TO HOLD AN EAGLE

by Justine Davis

  He considered it for a moment, then decided. He didn't know this part of the coast very well. Even if he headed in right now, straight to shore, there was no guarantee he'd be able to get her to a professional any sooner than if he took her straight to the Harbor Department dock. He could radio ahead to have paramedics waiting, and in the long run it would probably be faster.

  He set the autopilot back on course, checking his watch again to mentally set the time he guessed he would have to take his bearings and set a course into the harbor. He picked up the powerful binoculars he'd left sitting on the cockpit seat when he'd gone over the side, scanning the surrounding ocean once more.

  Empty, except for a few small pleasure boats he could see far to the north, off Newport Beach, and a few more, to the south out of Dana Point. Nothing that was any danger to them if he left the boat unattended for a while. And nothing that explained the presence of a lone woman overboard. No panicked tacking back and forth in a search pattern, no flares, nothing.

  "Who are you, mermaid?" he muttered. "And why isn't anyone looking for you?"

  His expression grim, he went below once more. She was curled up in the cocoon of blankets, hugging them to her. She was sound asleep, thick, golden lashes lying softly on her cheeks, partially masking the dark, bruised-looking circles beneath her eyes. And the mug on the small table was empty.

  With a small smile, Linc bent to enter the low cabin, to get the mug and take it to the galley. Then he stopped, remembering her reaction when she had sensed his movement toward her before. Slowly, quietly, he backed away and left her sleeping.

  Linc yawned as he leaned back in the cockpit. It had been a long day. He'd started before dawn from his overnight anchorage off the Palos Verdes Peninsula, and after a full day of sailing, interrupted by those heart-pounding moments of exertion in the water, he was feeling the effects.

  He had stripped off his salt water-soaked clothes and had taken a quick shower before dressing in dry jeans and shirt—a light blue one this time, so Shy couldn't roll her eyes at him and make some saucy remark about his seemingly never-ending supply of white shirts. His sister often teased him unmercifully about his simple civilian clothes, making him blush—as only his irrepressible sister could do—with her frank assessment.

  "You've got a great bod, big brother, those great shoulders and pecs, and that washboard stomach, and you hide it in those darn loose shirts. I mean, the way you dress, the only thing a woman can tell about you is you've got great buns, because—"

  "Knock it off," he usually growled at that point, embarrassed more by the fact that she could embarrass him than by her words.

  He wondered for a moment if he should have offered the fresh water rinse to his unexpected guest. But it was too late now; she needed the rest more than she needed the shower. He doubted she would have been able to stand up long enough anyway. She was still sleeping soundly the last time he'd checked, so the salt residue obviously wasn't bothering her that much yet. It would when she woke up. If she even did before they made port.

  It was a good thing he'd decided to speed things up instead of continuing the leisurely sailing he'd been doing, he thought as he glanced back over his shoulder at the towering bank of fog building up a few miles farther offshore. When the steady wind from the west had begun to fluctuate, he had furled the sails and turned on the engine, a reluctant concession to the need to get his passenger ashore as soon as possible.

  He gave a slight, amazed shake of his head. If he hadn't been taking his time, if he'd been pushing, motoring instead of sailing leisurely, he would have been in port by now. And long past the place where a desperate young woman had fought to stay afloat. And if he hadn't been right there, at just that moment in time… He shivered a little; being a career navy man did nothing to lessen the horror of a cold, wet death at sea.

  He pushed the grim thought aside. He had been there, and the frightened woman below was safe now, even if she didn't believe it. And she seemed all right, too. She was warm again, that ashen tinge gone from her face, although she still seemed pale to him. She was sleeping soundly. She hadn't awakened when the twenty-one horsepower diesel had kicked in, even though it was directly next to her bunk and the steady thrum was audible in the small cabin.

  And he still had no idea where she had come from.

  He smothered all the questions he had no answers to and concentrated on what he was doing.

  Even though he hadn't often sailed this part of the coast, he had no doubts about his location; Dana Point stood out as massively now as it had when Richard Henry Dana had written about men tossing the cured cowhides off the top to the waiting ships below in 1834.

  He was almost there, he thought with the gratification of a voyage completed. It was one of the few moments of satisfaction he'd had of late. He'd been spinning his wheels, fretting with the inactivity of the enforced leave his commanding officer had not very subtly ordered him to take.

  "You're on the edge of burnout, Linc," Clark Powell had said, "and we can't afford to lose you. Three months, like it or not."

  He hadn't liked it, but when Shiloh had called to tell him her friend Wayne was taking the Phoenix on a long cruise, and the slip would be open for at least a month or two, he had jumped at the chance for a relaxing sail down the coast from Santa Barbara to San Clemente to visit his sister and brother-in-law.

  He'd packed some clothes, prepared and stocked the boat, slid the .45 automatic that was the twin to the one he'd given to Shy for her eighteenth birthday—he'd been startled when she'd first insisted that's what she wanted, but considering the kind of life they had both led, he supposed he shouldn't have been—into the holder he'd installed inside the main hatch. It was occupational caution, he told himself, not paranoia. Then he set sail.

  It would soon be time to make the turn and head toward the harbor entrance, he realized, and he'd have to be at the wheel then. Since he'd promised Shiloh he'd call her when he was headed in, so she could come pick him up, he'd better do it now, he thought.

  He once again checked the vicinity for any vessels close by; there was nothing close enough to be hazardous yet. He went below, glancing into the aft cabin; his passenger stirred but didn't awaken.

  He sat at the navigational station, and lifted the hinged chart table to search the cubby beneath. Shy would be at work at the sail loft, but she'd told him to call her anyway. He dug out the chart for the harbor and vicinity, where he had, logically enough, scribbled the phone number she'd given him. And printed in the legend of the chart was the local Harbor Department number. He could have them call the paramedics out to check her over, he decided. He could tell them what little he knew and then be on his way.

  He reached for the radio, raised the marine operator and requested the phone call.

  "All right, sir, and the number you wish to call?"

  A slight sound behind him caught his attention, but the operator asking him again to confirm the number he wished to call distracted him.

  "Sir? The number?"

  "Sorry. It's—"

  He felt the movement behind him and tensed with the instinctive reaction born of years of watching his back. He smiled wryly at himself; she wasn't exactly going to overpower him, all five foot one of her. But then he heard a distinctive metallic sound, and the skin at the back of his neck crawled unpleasantly. He dropped the microphone.

  He whirled, half in a crouch, and found himself staring down the chrome barrel of a .45 automatic, held in the hands of the nameless woman he'd pulled from the sea.

  * * *

  Chapter 2

  « ^ »

  His own gun.

  Linc nearly groaned aloud. He, who had a reputation for anticipating absolutely everything, had never even thought about removing the weapon from its bracket, within arm's reach of the doorway to the aft cabin. It had never occurred to him that she would go for it.

  You're a fool, Reese said silently. You know damn well that the deadliest packages sometimes come in the prett
iest wrappings. Not, of course, that he thought she was really going to shoot him…

  "Hang up."

  They were the first words he'd heard from her, and he didn't know if the not-unpleasant huskiness in her voice was normal, or a result of swallowing too much salt water during her sojourn in the Pacific.

  What he did know was that she was lusciously, femininely curved in the blue swimsuit that hugged all of those curves, that she was barely a fraction over the five foot one that he'd guessed her at, that a great deal of that seemed to be legs, and that her hair had dried to a pale blond swath that fell nearly to her elbows in a salty tangle down her back.

  And that she had him dead to rights.

  Confronting a weapon trained on his heart was nothing new to him; facing an armed woman who was shaking so badly she could barely hold the gun was. His eyes flicked over her hands, and the way she held the gun seemed as if she'd never touched one before. He shifted slightly, tilting his head so he could see the side of the weapon. Then, hiding it carefully, he let his taut body relax a bit.

  "Hang up," she repeated, a little fiercely as the marine operator's voice crackled through the speaker again.

  "Just calling my little sister," Linc said with an exaggeratedly casual shrug. It wasn't really a he; he had been going to call Shy next.

  That seemed to startle her; her pale brows furrowed. He pressed the advantage.

  "She's expecting me, and I'm a little late. I don't want her to worry."

  He saw her mouth tighten a little, and knew she was remembering that the reason he was late was that he'd stopped to save her life. The operator's voice came crackling out of the speaker again, sounding irritated this time. Linc's eyes never left the woman who held his gun. He could almost see her fighting to hang on to her resolve.

  "Hang up," she ordered again.

  "Whatever you say," he agreed mildly, and reached for the microphone. "Sorry," he said to the operator. "I'll try again later."

  After replacing the microphone in its hanger, he turned back to face her. He leaned against the chart table and folded his arms calmly across his chest. When he spoke, it was as if the woman before him had held nothing more threatening than a water pistol.

  "I'm glad to see you're feeling better."

  The ordinariness of it, and his unperturbed tone, seemed to disconcert her, as he'd intended. A blush rose up her slender throat, and only then did Linc realize that the paleness that had worried him was apparently her natural coloration. With her hair being almost as fair as her skin, her eyes, clear now and sharply focused, took over her face, as if all the color and vitality she possessed were centered there in the vivid blue.

  "You can take a shower, if you like. You must feel salty."

  The polite concern in his voice seemed to deepen her confusion; the gun lowered a fraction.

  "I could probably find you something to wear over that suit," Linc added, pressing the routine, the ordinary, forcing the change from the nervous drama. "It'll be getting chilly soon."

  The gun came down a bit more. And with a smooth, easy gesture no more hasty than if he'd been risking merely that water pistol, he reached out and swept the weapon out of her trembling hands.

  She gave a startled cry, staring at the gun now in his hands, then up at his face.

  "It's an automatic," he explained gently. "It won't fire unless you take the safety off."

  Utter humiliation flooded her face. He could almost feel it radiating from her as she sank to the floor in a tiny heap, burying her face in her hands.

  "God, I'm such a fool," she said, her voice quivering as her slender body shook with her battle not to cry.

  Something about that unexpected collapse tugged at Linc, and he found himself in the odd position of wanting to comfort the person who had seconds ago been holding a gun on him. He knelt down beside her—after slipping the .45 safely into his waistband at the small of his back.

  "I'd say you're just scared," he said softly.

  "That's nothing new." Her voice was bitter between the gulps of air she was taking, trying to control the quivering of her body and stop the tears Linc could imagine were brimming in her eyes. "But I'm a fool for thinking I could ever … scare anyone else."

  "I don't know. You had me going, for a minute."

  She looked up at him then, the bitterness he'd heard in her voice reflecting twofold in her face. And, quite obviously, directed at herself. The emotion twisted her delicate features painfully.

  "You? You never even blinked."

  "Yes, I did." She gave him a look rank with disbelief. "You surprised me," he admitted. "And it's been a long time since anyone's gotten the drop on me."

  Her eyes narrowed, the vivid blue seeming to intensify as she stared at him. He saw the bitter self-disgust recede before the creeping return of the fear that had faded for a moment. She was, he realized, wondering what kind of man kept track of when someone got the drop on him. And she wasn't liking the answers she came up with.

  "It's all right," he told her. "I'm not…"

  He stopped. What was she thinking he was? And whatever she was thinking, was it far wrong? He'd played some odd roles in his Naval Investigative Services career, from a green ensign to an admiral, from a disgruntled submariner with secrets to sell to a money hungry physician's assistant with access to an unending supply of prescription drugs and an eye to treading on an already established drug dealer's territory. That he'd found those roles unpalatable had made him no less good at them.

  He wondered what the fearful woman before him would say if he told her he indeed probably had been whatever evil thing she was thinking of, but that it had been for a good cause, for the right side—for the "white hats" of a childhood game taught to him by a father who had also played the same dark games—or any one of the other justifications he used to keep himself going. Finally, he just settled for the simple truth. "I'm not going to hurt you," he said quietly.

  Silence spun out between them. Linc could see her studying him yet again, considering, almost able to see her mind turning over the possibilities. And, at last, the tension seemed to ease out of her a little.

  "No, I suppose you're not," she said slowly. "Not after you risked your life to save me."

  Linc's mouth quirked. "I wouldn't exactly say I risked my life. I was pretty safe. Until you started fighting and nearly drowned us both, that is."

  When the faint tinge of color rose in her cheeks once more, Linc knew he'd said it just to see it again. He liked the way it made her eyes stand out, liked the proof that she was warm and recovering, liked the fact that she did it at all. The innocence it took to blush over such a simple thing made him feel an odd emotion inside, as if perhaps the world wasn't as ugly as he so often found it, at least not through and through.

  Was this what Con had found in Shiloh? Linc's eyes narrowed suddenly at the unexpected thought. He knew Shy had it in her, that bright, shining innocence held on to despite the cool competence she had worked so hard at attaining; it had been, at times, the only thing that had kept Linc going. And Linc knew that the dark, solitary man who was now his brother-in-law had found a haven of peace and goodness in his feisty little sister, a patch of golden sunlight after all the darkness, all the shadows. Linc envied his friend even as he rejoiced for them both; there would be no such brightness for him, he'd walked this dark road too long.

  And there you go again, Reese, he told himself sharply. Quit whining and get to work, before you sink this boat on the rocks of the jetty.

  "We're almost to Dana Point. The paramedics can meet us at the Harbor Department dock—"

  "Paramedics?" she said, short and sharp.

  Linc lifted a brow. "Yes. You almost drowned, remem—"

  "No!" Panic made her voice harsh, and he saw her try to control it. "No," she repeated, steadier. "I'm fine. Please, no paramedics."

  Linc sat back on his heels, looking at her. "There could be aftereffects, you know. Especially if you took any water into your lungs. You shou
ld at least see a doctor."

  "I … I will. Later."

  "Then we'll just go straight to the sheriff's office at the Harbor Department."

  "No!"

  He lifted a brow, but said nothing; he'd long ago discovered that he often learned more by his silence than by asking questions.

  "No," she said again, more restrained this time. "Please. There's no need."

  The brow went higher.

  "Please," she repeated urgently. "I know … I mean, thank you for all you've done, but if you'll just, uh, get me to shore, I'll … be fine."

  She subsided into silence. Linc waited, but soon realized that she had nothing more to say. Odd, he thought. Most people would be explaining away like mad, or talking just to fill the silence. He decided to prod a little further.

  "I'll call someone for you, then. Or you can. Someone to come meet you after we dock."

  "No!" She paled again at the involuntary ferocity of the denial." I mean… I already have somebody… I have a friend close by. I'll go there."

  His expression never wavered at the obvious fabrication. But his every instinct was humming, warming to the mystery, reacting to the evasions. Telling himself fiercely that he was on leave did little good in quieting the response that was second nature to him.

  "Let me make sure I have this right," he said with deceptive smoothness. "I pull you out of the Pacific, miles offshore, you nearly drown, there's no boat looking for you, but you don't want to see the paramedics or the police."

  He saw her press her lips together tightly. The thick, golden lashes lowered, and he wondered if she was going to give in and cry this time.

  "So tell me, mermaid, what am I supposed to do?" he asked softly. "Just hand you off at the dock and then sail into the sunset? Forget all about it?"

  He heard her take a gulping breath, saw her blink rapidly. Her eyes were brimming, but she was fighting the tears gamely. Then her head came up. As if she'd found some source of inner strength, the moisture in her eyes receded, and her face changed, transformed into an expressionless mask made almost lifeless by her paleness.