by Vicki Hinze
When he sat back down, he grew serious. “I admire your steadfastness in this, Amanda. Frankly, I admire you much more. I didn’t mean to come across like a jerk, but I had to make sure you knew what you were risking by continuing with the investigation when you’ve been ordered to stand down.”
“How can I not continue?”
“That was how I felt about it, too.” He leaned toward her, looped his hands on his knees. “But it could cost you your career, and if what happened today is any gauge, your life. Those are pretty high costs.”
“We’re all going to die, Mark.” She met his gaze easily, calmly. “It’s what we do while we’re alive that matters.”
“Yes.”
The look in his eyes burned her, and the truth dawned. “You were ordered to stand down, too.”
“Again.” He nodded. “Colonel Gray phoned while you were in the shower.”
“Are you going to do it?”
“Now that I’m certain you won’t back out on me, I’m going to work with you.” Mark reached over and covered her hand with his on the table. “And together, we’re going to find the truth.”
Just as he had felt obligated to warn her, she felt obligated to warn him. “You could lose your career, or maybe even end up in jail.”
He tilted his head and slid her a look that left her nearly breathless. “I can live with that.” A furrow formed in the skin between his eyebrows. “I can’t live without self-respect. I have duties, too.”
Self-respect. That was the one. The single comment heaped on all of his other comments that captivated her. The intimate bond between them expanded and it was strong. So was her physical reaction to him, but this...this connection seemed far deeper than mere attraction.
Don’t be crazy. You just met the man.
He smiled and thoughts of resistance faded, her blood heated, and her logic turned to mush. Sometimes you don’t need time. You just know. She knew, and she liked knowing just fine—at least, at the moment.
“You look ready to fall over.”
“I am. I haven’t had time to recoup.” She heard what she said, but still couldn’t believe she’d said it. Amanda West, admitting vulnerability to a man? Inside, she froze. Outside, she shuddered.
“Are you cold?” When she shook her head she wasn’t, he added, “It took me about four days to get back to normal.”
Amanda watched his expression and body language closely, but he hadn’t sneered or gloated. Her father would have done both—and then ridiculed and beaten her for being weak.
Totally oblivious to her scrutiny, Mark glanced at his watch. It caught the light and the metal twinkled. “We’re out of time for today. What do you say that tomorrow we re-interview a couple people attached to M.C. Harding’s case? Maybe you’ll pick up on something I missed, or make a connection I haven’t. We should talk with M.C. again, too, but we can’t get in to see him until normal visiting hours.”
A lawyer banned from the correctional facility? How bizarre! “Aren’t you a member of his legal team?”
“Yes, but at Providence Air Force Base that doesn’t mean you have total access to prisoners. I have total access, but only during normal visiting hours. We’re stymied until tomorrow morning.”
“Colonel Gray?” she asked.
“He doesn’t like routine being interrupted. It undermines order.” Mark rolled his gaze. “So does our plan of action sound solid to you?”
She nodded. “It works for me.”
He glanced at the boat dock, and then at a long, thin cabinet built into the back wall of the house. “Do you like to fish?”
“Yeah.” What woman in her right mind could resist putting the world on hold for a few minutes when Mark Cross looked at her with little-boy hope and eagerness? Even if he had made the suggestion only so she’d relax and let her mind shut down for a while. She appreciated the gesture, especially knowing he remembered everything about his experience and how challenging it was to reorient and transition.
The hardest part was cutting off the adrenaline flood. Fishing, being calming and soothing and slow-paced, would help.
“Come on.” He pushed back his chair. “I’ve got a killer Ultra Lite rod you’re going to love.”
An hour later, they were barefoot, sprawled in low chairs at the end of the dock, rocked back with their lines in the water and their thoughts lost in the quiet of twilight. Neither of them seemed particularly inclined to talk. The quiet settled around them, soothed them, and the tension knotting the muscles in Amanda’s neck and stomach slowly melted away. It was the first time in over a year she’d felt so relaxed.
After a while, Mark sighed. “Amanda?” He sounded tentative, and he kept his gaze fixed on the water.
What should she think of that? “Yeah?”
“I, um, have a confession to make.”
Interesting. “Oh?”
“Yeah.” He dragged his gaze to hers and, judging by his sour expression, he felt pretty rotten about whatever he had done and was about to confess. “The VOQ wasn’t overbooked.”
Her heart rate kicked up to warp speed. “It wasn’t?”
“Not exactly.”
“Not exactly?” She rolled her neck and rubbed at a knot of tension in it. Available guest accommodations were fixed, not flexible. “Either it was or wasn’t booked up, Mark.”
His face reddened. “It wasn’t.”
“Then why did you say it was?” Afraid to read too much into this, she treaded cautiously. They were attracted to each other on a lot of levels, but that didn’t mean either of them would choose to act on that attraction, and assuming it did could cause consequences that ranged from bad to downright embarrassing.
He gave his shoulder a little shrug. “I wanted you here.”
The pulse in her throat throbbed and her chest cinched tight. “Because...”
A cigar boat sped through the water, cutting an angry white-foam trail, and heading straight for the dock. Mark grabbed her arm and pulled her into the water.
Cold, Amanda gasped and choked. When she broke the surface, she pegged the boat’s position and swam under the dock, following Mark.
A bullet hit the post, three inches from her head. Splinters of wood flew.
She dived underwater, swam out from beneath the dock, and took cover behind Mark’s boat.
The cigar boat veered away, spewing water ten feet up off the water’s surface, and streaked toward the mouth of the bay. Two men in blue parkas, wearing dark glasses and baseball caps, were onboard.
Amanda looked at Mark, bobbing in the water beside her. “Aren’t we going after them?” She looked at his boat.
“We won’t catch them. Those things are speed demons.” He looked from the vessel disappearing into the distance back to Amanda. “We should report the incident. Shots were fired.” Mark was right, of course, but bottom line was it would cost them more than they would gain. “It won’t serve any purpose except to get Colonel Gray crawling all over you, and Colonel Drake crawling all over me again. The Coast Guard isn’t going to catch them in that thing, anyway.”
“You’ve got a point,” Mark conceded. “Colonel Gray wouldn’t miss any opportunity to stomp on Drake.”
Having to work around the Providence Air Force Base commander irked Amanda. “This man sounds like a real charmer.”
“He isn’t all bad, but he is a major work-in-progress. Little-big-man syndrome—a bad case of it. Mostly, he’s a retired-on-active-duty thorn in the side. Since he didn’t get the S.A.S.S. command promotion, he’s just doing his time until next fall when he can retire. But he holds a wicked grudge, and he totally believes misery loves company.”
So Colonel Drake had warned Amanda. Mark was right about them catching the cigar boat in his fishing boat, too. That wasn’t going to happen. Those things nearly had flight status. “You knew they’d come back tonight, didn’t you?”
“Yes.” He shook water off his face that was running into his eyes.
“That’s why you want
ed me here rather than at the Visiting Officers’ Quarters?”
“Yes.” He held her gaze. When she didn’t say anything, he searched her face, seeking something only he could identify, and added, “Then.”
She swam closer to him, stared up into his eyes, the water softly rippling around them. “And now?”
He wiped at a rivulet trickling down her temple with the pad of his thumb. “Frankly, I’m not sure yet, but I think I want to find out.” He risked a glance into her eyes. “If you don’t have any objections.”
“No, no objections.” She smiled, wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him. Tentative and exploring, undemanding, she let herself open and get familiar with the feel and taste and scent of him.
His response was electric, liquid fire and pure heat, and he pulled her close to the hard wall of his chest. Amanda sank into the kiss, into a riot of sensations, certain that Mark Cross might have lied to her, but she appreciated his reasoning anyway. And silently she admitted that if he hadn’t lied to her about the VOQ, she would have lied to him.
Not that she would mention it.
The rewards of him doing penance were just too intoxicating to willingly forfeit. But to soothe her guilty conscience, she’d pay her own form of penance and see to it he felt just as intoxicated.
It was an acceptable compromise....
Chapter Five
Amanda asked herself at least a dozen times between 1:00 and 3:00 am. why she didn’t just knock on Mark’s bedroom door, admit she was having a tough time about her missing three months and she needed to talk. He’d been through it. He would get it. But she already knew the answer. For the same reason he didn’t knock on hers admitting he needed to talk about his missing three months. They were feeling too much too fast and didn’t trust it. Wiser, really, that they both had stayed in their respective rooms.
If she had half a brain, she would applaud their common sense. She’d be grateful for their logical judgment.
But she didn’t, and she wasn’t.
By morning she was as grouchy as all-get-out and just frustrated enough not to bother hiding it.
Dressed in her uniform, a pale blue shirt and dark blue skirt, she smoothed the epaulets bearing her rank at her shoulders and met Mark in the kitchen. He was dressed in his uniform, too. Seeing that he looked a little ragged around the edges gave her a warm glow in the pit of her belly.
“Rough night?” she asked.
“Long,” he admitted.
“Sorry to hear that.”
He gave her a glare that lacked heat. “Yeah, I can see you are. It shows in every watt of your mega-smile.”
She wiggled her eyebrows at him. “Hey, no one’s tried to kill me in twelve hours. I’m celebrating.”
He walked to the coffeepot. “Right.”
“Okay,” she conceded. “It was a long night for me, too. Does that make you feel better?”
“Yeah.” Cup in hand, he looked back over his shoulder at her. “If it’s true.”
“It’s true.” He looked if not happy then satisfied about that. Too satisfied. “Lumpy mattress.” It was brand-new and pillow-topped and soft and scrumptious.
“Of course.” He filled the cup and passed it to her. “Hungry?”
“Starved.” Truer words had never been spoken.
They ate scrambled eggs and English muffins and fresh cantaloupe, talking about the incidents and where they intended to go in their investigation.
Mark sipped his orange juice and took a one-eighty on her. “So, are we going to act on this thing between us or pretend not to notice it’s there?”
Surprised by his bluntness, she paused, slowly chewed a bite of muffin then swallowed it. Just looking at him had her senses on alert. “Do you really think we’ve got a choice?”
“We’ve always got a choice, Amanda.”
She tilted her head toward her shoulder. “I’m not in the mood to be that disciplined.”
Relief washed over his face. “Thank God.”
He leaned across the table, clearly intending to kiss her, and her heart rate kicked up a notch. But he ignored her mouth and pressed a tender kiss to her forehead, which seemed far more intimate somehow. She thought back to her former relationships, which were admittedly superficial, but couldn’t recall ever being kissed on the forehead. The kiss was tender and gentle; a caress that made her feel treasured.
She liked it. A lot. Too much. She frowned at him. “You’re going to have to explain the six-date thing. I don’t enter relationships seeing them end. I mean, what’s the point?”
“You wouldn’t be,” he said softly. “I’m not heartless, Amanda. You know how it is, when you have to start lying…it’s just better to make a clean break than to deal with all the suspicions.” He rimmed the juice glass with his thumb and asked her frankly, “So are you saying you don’t have a problem lying and dealing with the suspicions?”
The phone rang, sparing her from answering.
He answered it. “Hello.”
He listened for a brief moment, his expression tightening, his body stiffening, on alert. He put his napkin on the table. “We’ll be right there.” Mark hung up the phone and spoke to Amanda. “M.C. Harding wants to see us at the jail as soon as possible.”
“Us? But I’m banned from the facility.”
“Not anymore. He’s got the warden’s approval.”
Uneasy, she cleared the table, rinsed the dishes at the sink. “Did he say why he wants to see us?”
“No, he didn’t.” Mark put the pitcher of juice back into the fridge, snatched the faucet from her and rinsed his hands. “But he sounded a lot less hostile today than yesterday. Maybe he’s figured out that you’re not out to kill him.”
“Maybe.” Amanda got a strange feeling in the pit of her stomach, warning her that wasn’t the case at all. Harding hadn’t been in a forgiving mood when he’d raised the roof with the warden. No, this wasn’t a moment of grace on his part. Yet he could have picked up on what Mark had started to tell him when the guard had come in—that she was in the same situation on the three-month absences. He could have replayed the conversation in his mind later, after he’d reported the incident to the warden, and realized what Mark had been about to tell him. “You ready to go?” She looked at Mark.
Standing beside her, he rubbed his hands dry on the dishcloth. “Almost.” He tossed the cloth onto the counter. bent down, and then kissed her solidly. “Good morning, Amanda.”
She laughed out loud and then kissed him back. “Good morning, Mark.”
“Don’t forget to leave your weapon in the car.” Outside the prison in the visitor’s parking lot, Mark reached for the Hummer’s door handle.
She took the gun out of her purse and stashed it in the glove-box so they could clear security and meet Harding.
Inside, the halls were eerily quiet and all but empty, which was vastly unusual for a federal installation and contrasted starkly with her previous visit. Wondering why, Amanda walked beside Mark, spotted three surveillance cameras and held her question. Despite the absence of human bodies, there were eyes and ears everywhere.
In the interview room, Harding sat waiting for them. Amanda stopped. He’d already been brought in? Typically, a prisoner wasn’t retrieved until the visitors were in the interview room. Her instincts alerted, and the skin on her neck crawled. She reached for Mark’s arm and heard him mutter, “Perfect.” Simultaneously, they turned back for the door.
It slammed shut right in front of them.
Amanda darted her gaze to Mark. Every sense she had elevated to high alert and the truth smacked her hard, right between the eyes.
They had walked into a trap.
“Sit down,” Harding said from behind them. “I’ve never shot anyone off of a battlefield, and I’d rather not start now. But if you don’t move, I will.”
Amanda and Mark turned, sat down across the table from him, focusing on the barrel of a .38 he held aimed somewhere between them. With his elbows perched on the
scarred tabletop, he stood ready to pivot and shoot either of them.
“What are you doing, M.C.?” Mark asked.
“Surviving.” Anger and pain flashed through his eyes. “That’s all. Just surviving.”
The door opened behind them and two men walked into the interview room. Two men Amanda immediately recognized. She warned Mark. “And who said GRID doesn’t provide great service?” Amanda spoke to the beefy guard whose nose she had broken at the Middle Eastern compound. “Blown up any Hondas lately? How about potshots? Taken any of those at people fishing?” These were the men in the blue pickup and boat—she felt sure of it—but not the men in the black Lexus. They remained a mystery.
“Don’t start with me, West,” Beefy told her. “I underestimated you once. It won’t happen again.”
She bet it wouldn’t. Still, her flesh wound was little more than a nick, and he again had two black eyes and a swollen and bruised nose. “Annoyed someone else, I see.”
“Don’t start with me,” he repeated.
“That’ll do.” The other guard raised a hand, warning Beefy to hush. Carrying a black briefcase, he slid it onto the table and opened it.
Amanda couldn’t see what was inside, but she knew enough to fear it.
“What is this about?” Mark asked.
“You’ll see soon enough.” The second guard filled a syringe, tapped the syringe and stepped to Mark. “I’m being paid to deliver you, Captain Cross. I don’t care if you’re alive or dead when I do it. If you move, he’ll shoot you.” He nodded to the beefy guard. “Any questions?”
“He’s not bluffing,” Amanda warned Mark, giving him a let’s-go-with-it-and-see-where-it-leads glance that she hoped he wouldn’t miss. There were three of them, but only two were armed. She and Mark could take them. But if they did, they’d just be buying themselves more sniper attacks. It wouldn’t further them in finding the truth.
Mark evidently came to the same conclusion. He didn’t oppose, just let the man with the needle inject him.