All told, Garrison had served in a number of hots spot around the globe, but it was his first tour as an SF officer in Afghanistan that had most likely brought him into Ertonç's orbit. From what she'd also read in the general's intel file, both Garrison and then-Colonel Ertonç had been operating in and around Kabul at the time.
Doing what, she would love to know.
Whatever they'd done had forged a seriously tight relationship between the men, especially on Ertonç's side. How else to explain the general's noticeable reluctance as Garrison extricated himself from their conversation? Stranger still, the final nod Ertonç offered Garrison had an odd, almost deferential dip to it.
From a general to a captain?
Her curiosity rose as Garrison headed for the podium at the front of the stage to test the microphone. Her body, however, lowered as she instinctively used the beefy shoulders of the soldier in front of her for added cover and concealment while she studied the captain's features. The overt assurance and easy confidence she'd noted in the bar and parking lot last night were muted as the man ran through the sound checks. Because he was on a stage in front of several hundred soldiers?
Or had that intriguing conversation with the general affected him too?
The admittedly all too brief moments she'd spent in Garrison's company had Regan leaning toward the latter. Until the captain stiffened. Stared. The man was instantly and unequivocally livid.
With her?
Simply because he'd spotted her here?
Lord, she hoped not. Though he was twenty feet away, she'd definitely felt that spike of ire. If it was directed at her, she'd not only lost a dinner invite, there was no way Garrison would let her near his apartment, much less LaCroix's portion of it.
No. In the tense, motionless moments that followed, she became certain that cold stare wasn't focused on her, but someone just off her right. A row or two behind her.
Who?
Dare she risk turning far enough around to find out?
Regan forced herself to wait. To watch.
To study.
Garrison's outward demeanor calmed more quickly than she'd have thought possible as the man absorbed the brunt of his anger. It was still there, though. Seething, just beneath the surface. But a second later, it was gone. Another, and the captain had turned to cede the podium to an approaching US Army colonel.
"Good afternoon, Soldiers."
As the colonel launched into his introduction and brief overview of General Ertonç's career with the Turkish Land Forces, Regan finally risked turning her head, then her torso, just far enough to the right to identify—
LaCroix?
It was him all right. The sergeant was precisely where she'd anticipated. But not—from that look on the captain's face earlier—where Garrison had assumed the sergeant would be. Even more fascinating were the vestiges of fury she could see in LaCroix's still-hardened features. The sergeant was equally livid…with Garrison.
Why?
Fortunately, LaCroix was so consumed with his anger, he didn't appear to be paying attention to the crowd around him, including her.
She was invisible to him. For now.
Intent on remaining so, Regan carefully eased her torso toward the stage, hoping to catch another glimpse of the captain's expression, but she was too late. All she caught was the blur of those intimidating shoulders as they disappeared though the curtains at stage right. Moments later, she was joining the audience as they all stood, clapping to welcome General Ertonç to the podium.
The mass movement allowed her to catch to Mira's eye and receive a subtle nod in return. Mira had caught the fiery exchange between the captain and sergeant as well, and was just as intrigued.
Fortunately, her NCIS colleague was able to remain on her feet as Regan and the audience resumed their seats. By the time Ertonç had begun his opening remarks, Special Agent Ellis had shifted her position, smoothly posting herself just past LaCroix's row where she began to quietly mark time.
Just in case.
Regan forced herself to lean back. To relax and listen.
The longer she accomplished the latter, the more bemused she became. Aytaç Ertonç had an excellent command of English. So why was he using it to deliver a speech that was so bafflingly generic?
As the minutes passed, Regan couldn't help shifting in her seat, along with half the general's custom-made audience.
Like most everyone there, she'd suffered though countless mandatory doozies in her career. She also recognized a canned number when she heard it.
But this one? Other than a scant reference or two regarding the need for NATO armies to work together, there was just…nothing. No substance. Certainly, no detail. The general hadn't even tried to tailor his speech to this crowd.
What was Ertonç really doing in Hohenfels?
Because this was not it.
Before Regan knew it—before they all knew it—everyone in the audience was jackknifing back up to the soles of their boots, clapping respectfully as the general nodded once, then turned to depart the stage.
Just like that, the event was over.
Unfortunately, Terry Vaughn hadn't been able to secure her an invite to the one that followed. The meet-and-greet.
She had half a mind to risk Terry's ire, and possibly Garrison's, by crashing it anyway, when she noticed that LaCroix didn't appear to be on the select list of invitees headed toward the front of the stage either, because he was leaving. She turned to follow the sergeant out of the auditorium. If she could catch up with him, "accidentally" bump into him, she just might be able to—
Damn.
He'd disappeared into the drifting and shifting cloud of camouflage.
Where had he—
Yes. Regan caught sight of the sergeant's stiff spine and icy stride as she cleared the double doors she'd used to gain entrance to the auditorium not more than fifteen minutes earlier. Ten more steps and she'd be coming up alongside him as he departed the lobby.
Halfway into her impromptu quest, a hand locked around her right elbow, tugging her to a swift and sudden stop.
She spun around to confront its owner, only to snap her mouth shut as she spotted the same dark gray stare she'd spent a good deal of the previous night avoiding in that Bavarian bar. Garrison.
Shit.
While the ire she'd noted during that stage exchange had faded, rampant suspicion had burrowed into its place. And it was definitely directed at her.
"How the devil did you get in here?"
"Pardon?"
"The auditorium. That briefing you just attended was closed. How did you get in?"
Sorry, Terry. She'd taken the time to call him over lunch and warn him it might come to this. Terry had been decidedly unhappy with this particular backup plan, especially since it seemed he and Garrison were friends. But mostly because Terry knew he'd have to take the crap that was bound to come with what she was about to do.
Too bad. There was no way she was giving up Mira.
Regan slid a light, easy smile to her lips. "My boss."
"Terry?"
She nodded. "Captain Vaughn called me into his office this morning. He said there was a general who'd be speaking here this afternoon, then afterward with just the SF crowd—and that I should show up and do everything I could to score an interview with the man of the hour."
"General Ertonç?"
She shook her head as she kicked her smile up a notch, deliberately brightening it. "You."
4
Regan winced as that oversized grip shifted, clamping around her upper arm as its owner turned to draw her resolutely across the lobby toward a smaller, narrow doorway that went…somewhere.
Her irritation at once again being led against her will was supplanted by frustration as she caught sight of LaCroix's profile moments before Garrison nudged her into a seriously cramped, audio-visual storage closet.
Just like that, LaCroix was gone.
With him, any chance she'd had of subtly questioning hi
m regarding that terse stare down he'd shared with the man now staring her down.
Garrison reached behind him to snap the door shut, shrinking an already tiny space exponentially.
"Explain." Hard. Clipped. Definitely an order. And not from the off-duty man in that bar last night, doing his damnedest to draw her out and engage her personal interest, but from the stiff, Special Forces captain looming two feet away.
Waiting.
Worse, that revealing pulse she'd noted beneath the fluorescent parking lot light was throbbing. This was not good.
She considered slipping on yet another breezy smile, then instinctively changed her tactics. To impatience. "I told you. My boss called me into his—"
The sharp shake of his head cut her off. "Not that part. Me. Why the hell would you want to interview me? And why now?"
So that was what was bothering him. Even more than her presence at an event which, as he'd stated, had been closed.
Of course, that revelation had her plotting to push it—and him—with half-truth, half-conjecture, and an entirely fervent prayer that this latest meeting of theirs wasn't about to blow up in her face before it got started. She crossed her arms, if only to keep any stray nerves from betraying her as that icy stare grew icier with every second that ticked by. "Why not you? You're the general's US liaison for the next few days. Who wouldn't be interested in reading about that? I also understand you two know each other personally, that you met years ago in Kabul. You're bound to have a unique insight into the man."
It was her turn to wait—for confirmation of what she'd just said. Any part of what she'd just said. She waited in vain.
"Who's your source?"
"I beg your pardon?"
"Your source. Who told you General Ertonç and I are friends?"
"You aren't?"
He ignored the question. "Who?"
Great. Once again, she was going to have to sacrifice Terry to that growing subzero vortex. If he survived the ensuing frostbite, he just might forgive her. Unfortunately, she had no choice. There was no source protection in her faux line of work. For a civilian reporter, yes. Not a military one. Not with the ever-present national security card at the top of Garrison's deck. Not if the public affairs officer in question wanted to keep his or her job—which she definitely needed to appear to want to do.
Or perhaps not. The camouflaged pattern on the captain's ACUs had given her another idea. Possibly, an out.
"I don't know."
"You—" He broke off. Frowned. "What?"
She shrugged. At least her answer had surprised him out of his anger. Best to capitalize on it quickly. "All Captain Vaughn knew was that you'd worked with the general in Kabul." And if Terry didn't, he was about to discover it and soon. From her. "I overheard the part about your friendship from a conversation between two soldiers seated near me during the general's speech. In fact, that's who I was following when you grabbed me and hauled me in here, or rather, who I was trying to follow. I was hoping to verify the information for my story, and perhaps find out more about your friendship with the general and how you two met, before I approached you about it."
There. Hopefully, the gabbing soldiers bit would assuage any lingering suspicion should he have spotted LaCroix's retreating form as well.
She waited several beats. When the captain didn't respond, she drew on her feigned irritation from earlier. "Well? Are you two friends?"
The nod he finally offered was curt. "Of a sort."
Well, that suggested…what?
This time, she did draw on that breezy smile. "Fantastic. Then perhaps you can assist me in getting the interview I'd really love to land?"
"Let me guess—Ertonç?"
She ignored the budding sarcasm in his tone as she deliberately infused hers with an eagerness that would've put the entire White House press corps to shame. "Yes. Captain Vaughn put in a request for one this morning, but he was shot down…by you? At least, I'm assuming so. From the interaction I saw up on the stage, it certainly looks as though you've been tapped as point man for the general's visit."
His thin smile offered a "nice try." But the slight uptick in that lovely, tattling pulse confirmed it. He was Ertonç's US man Friday.
But how did that intriguing collateral duty mesh with what she'd seen and heard in the bar last night between this man and Sergeant LaCroix? Not to mention the blistering stare down she'd just witnessed?
Suddenly, every instinct in her body converged—and she knew. She'd been collecting up the evidence in that revealing pulse and in the captain's body language, right here and right now with her, and earlier up on that stage with the general. Whatever LaCroix was plotting, Garrison was not in on it.
In fact, every tense, overly generous shred of sinew in his body underscored the opposite.
Garrison was trying to protect the general.
But from what? The captain wasn't privy to LaCroix's plans, whatever they were, or he'd have come in to CID and reported him. Garrison did know something, however, something about Ertonç. And he was actively working to conceal it from her.
But why? He had no idea she was a CID agent. That left her supposed job with Public Affairs. Which meant Garrison didn't want—couldn't afford—to have a reporter snooping around.
What had he said? "Why the hell would you want to interview me? And why now?"
Her interest in him wasn't the critical element so much as her timing. Last night he'd sought her attention with a tenacity she hadn't been able to shake, not without pissing him off and risking her case. The only thing that had happened between then and now was Ertonç's early arrival. She'd bet her badge that whatever Garrison was concealing from her had everything to do with the real reason Ertonç was in Hohenfels. The curious body language between the men on that stage and the perplexing deferential nod she'd observed confirmed it.
And so much more.
Garrison didn't need his new collateral duty to get close to Ertonç; he was already there. It was Ertonç who needed Garrison.
Regan tucked the stunning turnabout away and located the twin of the easy smile she'd begun all this with. She infused it with as much warmth and teasing as she dared as she leaned into the captain. "I should warn you: I'm tenacious. I already know that General Ertonç wasn't scheduled to give that painfully bland speech I just heard for another five weeks, and that his premature arrival has had everyone scrambling. So, why's he really here? Of course, I'm happy to take my curiosity, and go off and satisfy it myself. Or…"
She left the word dangling, exploiting the cloistered intimacy of the tiny closet he'd trapped them within to keep a host of other, more enticing, possibilities dangling as well.
Fortunately, she saw his hand coming up. She was able to brace herself as those callused fingers slid in to lightly cup her neck. His thumb scraped beneath her chin so he could tilt her face further up as he leaned down.
"…Or what?"
"Or you can help me get there first. On the record. And—" She allowed her smile to deepen, adding a hint of laughter as she stretched all the way up to his waiting ear to whisper, "—with much less bloodshed."
She pulled back. Just far enough to watch as that intense focus of his shifted inward. She could actually feel him weighing his options—her.
As far as he knew, she was new to the military. To Public Affairs. As of yet, untested by both. Was she still more reporter than soldier?
It was a critical question.
Even if he decided to contact Captain Vaughn to officially, if confidentially, steer her away from General Ertonç—which he could do—Garrison had to believe there was a real risk that, if she did identify more as a reporter than a soldier, she might well pass on the tip to someone not beholden to Uncle Sam's military publishing dictates.
"Dessert."
Her confusion must've shown, because a low chuckle warmed the tiny space. His.
"Dinner. Tonight." He'd texted her his address before she'd even had a chance to pour her morning coffee. His
eagerness hadn't surprised her. But the fact that the address wasn't the one she and Jelly had on file for him had. Even more surprising, the address he'd texted had come back not to an apartment, but a house.
When had he moved—and why?
"You're still coming over, yes?"
"Of course." For reasons piling up faster than she could count.
"Good. Give me a few minutes, and I'll see what I can do about your request to interview the general."
"And in exchange?" But she already knew.
"You don't put me on the record until after dessert."
This smile wasn't even scripted. "Deal."
Evidently she wasn't the only one fine-tuning her agenda. He was adjusting his as well. He'd accepted her story regarding her determined pursuit of the general's interview. Their dinner had simply provided him with an opportunity to pursue other, emerging, goals. An opportunity he wasn't above capitalizing upon. Specifically, his need to discern what she learned from said interview and intended to publish—as well as his own intention to control the information. And her.
She actually respected him for it.
But she still had no intention of letting him know he'd met his match.
Not even when his head dipped, bringing those intimidating shoulders too close for her peace of mind. For a moment, she was afraid he intended to push this meeting beyond the bounds of professionalism, but he finally paused, just shy of touching her.
His murmur warmed her ear much as hers had done his earlier. "Wait here."
With that, he straightened, turned around, and left.
She reached for her phone as soon as the door snapped shut, furiously typing the first in a slew of texts to her faux boss to aid in covering his ass along with hers, should Garrison stop to phone Captain Vaughn to verify the pertinent aspects of the story she'd just spun.
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