Crazy Love

by Tara Janzen

  Abruptly, Hawkins stopped, his gaze frozen to the page. Then he shot a rapier-sharp glance across the office.

  “Escape”—that was the word Superman had choked on, and quite frankly, Dylan didn’t want to talk about it. As a matter of fact, he wasn’t going to talk about it, especially in front of Skeeter.

  With a softly muttered curse, Hawkins shifted his attention back to the fax and continued reading.

  “Sumba,” he said after a moment, speaking the word in a voice so cold, Dylan felt the hair rise on the back of his neck.

  He took a careful breath, told himself to calm down. He wasn’t surprised the island of Sumba was mentioned in the report. He just didn’t like being reminded of the damn place, not that he wasn’t thinking about Sumba and Hamzah Negara, the bastard who owned it, twenty-five out of every twenty-four hours in the day right now.

  Hawkins didn’t say another word, just stood there, staring at the fax, until finally, after an endless, tension-filled minute, he folded the piece of paper and put it in his pocket.

  “Shouldn’t I, uh, make a copy of that for the files?” Skeeter asked. “Maybe scan it into a documents folder?”

  “No,” both Dylan and Hawkins said at the same time, then looked at each other.

  “No,” Hawkins repeated, shifting his attention back to the plans.

  Dylan hazarded a quick glance in Skeeter’s direction. She was poised like a cat on the edge of her chair, doughnut paused in midair, curiosity damn near perking up her ears, and her gaze locked on Superman’s pocket.

  “But it’s a commendation,” she said. “General Grant likes to stockpile those things, use them for budget fodder.”

  “Not this commendation,” Dylan said in a tone that would brook no argument. He wasn’t too worried. The girl was nothing but trouble, but she was hell and gone out of luck if she thought she could lift that fax off Superman without him knowing it. Nobody was that good. His secret was safe, at least from her. Hawkins was another story, and Dylan could tell by the grim expression on Superman’s face that he was going to want to talk about the Jakarta mission—a lot.

  Too bad.

  “I know just where to put it,” Skeeter said, interrupting his train of thought.

  He slanted her another glance. He obviously needed to work on his brook-no-argument tone.

  “No.”

  “We have half a dozen folders on him, including the black ones, the ones that need top-secret clearance. If you don’t want to see the commendation again, we could deep-six it into one of those, but it should be archived.”

  Deep-sixing into black files? Since when had she had access to SDF’s top-secret documents?

  He no sooner thought the question than he knew the answer: since she’d damn well figured out how to access them herself, that’s since when. The girl ran wild at Steele Street.

  And who in the hell “him” was she talking about? “Half a dozen files on who?”

  “Negara,” she said. “Hamzah Negara, the Indonesian warlord whose fortress is on the island of Sumba in the Sabu Sea.”

  If she’d meant to freeze him into place, she’d done a damn good job, and suddenly he regretted every ounce of Scotch. It was churning in his stomach, and if he got sick, he was going to feel like a royal fool.

  “He’s billing himself as an Islamic jihadist these days,” she continued. “But he’s cut more than a few deals with the CIA when it was to his advantage. His legitimate businesses include controlling interest in the Java Resorts Group, and he’s big into vice, with high stakes in prostitution and gambling. A lot of people think he’s the power behind the Jai Traon pirates harassing the shipping lanes in the South China Sea, but his major source of income is still China White—Southeast Asian heroin.”

  And who in the hell, he wondered, had been briefing Skeeter on his missions?

  He angled his gaze at Hawkins, who gave him a slow shake of his head.

  Good God. Just how deeply had the girl gotten herself into the secrets of Steele Street and SDF? The potential answer to that question unnerved him. There were things she really shouldn’t know—including what she’d just said.

  “The commendation stays where it is.” Nonexistent, nothing but a piece of paper in a pocket.

  Jakarta was behind him, and Washington, D.C., was here and now. They had the Godwin file to deal with, and after he stole the Godwin file, there’d be another mission, another job, and then another, until Negara was nothing but old business, best forgotten, and that’s the way he wanted it. He did not want the damn Jakarta thing hanging over his head like a friggin’ guillotine—but it was, ready to drop without a moment’s notice.

  But that was just him, and a little residual paranoia, which, really, was to be expected, considering where he’d been last week—at least where he thought he’d been, mostly.

  Shit.

  He brought his hand up and wiped it across his mouth. The cramped cell on the hillside was clear in his mind, the filth, the smell, the shackles, and his neighbor—the guy hanging next to him, dying. He’d been thrown into that cell, and he’d made his escape from that cell, but in between those two events, sometime between the dark days and darker nights, there had been someplace white, and clean, and excruciatingly bright.

  It hurt even to think about it, how bright the place had been, the light almost blue, searing into his brain, making time stop. There had been nothing to hold on to in that place, no handhold for reality, and maybe there hadn’t been any reality at all. Maybe the white place had been a drug-induced hallucination.

  Because there had been drugs. God only knew what. God and the doctors on the U.S.S. Jefferson, he hoped.

  After his escape, a Navy medical team had checked him over, inside and out, and told him he was fine—probably just fine. If the injections Negara had given him had been lethal, he would have already dropped over dead, probably. That had been five days ago, plenty of time for their antidotes to counteract the warlord’s chemical soup—probably.

  A week would be the true test.

  Probably.

  Shit.

  He didn’t have to look to know the bruises were still there, two of them up the inside of his right forearm, each with a tiny pinprick in the center where Negara’s needles had gone in, three more where the Navy had run their counterattack. As an added—but probably unnecessary—precaution, the doctors had given him a series of backup antidotes, three injectable Syrettes safely nested in a square of foam rubber inside a small stainless steel case—red if his body temperature started to rise over the hundred-degree mark and/or he started hallucinating; blue if his temperature dropped below normal and/or his guts started turning inside out; and yellow if his heart stopped. So it was red—hot and whacked; blue—cold and puking; and yellow—dead. He felt like freaking Alice in Wonderland.

  And, yeah, injecting himself with the yellow Syrette if his heart stopped was probably going to be a real good trick. He’d meant to tell Hawkins about the potential necessity for that particular procedure as soon as he’d walked into Steele Street last night—but he’d gotten distracted.

  His gaze strayed back to Skeeter. Hell, he was still distracted, which made him wonder if instead of harboring a time-delay component, Negara’s chemicals hadn’t already taken full effect, simply making him stupid—because it was nothing but stupid to be so wound up about things, especially being so wound up about her. He had no business taking her anywhere. Stealing things was his business, his real business. Beautiful punk-rock girls and delayed-reaction toxic chemicals with names like NG4, XT7, and XXG2 were new fields for him—fields he wanted to get the hell out of as quickly as possible, preferably with all his parts still in working order.

  Two more days.

  That’s all he needed.

  He did not need Skeeter Bang driving him crazy and Hawkins giving him the evil eye. The commendation was a done deal, no matter what the two of them wanted.

  “So how’s Kat?” he asked, changing the subject to Superman’s wif
e and hopefully taking the heat off himself.

  And it worked. Something damn close to a smile actually came across Hawkins’s face.

  “Still pregnant,” his friend said, the almost-smile broadening into the real thing.

  “Very pregnant,” Skeeter added. “She could go any minute.”

  “Not any minute,” Hawkins disagreed, glancing over at the girl. “Kat’s cervix is softening, but she’s only dilated to two.”

  O-kay. So much for that subject. The last thing Dylan wanted to talk about was Katya Hawkins’s cervix—ever.

  “So what are we dealing with at Whitfield’s?” he asked, moving things along.

  “A Halloran-Jenks security system for the estate,” Hawkins said, returning his attention to the plans and running his finger over a scale drawing of the mansion. “Including video surveillance, with banks of cameras here, here, and here, a two-story office with keypad entry, and a biometric wall vault hidden behind a bank of bookcases on the second-floor loft.”

  “Biometric? Hell.” That was going to take some preparation. It was going to take time. Something they didn’t have.

  “Yeah, I know, but Grant said he had Whitfield’s fingerprints. He’ll have them sent to your hotel,” Hawkins said.

  And that was the advantage of having a renegade general for a commanding officer. Grant knew how to get things like a senator’s fingerprints. Hell, he’d probably lifted them himself last night, off of something in Whitfield’s office.

  “Wasn’t that a Halloran-Jenks system we breached in Montreal?”

  “The same, but Whitfield doesn’t have the T-21 upgrades.”

  “Even better.”

  “The loft is semicircular,” Hawkins continued. “It rings half the upper floor and overlooks the main-floor office below. Access is via an open-cage elevator or a circular staircase. There are floor-to-ceiling windows on each end of the loft, looking out over the back of the estate. Access to the small room containing the vault is through Chaucer.”

  At Dylan’s inquiring glance, Hawkins shrugged.

  “Whitfield is old school, and he’s hosting a reception for the British ambassador tonight. You’ll be going as Michael Deakins, a State Department aide. The invitation for you and your wife, Jeanette, will be waiting for you at the hotel, along with—”

  Whoa. Dylan held up his hand.

  Whoa. Whoa. Whoa.

  “—the appropriate identification, and a—” Hawkins’s voice ground to a halt. “What?”

  Wife?

  He couldn’t even get the word out. He pushed his sunglasses down on his nose, his gaze zeroing in on Hawkins. Superman couldn’t possibly be thinking what Dylan thought he was thinking.

  “Jeanette?” he finally managed to say. “There is no Jeanette.” Because there was only one possible Jeanette, and she had sugar on her nose.

  “Yes,” Hawkins said. “There is a Jeanette. She’s part of your cover.”

  No. No, she wasn’t.

  “No wife.” No way in hell. Good God. Skeeter Jeanne Bang undercover as the wife of a State Department aide at a Washington, D.C., black-tie reception for the British ambassador; the underage street Goth princess with a flute of champagne in her hand and a lightning-bolt tattoo streaking up her leg, with the Chinese symbols for Honor, Duty, and Loyalty inked into her upper arm, and lo and behold, even more of the damn lightning bolt snaking up over her shoulder.

  It made his head spin.

  He sent the “street princess” a quick glance, the whole ball-capped, mirror-sunglassed wonder of her, expecting confirmation of the complete idiocy of Superman’s plan—and immediately realized his mistake.

  She’d seen it all, every ounce of disbelief, panic, and denial that had swept over his face, and she’d taken every one of his knee-jerk reactions very, very personally. Dammit. He hadn’t known a mouth that soft could set itself into such a hard line.

  Tough. He was the boss, and this was his call.

  Wife. Jesus. The last thing he needed was an excuse to treat her like a wife. That was asking for trouble.

  “Driving,” he said succinctly. “That was the deal we cut.”

  She didn’t say a word, just sat there looking mutinous, her arms crossed over her breasts.

  After a couple of long seconds, Hawkins broke the silence. “Okay, then. Let’s finish going over the setup at Whitfield’s, and the two of you can work out the details later.”

  Details?

  There weren’t going to be any details.

  And there wasn’t going to be any “wife.” He didn’t care how much cover Superman thought he needed.

  CHAPTER

  6

  FISH.

  Net.

  Combat.

  Boots.

  Lightning.

  Bolt.

  From where Dylan was sitting in the plane seat next to her, he could see Skeeter’s tattoo zipping up her leg and the zigzag just above the hip-hugging waistband of her skirt. The highly stylized line of ink appeared again higher up, zooming out from under her tank top with another zigzag on her shoulder blade, following the curve of a tiny pink bra strap down to the kind of curves that made it impossible for him to sleep at night.

  All of it was mesmerizing, but he’d gotten stuck on one small spot less than two inches in width, a break in the bolt, a small spot on her upper thigh where there was no ink.

  Black.

  Ops.

  Afghanistan.

  Mission.

  Skeeter.

  Skinned.

  He took another slow sip of coffee.

  There it was, staring him in the face, the perfect example of everything he’d been trying to say last night, of every reason he’d had for not bringing her with him, which didn’t exactly explain why she was within touching distance at 30,000 feet, working on her laptop and smelling like the sugar she’d long since licked off her lips—sweet.

  Very sweet.

  Edible—and he knew right where he wanted to start, a little fantasy of his he probably wasn’t going to get a chance to indulge, not in a 747, not even in first-class. If he was down to his last few hours on earth, it might be nice to check out with one shred of integrity still intact.

  Or not.

  The tank top was stretchy white lace. Her shoulders were bare, the right one practically touching him—a silky soft, creamy smooth shoulder with that slinky little pink bra strap running over the top curve.

  He was trying not to think about it.

  He shifted in his seat to get an extra quarter inch of distance between them and looked at his watch. Thirty-six hours left before his week was up.

  Thirty-six hours.

  That really wasn’t much. Not in the broad scheme of things. He should probably make love to her. So what if he lost his last shred of integrity? He at least would have had her, and there wasn’t a doubt in his mind that she was worth more than anything he had in his bag of tricks—including his last shred of integrity.

  Also on the upside, making love with her was probably as close to heaven as he was ever going to get, and that bore some thinking about, given his current condition, and if he keeled over dead after ward, well, then he didn’t have to worry about breaking her heart.

  Great. He’d convinced himself. It was a win/win situation.

  So what was that odd sense of unease, that little sizzle of panic he felt?

  He let out a heavy breath, ran his hand back through his hair, and tried not to think about it. That seemed to be his standard operating procedure this week—don’t think.

  “Ms. Bang?” The flight attendant, an attractive brunette in her thirties, leaned down over Skeeter’s aisle seat with a notebook and pen in hand, a conspiratorial smile on her lips. “The man in 4B wondered if he could have your autograph. He told me his daughter is a huge fan.”

  Fan? What the hell? Dylan lifted himself up and looked over the back of his seat. Since when did covert operators have fans?

  Never. That was when.

  He spot
ted the guy, and just as he’d suspected, 4B was checking her out—checking out her hot pink bra and endlessly long, fishnet-covered legs. Christ. He was even checking out her combat boots. Somebody ought to tell 4B she could take his face off with one of those boots.

  The man glanced at Dylan then and caught the cold, hard stare Dylan was giving him, and yeah, it took him a second, but he got the friggin’ message.

  That’s right, dude. Your face.

  Satisfied, Dylan dropped back down in his seat and looked over to see Skeeter scrawling the word “Pink” across the paper.

  Pink. Hell. The rock star. “You’re prettier than Pink.”

  A set of mirrored sunglasses shifted in his direction, but only for a heartbeat, before she was smiling at the flight attendant and handing back the notebook and pen.

  Prettier than Pink? He let out another breath and tried to remember the last time he’d said something that dumb to a woman.

  Okay, nothing was coming to him, because he’d never said anything that dumb to a woman.

  God, it was going to be a long flight.

  “You need to stop staring at my leg,” she said.

  A really long flight.

  “I’m not staring at your leg.”

  “You have been, ever since takeoff, right at the spot where I got hit in Afghanistan.”

  Caught. Red-handed.

  He cleared his throat.

  “I was just thinking how perfectly the scar illustrates my point about you staying with the car at Whitfield’s.” It was the only detail they’d worked out after Hawkins had finished the briefing, and as far as Dylan was concerned, it was the only detail they’d needed to work out, except for a new one that had just come to him. He pulled a pen and a small notepad out of the inside pocket of his suit jacket and jotted down a number. “If there’s a problem—any kind of a problem—tonight, I expect you to leave the area and call this number as soon as you’re clear. Let it ring twice and hang up. You’ll get a call back in less than five minutes.”

  He ripped off the page and handed it to her.

  She just stared at it.