idea that this guy is a mad killer,” she said, “because nobody has died. Anybody who’s been around B-52s for a while knows how hard it is to knock one out of the sky. That charge didn’t knock out anything essential to the aircraft’s survival. That may have been deliberate.”
“It could also have been an accident,” Dare pointed out.
“But don’t forget last night. Setting fire to a plane on the runway was hardly designed to kill. It seems to me that it was designed to give you a hard time. Tell me you haven’t had a hellish day today, with more to come.”
He smiled faintly. “I can’t. It was awful, start to finish. What about my hydraulics? For a while I believed that hadn’t been intended to kill me, but I’ve had a lot of time to think about it since Saturday, Andrea. Nobody messes around with an aircraft’s hydraulic system if he doesn’t want to kill.”
“He could have intended for you to punch out, which any pilot in his right mind would have done, Dare. I still can’t believe you didn’t eject as soon as you knew you were in trouble. My God!”
“A pilot has to believe he’s got no other option before he’ll punch out, honey. I didn’t believe it.”
For a long moment she appeared to be incapable of speech. Dare watched the way her eyes sparked with outrage and darkened with remembered fright. God, he needed to hold this woman.
“Anyhow,” Andrea continued when she had a grip on the surge of unwelcome emotion, “I was shot because I scared the guy. I can understand that. No, my problem is that it just doesn’t fit with the rest of what’s been going on. We’ve agreed that our man must be somebody who can get past security, who probably has a legitimate reason to be on the flight line. Halliday keeps telling me—”
“Halliday?”
“My electronic security expert. He keeps telling me the perimeter is a no-man’s-land of sensors, that nobody who doesn’t know the location of those sensors could get through without detection—unless the sensors are turned off. If we agree to that, and I don’t see any reason why we shouldn’t, then I can’t understand why anyone was trying to get through the perimeter. And even if somebody could get through the perimeter, he’d have to get past all the security guards, which brings us right back to someone who has a legitimate reason to be out there—”
“And therefore has no need to cut the fence and dodge the sensors.”
“Exactly.”
Dare rubbed his chin and took an swig of whiskey, steeling himself for the fire when it hit his stomach. Life dealt rotten hands sometimes, and right now he was feeling that the most rotten hand was that he couldn’t take Andrea home with him and fall asleep wrapped around her. Instead he forced himself to consider what she was saying.
“Maybe,” he said presently, “we ought to look at it another way. Say our man has a legitimate reason to be out there, but not one legitimate enough to cover multiple visits to the flight line. Say he doesn’t want anyone to know he’s been there if he can avoid it, but if he gets stopped his cover story is good, just once.”
“Just once?”
Dare shrugged. “Well, not enough times to explain rep
eated visits, but good enough that he’d be overlooked once or maybe twice.”
Andrea nodded. “He still has to get past all the sensors.”
“There must be people who can do that.”
“Not according to Halliday. According to him, only he and his technicians know anything about the layout of the sensors. He said each of them knows part of it, and only he knows all of it.”
“So maybe Halliday’s wrong. Maybe he just likes to think he’s the only one—”
Andrea shook her head. “I looked into it. The plans are highly classified. There’s one copy in Halliday’s safe and one copy with central document control. Nobody on the base has checked out the copy from document control, and none of the document custodians has enough technical background to understand the stuff, so that rules them out. That leaves only—” Andrea’s head snapped up. “Dare!”
He leaned forward. “What?”
“Maybe he is the only one.”
“Who? What? Run that by me again, Andrea.”
“Maybe Halliday is the only one who can get by all the sensors. And he’d have a legitimate excuse to be on the flight line, but not too often.”
“How so?”
“He could say he was checking out the security systems. My guys know who he is. They’d let him pass without a second thought. But if he was out there too often, they’d get suspicious.”
“Well, I guess he’s a possibility, then, but that doesn’t prove anything, Andrea.”
She sighed. “I guess not. I can’t imagine why he’d do this, anyway.”
“That’s been a problem all along—no apparent motive. Look, maybe it wouldn’t hurt to keep an eye on him.”
“Damn straight,” Andrea said briskly, standing. “I’ll talk to Nickerson in the morning. Honestly, Dare, he sat right here and told me he was the only person who could bypass the electronic surveillance. I thought he was bragging, but it never occurred to me that he might be laughing at me.”
“Maybe he wasn’t.” Dare stood, too. “Maybe we’re too tired to think straight.”
“Yeah.” She gave a short laugh and rubbed her neck again.
Dare moved around behind her and put both his hands on her shoulders, rubbing deeply but gently. Andrea released a soft groan of satisfaction.
“Feel good?” Dare asked.
“Mmm.”
“You know what I want more than anything, Andrea?”
“Hmm?”
Bending his head, he closed his teeth gently on her earlobe. “To take you home with me and go to sleep with your head tucked under my chin and your legs all tangled with mine.”
He heard her softly indrawn breath and waited for the anticipated refusal.
“Okay,” she said.
Stunned, Dare froze, his hands locked on her shoulders, his mouth near her ear. He had to clear his throat before he could find his voice.
“What did you say?”
“I said ‘okay.’” Turning, she faced him.
Dare drank in her face, noting that her eyes were incredibly weary, but also incredibly soft. This Andrea was the one who’d reached in and plucked something from his heart that he’d thought himself incapable of giving. He was fond of all the Andreas, but this one, so rarely in evidence, held a special place in his soul.
“Are you sure?” he asked, daring to touch her hair, her cheek, with the gentleness she so easily evoked in him.
“I’m sure.” She met his look squarely.
“You won’t regret it?”
“I’ll regret even more spending tonight alone,” she said steadily. So little time. So very little time. It was suddenly important not to waste even a minute of it.
“I’ll get you back before the world is up.”
She nodded. “I know you will, Dare.” The words conveyed her trust, surprising them both, for neither of them had realized just how much she trusted him.
“Give me ten minutes to warm up the truck, then come out,” he told her. Not for anything would he have the cops at the front desk see them depart together. It wouldn’t bother him, but it would bother Andrea.
A short while later, Andrea snuggled into Dare’s embrace, her head tucked under his chin, her thigh caught between his, just the way he’d wanted her so badly.
“Now,” she murmured, “I don’t want to sleep.”
“You should. You’re pooped.”
“So are you. Are you sleepy?”
“Only a little.”
“I needed this,” she sighed. “God, how I needed this.”
“You only had to tell me.”
“I know. That scares me.”
He slipped his fingers into her short hair and stroked her scalp gently. “Why does that scare you, Andrea?”
She was silent for so long that he began to think sleep had claimed her, but then he heard her draw a deep breath.
“I’ve never had anyone want to please me before,” she said finally.
“But why should that scare you?”
“Because it’s so different. Because it changes the rules.”
“How does it change the rules?” Patiently he caressed her, waiting for her to work her own way through her feelings.
“It’s a responsibility,” she said. “A big responsibility.”
“How so?”
“I could hurt you.”
He sighed heavily and hugged her tighter. “That’s not your responsibility, Andrea.”
“Maybe. Maybe not. I don’t think I’m explaining myself very well.”
“Take your time.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Yes, it does,” he said. “It’s as important as hell because it bothers you. Are you afraid you’ll disappoint me?”
“Yes!”
The way the word burst out of her told Dare more about Andrea’s real fears than any number of words could have. So she wasn’t terrified of being turned into another woman like her mother; she wasn’t terrified of being devoured by him. She was terrified of disappointing him the way she’d disappointed her father.
Dare had a sudden painful image of Andrea the way he’d seen her at chapel when she was all of what—thirteen? fourteen?—in that ridiculous, frilly dress. Had she been trying to please the father who could never be pleased? Had she given up finally, burying the hurt deep inside, and gone her own way, thinking she couldn’t please any man, that she was a failure as a woman?
He had no difficulty imagining Andrea even younger, five or six maybe, with her freckles and pert face, being hollered at because she was dirty, or because she’d been playing with the boys. Because she wasn’t Charlie Burke’s notion of a female.
“Andrea,” her name came out hoarsely, torn from some place deep inside him, “you won’t disappoint me.”
“You don’t know that, Dare.”
“Sure I do.” He tried to keep his tone light enough that she wouldn’t pull away from the depth of the feelings she’d just drawn out of him. Rolling onto his back, he pulled her with him so that she lay on top of him and hugged her so tightly she squeaked a protest. “You can make me mad,” he said, “and you can make me hurt, but you can’t ever disappoint me.”
Andrea told herself it was because she was so tired, but tears sprang to her eyes and dropped onto Dare’s chest.
“Andrea, honey, don’t cry. You’re worrying me.”
“I’m just tired,” she said, sniffling forlornly. “It’s one of those stupid female things I do sometimes.”
What could he say to that? Not knowing what else to do, he kissed her soundly.
“Now sleep, darlin’,” he said, once again tucking her securely into the curve of his large body. “I’ll wake you in time to get you back.”
Andrea woke at the first sound of Dare’s alarm clock in the morning. Still tucked against his shoulder and side, she waited while he cursed softly and felt around his night table. The buzzing stopped, and he relaxed back into the bed with a sigh.
“Andrea?” His voice was hushed. “Time
to get you back.”
“What time is it?”
“Five.”
She snuggled closer. “How about a quickie, cowboy?”
“I was going to feed you breakfast.”
“I’ll eat at the O’Club.”
“A quickie, huh?”
“Very quick,” she said, nuzzling his nipple. “I can’t believe I climbed into bed with you last night and slept. Not when all I’ve been able to think about all week…”
With a growling laugh he rolled over onto her. Moments later he was sheathed in her moist warmth. “That quick enough for you?”
Andrea rolled her hips suggestively. “Not quite, cowboy. You forgot the rest of it.”
“The rest of wha—” The words died in a groan as she tightened herself around him. “Now you’ve done it, woman,” he growled. “Now I’m going to—” He whispered the rest of the words into her ear, very earthy words. Andrea might have giggled except that he was doing exactly what he’d threatened, and it felt so damned good….
“You can talk dirty to me any time you want, sir,” Andrea told him breathlessly a few minutes later. “Just as long as you follow through.”
Dare was still chuckling when he drove her back to the BOQ.
Nickerson knocked on her office door almost before she settled into the chair behind her desk.
“Oh hell, what now?” she asked on a sigh as she watched him close the door and come to stand in front of her.
“The fire marshal called me at three this morning, ma’am. I thought you’d want to know what he said.”
Andrea was silent, thinking the only thing she really wanted to do was curl up in some cozy corner and enjoy the glow Dare had left her with. He always left her feeling good, she realized with a dawning sense of wonder. He always made her feel good about herself.
“Ma’am?”
Nickerson’s voice called her back to the present with a thud.
“Sorry,” she said. “I guess I’m not really awake yet.” Looking up at Nick, it suddenly dawned on her that he had probably tried to raise her as soon as the fire marshal called him, but she’d left her radio on her desk because Dolan had taken the command, and she hadn’t been in the BOQ to answer her phone. Her cheeks began to heat, and the oddly wooden expression on Nickerson’s face didn’t help.
