"Please," Lightning added with an amused smile.
All too conscious of his proximity, Mackenzie transmitted the necessary code words and verifications, then listened with unabashed interest to the brief conversation between Lightning and the Prez. When it was over, she leaned back in her chair and angled OMEGA's director a curious look.
"Sounds like Renegade's got the weight of the free world riding on his shoulders on this one."
"The weight of North America, anyway."
His gaze lingered on her upturned face. Mackenzie had almost forgotten how to breathe by the time he murmured a request that she get Renegade on the line.
His eyes, narrowed and rattlesnake-mean behind his mirrored sunglasses, Jack Carstairs snapped shut the phone Mackenzie Blair had issued him mere hours ago. The damned thing was half the size of a cigarette pack and bounced signals off a secure telecommunications satellite some thirty-six thousand kilometers above the earth. Lightning's message had come through loud and clear.
Renegade was to keep his hands off Elena Maria Alazar.
As if he needed the warning! He'd learned his lesson the first time. No way was he going to get shot down in flames again.
Hefting his beat-up leather carryall, he walked out of the airport into a flood of heat and honeysuckle-scented air. A short tram ride took him to the rental agency, where he checked out a sturdy Jeep Cherokee.
The drive from the airport to downtown San Antonio took only about fifteen minutes, long enough for Jack to work through his irritation at the call. Not long enough, however, to completely suppress the prickly sensation that crawled along his nerves at the thought of seeing Ellie Alazar again.
His jaw set, he negotiated the traffic in the city's center and pulled up at the Menger. Constructed in 1859, the hotel was situated on Alamo Plaza, right next to the famous mission. The little blurb Jack had read in one of the airline's magazines during the flight down indicated the Menger had played host to a roster of distinguished notables. Reportedly, Robert E. Lee rode his horse, Traveller, right into the lobby. Teddy Roosevelt tipped a few in the bar while organizing and training his Rough Riders. Sarah Bernhardt, Lillie Langtry and Mae West had all brought their own brand of luster to the hotel.
Now Elena Maria Alazar was adding another touch of notoriety to the venerable institution. One Jack suspected wasn't particularly appreciated by the management.
He killed the engine, then climbed out of the Cherokee. A valet took the car keys. Another offered to take his bag.
"I've got it."
Anyone else entering the hotel's three-story lobby for the first time might have let their gaze roam the cream marble columns, magnificent wrought-iron balcony railings and priceless antiques and paintings. Six years of embassy guard duty and another eight working for OMEGA had conditioned Jack to automatically note the lobby's physical layout, security camera placement and emergency egress routes. His boot heels echoing on the marble floors, he crossed to the desk. There he was handed a message. Ellie was waiting for him in the taproom.
After the blazing sun outside and dazzling white marble of the lobby, the bar wrapped Jack in the welcoming gloom of an English pub. A dark cherry-wood ceiling loomed above glass-fronted cabinets, beveled mirrors and high-backed booths. A stuffed moose head with a huge rack of antlers surveyed the scene with majestic indifference, wreathed in the mingled scents of wood polish and aged Scotch.
Instinctively, Jack peeled off his sunglasses and recorded the bar's layout, but the details sifted right through his conscious mind to be stored away for future reference. His main focus, his only focus, was the woman who swiveled at the sound of his footsteps.
His first thought was that she hadn't changed. Her mink brown hair still tumbled in a loose ponytail down her back. Her cinnamon eyes still looked out at the world through a screen of thick, black lashes. In her short-sleeved red top and trim-fitting tan shorts, she looked more like a teenager on vacation than a respected historian with a long string of initials after her name.
Not until he stepped closer did he notice the differences. The Ellie he'd known nine years ago had glowed with youth and laughter and a vibrant joy of life. This woman showed fine lines of stress at the corners of her mouth. Shadows darkened her eyes, and he saw in their brown depths a wariness that echoed his.
She didn't smile. Didn't ease her stiff-backed pose. Silence stretched between them. She broke it, finally, with a cool greeting.
"Hello, Jack."
He'd expected to feel remnants of the old anger, the resentment, the fierce hurt. He hadn't expected the punch to his gut that came with the sound of her voice. His head clipped in a curt nod. It was the best he could manage at the moment.
"Thanks for coming," she said coolly.
He moved closer, wanting her to see his face when he delivered the speech he'd been preparing since Lightning informed him of the nature of his mission.
"Let's get one thing straight, right here and right now. My job is to protect you. That's the reason I'm here. That's the only reason I'm here."
Her chin snapped up. The fire he remembered all too well flared hot and dark in her eyes.
"I didn't imagine you'd make the trip down to San Antonio for any other reason. We had our fun, Jack. We both enjoyed our little fling. But that's all it was. You made that quite clear when you walked away from me nine years ago."
His jaw tightened. He had no answer for that. There was no answer. Eyes hard, he watched her slide off the bar stool. Her scent came with her as she approached, a combination of sun and the delicate cactus pear perfume she'd always worn. It was her mother's concoction, he remembered her telling him. He also remembered that he'd been nuzzling her neck at the time. Deliberately. Jack slammed the door on the thought.
When she raised a hand to shove back a loose tendril of hair, however, the gleam of silver circling her wrist brought another, sharper memory. The two-inch-wide beaten silver bracelet had cost him a half-month's pay. He'd slipped it onto her wrist mere moments before her uncle's police had arrived to arrest him.
"Let's go upstairs," he instructed tersely. "I want to see the message your friend left you."
Chapter 2
Wrapping her arms around her middle, Ellie stood just inside the door of the trashed suite.
"I moved to another room. The hotel wanted to clean up the mess, but I asked them to leave it until you got here."
His face impassive, Jack surveyed the mess. "Did the police find anything?"
"They dusted for prints, interviewed the hotel staff and asked for a complete inventory of the missing items, but as far as I know, they haven't come up with any concrete leads. In fact..."
"In fact?"
Her shoulders hfted under the chili red top. ''The detective in charge was somewhat less than sympathetic. Evidently he read the story about me in the Light and doesn't take kindly to Mexicans determined to rewrite Texas history. It doesn't seem to make a whole lot of difference to some folks that I'm as American as they are."
"No, it wouldn't."
Jack had seen more than his share of bigotry during his overseas tours, both in the Marines and as an OMEGA agent. It didn't matter what a person's race, creed or financial circumstances might be. There was always someone who hated him or her because of them. With a mental note to establish base with the detective handling Ellie's case as soon as he conducted his preliminary assessment of the situation, he eyed the message on the mirror.
The wording suggested a man, someone familiar with weapons and not afraid to let Ellie know it. The obvious inference was that the threat stemmed from her work. Jack never trusted the obvious.
"I want a complete background brief on the members on your team," he told her, making a final sweep of the premises. "Particularly anyone who might or might not have a grudge against the team's leader."
Startled, she dropped her arms. "You think one of my own people is responsible for this?''
"I don't think an
ything at this point. I'm just assessing the situation."
Her eyes huge, she stared at him. Jack could see the doubt creep into their cinnamon brown depths, followed swiftly by dismay. Only now, he guessed, was it occurring to her that the leak to the press might have been more deliberate than accidental. That one of her team members might, in fact, be working behind the scenes on some hidden agenda of his or her own.
The years fell away. For a moment, he caught a glimpse in her stricken face of the trusting, passionate girl she'd once been.
He'd come so close to loving that girl. Closer than he'd ever come to loving anyone who didn't wear khaki. Until Ellie, the Marines had been his life. Until Ellie, the Corps had constituted the only family he'd ever wanted or needed. He'd never known his father's name. He'd long ago buried the memory of the mother who left her four-year-old son in the roach-infested hotel room and drove off with some poor slob she'd picked up in a bar. After years of being passed from one foster home to another, Jack had walked into a recruiting office on his eighteenth birthday, signed up and found a home.
He shot up through the ranks, from private to corporal to gunnery sergeant in minimal time. He learned to follow and to lead. Because of his outstanding record, he was selected for the elite Marine Security Guard Battalion. His first tour was at the U.S. Embassy in Gabon, Africa, his second at the plush post in Mexico City.
The debacle in Mexico City had ended his career and destroyed all sense of family with the Corps. Thankfully, he'd found another home in OMEGA. This one, he vowed savagely, he wouldn't jeopardize by tumbling Ellie into the nearest bed.
“I also want a copy of your list of missing items."
The dismay left Ellie's face. Stiffening at his curt tone, she gave him an equally succinct response. "I'll print you out a copy. It runs to more than fifty pages."
"Fifty pages!"
The exclamation earned him a condescending smile. "My team's been on-site for almost a week now. We've recorded hundreds of digital images, cross-indexed them and made copious notes concerning each. The data was all stored in the external FireWire drive that was stolen. Thank God I backed the files up via the university's remote access mainframe!"
With that heartfelt mutter, she led the way down the hall to the new set of rooms the hotel had assigned her. Jack followed, forcing himself to keep his gaze on her back, her hair, the stiff set to her shoulders under her top. On anything, dammit, but the seductive sway of her hips.
A swift prowl around the spacious corner suite she showed him to had him shaking his head. "Pack your things."
"I beg your pardon?"
''I'll call the front desk and get them to move us.''
"Why?"
He dragged back the gauzy curtains covering the corner windows. One set of wavy glass panes fronted the street. The other set faced the brick wall of the River Center complex next door.
"See the roof of that building?"
"Yes."
"It's on a direct line with these windows. Anyone with a mind to it could get a clear bead on a target in this room. Or climb up on the roof of that JMAX theater across the street and stake you out."
The color leached from her cheeks. ''If you're trying to scare me, you're doing one heck of a good job."
"You should be scared. That wasn't a valentine your visitor left on that mirror, you know."
"Of course I know! To paraphrase your earlier remark, the viciousness of that threat is the reason, the only reason, I agreed to the nuisance of a bodyguard."
Hooking his thumbs in his jeans pockets, Jack tried to get a handle on the woman who'd emerged from the girl he'd once known.
"So why are you hanging around San Antonio, Ellie? Why offer yourself as a target to the kook or malcontent who issued that warning?"
"Because I refuse to let said kook or malcontent interfere with my work. In all modesty, I'm good at what I do. Damned good." She speared him with a hard look. "You predicted I would be. Remember, Jack? Right about the time you and Uncle Eduardo jointly decided finishing college was more important to me than my... Let's see, how did he phrase it? My passing infatuation with a hardheaded Marine."
They'd have to scratch at the old scars sometime. Better to do it now and give the scabs time to heal again. If Jack was to protect her, he needed her trust. Or at least her cooperation. He wouldn't gain either until he'd acknowledged his culpability for the hurt she'd suffered all those years ago.
"You were only nineteen, Ellie. I thought... Your uncle thought..."
"That I didn't know my own mind." Her chin came up. ''You were wrong. I knew it then. I know it now."
She couldn't have made her meaning plainer. Jack Carstairs wouldn't get the chance to wound her again. He accepted that stark truth with a nod.
"Why don't we get settled in different rooms, and you can tell me exactly what it is you're so good at. I need to understand what you're doing here," he said to forestall the stiff response he saw coming, "and why it's roused such controversy."
The hotel staff moved them to adjoining suites two floors down. The rooms looked out over the inner courtyard of the hotel instead of the street. Like the rest of the historic hotel, they were furnished with a combination of period antiques and modern comfort. A burned-wood armoire held a twenty-seven-inch TV and a well-stocked bar. The wrought-iron bedstead boasted a queen-size mattress and thick, puffy goose-down comforter.
While Jack checked phones, door locks and ceiling vents, three valets transferred boxes of files and equipment on rolling doles. Ruthlessly rearranging the furniture to meet her work-space needs, Ellie promptly turned her sitting room into a functional office. She'd already replaced the stolen computer and hard drive, which she now hooked up to an oversize flat LCD screen.
A smaller unit sat beside the computer. Jack studied it with a faint smile. Mackenzie Blair, OMEGA's chief of communications, would light up like a Christmas tree if she caught sight of all those buttons and dials and displays. The palm-size unit was probably crammed with more circuitry than the Space Shuttle.
Evidently Ellie Alazar shared Mackenzie's fascination with electronic gadgetry. She gave the small metal box the kind of pat a fond mother might give a child.
"This holds the guts of a technology I developed the summer after we..." Her brown brows slashed down. Obviously impatient with her hesitation, she plowed ahead. "The summer after I met you. I didn't make the trip to Mexico City that year. I didn't go down for several years, as a matter of fact."
Jack wasn't surprised. Elena's emotions ran close to the surface. In the short months he'd known her, she'd never once reined them in. Looking back, he could see that was what had drawn him to her in the first place. Everything she thought or felt was all there, in her eyes, her face. Impatience, passion, anger—whatever emotion gripped her, she shared. Honestly. Openly.
She'd certainly shared her feelings the day her uncle sent his police to arrest Jack. She'd been furious with Eduardo Alazar. But not half as angry as she'd became with the Marine who refused to stand and fight for her.
"You didn't go to Mexico that summer," Jack acknowledged, steering the conversation to less volatile subjects. "What did you do?"
"I worked for the National Park Service on a dig in the Pecos National Park. We were excavating the site of the battle of Glorietta Pass. The battle took place in 1862 and was one of the pivotal engagements in the Civil War."
"The Gettysburg of the West. I've heard of it."
She gave him a look of approval. ''Then you know the battle turned the tide against Confederates and sent Silbey's Brigade scuttling back to Texas in total disarray."
Another Texas defeat. Evidently Ellie had started her career at the site of one disastrous conflict for the Lone Star state. Now she was up to her trim, tight buns in controversy over another. No wonder some loyal local citizens wanted to roll up the welcome mat and send her on her way.
"We used metal detectors to locate shell casings at the battle site
," she explained, warming to her subject. "We marked their location on a computerized grid, then categorized the casings by make and caliber. We also analyzed the rifling marks on the brass to determine the type of weapon that fired them."
"Sounds like a lot of work."
"It was. Three summers' worth of digging and mapping. Plus hundreds of hours of detailed research into the weaponry of the time. The Confederates tended to carry a wide variety of personally owned rifles and side arms. Union weapons were somewhat more standardized. By matching spent shell casings to the type of weapon that fired them, we were able to map the precise movement of both armies on the battlefield. We also built a massive database. For my Ph.D. dissertation, I expanded and translated the raw data into a program that allows forensic historians to reliably identify shell casings from any era post-1820."
"Why 1820?"
"The copper percussion cap was invented in the 1820s. Within a decade, two at most, almost every army in the world had converted its muzzle-loading flintlocks to percussion. More to the point where my research was concerned, the copper casing retained more defined rifling marks, which aided in identification of the type of weapon that fired it."
Jack was impressed. He could fieldstrip an M-15, clean the components and put it back together blind-folded. He'd qualified at the expert level on every weapon in the Marine Corps inventory, as well as on the ones OMEGA outfitted him with. Yet his knowledge of the science of ballistics didn't begin to compare with Ellie's.
"So how do we get from the invention of the percussion cap to your finding that the hero of the Alamo deserted his troops and ran away?"
"It's not a finding." She shot the answer back. "It's only one of several hypotheses I surfaced for discussion with my team. Honestly, you'd think simple intellectual curiosity would make folks wait to see whether the theory is substantiated by fact before they get all in a twit."
"You'd think," Jack echoed solemnly.
Flushing a bit, she backpedaled. "Sorry. I didn't mean to snap. I'm just getting tired of having to deal with outraged letters to the editor, picketers at the site, skittish team members and a nervous National Park Service director who's close to pulling the plug on our funding."
Texas Hero Page 2