“How long will that take?”
She winced. “Maybe a couple hours. Why? You okay with me being gone that long?”
“Is Mother okay with it?”
Ember waved his question off. “She won’t miss me. She’s busy with Charles right now. You ought to see those two. You’d think they were BFFs the way they tease each other.”
He shook his head once she’d shut his office door behind her What the hell’s a BFF? Probably not the F words I’m thinking.
Chapter Six
“Do you remember your birth mother?”
Okay. That was not what Taylor was expecting. “My birth mother? What’d she have to do this?”
“It’s the real reason you’re here.” Gracie cocked her head as if she were listening for something outside. “So. Do you?”
“I don’t see what that has to do with you and your buddy, Luke, bringing me here. What happened? How’d you get me away from the killer?” He flexed his fists against the blanket. His personal life was off limits.
She smiled softly. “How about if I tell you about your birth mother first, then I’ll tell you about Luke?”
“No. How about you listen up and let me out of here?” He jerked the restraints as hard as he could. They didn’t budge, but the clot in his chest did. The wicked wound stabbed him good and hard, blood soaking through the sheet and blanket.
Gracie flew to his side. “Shush. You’re bleeding again.”
“Damn you,” he hissed. “Don’t shush me one more time. Let me go. Untie me!”
She ignored everything but the hole in his chest. Her brows furrowed. Her top teeth trapped her bottom lip. With the lightest touch, she lifted the crimson bandage. Blood oozed out of the hole in his chest and still she ignored his command. The woman seemed to know what she was doing, so he tried to relax. She pressed another gauze packing against the hole. Within seconds, it was saturated. She added more layers and harder pressure.
“You need to keep calm. Fighting with me isn’t going to help you heal.”
He groaned. Damn it, as gentle as she was, the pressure hurt. “One minute you guys shoot me, and the next you’re helping me. Why-y-y?”
He didn’t mean for his question to come out in a grinding growl, but she’d dropped the rail and leveraged her full weight against the bloody hole. If he didn’t know better, he’d say she was up on the balls of her feet, the heels of her palms exerting nothing but pain. What was she trying to do? Push the blood back into him?
“That’s what I was trying to tell you. Now hush. Let me get this bleeding stopped.” She triple-layered the packing and pressed harder until he had to bite his tongue to keep from cursing at her. By then, she’d climbed onto the side of the bed. Both knees perched at his hip like she might straddle him at any second.
He could smell her. Soap. Deodorant. And something else. Shampoo, maybe?
Squeezing his eyes tight against the vision of his perfect death—the one with an angel bending over him—he endured the pain she inflicted. Only he hadn’t expected this kind of angel when he died. He’d imagined some big, hefty guy in armor plating with a spear and a halo come to rescue another warrior, not a petite wisp of a woman with full lips, minty breath and fierce resolution glittering in her eyes. Damn, she was stronger than she looked.
Fear nagged. No matter how hard she pressed, the bleeding didn’t seem to slow. Funny. Here he was a decorated war hero, a general’s only son and a decent undercover operative, but it all might end in the middle of nowhere tied to this beautiful but peculiar woman’s bed. Not exactly how he’d imagined leaving this life. A hail of gunfire, maybe. A smoking IED. Not this.
The dreamlike quality of her heroic efforts overwhelmed. He meant nothing to her yet she worked hard, a sheen of perspiration glistening on her brow. Her nostrils flared. Anger pursed her lips like maybe he didn’t have her permission to die. Why not?
The most perfect eyebrows slanted downward over a thin straight nose like she’d rather die than let him bleed out. Again—why would she, a perfect stranger, work with all her might to save him? Why did she even care about a man who’d been trained to be invisible from birth?
That’s why he’d chosen to become a USMC scout sniper. He knew how to evaporate into thin air. He was good at it. Hell, he’d been doing it all his life. Ever since he could remember, he’d been the unseen. The half-breed. Half-life. Half-son.
The General was the important one. The go-getter. The man of the hour. The one the President called at odd hours of day and night. So why was this Gracie person worried about him? A nobody?
What are you, a sissy? You let a girl hold you prisoner? You should’ve tried harder to escape. You should’ve known better than to get caught. You should’ve seen that arrow coming.
Taylor’s force field sprang to life. Shut up, General. Get out of my head!
Gracie banished the prick with a gentle grunt. Damn it. She had an adorable cuteness to her, a beauty that fell on Taylor like starlight or something. Of course, he was on his way out of this life. Dying guys saw stuff like starlight and beautiful women all the time, didn’t they?
Vanilla and cinnamon. That’s what the other fragrance was. Drawing in a deliberate slow breath of her, he let the scent calm him. Like this crazy demented woman, it seemed familiar, as if once upon a time it had been his favorite fragrance. His heart rate slowed.
He looked up into the fierce but tender emotions on her pretty face. She alternated between licking her bottom lip and biting it. This just might be the perfect way to die after all.
Trust her? His military training shouted, Hell no.
But maybe...
Taylor let his body go limp and his resistance went with it.
The moment he did, Gracie blew a strand of hair off her face and whispered, “Thank God.” Her eyes widened with relief. “Wow. I think it stopped bleeding for now. Darn, Taylor. You scared me for a second there. Don’t ever do that again.”
How could he resist? “Just a second?”
The prettiest smile broke across her face like early sunrise over the Hindu Kush. She pinched her index finger to her thumb and ducked her head into her shoulders. “Yes. Just for the tiniest second. I’m only a nursing assistant, but trust me. I’ve done this before. Once or twice.”
“You’ve tied other men to your bed?” Why the flirtatious tease rolled off his tongue, he didn’t know. Like it or not, understand it or not, she’d just saved his life. He had a connection to her.
She slid back to the floor. The danger of dying passed. From out of nowhere, she produced white medical tape to secure fresh packing firmly in place. Without a word she walked out of the room and returned with a washbasin, a clean blanket and linens.
“Lean forward just a tiny bit,” she whispered as she set everything on the dresser beside him.
“Yes, ma’am,” he mumbled his automatic response. Using the leather restraints for leverage, he tilted his torso forward just enough for her to pull the bloody pad out from beneath him.
Working quickly, she positioned a clean pad and eased him flat to the mattress. With the gentlest hands, she sponged the blood from his chest, around his armpit, and down his side. Just as carefully, she changed the blanket and sheet without exposing him.
The effort of nearly dying had taken a toll. Weariness pegged him, but he couldn’t stop watching her. If his hands had been free, he’d have cupped her chin, just to make her look at him when he said thank you. For what? Saving him after she’d shot him?
Confusion shifted through his tired head.
“Are you in pain?” Again, her gentle hand on his brow checked for a fever. “You’re still breathing hard.”
“No, umm, yeah. I guess. Maybe. Just my chest. It hurts.”
Once more she left the room and returned, this time with a green plastic prescription bottle in her hand.
He balked. “What the—?”
“This is just eight hundred milligrams of ibuprofen. It’s not a narcotic. Do you want
to read the label?” She held it where he could see it for himself.
She hadn’t lied. He relaxed, his energy spent. “That’s okay, I guess.”
Gracie poured a glass of water from the pitcher on his nightstand. “Here you go,” she said while she placed a tablet between his teeth. “Tell me if you need another, okay? You’re a big guy. Two doses might be in order.”
He shook like a sissy, his teeth clinking against the glass she held for him while swallowing the tablet. He sank back into the pillow with a deep sigh.
Gracie padded out of the room again. Damn, she hardly made any noise when she walked. Soon she was back with a plate of breakfast and a large glass of orange juice.
“You need to eat. That pill will upset your stomach if you don’t. Would you like coffee, too? I made a fresh pot.”
“I guess. It’s not like I’m going anywhere.”
Within a minute she was back with a tall cup of coffee. “Sugar or cream?”
“One sugar.” As bizarre as his circumstances were, Taylor knew he needed to eat, and coffee would hit the spot. “Sure could use my hands right about now.”
She smiled. “I bet you could. Here. I’ll help you eat.”
He would’ve argued, but it was useless. A man tied to a bed with no clothes just didn’t get any respect. Besides, he had no fight left in him.
Gracie stood dutifully at his bedside and fed him the scrambled eggs and bacon, alternated giving him a sip of coffee as well as orange juice, then finished it off with toast. After every couple of bites, she dabbed his mouth with a white cloth napkin.
“Do you ever dip your toast in your coffee?” she asked shyly.
That was an odd question. “Umm. Yeah. I do.”
“I thought so. Do you want me to do that for you?”
“No. That’s okay.” He caught himself wanting to smile at her, and quickly corrected his idiot male brain’s response to a pretty woman. A smart guy doesn’t lose his bearings the first minute a hot gal bats her baby browns his way.
Besides, he wasn’t here for his health. Someone had shot him with a damned sharp arrow. That person meant for him to die. She might not be the Chronicle Killer, but she knew more than she’d let on. The time had come for answers.
She shrugged and set the empty plate to the nightstand. “I just want you to be comfortable while you’re here. Are you up for conversation or would you rather take a nap? I can always come back.”
Damn it. The last thing he wanted was to like this woman. He leaned back into the pillow, his stomach full and his eyes heavy.
“So talk.”
Chapter Seven
It wasn’t every day the Secretary of Defense, the SECDEF, placed a personal call to a lowly contractor. Alex was damned surprised to hear Arthur Turner on the other end of his secure phone line.
“Do you want to tell me why I just got off the phone with a reporter who’s asking questions about a certain operation you’re running for me in China?”
“Not Shadowman.” Alex jumped to his feet.
“Is there another? Of course, Shadowman What kind of a shop are you running?”
“Which reporter?”
“Your buddy, Crosland Webster. Channel 16’s rising star. He knew everything, the flight plan, the drop point and the names of your two agents. Lennox and Tao, right?”
“Yes, but Webster? Are you certain of this, sir?”
Webster was on his way to Quantico under The TEAM’s armed escort. How could he possibly know about the black op into China? Worse, how had he made a call? And when? Zack and David had just left two days ago. The quantity of nuclear infrastructures going up at the Xianning mega-damn in the southeastern Hubei province begged a closer look. So did the presence of missile silos.
“I can’t afford publicity, Stewart. If the Chinese find out we’ve been inside their borders for the past three years, you and I will go down in flames.”
“Understood, Mr. Secretary. Did Webster say how he got this information?”
“The man’s no idiot. Said he had a CI with a good ear before I told him he was dead-assed wrong and he needed to shut the hell up.”
“A confidential informant? More like a spy.” Alex cursed quietly to himself, his eyes on his door and his mind on those trusted agents on the other side. Who could it be?
“Oh, and Alex.” Secretary Turner’s voice softened. “It would certainly help if you’d take up golf. We could accomplish a lot of work in nine holes.”
Alex huffed at that suggestion. “I’ve got work to do, Art. Thanks for the heads up.”
“Knew you’d say that. Call if you need an assist. We need to shut this leak down before it goes public.”
“I’ll be in touch.” Alex hung up without another word. In two seconds flat he had Mark and Mother in his office.
“Mother, bring Zack and David home.”
She raised her eyebrows, but Alex cut her off before her game of sixty questions began. “Now! Intercept that military transport they’re on and cancel the op. I want Lennox and Tao out of China. Today!”
“Yes, Boss.” She scurried out of his office.
Alex turned to Mark. “We’ve got a sonofabitchin’ mole in our office. Pull the security videos. I want to know who it is by the time I go home.”
“I can do that,” Mark replied. “But first, I need you to see this.”
Alex scanned the blazing red letterhead on the sheet of paper Mark handed him, his hackles rising. Covert Countermeasures Inc. Big deal. Owned by Arnold Steele. Who cared?
The more he read, the higher those hackles lifted. Steele not only boasted his company was the big dog in town, he’d also targeted The TEAM’s reliability and integrity with cold hard facts the public had no right to know.
He’d listed each of Alex’s agents by name, home address and weapons ranking, beginning with Alex himself. Individual shortcomings, right down to traffic citations and parking tickets, came next. The letter didn’t list one iota of information on any CCI agents, however, just that they were the better choice for the federal government. Bullshit.
“Where’d you get this?”
“A buddy of mine in the FBI. Thane Underwood. I know you don’t care to work with the Bureau, but he’s solid. Lives down the street from me. His boss asked him to make sure Steele’s numbers are accurate, but Thane wanted you to see them first.”
“Damn straight they’re accurate. These are the latest proficiency scores.” Alex glared at Mark. “How’d Steele get them?”
“Looks like that mole of ours has been busy.”
“And he just outed all of my agents.” Alex glanced at his closed door. Had to be the new guy, Charles Oakes. The other new hires, Gabe, Taylor and Maverick were solid. Call him prejudiced, but they were Marines. Like him. Trustworthy to the bone.
Alex glared at his senior agent, fighting the urge to kill the messenger. He’d personally hired every man and woman in that outer work bay. That he’d failed to detect a liar in his midst spiked his disgust like nothing else.
He wished Murphy sat with him now, his wise, old friend and advisor. Mark might be a steady and patient man, but he was a kid by military standards. One deployment did not a wise man make.
Mark didn’t bat an eye and Alex settled down. He’d been slandered before. The real problem was how to decrement future damage to the SECDEF’s operation in China. Bringing Zack and David home only solved the short-term problem by removing them from immediate danger. Zack would be pissed. The guy was alpha through and through, the kind of man who didn’t step back for any reason. A risk-taker. He thrived on the edge, and he always completed his missions.
“Steele was my CO in Iraq,” Alex said finally. “McCormack’s son, Brady. We both served under him. Bastard sent us to Fallujah. Supposedly the insurgents had a group of Coalition Forces pinned down. He’s the reason Brady came home a quadriplegic.”
It was a bloody day of botched leadership on Steele’s part. He’d ordered his company out of the Green Zone and into
Hell. If successful, it would’ve made him look like a brilliant strategist. Instead, it got six good men killed and one damned near. Steele relied on faulty intel. There were no Coalition Forces under fire. Only a nicely set trap.
“Fallujah was a hellhole. That’s where you saved Brady’s life.”
Yeah. He knew. Somehow saving a man’s life only to have him end up a quadriplegic felt more like he hadn’t done much at all.
“It’s also why McCormack bankrolled you and The TEAM when you started. So now Steele’s out to destroy you?”
“Or die trying.”
“This is serious, Boss. Whoever leaked the China Op to Webster also leaked our proficiency scores to Steele. Do you think he could be connected with the Chronicle Killer, too?”
The possibilities of what Mark voiced were endless. And deadly.
“Understood. One thing at a time,” Alex said. “You find the mole. I’ll take care of Steele. Since he knows everyone on my TEAM, I think it’s time to enlist a little help from the SECDEF.”
Mark nodded at the CCI letter. “That piece of crap deserves a response. Steele slandered you personally. Want me to draft something for you to sign?”
“Don’t waste your time. They’re just words. The truth will always out. Besides, advertising in this line of business defeats the hell out of covert.”
Still...
There were better ways to deal with a slanderer than all out confrontation. Steele had chosen to play a dangerous game. If he was willing to openly denigrate The TEAM, was he also behind or somehow involved in the top-secret spill to Webster? Did Steele have the balls for high treason?
Alex couldn’t take the chance, not with national security at risk. He lifted the receiver of his secure phone and hit speed dial. “Put me through to Secretary Turner. Now.”
Gracie accepted Taylor’s invitation and returned to the chair beside his bed again. “Okay, so I was going to tell you about your birth mother.”
“Martha White Hawk Armstrong.” Taylor pre-empted the history lesson.
Taylor Page 6
