“But to just put her on a plane? Telling no one? Leaving her fate to chance? Someone would do that?”
“Bronny, the thing you have to understand about terrorism—its purpose isn’t to destroy enemies. It is to demoralize and control people through fear. Often, terrorists need the people they are preying upon to continue to be productive.”
Bronwyn nodded thoughtfully. “And the best way to control a parent is to threaten their children.”
“Right. For the last ten years, I’ve been in failed-state countries where there is no law and no sanctuary. There is only unending strife, motivated by greed, between power factions. People in those places teeter at the tipping point of panic all the time. Jack up the fear suddenly, and they will do things—thoughtless, screwball, sometimes atrocious things—they would ordinarily never do.”
“The parents in this case must have believed the danger to Julia wasn’t just a threat, it was a sure thing.”
“Probably. And for some reason, they couldn’t take her and run themselves.”
Bronwyn peeled a long, dry splinter from a piling. She broke it into smaller pieces and flung them into the water before turning to him. “So it’s a Baby Moses story.”
“Baby Moses?” Sounded off topic to Garth, but God knew, he didn’t want to dwell on all the things he’d seen happen to children. He was happy to let her talk about anything she wanted to, while he mentally traced the sweet purity of her profile and drew her soft, illusive scent deep into his lungs.
“It’s in the Old Testament,” she reminded him. Unnecessarily. “Pharaoh’s soldiers were going from house to house killing all the baby boy-children of the Jewish slaves. To save Moses even at the cost of losing him, Moses’s mother made him a tiny boat of woven reeds and put him in it and floated it where it would be hidden among the bulrushes in the Nile. What’s implied is that she hid him in a place no one would think to look for a baby.”
“Substitute a banana box for a homemade boat, and that would be about right.”
“Suppose there’s more to the story? Suppose putting Julia on the plane was an act of desperation, but not a crazy one?”
“Meaning what?”
Bronwyn tilted her head. Her hair swung like a curtain—which Garth thought entrancing. He’d like to feel the silken length swing against his hand or against his face as she bent over to kiss him or maybe against his belly when she—
His hands tightened on the dry, crumbling wood of the dock edge. He forced his mind back on the subject.
“Read at face value,” Bronwyn continued, unaware of the direction of his thoughts, “Moses was either very lucky or had divine intervention. However, read the story carefully, and you can see a suspicious number of coincidences. I think Moses’s mother was as audacious as she was desperate. Saving him by hiding him in the Nile was not as chancy as it sounds.
“First of all,” she held up a slender finger, “he wasn’t abandoned to his fate. Moses’s sister was also sent to keep watch.” She raised a second finger. “Second, Moses was put in the river at a spot Pharaoh’s daughter was known to visit. Third, Moses was found not by a nobody but by Pharaoh’s daughter—possibly the only person in the kingdom with the power to keep him alive, despite the Pharaoh’s decree.
“Fourth, when Pharaoh’s daughter decided to keep him, Moses’s sister ran up to her and announced, ‘I just happen to know a wet nurse!’” Bronwyn tossed her hand dismissively. “I ask you, was she thinking fast when she offered her mother’s services as a wet nurse, or had Moses’s mother planned every step?”
He locked onto what she was saying. “You believe someone was supposed to be on the plane to make sure the box was put into the right hands.”
“Well, yes. Because the question isn’t only where was she coming from and why. We have to ask: who was she going to?”
He’d been so focused on the fact that he was smack-dab in the middle of the kind of dirty mess that would make his efforts to restart his naval career academic (and end the career of anyone he asked to help him), and so appalled to find yet another total innocent set adrift, that after he’d dismissed the possibility that someone intended to sell her, he hadn’t pursued the question further.
Had someone planned a drop, the oldest spy trick in the world? Was Renfro supposed to board the plane carrying a box of bananas and disembark at the other end carrying an identical box?
What could be easier than getting off a plane carrying a box of bananas—especially where there would be no customs check to go through after disembarking.
“There was someone who was supposed to be on the plane but wasn’t.” Renfro. MacMurtry had been there to meet him, but he hadn’t been aboard. “I’ve got some people seeing if they can get a lead on him,” Garth continued.
“Do you think he is the baby’s father?”
“Don’t know. One thing is for sure. If there was someone she was supposed to go to, then that person wants there to be no evidence of any kind of Julia’s existence in this country. Someone was using the… company I work for. Someone powerful, with connections to the navy, if they could send a lieutenant to pick up the plane’s missing passenger.”
“You don’t think Julia was expected by anyone in your company?”
“I’d have heard from them by now.” And there went any hope, however faint, that his bosses would think he’d done the right thing by acting on his own and reward him. He sneered inwardly at himself. Once a Boy Scout, always a Boy Scout. He’d known he was most likely getting on the good side of nobody. What made him keep hoping for the happy ending?
“Then what are we going to do?”
“Wait. If I can find… the man who was supposed to be aboard, maybe he can tell us more. But I think you need to prepare yourself. It’s possible that no one is looking for Julia. If someone wanted her to disappear without a trace, they did a good job.”
Bronwyn fisted her hands on her hips. “Then I’m back to where I started. Shouldn’t we just go to the police or the FBI? Can’t we just tell them the truth? If there’s any way to find Julia’s family, surely they’re more likely to succeed than we are.”
He started to tell her he could kiss everything he had worked toward for ten years good-bye if he let the baby’s existence and her means of entry into the country become public. But if his only concern had been to cover his own ass, he would have done as he was advised and would have dropped her off at some emergency room.
He’d gone soft. He’d let himself put his own feelings and judgment ahead of the requirements of the job he had to do. Now he had involved Bronwyn. She was pure and sweet and clean, and he’d never wanted anyone more in his life.
She had no idea how ruthless the people were whose way she would be stepping into. She worried about the damage being associated with a ghost would do her reputation? These were people who would think nothing of discrediting her until no one would trust her to mow grass.
They would think nothing of framing her and making sure she took the fall, think nothing of eliminating her altogether. Maintaining security was their job. They would not let the livelihood or life of one innocent woman or baby imperil their mission.
“No.”
Bronwyn studied him long and slowly, a little pleat between her dark reddish eyebrows. “Because of those ‘national security’ issues?”
“Yes.”
She was quiet a long time. Far out on the river, a fishing boat’s trolling motor hummed, just inside the threshold of audibility. Overhead, a flock of starlings chittered and angled their aggregate being toward a stand of hardwoods on the opposite shore to roost for the night. Closer, in the trees behind them, quail sent a few sleepy Bob? Bob White? calls and fell silent.
The water looked smooth and still as glass, but underneath the dock, the river licked and sucked softly at the pilings like the living, moving thing it was.
“I don’t h
ave any control in this situation at all, do I?” Bronwyn asked, more contemplative than complaining. “I can’t even quit—and live with myself afterward.”
“Bronny, I’m sorry. I got you into this. It’s all my fault.”
“Partly your fault, yes. All your fault? I don’t think so. You tried to leave and take Julia with you. I wouldn’t let you. I was so sure, if there was a choice between us, Julia was better off with me.”
“No. It’s all my fault. I knew the score. And I knew who you were as soon as you stepped on the porch.”
Chapter 24
We want to be in a situation under maximum pressure, maximum intensity, and maximum danger. When it is shared with others, it provides a bond which is stronger than any tie that can exist.
—SEAL Team Six Officer
Bronwyn looked at the man beside her on the dock, his tan face ruddy in the gloaming. The blood red of his shirt scintillated. His golden-oak skin gleamed over muscles sleek as a leopard’s. He sat, as always, head balanced, broad shoulders straight, relaxed, utterly still. He pulsed with the elemental power of a totem. He was the thunderbird, the falcon-headed sun god, the Aztec’s golden jaguar.
He never made any of the purposeless, unconscious movements other people do. He didn’t rub his nose, touch his tie, tug his belt, or like some men, check his fly. Little movements so individual that a friend could be recognized even if his face couldn’t be seen. Not Garth. He could seem blank. Molded of amber, solid to the core. Except for the occasional smile, he gave away nothing.
Now that she knew to look for it, his distinguishing feature was that he was so there. It made his smallest utterance seem profound, portentous. She struggled for comprehension. “You knew it was me—we had met before—even before I reminded you?”
“Yeah.”
She opened her mouth to speak… and couldn’t think of anything to say. Worlds seemed to have passed between this evening and just twenty-four hours ago. She searched for the link between who she was then and who she was now. Couldn’t find it. She shook with an empty little laugh of mystified acquiescence. She said the only thing that came to mind. “Was that… only last night?”
He wet his lips and ducked his head a fraction. “Yeah.”
Two telltales in a row! Three, if she counted the smile he was trying to hide right now—and really, she thought she should.
She should take him to task for playing such a trick. Demand an explanation. Stomp off in a huff, though that wasn’t her style. She definitely should call him on deliberately misleading her.
But she was so damned glad to know he hadn’t forgotten her. Because she hadn’t forgotten him. She hadn’t forgotten that instant of unbearable recognition when she had realized he had many of the same qualities Troy did—and yet she felt the attraction.
Like a fresh stab into an open wound, it told her the same forces in her character that had led to the first wound were still active. She apparently hadn’t learned a thing. Every cell in her body could cry out to bring him closer. Believing he had forgotten that meeting utterly had made it possible to push aside her visceral response to his nearness. “Why didn’t you say something?”
“Because I should have gotten out of there the second I recognized you.” His dark voice was gruff. “I knew I was up to my neck in it, and anyone who touched me would get covered in it, too. Instead, I gave myself a dozen stupid reasons why I didn’t have to leave. But the real reason I stayed was because I wanted you.”
Julia cried out in her sleep. Bronwyn got up and went to the laptop. She tapped a key to make the screen light up. Julia wriggled and stretched. Her sweet little lips made sucking movements before she fell back into a deep sleep.
“How’s the battery holding up?” Garth asked.
“It’s okay. I had just charged it.”
He held out a long-fingered hand. “Come sit back down.”
His warm, hard hand steadied her as she lowered herself. When her legs again dangled over the river, he urged her to stretch out. With one long arm he cradled her all the way down.
“This okay?” He pulled his arm from beneath her. The weathered planks were rough, a little gritty. Though the air was cooling rapidly, the boards still held the heat of the day. With her legs dangling, there was a not-unpleasant stretch through her thighs and abdomen, but the position put strain on her lower back.
“Widen your knees. You’ll be more comfortable.”
She tried it. The pressure on her lower spine eased. She relaxed. The posture created more room for her diaphragm to move. She drew the wet smell of the river, rich with elements of earth, pines, and cypress, deep into her lungs.
“It has a whole smell of its own, doesn’t it? The river,” she added. She wanted to talk about something else while she absorbed the implications of his revelations. “You know it’s a water world. The smell is little fishy like the ocean, but it’s not marine.”
“Riverine.”
“That’s a word?”
“The word for the environment created by the river.”
“Do SEALs go on rivers?”
“SEALs go anywhere, but water is where we have the tactical edge. There’s a saying, ‘When SEALs are in trouble, they always go to water.’ The coast offers admission to a country, but the river will carry you into its heart.”
***
He rolled on his side and propped his head in his hand. The last traces of sunset had disappeared behind the dark smudge of pines on the opposite shore. Intense blue vibrated on the air. Her white skin glowed like alabaster.
“You’re so pretty.” He was supposed to have said that earlier, he remembered. He smoothed a deep-red tendril from her forehead.
He stroked down the side of her face across her temple, over the elegant rise of her cheekbone, the soft, soft plane of her cheek. The silken skin of her neck. Touching her was a joy in itself. When his skin met her skin, it was like setting his hand on the hood of a quiet and very powerful engine. Insistent heat and fine vibration raced into him. He couldn’t wait to plunge into it, to feel surrounded by it. His breath quickened; his body tightened; his cheeks grew hot as the desire he always felt for this woman surged.
She turned her head to look him full in the face. “I’m not… ready.”
“Okay.” He didn’t pretend not to understand. He had known it was too soon. Even so, he had to swallow a lump of disappointment. “Okay.” On the upside, she hadn’t said no, only not yet. “Let me make you feel good.”
“I said—”
“I know. I’m not going to jump you. I’m not going to push you faster than you want to go. Just let me touch you. When something feels good, tell me. I’ll do it again.”
“But…”
“Bronny, just for a few minutes.” He rested his palm on her stomach, rubbing lightly in soft, slow circles. With each upward circuit, his thumb grazed the lower slopes of her breasts. On the down swing, his little finger drifted across her mound. “Just for a few minutes, lie back and let someone take care of you.”
Under his hand the rhythmic swell and ebb of her breath deepened into a sigh, releasing tension in her whole body. Her thighs opened. Her eyelids drifted down.
Triumph expanded in his chest at the same time that tenderness punched his stomach like a blow from the inside. He was instantly hard. She was his. His mate. She would receive him into her body, into that hot core of feminine power. Completing him as he completed her, making of their separate contributions a new, richer whole.
She was so beautiful. The fading light made her white skin look more ethereal, his tan, darker, more solid. He watched his hand move over her, keeping his touch light and accidental. A small exultant smile touched his lips when he saw telltale movements that told him, whether she meant to or not, that she was now expecting, reaching for his touch.
Now he stroked his hand over one of those darling breasts
, finding the nipple beneath the soft cotton of her top, but still he kept the pressure light, barely skimming. He slid his hand up her thigh, the short skirt no impediment to his questing hand.
By degrees, Bronwyn’s mood of receptive curiosity changed to something more demanding. There. She needed for him to touch her there. The casual competence of his touches made it clear he understood every landmark of her body. But that warm, hard, long-fingered hand skated nearer and nearer without ever quite… She opened her thighs a bit more in invitation. He took full advantage and stroked gentle, skating glides over the silken skin on her legs’ inner faces. Closer… Closer…
Ready to protest his teasing, she opened her eyes and turned her head to look at him.
Deep blue, lazy-lidded eyes appraised her reaction with equal parts calculation and soft-focused humor. He smiled. A smile that was a barely discernible widening of the bow of his lip and yet melting-full, replete with tenderness.
Her throat squeezed painfully around a fist-sized lump. He really might be in love with me. The wonder and the terror of the thought flipped her stomach into a free fall. She had dismissed his out-of-the-blue declaration, hoping he’d regret his impulsiveness and let it go.
But what if…
What if it were…
What if it were… real?
Her eyes filled. Her heart chugged into a harsh, bumpy rhythm.
He slipped his arm under her shoulders until her head and neck were cradled in the crook of his elbow. He smelled of hot wind. Of sandalwood and some dark spice like clove. An intensely masculine smell that simultaneously satisfied and made her hungry. He was the best-smelling man she’d ever met. And the best-feeling one.
He smiled deep into her eyes and lowered his head. Slow, soft, thorough, he took her lips in a kiss. Inexorably gentle, licking and biting at her mouth until she opened to the penetration of his tongue and the hot, brave taste of him.
SEALed Forever Page 17
