COOL UNDER FIRE

by Justine Davis

  "Yes." Worry crept into the deep voice. "Do you?"

  "I had a great teacher. I have to go, Daddy. I love you."

  "I love you, too, baby. Take care."

  "I will. You, too."

  Con stared down the hatchway at her as she hung up the radio microphone. And he had thought he should warn her not to say too much. She had done it, in words an outsider would never understand. Her father was warned, and she'd even managed to sneak in a call for Linc. He shook his head in wonder as she came back up to the wheel as carefully as if the automatic pilot had suddenly gone haywire.

  "The 'black hat' game?" he finally asked.

  Her voice was cool, impersonal. "It was the game he invented to teach us what to do if anybody ever came for us. First Linc, then me. He called them the 'black hats.' It was easier for a child to understand."

  "And the rules?"

  "The rules are that there aren't any rules. You do whatever you have to do. He thought we were better off knowing what we were up against than being caught by surprise. We were children, but he trusted us. We would have died rather than let him down."

  Ouch, Con thought. Yet hadn't her father been proven right? Where would she be—hell, where would he be—if she hadn't reacted the way she had? It all would have ended back there in her living room.

  "Your father is a very wise man." His words were quiet, soft.

  She turned to look at him. "Yes, he is."

  He sighed. "I just wanted to keep you out of it. But you're right. You're already in it."

  "Up to my neck," she said, but not coldly anymore.

  "And a lovely neck it is." Only when she looked sharply at him did he realize he'd said it out loud; he was grateful for the darkness masking his face.

  Shiloh was thankful herself for the silver wash of moonlight as she felt her cheeks heat. "Just how far back is that Irish blarney?" she asked lightly.

  She didn't even convince herself; she knew he didn't throw out idle flattery. The knowledge did nothing to ease her reaction.

  "Not far enough, I guess," he muttered.

  She sat back down, a careful two feet away from him. This is ridiculous, she lectured herself. She'd had her share of flattery from men over the years and had brushed most of it off uncaringly, wishing they would compliment her on something worthwhile rather than that chance arrangement of features and vivid coloring they seemed so fond of.

  This man had done just that since the first glint of admiration had lit his blue eyes. He made her feel competent and in control. So why was it the hint that he might find her attractive made her blush, made her pulse begin to flutter? It made no sense at all.

  "Shiloh?"

  "What?"

  "I'm sorry." Again. "I promised not to underestimate you. But I've never come across anybody quite like you." He managed a slight smile. "Just keep kicking me. I'll get it through my head."

  "Linc said you were … independent."

  "Why do I get the feeling that's the edited version?"

  She grinned suddenly. "Well, he did say a few other things. I just didn't remember them until now."

  "I'll bet. We didn't hit it off at first."

  "So he said."

  "He told you a lot, I gather."

  "Everything but your name." She looked at him, hesitant; then her curiosity won out. "He also said he envied you."

  "Me?" He was startled. "What the hell for?"

  She wondered at his astonishment, but merely explained. "He said it would be heaven to be responsible only for getting the job done, and only to one man instead of an admiral, the entire navy and the federal government."

  "Oh. That." He shrugged. "It has its good points. And its bad ones."

  "Like now? No backup?"

  Con paused, then nodded. "Normally, there would be. Sam's got some good men working for him."

  He paused again, then made himself go on. He had to, he thought. She'd earned it. Besides, she was Linc's sister. Blood ran true; who knew that better than he did? He didn't admit how much of his decision was based on the need to keep that chill in her voice from being directed at him again.

  "I was undercover at one of Sam's companies. He sent me in when two new projects wound up in production by the competition while they were still in the final testing stages at WestAir. Sam's not much of a believer in coincidence."

  "I can see—" She stopped, her eyes widening. "WestAir? Sam? Your boss is Sam West?"

  He hesitated, then let out a small breath and nodded. Shiloh sat back. "Whew." She gave him a sideways look. "Then he is as straight as everybody says?"

  He nodded. "And everybody who works for him plays by his rules."

  "And when they don't, that's where you come in?"

  "Something like that."

  "'The Troubleshooting Division,'" she quoted, remembering.

  Con winced. The article in a national magazine that had quoted Sam's effusive praise of his privately recruited and trained "Problem Management Force" had been published over three years ago, but the nickname coined by the writer, bolstered by the article's highlighted list of impressive successes, seemed to have stuck for good.

  "You were working for him in the Philippines?"

  He nodded again. "That sonar tracker was built by SeaTech, another WestCorp company. When it got sabotaged, Sam took it very personally."

  "So did the navy."

  "So I found out," he said with a grin.

  "And so did the black hats." The sudden solemnity of her voice told him that she was thinking of how nearly things had ended in disaster. Whatever instinct had made him move when he had seen that glint of light on metal at Linc's back, he was glad of it now, not only for the sake of the man who had, unexpectedly, become a friend, but for this lovely, spirited woman who loved that friend so much. That old longing, that ache he'd thought he'd conquered long ago, rose up suddenly, fiercely. He beat it back down.

  "—not a military project this time?"

  "No. The first one was. That's why the FBI went in. But this one was strictly commercial. And, like most things Sam touches, very profitable. Only the wrong people are making the profit."

  "There's no way it could really be coincidence?"

  "Similar projects, yes. Exact down to the smallest specifications, no."

  "Somebody sold out." He nodded, chilly eyes awash in silver moonlight. "And you found out who?"

  "Apparently." She looked at him quizzically. "I only had a suspicion, a gut-level feeling, I guess. I hadn't even started to dig. I didn't have any proof yet. I still don't."

  "Except that they tried to kill you."

  "Yes."

  "And did kill an FBI agent."

  "Yes." He took a breath. "I know that now. I always suspected it, even though there was no evidence. But the Feds were convinced it was an accident, because their guy had already turned in a clean report on WestAir, and there was no reason for them to kill him."

  He shifted on the cockpit seat. "I don't know if the FBI man was really convinced they were clean, or if they bought him off. And then killed him as insurance that he wouldn't talk. We may never know."

  She was silent for a long moment. The steady swish of the bow spray as the cutter sliced through the gentle swells was oddly comforting, a touch of reality on the ghostly moonlit ocean. She looked out at the silver path that beckoned them on, then back at the firm, chiseled planes of his face. One seemed as unreal, as impossible, as the other.

  "Somebody blew your cover, didn't they?" Her voice was quiet with the finality of one who already knew the answer.

  She was right, he thought, but, driven by a curiosity he didn't understand, he asked anyway. "What makes you think I didn't just screw up, do something to make them tumble to me?"

  She shook her head slowly. "No."

  "That's it? Just like that?"

  She smiled at the recurrence of the words; a lot of things seemed to be happening that way. "Just like that."

  Her instant bestowal of faith shook him. It was an act
so near to impossible for him that he couldn't help but be awed at the ease with which she did it. When he went on, his voice was a little unsteady.

  "You're right, though. I never had a chance to tip my hand." He let out a long breath. "It's the only explanation. Somebody tipped them off."

  "Somebody who knew you?"

  "I thought so at first. Somebody who'd worked somewhere else I'd been, or at Sam's headquarters in Denver. I even thought it could have been innocent. A 'What's he doing here?' to the wrong person."

  "Until?"

  "Until Moose said they'd been given your address."

  "By who?"

  He shrugged. "I know who. What I don't know is where he got it."

  "The guy who's running things?" she asked.

  "It has to be. But … no matter who it is, there should have been no way for them to…" He stopped, letting out a long breath that sounded oddly strained.

  "No way to what?"

  "To find you."

  "You did."

  "That was different. I knew where you were."

  "You … did?"

  He was silent for a moment. "When I woke up in the hospital in Subic Bay, Linc was there. He was writing you a letter. I saw the address."

  "And remembered it?" She sounded incredulous, and he shrugged.

  "Occupational hazard." Then he grinned. "Actually, I was in no shape to remember the number, but I knew the street, and Linc had described the house. 'It's the one the flowers love,' he said."

  Shiloh was a little taken aback by this touch of pastoral appreciation from her very tough, very worldly brother. She was taken aback that that same, very protective brother had opened up enough to discuss her at all; clearly the respect and liking Con felt for him were returned. Both thoughts left her feeling absurdly pleased.

  Con's grin had faded, and the strain had returned to his voice. "They shouldn't have known you existed."

  "But they found out. Which means?"

  "I'm not sure, exactly." His tone made it clear that he didn't care for the possibilities. "They shouldn't even have been able to find out about Linc. Sam doesn't keep that kind of thing in writing. Most of the PMF work is undocumented. So there's not a damned thing on our end that anybody could find to show that Linc and I had even worked together, let alone anything about you."

  "Who knew that you had worked with him?"

  "A handful of people, most of them in the navy." He rubbed a hand over his beard-roughened jaw, wondering idly if the wonderful Wayne kept a razor on this tub. "On our side, only me, Sam and, after the fact, Joe Selkirk. He's Sam's top aide. Ex-navy himself. He and Linc knew some of the same people." He let out a short breath. "I don't get it. There's no way those goons could have known about you. Nobody knew I'd ever laid eyes on Linc after we got back. I never contacted him at his office, and vice versa."

  "Of course."

  The habits of a lifetime were hard to break, as Shiloh had learned early on. She was twelve years old and on a vacation with friends before she learned that not every father checked the motel room for bugs other than the multi-legged kind, not to mention an escape route.

  Con shrugged, admitting it. "Levers," he said, summing it up in a word. "There's no evidence of a connection that would have led them to you. Hell, there isn't a connection for them to find."

  "Wasn't," she amended softly.

  "Yeah." He let out a disgusted sigh. "I took care of that, didn't I?"

  "No wheel spinning," she repeated. "Who knew you were going into WestAir?"

  "Sam."

  "Only Sam?"

  He nodded. Shiloh kept her face carefully even, but something flickered in her green eyes.

  "No." Con shook his head. "Not Sam. Not in a million years."

  She raised an eyebrow at him. He looked away, staring out to sea. He knew she had guessed that the thought had occurred to him before, or the denial wouldn't have been so close to the surface.

  "Con," she began.

  He turned his head back to her. "It can't be. I know he's got to be high up, to have the kind of access he must have, but not Sam. It can't be."

  She heard the undertone of desperation in his voice and could see its echo in a pair of blue eyes lit by silver moonlight. She saw then that there was much more involved here than just the security of a company. At stake was some deeply buried part of the man beside her, the one battered part of his soul that clung to some tiny bit of faith in his fellow man. If his joker indeed turned out to be the very man who had sent him here, that faith, and most likely that soul, would be destroyed.

  "All right."

  He had to be right, she thought. She couldn't bear to see what it would do to him if he were wrong.

  Satisfied that the anchor was set and the natural circle the boat would prescribe as the wind shifted would still be clear of the rocks, Shiloh walked back to the cockpit from the bow.

  They had rounded the southern tip of Catalina Island at a safe distance. The high, barren bluffs of the south end looked starkly white against the night sky, and they could hear the wash of the surf as it hit the rugged shoreline.

  This was her favorite cove on the windward side of the island. It was sheltered, the water was crystal clear, and there was a lovely little crescent of beach ashore. She was delighted to have found it empty; it made anchoring much easier, because there were no other boats to contend with, and she knew it well enough to be able to do it in darkness.

  Con had been silent since that brief discussion about Sam. He stared out into the darkness, away from the wide path of moonlight, as if he needed the blackness to mask his thoughts. She had seen first her father, then her brother, wrestle with doubts too many times to interrupt with any banal platitudes. She merely gave him directions to help with the anchoring.

  "Seven to one," she told him. "Pay out seven times the depth." He had followed her instructions exactly. And silently.

  When they were set, she went below and made coffee, and he took the cup she offered with a nod and a short "thank you." Then he slipped back into silence, and she left him to it. She stretched out on the cockpit seat, savoring the sound of the water and giving quiet thanks for the too often taken for granted California climate that allowed her to sit there quite comfortably in only a heavy sweatshirt in the middle of October.

  They watched the world grow light around them, although the little cove, nestled below the bulk and height of the island, remained in shadow. What mist there was cleared at the first touch of the sun, and Shiloh knew they were going to have one of those beautiful, bright fall days.

  She sighed with pleasure, stretching luxuriously as she drew a deep breath of salt-tangy air. She sensed Con's gaze on her and looked over to find him watching her intently.

  "It's going to be beautiful," she said, her voice soft, still under the spell of the glorious dawn.

  "Yes." His eyes never left her.

  "I … I'm going to go for a swim and a wash." She wondered why she felt so breathless. "I usually just use the fresh water in the tank to rinse off. There should be some biodegradable soap in the head. There's plenty of water for a shower, though, if you want." Why was she rambling like this?

  Great, Con thought. A dawn swim in paradise. Wearing what? Or, more importantly, not wearing what? His stomach knotted. Hastily he spoke.

  "How much water is there?"

  "She carries 170 gallons, and she's full. We can always go around to Avalon if we need anything, but if we're aiming for complete isolation, we've got enough for almost a month if we're careful, two weeks if we're not."

  "Oh."

  He felt a strange weakness in his knees that told him if he'd been standing, it wouldn't have been for long. An image of an endless stretch of days on this elegant little vessel, alone with her, away from the outside world that had once again turned sour on him, turned his muscles to mush and his insides to rock.

  "How much time are we going to need?"

  He shook off the vision. "Not that much." When she looked at him
with those delicate brows just barely furrowed, he realized that his voice had held an undertone of disappointment. He tried again. "Sam will be back in two days. I'll give him the name, then the decision is his."

  Whatever doubts he'd had, he'd conquered them now. Or buried them, she thought. There was nothing in his voice but businesslike precision.

  "And if they find us?"

  His mouth twisted wryly. "I'll wish this thing had a cannon."

  She started to laugh, then stopped. "It just might," she said, and disappeared below. Curious, he followed, watching her pull open the teak door to one of the larger lockers. She reached inside and came out with a spotless, well-oiled, pump-action shotgun. She handed it to him.

  "Wayne doesn't always sail the friendly seas," she explained at his look, then reached back into the locker.

  Great, he thought as he hefted the weapon. Wayne again. Why did he have to be so damned efficient? And why did she know where every damned thing on this boat was?

  Shiloh handed him the box of shells she'd found. "I don't imagine he keeps it loaded in port," she said, wondering at his rather fierce expression.

  He pumped it once and found she was right. He took five of the .00 shells and loaded it, pumping one round into the chamber.

  "You ever use one of these?" He was almost surprised when she shook her head no. Then he turned and propped it near the main hatch, where it could be reached easily. "Don't forget it's primed and ready," he said as he turned back to her. He reached behind him, pulling her .45 out of the small of his back. He held it out to her.

  "Thank you."

  "I said you'd get it back."

  "Do you always keep your promises?"

  "Yes. That's why I don't make many." He abruptly turned his back on her and put the box of shells next to the gun.

  Whew, Shiloh thought. I feel like I've just been warned off. In the next minute she was laughing at herself for reading anything personal into his words or his manner. He was in the middle of a tempest; the last thing he would be thinking about was her. Besides, he didn't know the odd things that had been happening to her every time she looked at him.

  And a good thing, too, she chided herself. Even if it is his own fault. If her first sight of him hadn't been nearly naked across her bed, her mind wouldn't be traveling in these uncalled for directions. Not to mention the sight of him sprawled naked on her living room floor.