The Admiral's Bride

by Suzanne Brockmann

  Lucky pointed to the screen that showed the CRO mess hall. “Isn’t that Jake?”

  “Jake.” Bobby glanced at him. “Finish reading the book?”

  Lucky smiled. “Yeah.”

  “Like him better now, huh?”

  “I’m still working on the like part, considering he’s spending all his time kissing my woman.”

  “You never had a chance with Zoe, and you know it.” Bobby keyed in some numbers, and the screen showed the camera on the other side of the room, closer to Jake, who was sitting alone at a table, lunch tray in front of him. “Yep. It’s definitely the admiral.”

  Lucky leaned closer. “Is it my imagination or…Does he look okay to you?”

  “Looks wound pretty tight. I wonder where Zoe is.” Bobby typed in a steady stream of numbers, and lightning-quick pictures flashed on the other two screens. “Whoops, there she was.”

  “Wait a minute,” Lucky said. “You saw her? How could you see anything in that?”

  Bobby shrugged, calling back the image he’d spotted. “I’m pretty good with visuals.” On the center screen, Zoe walked briskly down the hallway, heading toward the room she shared with Jake. She smiled brightly as someone passed her.

  Bobby hit the commands to show the cameras inside the room as Zoe went inside.

  But no sooner was she inside the door than she leaned against it, her smile vanishing. It was as if her legs suddenly failed to support her, because she slid down, back against the door, so that she was sitting on the floor.

  She hugged her legs and bent her head and…

  Zoe was crying.

  She was shaking, sobbing as if her heart were breaking.

  Bobby looked at Lucky and Lucky looked at Bobby.

  On the other video screen, Jake toyed unenthusiastically with his food. He tossed his fork onto the tray and rested his forehead in the palm of his hand, a picture of total despair.

  But then Jake sat up. And with both hands on the table in front of him, he made a gesture, a hand signal that the SEALs used. It was brief but unmistakable.

  Get ready.

  “Did you see that?” Lucky asked, nearly jumping out of his seat. “Was that what I thought it was?”

  “Yes, sir. That was definitely a message for us.”

  Jake had only made the signal once, but they had it down on tape.

  Lucky reached for the phone. “Yeah, Skelly, it’s O’Donlon. Is the senior chief there? Bob and I have something we want him and the rest of you guys to see,” he said. “Oh, and on your way over? You might want to run.”

  Zoe pulled her baseball cap down over her eyes as she pushed the cleaning cart into Christopher Vincent’s private quarters.

  No one had noticed yet that she wasn’t a part of the regular cleaning crew. Or if they had, they’d been downtrodden and beaten into submission too often to care.

  Melissa, Amy, Ivy, Karen, Beth and Joan. Zoe had had to learn their names from the color of their hair. Their faces were too similar—they looked exhausted and as if they’d lost all hope.

  Zoe moved like them, as if she, too, ached both physically and emotionally, as she took the supplies for cleaning the bathroom toward the door to Vincent’s private office.

  The door was ajar, and she went in without switching on the light.

  It was exactly as Jake had described it. Big desk. No windows. Three doors. No sign of the canisters of Trip X anywhere.

  The bathroom was on the left. Zoe tried the knob of the far right door as she went past. Locked. So was the center door. The bathroom was half open, and she turned on the light. It was tiny. One toilet and a sink. According to the Frosty Cakes factory layout she’d looked at with Bobby and Wes, there was enough unaccounted for room in this part of the building for a good-size security headquarters, as well as a conference room-size inner chamber.

  She didn’t have her lock pick, but she had a paper clip from Vincent’s desk. In the light of the bathroom, she unbent the piece of metal and—

  The office light went on. “Who are you? What are you doing in here?”

  “Cleaning the bathroom?” Zoe blinked owlishly as she unobtrusively tried to slip the paper clip into the back pocket of her jeans. She only got it in halfway before the long-bearded man got too close.

  He was Vincent’s second lieutenant. “You’re the new girl. This couldn’t possibly be your assignment.”

  Zoe made her bottom lip start to quiver. “I was told to clean bathrooms. But I…I got lost, and I didn’t know what to do, so I followed a cleaning crew in here and—”

  “Get out.” Lieutenant Beard held open the door. “Now.”

  Zoe grabbed her cleaning supplies and sprinted for the door. On her way out, the second lieutenant hit her so hard on the back of the head that her ears rang and she stumbled to her knees. It was all she could do to keep herself from spinning and giving the bastard a roundhouse kick to the bearded jaw.

  But she didn’t. She kept her eyes lowered, her head down. If she was going to make it out of here without completely blowing her and Jake’s cover, she wasn’t going to do it by advertising her black belt in karate.

  Beth, the leader of the cleaning team, smacked her, too, as Zoe pushed herself onto her feet. “What are you, stupid? You just can’t go wherever you want. You were given an assignment.”

  Zoe let her eyes fill with tears. It was amazing that she had any left after the way she’d cried just an hour ago. But apparently, she still had plenty to spare. All she had to do was think about Jake, and her tears came in force.

  “I’m sorry,” she murmured. “I lost Edith, my partner, and I got scared and I saw you and…”

  “Go back to the kitchen,” Beth said sharply. “Edith will probably be waiting for you there.”

  Zoe stared at her stupidly. This was it? No being dragged in front of Christopher Vincent? No questions about what she’d been doing in his private office?

  “Go,” Beth said.

  Zoe turned and ran.

  The computer’s alarm sounded, piercingly loud, and Lucky turned to see Harvard leaning over Crash’s shoulder, looking at the screen.

  “What’ve we got?” H asked.

  “A key word match,” Crash told him grimly. “Three words came up. Zoe. Spy. And birthday.”

  Harvard swore.

  The computer was programmed to listen to and record every conversation that came in from the heavily wired CRO fort. Harvard had written a program to search for groups of key words that, when used in a single conversation, might signal trouble.

  Cowboy joined them. “Play it back,” he said.

  “We’ve got video, too,” Crash told them as he cued up the digital recording. Lucky rolled his chair closer. “Here we go. Looks like we’re in Christopher Vincent’s outer office. This can’t be good.”

  A man on the tape spoke. “What’s this?” It was Christopher Vincent’s now too-familiar voice. On the video screen, the CRO leader straightened and came into camera range. He’d been bending over, picking something off the floor, but now his face was directly in front of the camera. Yeesh.

  Lucky had one word for Christopher Vincent. Tweezers. It was his only real hope. Because, damn, that single eyebrow wasn’t going to get him a GQ cover anytime in the near future.

  “I don’t know, sir.” Another man stepped into the frame. It was Ian Hindcrest, Vincent’s second lieutenant—another beauty pageant contestant from hell, what with the six-inch-long ZZTop beard. He took whatever Vincent had been holding. “It looks like…Yes, it’s a paper clip, sir.”

  “Who’s been in here today?” One thing about having a unibrow, when Vincent glowered, he glowered.

  Hindcrest took a step backward. “You had a series of morning appointments, but the cleaning crew was here after lunch, so I’d guess—”

  “The cleaning crew.” Vincent’s glower became downright scary. “There was a memo on my desk from the crew leader, but she’s a moron, I couldn’t read her writing. Something about some incident tod
ay? Your name was on the page.”

  “Of course.” Hindcrest brightened. “I was intending to type up my report about the event this evening. That rather dim new girl, the blonde, wandered in here by mistake.”

  “Zoe,” Vincent said.

  “That’s the one.”

  “Wandered where exactly?”

  “I found her in your office.” Hindcrest gestured to the door behind him. “Preparing to clean the bathroom.”

  “In my office.” Vincent nodded, his voice getting louder. “And it didn’t occur to you that this new girl—who’s still only a probationary member of the CRO—might have gone into my private office because she’s a spy?” He was flat-out shouting, and Hindcrest’s eyes had glazed over.

  “Spy?” the bearded man said weakly.

  Wes swore pungently, voicing what they all were thinking. “She’s made. She’s in trouble now.”

  “This isn’t a paper clip.” Vincent snatched the piece of metal from Hindcrest’s hand. “It’s a makeshift lock pick, dammit! I have no doubt she was trying to break into the inner chamber. Or maybe she’d already been in there, already seen what she needed to see! I knew it. There was something about her.”

  “The chemical—” Hindcrest cut himself off, aware he’d said too much. He cleared his throat. “The birthday surprise. Is it…?”

  “Jackpot,” Harvard murmured.

  “It’s still there,” Vincent said, “but we’ve got to assume she’s after it.” He swore. “Robinson’s probably in on this, too. The son of a bitch!”

  “I’ll call the guards to bring them in,” Hindcrest said.

  “We’ve got to warn them,” Bobby rumbled.

  “How?” Wes asked. “Send up signal flares?”

  “No,” Vincent said on the tape. “Not yet. He’s got information I need. Let’s let them think their cover’s intact. In the meantime, let’s get my birthday surprise started on its journey. Call Herzog and Jansen. Tell them they’re leaving for New York a few days early.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “That’s all of the tape,” Crash said grimly. “At least it’s all that the computer flagged.”

  Harvard was already on the phone. “We need immediate stepped-up satellite surveillance. We need code-red intercept teams stopping anyone and anything that so much as pokes a nose outside that CRO gate, and we need…” He looked at Lucky and covered the mouthpiece of the telephone. “We need help. Get on the other secured line, Lieutenant. Call in the rest of Alpha Squad. We need ’em here now.”

  Jake couldn’t watch as Zoe wove her beautiful golden hair into an intricate, elegant style. But he couldn’t not watch, either. A French braid, he remembered it was called. Daisy’s hair had been too curly and wild and thick to wear in that particular fashion. So this was a first for him, watching Zoe’s long fingers complete the transformation from jeans-clad tomboy to elegant, graceful, coolly formal beauty.

  It was another first for him, too.

  Jake had never watched Daisy get dressed up to go have sex with another man.

  The thought made him sick.

  How can you do this? He had to clench his teeth to keep the words from escaping. Don’t go.

  She wore a black skirt that redefined the word short and a black tank top that hugged her body and framed the tops of her breasts as if they were some kind of work of art. Her long, shapely legs were clad in the sheerest of stockings, her black heels at least three inches high.

  She leaned closer to the mirror to apply a final touch of lipstick and then stepped back to survey herself as she closed her makeup bag with a snap.

  She met his gaze only briefly in the glass.

  “Well,” she said.

  Jake couldn’t speak.

  “I guess it’s time,” she said.

  He found his voice, but he had to clear his throat about four times before his words could be understood. “It’s still a little early.”

  Don’t go.

  “I can’t walk very fast in these shoes.”

  “Ah.”

  She turned to face him, squaring her shoulders and lifting her chin slightly. She finally met his eyes, but she somehow kept her own gaze cool, distant. “So. I guess I’m out of here.”

  Don’t go.

  He couldn’t believe she was actually going to do this.

  “I guess I’ll see you later,” she said, heading for the door.

  Don’t go.

  She reached for the doorknob, opened the door. And she closed it behind her, leaving without even looking back.

  Chapter 18

  Zoe had to stop and sit down, drop her head between her legs to keep herself from fainting.

  God, she was going to throw up.

  Jake hadn’t stopped her.

  He’d just watched her get ready, watched her walk away.

  This didn’t have anything to do with him. He’d told her that himself.

  She couldn’t keep her breathing steady, couldn’t stop herself from being buffeted by the raggedness of each breath she took in and out, couldn’t stop her hands from shaking and her stomach from churning.

  Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country. Whoever would’ve guessed it could be this?

  When Jake stood by the mirror, he could still smell Zoe’s perfume. It was a subtle fragrance, mysterious and light. He’d watched her put it on—just two short spritzes into the air that she’d then walked through.

  She usually didn’t wear any scent at all, but she’d worn this on their wedding day. Their mock wedding day.

  He closed his eyes against the memory of Zoe standing in her trailer, bags already packed, chin held high as she’d prepared to confront him, tough and strong and ready to do whatever she had to do to get inside the CRO gates.

  Whatever she had to.

  She’d looked at him that same way tonight. Right before she’d walked out the door.

  She was cool, she was calm, she was completely in control. She was prepared to do whatever needed to be done, regardless of the sacrifice to herself. She was strong enough and tough enough.

  But Jake wasn’t, dammit. He wasn’t strong enough. And even though love didn’t seem to be part of Zoe’s working vocabulary, the fact remained that he loved her.

  Whether he liked it or not, whether he wanted to or not, he loved her.

  And despite telling her otherwise, despite her matter-of-fact indifference to this entire situation, he was not going to allow her to do this.

  He was the team leader, dammit. He had every right to tell her what she could and could not do.

  And she could not do this.

  Jake burst out of the door and headed down the hallway at a dead run.

  Please, God, let him catch her….

  Zoe stood up.

  Holy Mike, she hated wearing heels. Sure, she’d taught herself to run in them—for those times when she had to. But despite the hours of practice, she never quite felt as confident when she was wearing heels as when she had on her sneakers.

  She smoothed her skirt and took a deep breath. She’d made up her mind and she knew beyond the shadow of a doubt exactly what it was she had to do.

  Resolutely, she started walking carefully on those high heels, her heart firmly in her throat.

  This wasn’t going to be easy.

  As a matter of fact, it was, quite possibly, going to be the hardest thing she’d ever done in her entire life.

  Dick Edgers stopped him in the stairwell.

  “Hey, Jake! I understand you’re joining us in the inner council Friday. Congrats.”

  “Sorry, Dick, no time to talk.” But when Jake moved right, to go around the man, Dick moved to his left, blocking him. And when Jake moved left, Dick moved right.

  “Whoops,” Dick said, laughing. “Sorry!” Jake all but lifted him up and moved him out of his way.

  Jake cursed the delay, cursed the fact that he’d waited so long to go after Zoe, cursed the entire situation, cursed himself for letting
the charade go this far.

  And when he was done cursing, he started to pray. Please, God, let him catch her. Please, God…

  He took the stairs three at a time and hit the door onto the floor that led to Vincent’s quarters at a full run.

  And nearly knocked Zoe onto her rear end.

  He caught them both, holding her tightly, relief flooding through him. He hadn’t been too late. Thank God. Thank God.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked as he pulled back to look at her.

  “You’re going the wrong way,” he said. Vincent’s quarters were to the right, all the way down at the end of the hall, but she’d been heading toward the stairwell.

  He realized that her eyes were filled with tears and she was shaking. Still, she lifted her chin as she met his gaze. “I’m drawing the line,” she told him.

  He realized instantly what she meant. He’d told her once before that he didn’t trust her to draw a line marking what was and was not comfortable for her on this mission.

  But she was telling him, right now, that she was not going to go through with this farce. She was telling him.

  He kissed her—hard—right there in the hallway. He didn’t care who could see them, he simply didn’t give a damn anymore. She kissed him just as fiercely, clinging to him as if she were never going to let him go. But a kiss wasn’t enough. He had far too much to say.

  Jake pulled her with him into the stairwell and down the stairs. There was a men’s room on the next floor.

  She could move pretty fast in those heels when she wanted to, and he led her down the other hallway. Still holding her hand, he pushed open the men’s room door, pulled her inside and locked the door behind them.

  Releasing her hand, he turned the water on in all three sinks. As the roar from the faucets filled the room, he knew they could be seen but not heard. Zoe knew it, too.

  She stood hugging herself as if she were cold.

  “You were coming after me,” she said.

  “I was,” he admitted. “I couldn’t let you do this. It was crazy of me even to pretend that something this insane would be all right, because it’s not.” He swore. “I was ready to order you to back down, to forbid you from going further. And if that didn’t work, hell, I was ready to get on my knees and beg you if I had to.”