The Complete Mackenzie Collection

by Linda Howard

  “We’ve gone out together a few times.” They’d done a hell of a lot more than that, he thought savagely. She had given herself to him with a completeness that had shattered his memories of other women, reduced them to nothingness. And after they had returned from Vegas Sunday night she had slipped out to the work area and…done what? Secretly activated the laser on Bowie’s aircraft? Had the laser on the bird he’d been flying been activated, too? Could he just as easily have been the one who shot down a friend?

  Captain Hodge looked uncomfortable. “While you were with her, did she say anything? Ask any questions pertaining to Night Wing?”

  “No.” He was certain of that. Work had been mentioned in only the most general way. But then again, why should she have to ask him anything? “She has the clearance to find out anything about the project that she wants without having to ask anyone else.”

  “That’s true. But did she say anything that, in retrospect, you could construe as being a reason for wanting the lasers to fail? Or for wanting to scuttle the Night Wing project?”

  “No.” But she wouldn’t; Caroline was too smart for that. Caroline was brilliant. Caroline was perfectly capable of activating the lasers; she was not only an expert, she had access to the codes. “She has the knowledge and she had the opportunity,” he heard himself saying. “Do you have anything else? Motive, anything suspicious in her past, any current money problems?”

  “Her background is clean as a whistle,” the captain admitted. “We’re going to do a total recheck to make certain it’s correct and none of it has been fabricated, but that’s only a precaution. Everyone connected with this project has been verified down to the fillings in their teeth.”

  “Clarify this for me,” Major General Tuell said. “She could activate the lasers from the work area, without actually being in contact with the lasers themselves? The birds are under twenty-four-hour guard.”

  “Yes, sir,” Captain Hodge said. “By computer command. And Ms. Evans carried a double major in college. She got her doctorate in physics, but she also has a master’s in computer sciences. She knows her way around computers.”

  “I see.” The general sighed. “What are your recommendations?”

  “We won’t file formal charges, sir. We can prove opportunity, and the timing is very suspicious, but we haven’t as yet proven that the computers have actually been reprogrammed to arm and fire the lasers. There’s still a possibility that it’s a mechanical snafu.”

  “But you don’t think so?”

  “No sir. The problems began when she arrived, and in both instances they occurred after she had made midnight visits to the work area. She’s a civilian. I recommend that the FBI be notified and that she be restricted to base, but not yet taken into custody. As a precaution, I would also restrict the entire laser team from the work area until this is settled.”

  “Why is that, Captain?”

  “As I said, sir, as a precaution. She may not be the only one involved.”

  “The logs don’t show anyone else entering the work area at suspicious times.”

  “That doesn’t mean they didn’t know about it. I think Colonel Mackenzie will agree with me that it’s less expensive to halt testing for a few days than to lose another F-22, or maybe even one of the prototypes.”

  “Yes.” Joe’s voice was hard. “Are you going to question Ms. Evans?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “I’d like to be there.”

  “Of course, sir.” Captain Hodge thought wryly that Colonel Mackenzie didn’t have to have permission; he had supreme authority on this base with anything concerning the Night Wing project. He would defer to Major General Tuell, but it would be by choice.

  “When?”

  “I can have my people escort her here now, if you’d like.”

  “Then do it.”

  Major General Tuell stood. “Gentlemen, I’m leaving this in your hands. I trust you’ll both make certain of our position before charges are filed. However, do whatever has to be done to solve this. The project is too important.”

  They both saluted, and he returned it. As he left, Captain Hodge gestured to Joe’s telephone and said, “With your permission, sir.”

  Joe nodded curtly. Captain Hodge lifted the receiver and pressed a code. “Have Ms. Caroline Evans, C12X114, escorted to Colonel Mackenzie’s office. Verify.”

  Whoever had answered the phone repeated the code number. Captain Hodge said, “Correct. Thank you.”

  He hung up the phone and turned to Joe. “Ten minutes,” he said.

  Chapter 10

  Caroline had never felt so small and exposed and terrified. She sat in a chair in Joe’s office and tried to catch his eye, to silently plead with him to believe her, but he wouldn’t look at her. Or rather, he was looking at her all right, but it was with a cold, totally impersonal gaze, as if he were observing a bug. He wasn’t seeing her, Caroline. It was the look on his face more than anything else that frightened her. It was as hard as stone.

  “No, I did not reenter the work area on those occasions,” she repeated for what seemed like the hundredth time.

  “The sensors logged both your entrance and exit times, Ms. Evans.” Captain Hodge, the head of base security, was also good at repeating himself.

  “Then the sensors are wrong.”

  “No, the sensors are extremely accurate. State-of-the-art.”

  “The sensors are wrong.” She drew a deep breath, trying to calm herself. She felt almost sick with fear. “I dislodged my ID card somehow during the day Thursday. I discovered it was missing Friday morning when I dressed.”

  “So you keep saying. We have no record of you filing a report on this so-called missing card, and you realize, of course, how important this would be on a top-security project. Perhaps you would like to explain your reasoning again.”

  “I remembered snagging it on a file folder Thursday and thought it must have come loose then. I didn’t notify security because it seemed like a lot of bother when I was fairly certain it wasn’t lost but was still in the office.”

  “But the sensors record you leaving the building that afternoon with the other members of your team. You had to have had your tag on for that to be possible, and believe me, Ms. Evans, the security works on both entering and exiting. If anyone crosses that threshold from any direction without the proper identification, it triggers an alarm.”

  “And that’s why I’m telling you that the sensors have to be malfunctioning. When I discovered that I’d misplaced my tag, I called Cal Gilchrist and got him to check the office for me. He found my tag lying on the floor under my desk. He brought it back out to me and returned to his quarters while I began work. All you have to do is ask him.”

  “Mr. Gilchrist will be asked the appropriate questions. However, what the logs show is that both you and Mr. Gilchrist entered the building together and left together two minutes later. Then you reentered alone, and it was over an hour before Mr. Gilchrist returned.”

  “That’s impossible. I did not go into the building until Mr. Gilchrist returned with my tag. What do your precious sensors tell you when two tags but only one body leave a building?”

  The captain ignored her question and instead made a quick notation on the clipboard he carried. “Did you also misplace your tag on Sunday night?”

  “No. I didn’t enter the building on Sunday night.” She couldn’t prevent herself from giving Joe another quick, imploring glance. What was he thinking? Surely he didn’t suspect her of sabotaging the lasers.

  “The sensors say you did. And by your own testimony, your ID tag was with you.”

  “The tag was exactly where I had left it Friday afternoon when I put it on again this morning.”

  “You didn’t move it at all during the weekend?”

  “I spent the weekend in Vegas.”

  “And left your tag behind.”

  “Do you wear your ID tag off-base, Captain?” she shot back.

  He said mildly, “I’d like t
o remind you that I’m not the one under suspicion.”

  “Under suspicion of what? Spell it out for me,” she challenged.

  He refused to be drawn. “You spent all weekend in Vegas, you say. You didn’t return to the base either Friday night or Saturday night?”

  “No.”

  “Where were you in Vegas?”

  “At the Hilton.”

  “There’s more than one. But of course this can be verified?”

  Joe interrupted. “Ms. Evans and I spent the weekend together. I can verify her time from late Friday afternoon until 1900 hours Sunday.”

  “I see.” Captain Hodge kept his voice noncommittal, but Caroline’s face burned. This time she didn’t glance at Joe. “So the name tag was locked in your quarters the entire time.”

  She tried another calming breath. They didn’t seem to be working very well. “Yes.”

  “You’re certain your quarters were secured.”

  “Yes. I always double-check my door.”

  He looked sceptical. “‘Always’ is a very exact term. It means without fail. Are you saying you’ve never failed to double-check your door?”

  “On this occasion, Colonel Mackenzie himself checked the door while I watched.”

  The captain glanced at Joe, who nodded. Joe’s eyes were hooded, his expression unreadable.

  “You verify that the tag was in your possession and no one else’s. You were recorded entering the work area at exactly—” he paused to check the log “—2347 on Sunday night.”

  “I was in bed at that time Sunday night.”

  “Alone?” the captain asked indifferently.

  “Yes.”

  “No one can verify that. You say you were in bed. The computer log says you were in the work area.”

  “Talk to Cal Gilchrist!” she said fiercely. “Stop wasting time with this and verify what I’ve already told you.”

  “On Thursday morning, when I walked into your office you cleared the screen and turned the computer off,” Joe said. His voice was cold and deep. “What was on the screen that you didn’t want me to see?”

  She stared at him in silence, completely at a loss. He sounded as certain of her guilt as Captain Hodge was, but surely he knew…She tried to concentrate, to bring the occasion to mind. Thursday morning. He had startled her yet again, she remembered, and when she had reflexively started to slug him he had jerked her into his arms. She remembered fiddling with the computer to give herself something to do while she tried to get a handle on her reaction to him, but she had no idea what she had been working on.

  “I don’t remember,” she said weakly.

  “Come on,” he scoffed. “You remember everything. You have a mind like a steel trap.”

  “I don’t remember,” she repeated, staring at him. With a shock she realized that the expression in his eyes was one of disdain…disgust…even rage. Yes, it was mostly rage, but not the normal heat of temper. Joe Mackenzie’s rage was ice-cold, and all the more frightening because of it. He was looking at her as if he could destroy her without regret. He didn’t believe her!

  The enormity of that realization almost choked her. As it was, a huge knot in her chest swelled until she could scarcely breathe, until her heart was beating with slow, painful effort. Had their situations been reversed she would have given him her complete, unqualified trust without hesitation, because, despite the evidence, she knew he would never betray his country. Evidently he believed her capable of doing just that. Her thought processes were orderly and logical, but all of a sudden a staggering instinctive knowledge filled her: she would trust him because she had been fascinated by him, intensely involved with learning about him as a man because she loved him, while for him their time together had been purely physical. He hadn’t bothered to learn about her as a person because he didn’t care.

  In shock, she withdrew. She didn’t move physically, but she had been reaching out to him mentally, and now she slammed her mind’s door on those thoughts. She pulled all her reactions inward, bolting them inside in an effort to reestablish her emotional safeguards. It was probably too late, but the human animal’s instincts were always to survive, and so she obeyed those instincts. Her face went smooth and expressionless, and she stared back at him with eyes as blank as glass. She couldn’t afford to give him even a sliver of herself.

  “What were you working on?” he repeated.

  “I don’t remember.” Even her voice was flat. She had so desperately clamped down on her emotions that none of them stood a chance of escaping. Just as emotionlessly she said, “I’m going to assume I’m under suspicion of sabotage.”

  “We haven’t said that,” Captain Hodge replied.

  “Nor have you said that I’m not, and this feels very much like an interrogation.” She fastened her gaze on him, because she couldn’t bear to look at Joe. She didn’t know if she could ever look at Joe again. Later, when she was alone, she would regroup and take stock, do a damage assessment, but for right now she felt as if everything in her would shatter if she had to look at him. The pain was just too great; she couldn’t handle it, so she had to ignore it.

  “We couldn’t find any malfunction at all in the laser on Captain Wade’s aircraft,” she said, and even managed a little bit of pride in the evenness of her tone. It was as flat as the EEG line of a corpse. “We all talked it over. Yates Korleski, the team leader, was going to talk to Colonel Mackenzie tonight after he’d thought about it a bit longer, but we think the problem is in the computer program.”

  Captain Hodge looked mildly interested. “What kind of problem are you talking about, Ms. Evans?”

  “We don’t know. We want to compare the working program with the original to tell us if any changes have been made on the program we’re actually using.”

  “And if there are changes?”

  “Then we find out what those changes are.”

  “Whose idea was it to verify the program?”

  “Mine.”

  “What made you think of it?”

  “It was a process of elimination. The computer program is about all that’s left that could be wrong.”

  “But the program was working perfectly before you arrived. It would be a major feather in your cap if you solved a problem of this magnitude, wouldn’t it, Ms. Evans?”

  She didn’t flinch, just continued to stonily watch him. “I didn’t sabotage the program so I could have the glory of finding the problem.”

  “I didn’t accuse you of doing so. I merely asked if it would be a feather in your cap if you pinpointed a major flaw in a project this large and important.”

  “I already have a good professional reputation, Captain. That’s why I’m on the team.”

  “But you weren’t an original member, so evidently you weren’t good enough for that. Did you resent not being picked in the beginning?”

  “I didn’t know about it, so I couldn’t be resentful. I was working on something else. The Night Wing project was already in full swing before I finished my own project. I only became available a month ago. That’s verifiable,” she added before he could ask.

  “Hmmm.” He studied the notes he had on his clipboard a moment longer, then looked up with a thin smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “I believe that’s all I have to ask you for now, Ms. Evans. You may go. Oh—you’re restricted to the base. It wouldn’t look good if you were caught trying to leave.”

  “Are my telephone calls also restricted?”

  “Do you need to call someone?” he asked without answering her question. “An attorney, perhaps?”

  “Do I need one?”

  He gave her that thin smile again. “We haven’t pressed any charges yet.”

  He just had to put that “yet” in there, she noticed distantly, but it didn’t affect her. “You aren’t filing charges but I’m restricted to base. Let me remind you that I’m a civilian, Captain Hodge, not a part of the military.”

  “And let me remind you, Ms. Evans, that you are on a military
base and this is a military matter. If necessary, we can hold you in the brig for the maximum length of time before charges have to be formally filed. A lot of this can be checked out by then, and you may be exonerated, but if you insist on spending the time behind bars, we can accommodate you.”

  “You’ve made your point.”

  “I thought I had.”

  Caroline got up and concentrated on her legs. She made certain they didn’t wobble, that they moved when she told them to. She didn’t look at Joe as she walked out of the office, or at burly Sergeant Vrska on duty in the outer office. Evidently the good sergeant left only when the colonel did.

  They would talk to Cal, and he would verify everything she had told them, which would force them to accept that their precious security sensors could and had malfunctioned. Perhaps there had been a major foul-up in security and two ID tags had been issued with the same bar code. Perhaps someone had been entering the work area with a duplicate of her tag and had indeed been sabotaging the computer program, but questioning Cal would force them to admit that it wasn’t her.

  She wasn’t worried about being charged with sabotage, though enduring the captain’s questions hadn’t been a pleasant experience. But she might never recover from the look in Joe’s eyes and the realization that he didn’t trust her, that he believed her capable of sabotage.

  She had made a monumental, colossal fool of herself. Despite the superior capability of her brain, she had made the fundamental feminine mistake of assuming that making love with a man signaled a commitment from him. No, not making love, having sex. That was another mistake she had made, assigning too much importance to the act. To men it was the simple gratification of a physical appetite, like eating. No emotional baggage was involved. She had made love; he had had sex. She had given herself to him, heart, soul and body, and he had given her pleasure in return but nothing of himself beyond the temporary use of his own body. Magnificent as his body was, she had wanted more. She had thought she was getting more.