She slid it into the lock and eased open the door. Flattening herself against the wall, she sidled along toward the mailboxes. If she peered around the corner of the hallway where the mailboxes stretched out in three rows, she’d have a clear view of the lobby and the front door.
She crept around the corner and jerked back, dropping her keys with a clatter.
The tall stranger, his gleaming hair covered with the hood of his sweatshirt, glanced up, the mail from her box clutched in his hands.
She should’ve turned and run away, but a whip of fury lashed her body and she lunged forward.
“What the hell are you doing going through my mail?”
Then her stalker did the most amazing thing.
A smile broke across his tanned face, and he lifted a pair of broad shoulders. “Guess you caught me red-handed, Nicole.”
Chapter Two
The color drained from her face as fast as it had flared red in her cheeks. “Do I know you? And even if I do, I’m about two seconds from screaming bloody murder for the doorman and getting the cops out here.”
He believed her. A woman who would risk sailing the dangerous Gulf of Aden just to get a story wouldn’t fear some creeper in New York City—not that he was a creeper.
“Sorry about the mail.” He fanned out some bills and a few ads. “I’m not very good at this.”
“Good at what?” She inched past him and the row of mailboxes until she had one foot in the lobby.
“Skulking, I guess.”
“Are you going to tell me what you’re doing, or am I going to call the NYPD?” She jabbed her cell phone into the space between them.
“You see? I suck at this.” He bundled her mail, which he hadn’t had a chance to look at, and held it out to her. “I’m Slade Gallagher, the US Navy SEAL sniper who saved your life eighteen months ago off the coast of Somalia.”
She blinked, licked her lips and edged closer to him. “Is this some kind of trick?”
Trick? What kind of trick would that be? He stuffed his free hand into the pocket of his sweatshirt and withdrew his wallet. He flipped it open with one hand, his other still gripping the mail she’d refused to take from him.
“Take it and look at the card behind my driver’s license. It’s my military ID. Hell, look at my driver’s license, too.”
She reached forward to take the wallet from him between two fingers, as if stealing something from a snake ready to strike.
“And if my ID isn’t good enough for you, I can tell you what you were wearing that day.” He closed his eyes as if picturing the scene all over again through his scope. “You had on army-green cargo pants, a loose red shirt and a khaki jacket, with a red scarf wrapped around your neck.”
His lids flew open, and Nicole was staring at him through wide green eyes. She might be surprised, but he’d pictured the woman on the boat—Nicole Hastings—many times over the past year and a half. Some nights he couldn’t get the picture of her out of his head.
“We never knew your names. The Navy wouldn’t tell us.” She traced a finger over his driver’s license picture behind the plastic, and his face tingled as if she’d brushed it. “But while we were in the infirmary getting checked out, we saw you walking toward the helicopter before you boarded it and left the boat. I do recognize you.”
Her sculpted eyebrows collided over her nose. “But what are you doing here? Why have you been following me?”
“Following you?” A pulse hummed in his throat. “I just got here two days ago.”
“Last night?”
“I was watching your building.” He shook his head. “Damn, you noticed me out there?”
“Yes. Why are you watching me?”
“I hadn’t planned on having this discussion with you so early, but it works out better for me if we do.” He jerked his thumb at the ceiling. “Can we continue this conversation in your apartment?”
Her gaze shifted toward the lobby and back to his face.
“You can introduce me to the doorman and tell him we’re going up to your place. In fact, that’s the smart thing to do.”
She snapped his wallet closed and thrust it at him, and then spun on her heel. He followed her, still clutching the mail.
The doorman leaped into action and swung the door open for her before she reached it. “I didn’t see you come in, Nicole.”
“Came in through the back door.” She leveled a finger at Slade. “This is a...my friend. He’s coming up to my place, Leo, in case you see him wandering around the building.”
Leo tilted his head. “Okay. Nice to meet you. Any friend of the Hastings women has gotta be good people.”
Slade swept the hood from his head and held out his free hand. “Slade Gallagher.”
“Leo Veneto.”
Slade glanced at the tattoo on Leo’s forearm. “Marine?”
“Yes, sir. Tenth Marine regiment, artillery force. Served in the first Gulf War.”
Slade pumped his hand. “Hoorah.”
“Hoorah.” Leo gave Slade the once-over. “Navy, right?”
“You got it—SEAL sniper.”
“You boys saved our asses more than a few times.”
Nicole broke up the handshake and the mutual admiration. “We’re going to go up now.”
Leo grinned. “I’ll be right here.”
Slade followed her to the elevator where she stabbed the call button and turned to him suddenly. “I never knew Leo was in the Marines.”
“Has Semper Fi tattooed right on his arm.”
She finally snatched the mail from his hands as the doors of the elevator whisked open. “See anything interesting in my mail?”
“You didn’t give me a chance to go through all of it, but it looks like Harvard’s hitting you up for a donation.”
“They wouldn’t dare. I’m not even an alumna, and my father already funded a library for them.”
“So why’d you go to NYU instead of Harvard, where I’m sure they would’ve found a spot for you?”
“Film school.” She narrowed her eyes. “It’s not all family connections, you know.”
“Doesn’t hurt.” He should know.
They rode up to the tenth floor in silence, but he could practically hear all the gears shifting in her head, forming questions. He didn’t blame her. He just didn’t know if he’d have any answers that would satisfy her—rather than scare the spit out of her.
The elevator jolted to a stop on the tenth floor, and he held the door as she stepped out. “No penthouse suite, huh?”
“My mom didn’t want to be too ostentatious.” Her lips twisted. “And I’m being serious.”
Still, there seemed to be just two apartments on this floor. The size and location of this place must’ve run her mother, Mimi Hastings, more than five mil.
Nicole swung open the door with a flourish and watched him out of the corner of her eye as she stepped aside.
His gaze swept from one side of the opulently furnished room to the other, taking in the gold brocade sofas, the marble tables, the blindingly white carpet, the curved staircase to another floor and the artwork he could guarantee was worth a fortune. “Impressive.”
“This is my mother’s place. I’m here watching the...”
Before she could finish the sentence, a ball of white fur shot out from somewhere in the back of the apartment and did a couple of somersaults before landing at Slade’s feet, paws scrabbling for purchase against the legs of his jeans.
She rolled her eyes. “That’s a dog, believe it or not, and I’m taking care of her for my mother.”
Slade crouched and tickled the excited Shih Tzu beneath the chin. “Hey, little guy.”
“It’s a girl, and her name is Chanel.”
“Let me guess.” He
straightened up. “She has a diamond collar.”
“You pretty much have my mom all figured out.”
“Where is she, your mother?”
“Are we discussing my mother or why a Navy SEAL is spying on me in Manhattan?” She crossed her arms and tapped the toe of her running shoe.
He waved his arm at a deep-cushioned chair. “Can I sit down first? Maybe something to drink? This spying is tough business.”
Her lips formed a thin line, and for a minute he thought she was going to refuse. “All right.”
“Water is fine, and I’ll even get it myself if you show me the way.”
She crooked her finger. “Follow me, but no more stalling.”
Was that what he was doing? He had to admit, he didn’t want to be the bearer of bad news—and he had bad news for Nicole Hastings.
The little dog jumped into the chair he was eyeing, so he followed Nicole’s swaying hips, the Lycra of her leggings hugging every gentle line of her body. She was thin, but curved in and out in all the right places.
As she passed a granite island in the center of the kitchen, she kicked the leg of a stool tucked beneath the counter. “Have a seat.”
She yanked open the door of the fridge. “I have water, sparkling water, iced tea, juice, soda, beer and a 2008 Didier Dagueneau sauvignon blanc—a very good year.”
Was she trying to show off, or did that stuff just roll from her lips naturally? “Sparkling water, please.”
She filled two glasses with ice and then set them down in the middle of the island. The bottle with a green and yellow label hissed as she twisted off its lid, and the liquid fizzed and bubbled when it hit the ice.
She shoved a glass toward him. “Now that the formalities are over, let’s get to the main event.”
“You don’t mess around, do you?”
“I didn’t think you’d be one to mess around, either, the way you dropped that pirate who had me at gunpoint.”
“This is different.” He took a sip of the water, the bubbles tickling his nose. “You know that Giles Wentworth died in a car accident last February?”
“Went off the road in Scotland.”
“A few weeks ago, Lars Rasmussen committed suicide—took an overdose of pills.”
“I know that.” She hunched over the counter, drilling him with her green eyes. “What I want to know is the location and general health of Dahir Musse.”
He took a bigger gulp of his drink than he’d intended, and it fizzed in his nose. He wiped his eyes with the heel of his hand. “You’ve already connected the dots.”
“I don’t know if I’ve connected any dots, but Giles has driven on some incredibly dangerous roads without getting one scratch on the car, and Lars was about the least depressed person I know. Girl trouble?” She snorted, her delicate nostrils flaring. “He had a woman in every port, literally.”
Had she been one of those women?
The thought had come out of left field, and Slade took a careful sip of his water. “So, you already have a suspicion the deaths of your friends weren’t coincidental.”
“It’s not just that.” She caught a drip of condensation on the outside of her glass with the tip of her finger and dragged it back to the rim. “You said you’ve been here in New York just a few days?”
“Yeah.”
“I’ve had a feeling of being watched and followed for about two weeks now, ever since I heard rumors about Lars.”
“Anything concrete?”
“Until I caught you going through my mailbox? No.”
Heat crawled up his face to the roots of his hair. He’d tried to tell the brass he’d be no good at spying.
“You still haven’t told me what you’re doing here and why you were going through my mail.”
“Someone who monitors these things—our rescues, I mean—noticed the deaths. This guy raised a red flag because there was a hit stateside on another person our team had rescued—a doctor who’d helped us out in Pakistan. That proved to be related to terrorist activity in the region.”
She’d folded her hands around the glass, her white knuckles the only sign of tension. “You’re telling me that someone is after the four of us? Do you know where Dahir Musse is?”
“We don’t know where he is, and I can’t tell you for sure that someone is out to get your film crew, but I’m here to find out.”
“A Navy SEAL operating in the US? Isn’t that illegal or something?”
“Not exactly, but it is top secret. I’m not really here.” He pressed a finger to his lips. “I am sorry about the loss of your friends.”
“Thanks.” Her chest rose and fell as the corner of her mouth twitched. “Giles’s mother called to tell me about the accident. At the time, I figured it was just that—an accident. Then a few weeks ago, I started hearing rumors that Lars had killed himself. That’s about the time I started feeling watched. I put it down to paranoia at first, but the feelings got stronger. Then I verified Lars’s death last night with his brother and seriously freaked out, especially since I saw you lurking across the street at two in the morning.”
“Sorry about that. What were you doing up at two o’clock?”
“Working.”
“Did you ever release that documentary? I looked for it but never saw anything about the movie.”
Her eyes widened. “We never finished the film. We were all shaken up after the kidnapping and moved on to other projects—with other people.”
“The film was about Somali women, right?”
“About Somali women and the underground feminist movement there—dangerous stuff.”
He scratched the stubble on his chin. “That might be enough to get you killed.”
“Maybe, but why now? We never finished the film, never discussed finishing it. I never even got my hands on the footage.” She swirled her glass, and the ice tinkled against the side. “Are you here to figure out what’s going on?”
“I’m here to...make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
“To me.”
“To you.”
“I have no idea why someone would be after us now. Why weren’t we killed in Somalia if someone wanted to stop the film?”
“Our team of snipers stopped that from happening.”
“Do you think that’s why the pirates kidnapped us? I thought they were going for ransom. That’s what they told us, anyway.”
“The pirates patrolling those waters are usually working for someone else. They could’ve been hired to stop you and then once they were successful decided to go rogue and trade you for ransom money instead.”
She waved her arms out to her sides. “We’re in the middle of New York City. Do you know how crazy that sounds?”
“As crazy as it sounds in the middle of some Scottish highland road or in some posh district of Copenhagen.”
“Do you have people looking for Dahir?”
“We do, but there’s also the possibility that Dahir is working with the other side.”
She landed a fist on the granite. “Never. I tried to get him and his family out of Somalia. His life wasn’t going to be worth much there after that rescue on the high seas. He’d become a target in Mogadishu even before Giles and Lars died.”
“Tell me more about your feelings of being followed. Do you have any proof? Any evidence?” He watched her over the edge of his glass as he drained it.
Her instincts had been right about him following her, so she could be onto something. She might be a pampered rich girl, but she’d spent time in some of the most dangerous places in the world—and had survived.
“No hard evidence—a man on the subway who seemed to be following me, a persistent guy at a club one night, a jogger who kept turning up on the same trails in the park.”
He stu
died her face with its high cheekbones, patrician nose and full lips and found it hard to believe she hadn’t experienced persistent guys in clubs before. “These were all different men?”
“All different. I can’t explain it. It’s a general creep factor. I know you think because I come from a privileged background I don’t have any street smarts, but I’ve been in some rough areas around the world. We do have to keep our wits about us or wind up in hot water.”
“I believe you. I looked you up online.” He wouldn’t tell her that he’d researched Nicole Hastings long before he’d gotten this unusual assignment. She might start feeling a general creep factor about him.
“Who sent you here? The Navy?”
“I’m reporting directly to my superior officer in the Navy, but it goes beyond that. I’m also reporting to someone from the intelligence community—someone named Ariel.”
“Why would the intelligence community be interested in a couple of documentary filmmakers getting into trouble with some Somali pirates?”
“I doubt a bunch of ragtag pirates have the reach and connections to commit two murders in Europe and make them look like accidents.”
“So, the CIA or the FBI or whoever thinks our situation is linked to something or someone else?”
“Could be.”
She tapped a manicured fingernail on his glass. “Do you want more water?”
“No, thanks.”
As she tipped a bit more in her own glass, she said, “What did you hope to find in my mail, anyway?”
“I’m not sure. I’m a sniper, not a spook. I was just checking out what I could.”
“And what did you discover other than a request from Harvard?” She moved out of the kitchen with the grace of a gazelle and swept the mail from a table where she’d dropped it.
Hunching forward on his stool, he said, “Nothing. I wasn’t lying when I told you I didn’t have a chance to look through it all.”
She returned, shuffling through the large stack of envelopes and mailers. “Bills, junk, junk, bills, postcard from my mom, who’s the only one I know who still sends them instead of texting pictures. More bills...”
Her face paled as she plucked an envelope from the fanned-out pieces of mail.
Alpha Bravo SEAL Page 2