by Mallory Kane
She looked at his outspread hands, then met his gaze. Her eyes were wide and dilated with fright. “Is it safe?”
His embrace or the situation? “We’ve contained the attack.”
Her gaze held his for an instant, then she pushed past him and went up the stairs.
He turned to follow her, but the straight, stiff line of her back in the silk dressing gown spoke volumes. In fact, she couldn’t have been clearer if she’d shouted.
She didn’t want his help, nor his comfort. He couldn’t blame her. She’d managed for two years without it.
He was terrified that during that time she’d decided that being without him was easier than being with him.
He didn’t take his eyes off her until she disappeared through the door at the top of the stairs and closed it, quietly but firmly.
He couldn’t make it up to her for leaving her. All he could do was make sure that everything around her was safe. So he stepped through the metal door and looked around. She’d turned on the solar lights that were fed by panels on the roof of the cabin, so it was easy to see that this end of the basement was undamaged.
However, the smell of smoke and burned wood and rubber permeated the air, and forty feet away, at the other end of the room, he could see where the steel mesh that reinforced the basement walls was bare in several places. Whatever they’d use to blow up the barn, it had generated enough heat to incinerate the plywood.
The basement was slightly soundproofed by virtue of the reinforced walls and metal doors. Still, it must have been terrifying for her, down here alone, listening to the gunfire. He couldn’t imagine what she’d gone through as the explosion ripped the roof off the barn and burned through the walls he’d assured her were impenetrable.
For all his training and experience, in the Air Force and afterward, it occurred to him that beneath it all he was a naive idiot, thinking that because he thought he’d made her safe, she actually was.
Worse, he’d expected her to blindly accept his decisions—expected her to trust her life to them.
When had he become so arrogant and self-delusional?
The door behind him opened.
“Rook?”
He heard Deke’s voice in his ears and through the com unit at the same time.
“Yeah.”
“I saw Irina.” Deke’s footsteps were light on the wooden stairs. For his size, he could move almost without a sound. He stepped up beside Rook. “She didn’t seem to be hurt—”
“Not physically,” Rook finished, wincing. “She’s never going to trust me again.” He started toward the other end of the room.
Deke muttered something as he walked beside him.
“What? You might as well say it out loud. It won’t be anything I haven’t already said to myself.”
“Have you called yourself an arrogant prick? Because that’s what I’m calling you.”
“Actually, yeah.”
“Good. With your vote, it’s unanimous.” Deke widened the distance between them as they came closer to the far wall.
The smell of burned wood and rubber grew stronger, as did the heat. The crackling of flames filled the silence.
“It took nearly losing Mindy to make me realize what’s really important.”
“I know what’s important. Why do you think I did what I did?”
Deke snorted in disgust. “Yeah, you know what you think is important. Don’t put Irina through what I put Mindy through.” He moved to the south wall. “Damn, that was some explosion.”
Rook stepped to his left, to the north side. “Yep. Took the whole roof off the front of the barn.”
“Aw, man. Look at my car.” Deke’s SUV was in flames, and several other small fires were still burning.
The rental car Rook had parked near the safe-room door appeared untouched. He took a few steps closer and pulled a small, high-powered flashlight out of his pocket. The roof was still intact over this end of the building, and he saw very little damage.
A beam of light crossed his on the concrete floor. Deke was checking out the south side.
“The SUV’s leaking gas,” Deke said.
Rook trained his light beam on the same area where Deke’s light was shining. “How close to the flames?”
“Close.”
Then Rook saw it. A line of liquid trickling along the floor, from the smoldering SUV to the rental car. As he watched, the center of the line caught fire.
“The gas just caught,” Deke said. “It’s spreading in both directions.” He flipped on his com unit. “Taylor?”
Rook flipped the switch on his own unit. He heard static. These fancy new units didn’t work that great underground.
For a second, he debated running to the vehicles and trying to stop the gasoline before it caught the rental car on fire, but even as he thought it, he saw the flames brighten.
Time had run out.
“Taylor!” Deke shouted. “Get your men away from the barn. It’s about to blow!”
“Deke! Run!”
They both turned and ran.
IRINA HAD THE blanket wrapped around her shoulders, but no amount of external insulation was going to help the chill that sat like a block of ice inside her.
Deke had come in a few minutes ago. When he’d asked how she was doing, she’d merely shrugged. How did she answer that question? In the past week and a half, she’d abandoned her last shred of hope that Rook might still be alive, she’d almost lost two of her closest friends—Rook’s oath brothers—to terrorists and she had come face-to-face with the man she’d finally, after two long years, accepted as dead.
Deke had studied her for a few seconds, a worried frown marring his rugged features, then asked her if Rook was still downstairs. Without waiting for an answer, he’d headed down there.
She hadn’t moved. She still sat in the same position, waiting, not even sure why. What was she waiting for?
She supposed she should be doing something. Maybe making coffee? Or cooling bottles of water?
She’d neglected to buy the etiquette book that covered entertaining Secret Service agents who’d helped save their lives. Was she obligated to provide a full meal? Or just hors d’oeuvres? And was it impolite to exclude the attackers?
A near-hysterical chuckle escaped her lips. She didn’t know how to receive a husband who’d pretended to be dead for two years. She couldn’t possibly be expected to handle Secret Service and terrorists.
Leaning her elbows on the table, she pressed her face into her trembling hands. None of this seemed real. If she opened her eyes right now and found herself in her bed at Castle Ranch, still a widow, still essentially penniless, she wouldn’t be surprised.
A coughing spell interrupted her wandering thoughts. Her throat burned, and the smell of smoke lingered in her nostrils. She stood, pulling the blanket more snugly around the flimsy red gown and negligee. She needed to wash her face and get dressed.
As she turned toward the sink, she felt something under her feet. Did the floor shake? A low rumble hit her ears, followed instantaneously by a deafening explosion.
The safe room!
“No!” she cried. No! She dropped the blanket and rushed toward the basement stairs.
“Rook!” His name tore from her raw throat.
Before she got to the door, it slammed open. She got a split-second glimpse of two looming figures.
Then a hard body collided with hers, propelling her backward. Rook’s lean, muscled arms immediately grabbed her up.
His warm strength enveloped her. His hand cradled the back of her head and pressed her face into the hollow of his shoulder. Holding her. Protecting her.
She felt the soft cotton of his shirt beneath her palms. Then her fingertips encountered a thick, harsh ribbon of fabric. It was the nylon strap of the gun slung across his back. “Rook, are you okay? Please, please be okay.”
His arms tightened around her and his voice hummed near her ear. “Shh. Shh. I’m here.”
She doubled her fists in the material
of his shirt, sobbing with relief. Right this second nothing mattered except that he was here. He was safe. He was alive.
“This is Cunningham.” Deke’s voice broke into her consciousness.
Rook stiffened.
“Yeah, we’re fine. The two vehicles in the barn went up.” Deke continued. “Everybody okay out there?”
Rook took his hand away from the back of her head and adjusted the com unit in his ear. He cocked his head as the arm embracing her slid to her shoulder.
“Good,” he said, staring at a point beyond her left ear. His jaw flexed with tension. “Meet us in the front room to debrief.”
Suddenly, as quickly as her fingers had noticed the difference in his soft shirt and the harsh gun strap, she sensed the difference in him. The hand touching her shoulder belonged to a soldier. A commander. Not a lover.
Her Rook, her sweet, safe love, was gone.
She pushed away. “I need to get dressed.”
Deke stepped past them. “I’ll sweep the rooms first.”
She watched Deke’s retreating back helplessly, wanting to yell at him not to go. Stop leaving me alone with him.
But it didn’t matter. Rook might as well have been one of the nameless Secret Service agents swarming around the cabin. He was distant, detached, as he removed the com unit from his ear and put it in the box that sat on the counter. Then he swung the gun down from his shoulder and unloaded it and broke it down. He laid the parts on the table. From the small of his back, he retrieved a handgun and checked it, then slid it back into the waistband of his pants.
He did all this without looking at her or speaking to her. Then when it seemed he’d done everything he could think of to do to avoid talking to her or even looking her way, his gaze slid up to meet her eyes and he took a breath, as if about to speak.
But she had no idea what he’d been about to say, because at that instant Deke reappeared.
“Everything looks fine in here. You can go ahead, Irina.” He stopped, his gaze moving from her to Rook. “Or—”
She spoke quickly. “I will dress and then make some coffee.”
Rook shook his head. “No. No coffee. Join us in the front room. You need to know what we’re going to do next.”
“Fine,” she said evenly. “I appreciate you including me—this time.” Then she turned on her heel and left.
Wincing at the venom-laced words that lingered in the air, Rook watched her exit. She’d never been one to flaunt her beauty or her femininity. But her slender body was perfectly proportioned, beautifully formed. She walked like a princess, head held high, back straight, with no wasted movement. Yet to him, everything about her, even the slightest brush of her hair across her shoulders or the sweep of her eyelashes, was alluring, and profoundly sexy.
“Uh, Rook?”
He glanced sidelong at his friend. “What?”
“Taylor and his men are waiting in the front room for the debriefing.”
When Rook walked in with Deke at his side, Dan Taylor was standing near the fireplace, dressed in his flak jacket and police windbreaker, speaking quietly to a fellow Secret Service agent and jotting notes on a spiral notepad. Two other agents were standing near the front door.
All of them straightened perceptibly as Rook and Deke entered. Taylor accepted a manila envelope from one of his men and stepped over.
“Colonel Castle. I have something here I’d like you to look at.” He opened the envelope and pulled out several photos.
“That’s Lieutenant Cunningham’s guy who called himself Frank James. Along with a couple of the others found in the explosion of the old mine.”
“Explosion?” Rook looked at Deke, who shrugged.
“I had to get Mindy to safety, and I didn’t have a whole lot of options. I found some dynamite.”
Dan continued. “Lieutenant Cunningham believes there were at least six men there, counting James, but the others were so badly burned we weren’t able to recover enough for a definitive conclusion.”
Rook took the photos and studied them.
As soon as he laid eyes on the first photo, his pulse hammered in his ears. That face—or one eerily similar—had haunted him across three continents. It was of a thin-faced man with dirty-blond hair. He was obviously dead, and although he’d been cleaned up for the photo, one side of his face was unrecognizable.
“This guy’s a dead ringer for Novus Ordo, except for Novus’s receding hairline.”
“I knew it,” Deke said. “The first time I laid eyes on him I knew I’d seen him before. He looks just like your sketch.”
“He’s got to be Novus’s brother,” Rook said, tapping the picture. “So that’s how Ordo found out so much about all of us,” Rook said. “His brother must have been here the whole time.”
His temples throbbed. Was he finally close to identifying the terrorist—finally close to bringing down the man who was responsible for thousands of innocent deaths throughout the world? “Can we ID him? Fingerprints? Dental records? Publishing his photo?”
“We managed to get two prints off him. Dental records aren’t as easy as you’d think. If you’ve got a tentative ID, you can use dental records to verify it. But it’s like your CGI of Novus’s face. With no place to start, it’s almost impossible.”
“Why not start here, in Crook County, with prints and dental records?” Rook asked. “Have you met FBI agent Adrian Schiff? Good. Contact him. Then, if nothing comes of the fingerprints or the DNA, maybe we can at least verify whether he’s been living in this area.”
Dan nodded. “I’ll ask the local FBI to help with matching dental records. I like the idea of publishing the photo, too. It might flush out some of Ordo’s followers.
Dan jotted some notes on his dog-eared pad. “I suspect you’d like to be there when your specialists see these photos?”
“And I want their reactions recorded. I want to study each one of their faces when they first see this.” He handed the photos back to Dan.
“Now, sir. We need to get you and Mrs. Castle away from here. Two of my men have cleaned up the casualty and taken the prisoners in for interrogation. Two are securing the grounds and waiting for the local authorities.”
Rook winced. “Do we have to involve the locals?”
“Yes, sir. That blast was visible for several miles. We’re spinning it as an accident—gas line exploded, place was empty. We’ll take care of the rental car.”
It was a good plan. Simple. Two years ago, letting someone else take charge of anything wouldn’t have been in Colonel Robert Kenneth Castle’s playbook, but after spending all those months as an expatriate and fugitive, he found it disturbingly easy to acquiesce to the Secret Service agent.
“So how are you going to explain your presence?”
Deke spoke up. “I’m going to tell them I was on my way up here. They probably won’t believe it was a coincidence, but there’s not much they can do about it.”
“After you’re safely away, we’ll have a talk with the sheriff.”
“I want to know what you find out about the prisoners,” Rook said. “And who set the explosive in the barn.”
Taylor nodded. “My recommendation is that we first get you and Mrs. Castle to a safe location. We’ll debrief there once we’re done here.”
“No. Take us back to the ranch.”
“Sir, security at the ranch may have been compromised. Plus the specialists living on the grounds will know you’re there.”
Rook shook his head. “I have an obligation to my specialists—to everyone who works for me—to keep them safe. I trust you to take care of security at the ranch. At least, as Sun Tzu said, we’ll be keeping our friends close and our enemies closer.” He glanced at Deke.
“Yeah,” Deke agreed, “but so will they.”
IRINA BURIED her face in the white towel, breathing in its fresh, clean scent. She sent a silent blessing up for Jocelyn Talltrees, a local woman who kept an eye on the cabin and cleaned it twice a month. She peered over the towe
l into the mirror. Eyes clouded with fear and worry stared back at her from a pale, drawn face.
She had dreamed of finding Rook alive. It was why she’d spent a fortune the past two years searching for any clue that might give her hope. If anyone had asked her, she’d have told them that finding him would make her the happiest person on the planet. That getting her husband back would make her life complete once again.
But as she’d already realized, this reality she found herself in was no dream come true. In fact, it was a nightmare.
The man who’d come back to her was a stranger. He reminded her of the man who’d saved her father from execution as a traitor to the former Soviet Union.
Her father was one of only eight people in the world who could approximate the level of genius of Albert Einstein. When the Soviet Union broke up, Leonid Tankien was branded a traitor because of his belief that scientific breakthroughs belonged to the whole world. In poor health, he’d been placed under house arrest in the care of his only daughter and sentenced to hang for treason.
The president of the United States sent a special extraction team in to rescue Tankien and his daughter. Rook was the commanding officer on that mission. Like a superhero, he’d swept in and rescued them and brought them to the United States.
The plane ride to Washington, D.C., was twenty-two hours long. Rook and Irina sat together while her father rested. By the time the plane landed at Dulles, Rook had transformed from terse military commander to gentle yet strong confidant, and Irina had fallen hopelessly in love.
Too bad for her.
She hung the towel over the rack and rolled down the sleeves of her white silk shirt. The black pants she’d fished out of the closet were a size too large now, but the cotton socks and hiking boots fit fine. She pulled her hair back from her face and refastened the rubber band with a wince.
For a brief moment she again buried her face in her hands and worked on controlling her breathing and swallowing the nausea that kept pushing at her throat.
Someone knocked on the bathroom door. When she opened it, she found herself staring up at Rook’s handsome face.
He didn’t even bother to try and raise a smile as his gaze raked her from head to toe. “We’ve got to go.”
