“That’s such bullshit,” she said, surprising him even more. He didn’t know she knew that word. “The entire world revolves around sex, and you know it.”
“I disagree.”
“Prove it.”
He laughed. “Yeah, right. How?”
She moved fast then, faster than he’d thought her capable of moving, and straddled his lap, pushing his shoulders back, down onto the blanket.
He was completely unprepared, completely caught off guard.
She’d nearly knocked the air out of him, and there was no way he could catch his breath, not with her lying on top of him, her breasts against his chest, her hands holding his wrists above his head, her mouth a fraction of an inch from his, the warmth between her legs ground intimately against him . . .
Sweet Christ.
“What are you thinking now?” she breathed.
Nils kissed her. How could he not kiss her with her mouth so close, with her body so soft against his?
And oh, God, her mouth was as sweet as he remembered. He kissed her hungrily, frantically, unable to stop himself even though he knew this wasn’t real. Even though he knew he was failing her test.
Prove it. He was proving something here, but he wasn’t sure exactly what.
And then she was gone. Just like that, she’d rolled off of him.
Leaving him gasping for air, with an instant hard-on that was embarrassingly obvious through his flimsy cotton shorts.
“If getting laid weren’t a priority,” she told him, her voice shaking, “if, like most men, you weren’t thinking with your dick, you would have laughed and gently pulled me off you. You might’ve been embarrassed—probably more for me than for you. You might’ve apologized. What you wouldn’t have done was try to stick your tongue down my throat.”
“Are you completely insane?” Nils said as soon as he could speak. “Do you do this all the time, Meg? Because there are men who might not understand your little lesson—men who might not like being teased like that. You do this to them, and you just might find yourself with a lot more than you bargained for.”
“I can’t see you anymore,” she said.
Oh, Jesus, now she was trying not to cry. How the fuck did this get so crazily out of hand?
“Look, give me Joelle’s number. If you want me to, I’ll call her, I’ll—” He reached for her, but she jerked away.
“Don’t touch me!”
“I’m sorry.”
She was up and heading for a garbage can. He followed. “Meg, you’ve got to cut me some slack here. This friendship thing is all uncharted territory for me. You’ve got to give me credit for trying. I mean, how many days have we spent together? About ten, right? Ten days, and I only try to . . . to stick my tongue down your throat once—and when enticed, might I add? That’s pretty damn good in my book.”
“I’m having trouble keeping my hands off of you.”
She spoke so softly, still facing the garbage can, it took Nils a moment to realize what she’d said. And then he couldn’t speak. He was using all of his energy, all of his focus, on not reaching for her, on not taking her into his arms.
“Maybe that’s not such a bad thing,” he finally said.
“It is,” she said. “It’s a terrible thing. I’m married. I took vows. And I know what you’re thinking. That Daniel took vows, too, and he didn’t manage to keep his, but . . . I need to go. I have work to do this afternoon.”
He followed her back to the blanket. “Do you want me to bring over a pizza—”
“No.”
“—later? We could talk. I think we need to talk.”
She gathered up the blanket and jammed it into her bag. “I think you need to go back to California.”
“Meg, you’re my best friend—”
“That’s ridiculous. We hardly know each other.”
He followed as she headed toward the street. “I disagree.” He’d told her more about himself than he’d ever told anyone. They might have been friends who desperately wanted to become lovers, but they were, first and foremost, friends.
“I have a deadline. I’ll be working until late tonight. I’m really sorry, John.” The tears were back in her eyes. “This is completely my fault. I thought I could ignore my attraction to you.”
She waved to hail a cab, and a taxi skidded to a stop in front of her. “I’m sorry,” she said again, climbing in and shutting the door.
“Drive,” he heard her order through the open window, and the taxi pulled away, leaving Nils standing in the street.
“Call me,” he shouted after her. “Meg, please? Call me!”
There was no way Starrett could have spotted her.
But he was moving more quickly now and Alyssa Locke had to work to follow him. He disappeared for a moment in a crowd of lunchtime shoppers but then reappeared—his bright blue baseball cap standing out in the crowd.
Lt. John Nilsson had gone missing.
It wasn’t official. He’d been given thirty-six hours of free time by his CO, and there were still quite a few hours to go before he was AWOL.
But he wasn’t in his hotel room. It was possible he had a girlfriend in the area that no one knew about, but it was even more likely that he was off the map.
Meg Moore was gone, and Nilsson had followed. Locke was sure of it.
And although Ensign Starrett had been questioned and claimed to know nothing of Nilsson’s whereabouts, she knew better. Roger Starrett and John Nilsson were tight. Starrett knew exactly where Nils was—and it was just a matter of time before Nils contacted him.
Locke had taken it upon herself to be Starrett’s shadow during all her off-duty hours. She’d talked Jules into helping her out, and between the two of them, they had Starrett covered.
Who needed sleep anyway? Locke sure as hell wasn’t getting any. Not with her sister Tyra on the verge of going into the hospital. Trailing Starrett helped keep her mind off that—at least it should have. But today she was so damn distracted, she barely could have followed herself.
She trailed Starrett now down a crowded city sidewalk. He was pretty far in front of her, but then he took a hard right—into a McDonald’s.
Figures he liked fast food.
It took her close to a minute to reach the door, but once there, she could see his cap through the front window as he stood in line to get his daily dose of high cholesterol.
So she waited outside, pretending to windowshop at a jewelry store while keeping her eye on that blue cap, wishing she had the money to buy one of those expensive watches for Tyra.
Starrett finally made his way to the head of the line, ordered his Double Heart-Attack to go, paid, and turned to leave.
“No!” Locke couldn’t believe it.
The man in the blue cap wasn’t Sam Starrett or Roger Starrett or Houston or Bob or whatever dumbass redneck nickname the SEAL was going by today. In fact, the man in the blue cap wasn’t even a man. He was a woman who was about as tall as Starrett, but that’s where the similarities ended.
She’d been screwed.
Locke wasn’t aware she’d even spoken aloud until a honeyed voice behind her drawled, “Just name the time and place, sugar—I’ll be there with bells on.”
Starrett.
She spun around to find him grinning at her. His cap was gone, and she took grim satisfaction in seeing that without it, he had hat hair. There was a big, unattractive, sweat matted, indented ring around his head where heat and the cap had given his hair that special, unmistakable style.
“Your big mistake was focusing on following a piece of clothing rather than an entire person,” he told her. “It’s nothing to be ashamed of—that’s a pretty typical beginner’s error.”
“What did you do?” she asked. “Pay that woman to wear your hat?”
“Twenty bucks if she’d keep it on for ten minutes.” Starrett’s teeth were much too white and straight. Redneck assholes were supposed to be missing at least a few.
“So you knew I was followi
ng you?” Duh, obviously. She rolled her eyes, disgusted with herself. “Stupid question.”
“I spotted you back by the Starbucks.”
“That soon?” She couldn’t hide her dismay.
To her surprise, he didn’t make fun of her. “You’re really pretty good,” he said. “Actually, you’re exceptionally good. But remember, I’m a SEAL, Alyssa. When you trail someone who’s had that kind of training, you’ve got to be better than exceptional. You got to figure I don’t go anywhere without constantly checking my six—turning around and seeing who and what’s behind me. It’s automatic—I just do it. And another thing. You might want to work a little bit more on blending, you know, into the crowd?”
Locke looked down at her dark pants and suit jacket. “I blend.”
“Yeah—provided the crowd’s all FBI agents. You want to trail someone on the street—especially if you’re a hot-looking babe—dress down, skeeve up a little. Jeans and T-shirt. Sneakers. No makeup. And how the hell did you expect to keep up in those shoes?”
“I was doing fine.” That was a lie. She wasn’t doing anything close to fine. She was hot and exhausted and distracted and thinking of Tyra—waiting for her pager to go off or her cell phone to ring.
“Feet hurt?”
She hesitated only slightly as she looked into Starrett’s neon blue eyes. “Yes.”
He smiled, and for once it wasn’t one of those Boy Howdy cowboy grins. It was a real smile. He gestured with his chin just down the street. “You want me to wait while you run into the drugstore and pick up some Band Aids?”
She blinked at him. “Wait?”
“You’re following me because you think I know where John Nilsson is, right?”
She didn’t answer. No way was she telling him that.
“Naturally you can’t admit it, but we both know I’m right. Which means that even when we shake hands and say, ‘So long, have a nice day,’ you’re going to keep on following me. FYI, I’m walking all the way to that fancy toy store—it’s probably still about four blocks down. My niece’s birthday is next week and since I’m not going to be able to visit, I’m so screwed.” He laughed. “I’m going to have to send her the entire damn store. After maxing out my credit card, I’m heading all the way back to the hotel, stopping at as many bars as possible along the way. Your feet’ll be bleeding by then if you don’t get Band Aids.”
“You have a niece?” She couldn’t help asking—she couldn’t imagine it.
“Briana. She’s going to be four. She’s my older sister’s kid. Lives up in Boston.” He knew what she was thinking and he gave her another of those real smiles. “Imagine that. I have relatives who don’t live in a trailer park. I was thinking of getting her a collection of toy guns so she could shoot all those awful Teletubbies.”
Locke had to work not to smile, too. What was wrong with her? Or maybe she should ask what was wrong with Starrett? What was he up to, anyway? Aside from that initial rude comment about naming the time and place, calling her sugar, he was actually being . . . friendly . . . ?
“I don’t suppose it would help if I stated again—for the record—that I do not know where John Nilsson is,” he said.
She just looked at him.
“Right.” He laughed. “Come on. Go grab those Band Aids, and we’ll try this again. You know what they say—practice makes perfect.”
Starrett sat down on a bus stop bench, and as Locke went toward the drugstore, she glanced back at him. He made a “go on” motion with his hands.
So Locke went inside. It took about ninety seconds to find the Band Aids and pay for them. She went back outside and . . .
Starrett was gone. The bench was empty.
“Damn it!”
Her cell phone rang. She flipped it open. “Locke.”
“Mistake number two, angel face. Don’t let the suspect out of your sight.” It was Starrett.
She should have known. She should have suspected that his being so freaking nice was just the setup for this particular assinine punch line. She could hear him laughing at her. “You’re such an asshole.”
“I couldn’t resist,” he said. “I’m sorry. I was sitting there, and . . .”
“Where are you?”
He laughed even harder. “Nice try.”
She flagged down a cab. He’d said he was going to that toy store. She’d simply get there first.
“I don’t supposed you’d want . . . Nah, forget it,” he said. “If I asked you to have lunch with me, I’d be having lunch, but you’d just be having some up close and personal surveillance. That would kind of ruin it for me, you know what I mean?”
“I don’t need to meet you for lunch to find you,” she said. She covered the mouthpiece and leaned forward to speak to the taxi driver through the slit in the clear plastic shield. “There’s a toy store a few blocks down . . . ?”
“You only found me after I disappeared in the Micky D’s because I let you find me,” Starrett countered. “If I don’t want to be found, you’re not going to find me. Let’s get that straight. The first thing you need to do, lesson number one, dear heart, is to learn your place.”
Locke laughed in disbelief. “Which, according to you and some of the other Neanderthals you work with, is on my back with my legs spread, am I right?”
Starrett was silent. “Shit,” he finally said. “I’m momentarily stunned by the picture that brought to mind. Don’t do that to me, Locke, I have a vivid imagination. My brain’s likely to explode. Among other body parts.”
“Fuck you.” She heard herself say it and wished she could take it back. What was it about this man that always brought her down to his degradingly foul level?
“Why, thank you,” he said. “Fuck you, too, babe. The sooner the better—you’re way too uptight. Hey, I bet that cabdriver would do you if you threw in an extra twenty bucks.”
Shit. Shit! Locke turned around to look out the back window. Wherever Starrett was, he’d been watching her get into the cab.
“Of course, we both know you’re saving yourself for me,” he continued, laughing again.
“Yeah, in your dreams.”
“What I meant by you learning your place was that you’ve got to lose this James Bond mentality. Humility, Alyssa! You haven’t earned your license to kill—not yet. You want to be a great FBI agent? Sign up to train with the SEALs. You could probably even get into some kind of modified BUD/S program—modified because you’re FBI, not because you’re a woman. Don’t start making those insulted noises at me. Jesus, you do need to learn to relax. What do you say tonight, my hotel suite? Hmmm? You and me—we could do a little stress management exercise that I highly recommend. We’d have the place to ourselves, because, you know, John Nilsson seems to have disappeared.”
Locke made a strangled sound.
“No? Too bad.” Starrett said. He sighed. “In that case, so long, sweet thing. Have a real nice day.”
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Eleven
THE CLOCK ALARM went off a few minutes after six.
The heavy curtains kept out the light of the late afternoon—what little light there was. The day had turned gloomy and overcast, the clouds threatening rain.
Meg had checked into this rundown motel a little after noon. She’d reached her limit and had to sleep. She’d tried pulling off the road and sleeping in the car, but it was too bright, she was too worried about someone seeing Razeen in the backseat. And she desperately wanted to use a real bathroom.
Osman Razeen was still asleep on the other motel bed, his arms stretched uncomfortably over his head. Meg had had to position him that way, using the handcuffs to lock him to the wooden headboard.
She was going to have to dissolve another handful of sleeping pills into a glass of water and pour it down Razeen’s throat, praying that she didn’t give him too many, knowing that she couldn’t afford to give him too few. She had to keep him completely out of it. And then she had
to get him back in the car.
Meg stretched, wishing she had enough time to take a shower and—
Oh, God! She sat up, fumbling for her gun. The shadowy figure of a man had just stepped out of the bathroom.
“Freeze!” she said. “Don’t move! Who are you? What are you doing in here?”
Maybe it was one of the Extremists. Maybe they’d somehow followed her here. Maybe Amy and Eve were out in the parking lot right now.
Troubleshooters 02 The Defiant Hero Page 18