A Gentleman and a Soldier

by Cindy Dees

  She glanced over at the bank of television monitors on the wall. “Did you watch the test firing of the RITA rifle just now?”

  He nodded. “Looked like it went great.”

  “Did you notice anything unusual about the sniper?” she asked him cautiously.

  “Mr. Ford? Good shooter. But then, a monkey would look good firing the RITA. Hell of a weapon.”

  “That’s not what I meant. Did he…remind you of anybody?”

  Shane frowned. “The guy in those marshmallow commercials who turns into one as he eats more and more of them?”

  She grinned reluctantly. An apt analogy. “Did you get a good look at his eyes?”

  “Not on the monitor. He’d have to look right up at one of the cameras and then I’d have to zoom in to get a good look at them.”

  “They’re blue. With a gold ring in the middle.”

  The security man frowned. And then comprehension broke across his face. “Kinda like that Ruala fella?”

  “Exactly like that Ruala fella,” she answered tensely.

  She took a deep breath and announced, “I think Mr. Ford is Ramon Ruala.”

  “That’s crazy,” Wilkins blurted. “They don’t look anything alike. And after ten years?”

  She looked the security man in the eye. “I know it is. But I’m telling you, they’re the same person.”

  Wilkins spun in his chair and typed at light speed on his computer. The monitor directly in front of him flickered, and then video of the sniper walking into the building began to play. The security chief deftly followed Ruala’s movements on video replays from the moment he entered the plant, jumping from camera to camera. And then footage of Ruala in the bunker came on the screen.

  She leaned forward over Wilkins’s shoulder and stabbed the monitor with her finger. “There. Watch what he does with his right hand.”

  Wilkins zoomed the picture in on the rifle, and Ruala’s distinctive finger rocking came into focus.

  “That’s exactly what Ruala did right before he shot me,” she declared.

  Wilkins looked up at her. “You realize that if you’re wrong about this, you could cost Fasco its contract for the RITA.”

  She nodded solemnly. Wilkins wasn’t jumping out of his seat volunteering to go arrest Ford, and she couldn’t blame him. They were talking about Fasco’s survival, here. Over a hundred people’s jobs. But they were also talking about her life.

  Finally she broke the uncomfortable silence between them and said slowly, “Charlie Squad could tell us for sure if Ford is Ruala. I can make the inquiry unofficially. Quietly. But I’d need a copy of the video footage you’ve got of Ford to show the squad.”

  “Done,” Wilkins answered in relief. He turned to his keyboard and began to type.

  Ten minutes later he handed her a video cassette. She nodded her thanks to him and pushed to her feet using her cane. Her knee was killing her, but there was no earthly reason why it should be hurting like this.

  “You be careful,” Wilkins advised her. “If this guy is who you think he is, he’s a dangerous sonaofa—” He broke off. “Well, you know that already, don’t you?”

  She managed to force the corners of her mouth up into a parody of a smile. “Thanks.”

  Truth be told, she dreaded facing Mac Conlon almost more than Ramon Ruala. She stepped out of the security office, intent on getting to her car and thinking what in the world she was going to say to Mac if she saw him again. A group of men stepped out of a side hall directly in front of her and she looked up, startled. And stopped cold. Standing no more than five feet from her was the sniper. With several Fasco executives in tow.

  His gaze went down to the videotape in her hand, then up to the placard beside the door she’d just stepped out of. And then to her face. Something flickered in that blue-gold gaze.

  Terror washed over her like an icy bath. All she could do was stand there and stare back at him. Fear congealed in her throat into a sticky lump as Fasco’s CEO stepped forward and gestured to her.

  “This is Dr. Monroe, one of our defense systems analysts. She programmed the test firing sequence you went through today and ran it from the control booth.”

  The sniper nodded. “Nicely done.” He held out a hand to her.

  She stared down at it stupidly. She was supposed to shake hands with a man who might have tried to kill her? Fasco’s CEO cleared his throat beside her. She shifted her cane to her left hand with the videotape and shot out her right hand belatedly. Awkwardly. His palm was hard. Painfully strong. Not at all in keeping with the rest of the man. She ought to say something. Congratulate him on how well he’d handled the RITA rifle. Any inane comment would do. But no matter how hard she tried, words wouldn’t pass that glob of terror lodged in her throat.

  Ruala disengaged his hand from hers. With a last glance down at the black plastic rectangle clutched in her hand, he stepped around her and allowed the CEO to herd him away from the geeky computer programmer with no social graces.

  And then her knees started to shake like jelly. Right there in the middle of the hallway. Trembling until they were in real danger of collapsing. The walls began to close in, suffocating her. She had to get out of this place. Out of this building! A need to run away from the man behind her became so overpowering it was all she could do to walk to the front exit without breaking into a run.

  Thankfully she had a spare car key on the ring of keys in her pocket that went with her computer, desk and filing cabinets at Fasco. Clutching the videotape convulsively, she paused impatiently for a retinal scan on the way out of the building. One last swipe of her magnetic ID card and she was logged out.

  She all but ran outside, which was a trick with her knee threatening to lock up with every jarring step she took. The titanium and plastic joint was primarily designed with walking in mind. Light-headed with fear, she stumbled off the curb but righted herself awkwardly and lurched toward her car. Sweat beaded between her shoulder blades and rolled down her back maddeningly. Her neck tingled as if Ruala was staring right at it, choosing his shot behind her. Toying with her. Enjoying her terror. Doggedly, she headed for her car. Please don’t let him kill me. Please don’t let him kill me….

  Almost there. Her light-headedness turned to outright dizziness. Breathe, you idiot. Passing out now would be incredibly stupid. A male voice called out her name behind her. Oh God. Not now. She looked over her shoulder and waved a hello at the biggest flirt in the whole company. He insisted on massaging her shoulders or, worse, hugging her every time he saw her, no matter how inappropriate it was. Please, not today! She just wanted to get in her car and get as far away from here as she could.

  The flirt started to walk toward her. She called out something about being late for an appointment and, fumbling frantically, jammed her car key at the door lock. She missed the first time, her hands were shaking so bad. Finally a click and the door swung open. She banged her shin in her haste, but slid behind the wheel before Romeo could come over and put a half nelson on her. She locked her door for good measure.

  It took three tries to get her key in the ignition, but praise the Lord, the engine turned over. Slowly, now. Carefully. It would do no good to kill herself in the process of running away from Ruala. She guided her car out of the parking lot and onto the main road. Profoundly relieved, she pointed her car toward home.

  As the Fasco building grew small in her rearview mirror, she fished around in her purse and found her cell phone. Alternating looking at the road and her phone, she punched out a long series of numbers she’d memorized years ago in case of an emergency.

  “Go ahead,” said an anonymous male voice at the other end of the line.

  “Is Colonel Folly available?” she asked.

  “He’s in the crisis room. Could be there for some time. If it’s an emergency, I can get a message to him, though.”

  In his world, her dilemma probably didn’t constitute a crisis. Besides, the idea was to check the sniper’s identity without rocking the bo
at too hard. “When he gets a moment, could you ask him to call Tex Monroe’s sister, Susan? Tell him I may have a problem and could use his help.”

  Susan jerked awake, her heart pounding like a row of Indian war drums. Silence lay heavily around her, as stifling as a thick wool blanket. She was just wired because Colonel Folly hadn’t called back yet. Come on. Call! Her bedside clock said it was 2:00 a.m. The colonel certainly wouldn’t contact her before tomorrow morning. She might as well just try to go back to sleep. Yeah, right.

  Shadows wrapped around the room, clothing it in menace. She made out vague outlines of furniture, but the heavy blinds on her windows did their job well.

  A scraping noise sounded. Not the slightest bit like a house squeak. It was more like…like a chair dragging across the floor. Downstairs.

  Oh. My. God.

  Somebody was down there. Certainty exploded across her brain. It had to be Ramon Ruala.

  Her heart beat triple-time, racing like a jackrabbit running for its life. She looked around in the dark for a weapon. Nothing heavy and club-like in sight. Her cane was too light and whippy to do the job. What was she thinking? She couldn’t attack a killer with a stick! She’d hide under her bed. Like that wasn’t an obvious place for Ruala to check.

  Call the police. She picked up the telephone on the nightstand beside her bed.

  Silence.

  Total silence. As in no dial tone.

  Either it was the most ill-timed phone outage in history, or the intruder had cut the line. And she was alone in the middle of five thousand acres of isolated ranch. Terror roared through her, leaving her shaking uncontrollably. She should’ve listened to everyone who’d told her she was crazy to live way out here by herself.

  Her cell phone. It was in her purse. On the counter in her bathroom. She threw back the covers and swung her legs over the side of the bed, reaching for the ever-present cane by the nightstand and pushing herself upright. She paused, giving her bad knee a moment to adjust to bearing her weight. More than once she’d taken a spill by bounding thoughtlessly out of bed. She would think after a decade of living with her injury she’d remember it at some level of long-term memory. But her subconscious denial persisted.

  She limped gingerly across her bedroom to the bathroom, easing around the spot in the floor that squeaked. She fished the cell phone out of her purse and punched out 911. An operator asked efficiently for the nature of the emergency and the address.

  Susan whispered frantically, “My name’s Susan Monroe. I live on the Flying M Ranch on County Line Road. There’s an intruder in my house. Send the police!”

  A brief pause, then, “They’re on their way, ma’am. It’ll take about fifteen minutes for them to get there. Do you have a bathroom with locks on its doors?”

  “Yes. I’m there,” Susan replied under her breath.

  “Lock yourself in and sit tight.”

  “Got it,” she replied. By the glow of the night-light by her sink, she caught a glimpse in the big mirror of the thick, ugly scar that trailed from the side of her neck down across her chest toward her heart. She still shuddered at how close she’d come to dying from that wound. The doctors said if the bullet had gone millimeters in either direction…

  She felt that close to death again right now. If Ruala killed her tonight, what she knew about his new identity would die with her. She had to get in touch with someone before he found her! She dialed Charlie Squad headquarters for the second time that day.

  “Go ahead,” a male voice said in her ear.

  She murmured tersely, “My name’s Susan Monroe. I need to talk with Colonel Folly right away. It’s an emergency this time.”

  “One moment, ma’am. I’ll patch you through to him.”

  There was a squeak down the hall and she leaped to the second bathroom door that led out into the hallway. Her knee protested, sending a streak of white-hot fury up her thigh. Frantically she verified the lock was in place. And froze.

  From directly on the other side of the door she heard a low rumble of Spanish. She lurched when a second male voice answered the first. Dear God. There were two men! Ruala had help. She plastered herself against the wall beside the door, too petrified to move a muscle.

  A quiet slide of footsteps on carpet signaled that the men had moved on down the hallway. A distinctive creak sounded. The bedroom door at the far end of the hall. She’d bet they were going to do a room-by-room search of this floor, starting at the far end and working their way back toward the stairs. They’d discover the locked bathroom door in a few minutes, and then they’d find her.

  Ruala wouldn’t hesitate to kick down the door or shoot it out to get to her. He’d play hardball all the way. The 911 operator’s advice to lock herself in might work with a regular robber but not with him.

  She had to get out of here.

  The spacious bathroom’s walls closed in on her until it was no more than a tiny, airless cage. Its second-story window was too far above the ground for her to jump. It was out into the hallway and down the stairs, or else wait to be discovered. Gee, like that was a hard choice.

  She heard voices in the background at the other end of the phone. A second male voice came on the line. He sounded like he’d just woken up. “This is Tom Folly. What’s the problem, Susan?”

  She whispered frantically, “Ramon Ruala has a new identity. I saw him today. He’s going by the name David Ford and came to Fasco to test fire a rifle, but I think he was looking for me. I have videotape of him…”

  Another door squeaked open. That was right next door! She had to get going. “Sorry, got to go. He’s in the next room,” she whispered.

  The colonel barked, “Get out of there. Run away. Hide if you can’t run. Don’t worry about getting lost. We can track down your cell phone signal. Keep the line open…”

  Those were the last words she heard as she stuffed the cell phone, still connected to Charlie Squad headquarters, in the pocket of her cotton pajamas. She pressed her ear to the door and didn’t hear anything but blood rushing in her ears.

  She took a deep breath, cracked open the door and peeked out into the dark hallway. It was still and silent. She could do this. Just a few steps to the stairs and then down and outside. Away from the house. Away from Ruala. To the welcome darkness of the night. Her shoulder blades tickled as imaginary bullets slammed into them, exploding her lungs and tearing out her heart.

  She pushed the grisly image away, but her heart beat so hard it hurt. Something bumped next door, and she bolted out into the hallway. Of course in her panic she forgot her cane. But it wasn’t as if she was going back for the stupid thing.

  She moved down the hall as gracefully as her bad knee would allow. She dared not run for it. Her leg collapsed every time she tried that. She hop-skipped as quickly and quietly as she could away from Ruala and toward the front stairs.

  She almost made it. But then the fringe on the hall rug caught her right big toe. She pitched forward awkwardly. Her left leg swung out in front of her to stop the fall, but her bad knee jammed. Instead of cushioning her stumble, the stiff leg became a pivot point. She spun half-around on it and then fell backward, her arms flailing. Into space.

  Oh God. The stairs.

  Chapter 2

  M ac cracked one eye open infinitesimally and groaned in agony. Satan’s own fires shot through his skull. To hell with sobriety. He lifted the whiskey bottle to examine its contents. Empty. Damn. Even drinking himself senseless hadn’t helped. Susan Monroe’s innocent, wounded eyes still haunted his dreams.

  He’d gotten drunk on Jack Daniel’s that night, too. After he ripped out her heart and stomped all over it and then watched her nearly die at the hands of Ferrare’s personal assassin, Ramon Ruala. Now, Ferrare was a man he’d love to get his hands on. An international crime boss who dabbled in everything from stolen art to terrorism. Charlie Squad had been after the bastard for over a decade.

  Mac gripped the neck of the liquor bottle convulsively. God, he’d been a fool.
Why had he followed Folly’s orders, anyway? His boss told him she’d be safer somewhere else. And so, like a good little toy soldier, he’d followed orders to the best of his ability and run her off.

  He could’ve at least gone easy on her when he drove her away from the op. But no. The op was about to get messy and they needed her gone. Hell, he needed her gone. He was so head-over-heels in love with her he could hardly see straight. The thought of her in danger damn near made him freeze up. And he couldn’t afford to do that when they surrounded Ferrare and took him out. He’d been beyond gung ho to follow Folly’s order to drive her away that night.

  Of course, he could’ve just told her the truth and asked her to leave for her own safety. But that had seemed too easy. Not likely to work. He’d been too damn inexperienced back then to realize that sometimes the easy way works best.

  Oh no. He’d played the security game straight and told her nothing of the classified plan to ambush Ferrare. And what did she do instead of running away from him like she was supposed to? Plucky, heroic, save-the-world Susan bolted right into the middle of the damn sting. Nearly got herself killed. It was a miracle she lived through that fiasco.

  He’d never forget the sight of Ramon Ruala walking right up to the driver’s side window of the surveillance van she’d commandeered and looking in at Susan, then lifting that rifle and blasting at her from point-blank range. He’d never forget Susan covered in blood and moaning in pain as he pulled her out of that van. He’d lost it completely. Had to be dragged away from her himself.

  He snorted in disgust. Dutiful soldier and damn fool that he was, he’d done such a good job of breaking Suzie’s heart and wrecking her life that night he couldn’t ever go back to her, no matter how low on his belly he crawled.

  Just his luck. No more whiskey left to drown the ache in his heart. To drown himself. Thankfully, the liquor already in his system spun him away toward oblivion again. This time. But one of these days he wasn’t going to win the fight to beat it all back. God help him when he lost.