Her face went somber. “You’re obviously a very good secret keeper.”
Tanaka had proven that during his weeks in captivity. The air went darker and thicker than the antiseptic smell coating the air.
Rex moved closer, stopping at the foot of the bed, where crutches rested. “Ms. Cicero, how are you doing since the accident?”
“I am well.” She sat straighter, her skirt a bold psychedelic splash of color against the stark white linens.
“Glad to hear it.”
“You sound as if you do not believe me. If you wish, check me over, Colonel.” She paused to inch her flower-child skirt up provocatively. “I will be glad to show you any healing injuries.”
Yeah, this was the same troublemaking woman he’d met last spring. “I’m sure they’re lovely legs, but I’ll pass. We wouldn’t want to give Tanaka over there a heart attack.”
She cocked her head, long chandelier earrings brushing her shoulders. “Thank you for the sweet compliment.”
“It wasn’t a compliment.”
“I know.” Her smile broadened.
He’d considered her high-strung, and he still did, but that didn’t stem the guilt over her being hurt on his watch. If-onlys were a pain in the ass, but he couldn’t stop his thoughts.
If only he’d found Chuck sooner.
If only he’d discovered the mole faster.
If only he’d insisted those damn entertainers abandon the tour the minute he’d smelled trouble.
Except it hadn’t been his call to make.
She patted Tanaka’s hand on the bed rail, gripping the metal bar as she rose slowly. “I need to go. You enjoy your visit with the colonel.”
Livia leaned to kiss the airman’s broad forehead, her tank shirt hitching up and revealing a creamy patch of skin along the small of her back. The tiniest edge of a tattoo peeked out, but not enough for him to determine the design.
Rex blinked twice and averted his eyes, but not soon enough to avoid something stirring inside him, something he’d been too grief-numb to consider in a year—heat. And he resented the hell out of the fact, because it reminded him that even if in some strange universe he could reach out and touch this woman, it wouldn’t be as good as what he’d lost.
Livia straightened from the hospital bed, her shirt sliding back into place. Rex stepped away, opening the door to speed her exit.
He stayed silent, holding the door wide, as she gathered the crutches. Hey wait. The crutches were hers?
Rex clamped his slack jaw shut. He’d assumed . . . Ah hell. He was off his game today. It had to be because of Heather, certainly not due to some flirtatious woman who toyed with men for kicks.
He cleared the door as she passed, fanning a wave.
“Good-bye, Colonel.”
He watched her thump-thumping down the hospital corridor. She had on two shoes, no cast or braces that he could see. It must be something to do with her left knee, bent and bearing no weight.
He didn’t think that her injuries in the explosion could have been worse than what he’d been initially told. Surely if there had been more to her accident, the star-hungry paparazzi would have reported it.
Must have been something that happened afterward—a simple sprain maybe, probably from rehearsals.
He turned back to what had really brought him here—a morale visit to Chuck Tanaka. “So she comes to see you often?”
Damn it. So much for forgetting about Livia and focusing on Tanaka.
“She came to visit me back at the start when I was still pretty messed up, said she felt bad about what had happened to me.”
“None of it was her fault.”
“I understand she wasn’t to blame, but apparently she feels guilty about some outing where she left against security’s advice.”
She had come close to blowing the whole undercover operation when she left the American air base in Turkey against lockdown orders. “I’m sure she’s here out of more than guilt.” Rex was done talking about Livia. “So, Captain, what’s the next step with your rehab?”
“The docs say I’ll be out of here tomorrow.”
Tanaka didn’t look ready to leave.
“That’s great news.”
“I’ll have outpatient rehab for a while, until, well, until I stop getting better. With some determination, I should be back on a surfboard by summer.” His stubborn jaw set, Tanaka stared at the cast on his leg, swallowed hard, then looked back. “Straight up, they don’t know if I’ll fly again.”
Rex gripped the end of the bed and kept the sympathy off his face that Tanaka wouldn’t welcome. Pity sucked ass.
From the first look at Tanaka after they’d rescued him from his brutal captor, Rex had suspected Tanaka’s flying days were done. No one could take a beating that bad and come out whole again, inside or out. But that didn’t mean Tanaka was finished, damn it. “We do a lot of things in our squadron that don’t require flying. We have need of your skills and knowledge. There’s a place for you as long as I have a say.”
“Thank you, sir.” Tanaka nodded, but the shadows in his eyes said well enough that nothing could replace the sky.
“No thanks needed. Just doing my job and making damn sure you do yours. The air force has a lot of money invested in you.” He clapped Tanaka on the shoulder.
“Roger that, Colonel.”
A light tap sounded on the door. Tanaka winced. “That would be my physical therapist. He’s running late today because of some emergency. Gotta admit, I almost hoped he wouldn’t show. The dude’s a real sadist, but he’s persistent and seems to know what he’s doing.”
“I’ll let you get to it then.” Rex backed toward the door, mission complete here, although his day was far from over. He had a crash investigation gearing up and a testing project on temporary hold, racking up lost dollars by the second.
But first, he had an anniversary date to keep.
The next morning, Mason slipped on his shades against the piercing Vegas sunlight in the hospital parking lot.
He hadn’t slept much during his night in quarantine with Jill Walczak. In fact, he hadn’t slept much the night before that with the Area 51 landing mess. At least he’d been released from the hospital with a clean bill of health, as had Jill, who was walking alongside him through the sliding glass doors and into the parking lot.
From behind the protective shield of his sunglasses, he studied the reserved woman beside him. He couldn’t figure her out, and he’d made it his mission to be damn good at figuring out females after he’d missed the boat so soundly with his ex-wife. Given Jill’s red hair, he expected a fiery temper and close-to-the-skin emotions, but she was too good at hiding herself behind that prim and huffy mask. She definitely wasn’t his type, yet something about her pissed him off and turned him on all at the same time.
He paused at the end of the hospital porch overhang, scanning the lot for where his pal David “Ice” Berg would have dropped off his truck for him. He should be sprinting across the lot to his ride, which sure enough, was conveniently parked just to his right, next to a blue minivan. Yep, he could go now. He should go now.
Ah hell.
He wasn’t going anywhere yet. “So, Jill Walczak, can-do cop, you don’t think much of me, do you?”
“My opinion of you doesn’t matter.” She turned away and sat on a bench. She still wore hospital scrubs, as did he, rather than waiting around for someone to bring clothes from home, which meant she likely didn’t have anyone.
He would leave in a minute. He couldn’t get into his truck anyway, since his path to the driver’s side was blocked by a mom who’d parked her double stroller behind her minivan while she buckled in her other kids. No sweat. He wasn’t due at work for another hour.
As much as he burned to clear his name of any screw-up with that flight, he couldn’t walk away just yet, not until he figured out a way to shake free of this damned annoying—tenacious—attraction to a woman who obviously considered him pond scum. “Guess I’ll see
you around the cafeteria at the soft-serve ice cream machine.”
She put her hand above her eyes to shield them from the glare of the desert sun as she looked around. “Somehow I managed to get by without speaking to you before. I’ll persevere again.”
“You know there are those who say ignoring a guy is the best way to get his attention.” And damned if those people weren’t right.
She fixed him with an assessing stare. “Then by all means let me shower you with compliments, you handsome piece of man meat.”
He liked a woman with grit. “Are you always this crabby?”
“Nope.”
He hooked his elbow on the back of the bench so he could face her. Or rather he could if she would turn toward him again. “I take that to mean you do have some kind of grudge against me.”
She stared pointedly at his hand only an inch away from her shoulder. “I make it a habit to avoid men with notched bedposts.”
“I know for a fact that you have never seen my bedroom.” He didn’t move closer. He didn’t need to. He could see the goose bumps of awareness rising on her arms. She’d thought about his bedroom, and now that had him imagining her there. “Because, believe me, if you’d been there, I would remember.”
She rolled her eyes and snorted.
“Damn, lady, that was a good line.”
“Whatever.”
Maybe if he could tease her into a smile or a good mood, they could move on to some kind of acquaintance /friendship status, because no matter how smoking hot Jill Walczak might be, no way in hell did he go anywhere near complicated women. And without question, Jill was more complicated than solving a Rubik’s Cube in the dark.
Time to change tactics by going with no tactics at all, just straightforward honesty. He was a little rusty at that strategy. “Do you need a lift? I have my truck here if you’re waiting around for a cab. A couple of buds from my squadron dropped it off for me.”
“I’ve got a ride. He should be here any minute now.”
He? “Great.”
So much for his theory about no one bringing her clothes.
The foot traffic picked up, repeated swooshes of the automatic doors admitting and expelling a couple of doctors in uniforms, a nurse pushing a patient in a wheelchair. Out in the parking lot, the minivan mom had just finished strapping in most of her brood while the toddler in the front of the stroller squirmed and screamed. No wonder Mom wanted to keep his noise out of the van as long as possible.
He grinned. Give ’em, hell, kiddo.
His smile faded as he stared at the little rug rat. Sometimes he wondered about his decision to stay single after his divorce from Kim, since that meant he would never be a dad.
Sighing, Jill finally turned to Mason. “You don’t need to stay with me. I’m okay. If I have any more questions about your parachuting accident, I’ll get in touch.”
“Sure. Whatever. I’m not waiting around.” Just hanging out keeping her company until her ride arrived. What the hell was up with that? He needed to get his head in gear for the crash inquiry he faced in an hour. He’d racked his brains through the night and couldn’t come up with anything more than he’d told the boss initially. Hopefully by the time he checked in today, they would have figured everything out and be back on track for next week’s big show.
Time to punch out. He scratched his hand along his jaw, still bristly from the crappy disposable razor they’d given him to use. “Before I go, I want to say thank you.”
“Thank you?” Her green eyes blinked wide.
Green. Holy crap, they were green. He’d wondered back in the hazmat truck, and now he knew. They were light green, like an apple, and damn, wouldn’t that come across as the most unsexy comment ever? Your body is like Venus, your hair so whispery red my hands itch to feel if it’s as soft as it looks. And your eyes remind me of apples.
Of course she had no idea how very much he liked apples. “Thanks for arresting me, except for the cuffing part, which I could live without, since I’m not into kinky, oh, and I’d have rather bypassed the knee in my kidney. I thought for sure I would pee blood this morning, but I’m digressing here.”
“And you have a point to telling me this?”
He hitched his sore ankle onto his knee to ease the throbbing and shrugged a kink from his neck, maybe a result of his tussle with a pallet in midair or possibly from the stress of nearly getting gassed to death. “I’m grateful you were out there in that corner of the desert with your radio handy to call for speedy help. If I’d hung out in that crap from the explosion for much longer, I wouldn’t have been walking out of the hospital with a clean bill of health today.”
And he wouldn’t have been able to return to work and find out what the hell went wrong with that flight. Only by solving that mystery could he save the same from happening to some other tester down the road. And the next guy might not be so lucky.
Damn. Flirting with this woman suddenly seemed like the lamest thing of all to do. He could show up to work early and get a head start on the meeting.
Mason stood. “That’s all I wanted to say. If you’re sure your ride’s on the way, I guess I’ll make your day and push off.”
Jill actually laughed. “Thanks, and yes, I’m sure he’s on his way.” She glanced up at him. “Good luck, Sergeant.”
“Good-bye.” What was it about this woman that tugged at him? She wasn’t his type at all, so serious, not to mention able to see through his bullshit.
Mason fished his keys from his pocket—thank you again, Berg, for having the foresight to leave the extra set at the front desk, since everything on him had gone into a decontamination bin. He stepped down off the curb.
Ouch! Shit. His ankle still hurt like a son—of a gun.
He shook off the pain and started forward, more carefully this time, toward his Chevy truck parked just to his right. The mom still hadn’t cleared her stroller away, since now she was trying to settle the crying baby while the toddler pitched all of his many bribes out onto the asphalt.
Another engine revved off to the side, one with some serious muffler issues. He checked left. A beat-up, rusty sedan roared in front of the hospital, gaining speed, bumping two wheels onto the sidewalk, heading toward him. Toward Jill. Toward the screaming toddler just to his right restrained in the double stroller.
And he had only a few seconds to figure out how to save them all.
FIVE
“Jill! Get behind the bench!”
What the hell? Jill barely registered his words, but the unmistakable authority in his tone sent her feet moving on instinct until she found herself in a crouch behind the concrete bench. From her peripheral vision, she caught sight of an elderly couple huddled a few steps to her side behind another bench.
Mason was sprinting full-out along the sidewalk toward a minivan. Only seconds ago, he’d been limping. Now he ran with undeniable athleticism. Adrenaline had a way of numbing anything. His muscles bunched and strained against the green scrubs.
A roaring sounded behind her, the growling car coming closer. She leapt toward the elderly couple behind the other bench just as a rusty sedan scraped along the concrete seat. Sparks flew from the screeching metal.
The bench held.
Rock bits spewed in the air, bit at her skin, even as exhaust fumes choked her. The vehicle regained traction and peeled rubber along the patch of sidewalk, just where she’d been standing.
It careened back into the lot and plowed forward. Through the rear window she had an unobstructed view of the car speeding toward Mason. Oh God.
But wait. An unobstructed view? Where was the driver?
She tore herself from behind the bench and raced after the car—not that she had any chance of catching up with it.
Just ahead of the car, Mason scooped up a huge stroller in a bear hug. He leapt into the air, twisted at the last second, and landed on his back. Bits of loose asphalt sprayed from the ground as he skidded.
The car whooshed past him and into a telep
hone pole. A woman screamed. Her hands flailing, she rushed toward Mason and the stroller.
The toddler, who was strapped in, giggled.
Jill kept running full-out, only a few steps, only a few seconds. Everything had happened so quickly. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.” He eased the stroller to the side and upright in a smooth move that left her blinking. The mother pushed past and unbuckled her child.
“Omigod, omigod, omigod!” She scooped her son into her arms, tears streaking down her face as she kissed his curly little head and babbled, “Thank you, sir, thank you for saving him.”
As the adrenaline let down, Jill realized how he’d summed up the situation with lightning-fast reflexes, keeping her safe while trusting her to act rather than simply tackling her, somehow determining who was in imminent danger.
It would have been easy to believe the car was heading for the elderly couple instead. Mason had chosen correctly. She understood well from work how tough it could be to make the right choice sometimes. She also knew how hard it was for some men to believe in a woman’s training, even when the guys were pros, too. But he had trusted her.
Her attitude toward Mason shifted ever so slightly.
There were people behind them—she heard curses, footsteps running away, a woman speaking with 911. Jill extended her hand to Mason.
A blast echoed. She jerked back. Mason sprang to his feet.
Flames erupted from the crashed car about ten yards away.
The ground rumbled, and a hubcap clanked to rest beside her. Jill flinched, and the toddler burst into tears, his siblings peering out of the minivan with wide eyes. Good God, she and Mason had experienced two explosions together in less than forty-eight hours. Had the world gone nuts?
Mason darted forward again, the bright morning sun dancing off the flames. Damn it, she wasn’t standing around and watching this time.
“Wait, Mason,” she shouted, running after him. “What if there’s a secondary explosion? Stop!”
He closed in on the burning vehicle. “I’ve got to check on the person driving.”
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