And then Paoletti’s words sunk in. Observing. Takedown. No. No.
But yes. Shit, yes. Alyssa Locke was here to watch him.
She wouldn’t look at him. She was purposely looking over at the mock-up of the plane, out to where the senior chief and the other men assigned to his squad for this op were walking through their relatively simple insertion plan.
She was going to be watching as his team popped the doors as quietly as possible. They would enter with a bang and a flash of light, with detailed information from the surveillance team as to the five tangos’exact locations inside the plane. Once inside, they’d make head shots and take out the terrorists. Swift and deadly.
After they got the doors open, the entire operation would take a matter of seconds and run like a well-oiled clock.
But the reason it would run so smoothly was because Starrett and his men would practice. They would run the drill over and over and over, for as many days as the negotiators could give them, until they could do it in their sleep.
That kind of practice required complete concentration. And Sam was going to have to run the whole show here in Distraction City, with Alyssa Locke watching him.
He wanted her to look at him now, god damn it. Come on, look at him.
She finally glanced over.
He made a motion with his head and, what do you know? she actually followed as he stepped slightly back, away from the rest of the group.
“How are you, Lieutenant?” she asked coolly, not even trying to pretend that she really wanted him to answer that, not trying to pretend she actually gave a flying fuck.
He tried to ungrit his teeth. “As fine as I can be knowing that the lives of one hundred twenty people on board that World Airlines 747 depend on what my team and I do over the next few days or even hours.”
She gazed at him, so pristine and well put together in her neat little suit, hair pulled back, makeup perfect.
Hours ago, Sam had stripped down to a pair of shorts and a T-shirt he’d since caught on a nail and torn. He was sweaty and dusty and he needed a shave.
“This is going to be hard enough,” Sam continued, his voice lowered, “without the added stress of—”
She lifted an eyebrow. “Does Lieutenant Paoletti know that you have doubts about your ability to—”
Fuck that! “Excuse me, I don’t have doubts.” Jesus.
There was nothing in her eyes, not even the slightest flash of memories from that night. Not the least little sliver of shared intimacies. “Then there should be no problem.”
They’d have to forget about it, to pretend it just never happened, she’d said—the fact that she’d come to his hotel room and they’d made love not once but four times. Four. All night long, and then once in the morning, even. In the shower.
She’d been furious with him at the time, until her anger had shifted to passion. But now . . . Now she obviously felt nothing at all.
Sam turned away, unwilling to let her see the anger he couldn’t hide in his face, his eyes. But then—screw that—he looked at her. Right into her eyes.
And he let himself remember.
The expression on her perfect face as he’d made her come. The way she’d smiled as she’d touched him, first with the tip of her tongue and then with her lips and then . . .
He smiled at her, remembering it all and letting her see it in his face, but she didn’t blink, didn’t flinch, didn’t blush. She just put her sunglasses on, gazed back at him coolly through the slightly purple-tinted lenses, and then turned away.
Well, shit.
Apparently she wasn’t haunted by dreams of him at night.
Apparently she’d successfully exorcised him. Of course that was assuming he’d ever possessed her in the first place.
Sam managed to catch Paoletti’s eye and got a nod of dismissal. Striding back to the wooden mock-up, he tried to focus his anger at her—and at himself for caring so goddamn much—into a more helpful form of energy.
Determination.
“Okay,” he said grimly to his squad. “Let’s do this right.”
Seven
“Is your room okay?” the senior chief asked as Teri came out of the elevator and met him in the hotel lobby. “You’re facing the inside courtyard, right?”
“Oh,” she said, trying to remember which side of the hall her room had been on. “I didn’t have time to do more than throw my bag inside and wash my face, but yeah, I’m overlooking the swimming pool.”
She smiled at him, happy to see him, glad she had a full ten hours before she had another shift. She suspected Stan didn’t have that much down time and still couldn’t quite believe he’d chosen to spend some of his spare free moments with her. “The room has running water, so how can I complain?”
The Kazabek Grande was a hotel that had clearly seen better days.
Of course, all of Kazabek had seen better days.
“Don’t drink it. Bottled water only. And put that flack jacket on. What, do you think carrying it’s going to do you any good?”
“It’s so heavy. And hot.”
“Put it on anyway. And don’t take the elevator again,” Stan instructed as they crossed the lobby. “Electricity here comes and goes—there’s not enough to power the whole city at once. I was told the Grande goes black for at least four hours a day, usually starting just after sunset, but it can happen any time, and if you’re on the elevator . . .”
Her room was on the seventh floor, the restaurant near the lobby, and the heliport was on the roof. If she was going to have to trudge up and down the stairs wearing that heavy jacket . . . “This assignment is going to be great for my thighs. What a perk.”
Stan looked at her in obvious disbelief. “Yeah, like you really need to lose any weight. What is it with women these days? I was thinking earlier that I was going to make sure you had dessert tonight—even if I had to force-feed you.”
“Gee, that sounds like fun.”
He looked at her sharply, and she realized she’d said the words not quite aloud but pretty darn close. Had he heard? She didn’t know for sure, but she suspected he had.
She should hold his gaze. She should smile, maybe wiggle her eyebrows at him. Make it clear that she was flirting—or at least she would be flirting if she weren’t such a social reject.
She held his gaze and even somehow managed to smile, but Stan looked away. He’d definitely flirted with her on the plane. What had happened between then and now?
He cleared his throat. “We’ve, uh, taken over half of the restaurant as our mess area. You can go down there any time you’re off duty to get something to eat. If the kitchen’s closed, there’ll be wrapped sandwiches—not the greatest setup, but it’s the best we can do for now.”
He held open the door to a stairwell and stepped back for her to go first.
Down? “But . . .” Teri pointed across the lobby, completely confused. “The sign says . . .” That the restaurant, which boasted nightly karaoke, was up on the mezzanine level.
“They moved it,” Stan told her.
She went in, waiting for him to lead the way.
“This is the east tower,” he told her as he headed down the stairs. “The Grande has four connected towers arranged in a square around the lobby and the courtyard with the pool. We’re garrisoned in the west and south towers—you’re in the west, right?”
Teri nodded.
“Me, too. Just make sure you find the west stairwell when you want to go back up to your room. The floors to the different towers don’t all connect. The restaurant’s down here, in a ballroom in the basement beneath the east tower.” His voice echoed. “It’s in a room that doesn’t have windows. In Kazabek, hotels tend to lose business when their customers are killed by flying glass. And glass tends to fly when a car bomb goes off out in the street. Which it does here with an annoying frequency.”
“God.”
He stopped, hand on the knob to the door leading out to the basement level. “Teri, you’re not suppo
sed to be here. You can decide you’ve had enough at any time, and no one will think any less of you for leaving.”
She loved it when he looked at her like that, direct and to the point, right into her eyes. She also liked the way he’d looked at her on the plane—as if he’d wanted to kiss her.
But then he’d called her Lieutenant, clearly pulling back from any kind of intimacy. Yet now she was Teri again.
Which was it, Stan?
She didn’t dare ask. Didn’t dare call him by his first name, either. He was Senior Chief or Senior and calling him anything else seemed much too disrespectful. Besides, maybe he was as confused by this energy that seemed to buzz between them as she was.
“I’m not leaving. I just had one of the best days of my life,” she admitted.
It had started this morning—God, had it really only been this morning?—when she’d found the nerve to ring his doorbell and ask him for help.
No, that had been yesterday morning. Traveling all the way around the world had compressed the end of Sunday, and they’d arrived in K-stan late Sunday night California time, but Monday afternoon, K-stani time. It was nearly 1800 now and it had been way more than twenty-four hours since she’d slept. No wonder everything seemed a little blurry around the edges.
He nodded. “Well . . . I’m glad.”
And still he stood there. Just looking at her. In the privacy of the stairwell. Where no one could see him if he gently touched her hair the way he’d done in the transport plane. Where no one would know if he kissed her.
Teri’s heart pounded nearly as much as it had when he’d casually asked her to meet him in the lobby before dinner.
She wanted him to kiss her, to touch her again.
Please, Senior Chief, force-feed me dessert.
Yeah, that would really work. She was going to have to do it. She was going to have to call the man Stan.
After all, he had asked her to dinner. And she knew he liked her. He’d told her as much himself.
But he turned away before she got up the nerve to say or do anything at all. He opened the door. Held it for her.
“Let’s get something hot to eat before the power goes out and the kitchen closes. If I have to have another sandwich, I’m going to cry.” He smiled at her, if not with his mouth then certainly with his eyes. “And if you tell any of the squad that I was whining, I’ll deny it.”
Teri laughed, walking beside him into what, even in its heyday, must have been a cheap imitation of opulence. Shabby now, the hotel ballroom was musty and dark, with candles on every table, presumably in place for when the power went out.
The tables were covered with cheap plastic cloths, the chairs didn’t match. The acoustic tile in the ceiling was missing in places, with pipes and wires showing through.
Buckets were scattered around, catching drips from the leaky plumbing.
And yet it was exotic.
Or maybe the fact that she was walking into it at the senior chief’s side was what made it seem so alluringly foreign and filled with romantic potential.
He held out a chair for her at a table and she slid into it, looking up to smile her thanks. Her mother would have purposely sat in another seat and scowled.
She slipped off her flack jacket. Surely she was safe in here.
Stan sat down across from her instead of next to her. “Good, Muldoon’s right on time.”
Teri turned, and sure enough, Ens. Mike Muldoon was crossing the worn carpeting, looking around the room.
The senior chief stood up.
Muldoon smiled, but then hesitated midstep as he saw Teri sitting at the table. Still, he kept coming, but his smile now was a little forced and nervous.
“Hey,” Stan greeted the younger man. “Have you officially met Teri Howe?”
“Uh, no, Senior, not officially.”
“Ens. Michael Muldoon,” Stan said. “Lt. (jg) Teresa Howe. You guys both went to MIT.”
And with that, Teri knew.
Stan had asked her to dinner in order to set her up with Muldoon.
This dinner invitation wasn’t really a dinner invitation.
And the way he’d touched her on the plane, God, now that she stopped to think about it, that had really been nothing more than a comforting pat on the head, hadn’t it?
Oh, Lord. She was such a fool.
Teri supposed she was lucky he’d overheard her inappropriate comment, “That sounds like fun,” when Stan—completely innocently, no doubt—had teased her about force-feeding her dessert. Lucky because the sheer humiliation and embarrassment distracted her from the disappointment.
She got to her feet as Muldoon shook her hand, glad to have something to do besides shrinking back in her chair and wishing she were trapped all alone on the elevator.
“To be honest,” Muldoon told her, with an apologetic smile that made his handsome face even more handsome, “I went to MIT for only one semester.”
“That’s more than I ever did,” Stan said. “Come on, sit down.”
He sat first, opened his menu.
And as much as Teri wanted to make her excuses and run, she couldn’t do it. If Stan didn’t already know that she’d been hoping for more from him than friendship and an intro to his cute friend, her leaving would give her away.
Besides, friendship with Stan Wolchonok was better than nothing.
Wasn’t it?
“So,” she said to Muldoon, mostly because Stan glanced at her, because he expected her to say something. “When were you at MIT?”
“About seven years ago,” the ensign told her. “First semester of my freshman year. But then my father got sick, so I transferred to a school closer to home.”
Mike Muldoon was three years younger than she was. He was also almost impossibly handsome. Big eyes that were an even deeper shade of blue than Stan’s. Golden brown hair that was thick and wavy, with a lock that fell attractively over his forehead—perhaps a touch of the rebel despite the squeaky-clean length in the back. His jaw was square, he had cheekbones to die for, and a nose that could have come directly from a Greek statue.
“Where’s home?” she asked because Stan obviously wanted her to ask.
“At that time it was Florida,” Muldoon said. “Before that, Maine. Kinda one extreme to another, you know? How about you?”
“Cambridge, Massachusetts,” she told him. “From birth till college graduation.”
He gave her another of those beautiful smiles, this one a little shy. Was this guy for real? “That must’ve been nice,” he said.
Nice. Teri glanced at Stan, who was watching her. She didn’t want to tell Mike Muldoon that it hadn’t been nice, that she’d lived those last few years counting the days until she could leave home for good.
She forced a vague smile, then looked down at her menu, tired of small talk, tired of disappointments, tired.
“Go vegetarian tonight,” Stan recommended, taking over the conversational ball. “Remember that the refrigeration cuts out for four hours every day. We’ll be having our own food brought in. Starting tomorrow, hopefully.”
A waiter came, clearly overworked, bringing bottles of water and breadsticks, and they ordered. Teri asked for exactly what Stan was having and he smiled at her. God, the way her heart raced when he did that was pathetic.
“Is there a reason we’re not being billeted over at the airfield, Senior?” Muldoon asked. “I had a chance to look around out there, and there are two separate buildings that aren’t being used. It wouldn’t take much to clean them up and—”
“There’s a very big reason,” Stan said. “A GIK terrorist splinter group stole missile launchers from the K-stani army.”
“Whoa.” Teri sat back in her chair. “How do you steal a missile launcher?”
“From the K-stani army? Apparently pretty easily. They got two of ’em.”
“Wait a minute.” She tried to make sense of it. “Are you saying that if we set up living quarters in one of the buildings at the military airfield where th
e team built that mock-up of the 747—”
“We’d be an obvious and easy target,” Stan finished for her. “Yes.”
She looked from Stan to Muldoon and back. “And we’re not a target here?”
“Think of it this way—a missile launched at an isolated building on a remote airfield versus a missile launched into the heart of Kazabek, where the civilian casualty rate would be outrageously high . . .” Stan shook his head. “Even factoring in the dangers of being in the city, we determined we’d be safer at this hotel.”
“Okay,” Muldoon said. “I’m going to sleep really well tonight.”
From across the ballroom came a sudden blast of music and they all jumped. The volume was quickly adjusted, but it had caught the attention of everyone in the room.
As Teri watched, a skinny man climbed onto a wobbly makeshift stage. He started to sing “New York, New York” in a voice that shouldn’t have been allowed within fifty feet of a microphone.
“Oh, Christ,” Stan said, with complete and utter despair.
The man was singing in the local dialect, which had too many syllables to fit the notes.
It was beyond absurd and she met Stan’s eyes. Disbelief, horror, and amusement were combined with the warmth of his somehow knowing that she, too, was dangerously close to losing it.
“Welcome to hell,” he told her.
She had to clench her teeth to keep from laughing. Or crying.
“He’s not that bad,” Muldoon protested. “It takes a lot of nerve to get up in front of a crowd of strangers like this.”
“Excuse me, Senior Chief.”
It was Chief Wayne Jefferson—small, black, energetic, and well-known for his skills as an expert sharpshooter. He and Chief Frank O’Leary—tall, skinny, and laconic to the point of near-coma—were the team’s snipers. The two men couldn’t have been less alike.
“We’ve got a snafu with some of the rooms. Silverman, Jenk, Scooter,” Jefferson listed on his fingers, “Cosmo, Horse, and Izzy all got rooms facing the street. I just spent an hour using sign language and baby talk with the hotel manager, getting them reassigned—and their new rooms all face the street. Normally I wouldn’t bother you with this, Senior, but these men are tired as hell. I need to get them into their rooms now, and I recognized that my urge to grab this bastard and rip his smug racist smirk off his motherfucking face wouldn’t speed up the process.” He glanced at Teri. “I beg your pardon, ma’am.”
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