“Yes.”
“How’d you get out of the room they were holding you in?”
“I put my captor into a figure-four stranglehold.”
A suggestion of respect had crept into his voice. “You rendered him unconscious?”
“Yes.” She felt a sense of pride in her own resourcefulness.
“And you didn’t know we were on the wall preparing to spring you out of there?”
“Of course not,” she said, envisioning them trying to rescue her.
The warrior chuckled with amusement. “Wow. Talk about divine intervention.” His teeth flashed, a sliver of white against the backdrop of his painted face. “God is the master planner,” he murmured to himself.
“I’m sorry, but who are you exactly?” Charlotte asked.
“Oh, sorry.” He put a conciliatory hand on her knee. “I’m Lieutenant Lucas Strong. Just call me Lucas. And that’s Chief Wade. You can call him Saul. We’re Navy SEALs.”
She had guessed as much. “From SEAL Team Six, Lieutenant Mills’s Blue Squadron?”
“Yes,” Lucas affirmed.
“I was trying to help him,” Charlotte told them. “I was taking evidence on an iPad to the DIA for him.”
“We know.”
She should not have reminded herself. Memories of her capture, then her captivity, panned through her head, driving the breath from her lungs. Charlotte closed her eyes and hugged herself to quell her shivering.
It’s over, she assured herself. Don’t cry about it. All the same, a sound like a sob escaped her.
The lieutenant’s hand slid up and down her back. “You’re okay. You’re safe now,” he soothed. “We’re going to look after you.”
Her shuddering compelled him to slide closer. He put his arm around her and, suddenly, all was well with the world.
Even through his neoprene wetsuit, Charlotte could feel his heat, not to mention the awesome proportions of his body. For the first time in a decade, she knew what it felt like to feel petite and protected.
Tears of relief brimmed her eyes and tracked down her grubby face. A sniffle prompted her rescuer to tighten his hold, absorbing her occasional shudders. The thud of the SEAL’s heart and the rocking motion of the boat soothed her until her shivering subsided.
“Patrol’s coming,” Saul announced, interrupting the lull.
Releasing her, the lieutenant flashed a penlight and hailed the approaching craft. With no lights and with a motor that was practically silent, the larger vessel seemingly appeared out of nowhere to glide up alongside them.
Lucas grabbed hold of the ladder and, keeping the dingy steady, assisted Charlotte’s ascent with sure and professional hands.
After they’d hoisted the smaller boat onto the back of the bigger one, they took off at a good clip.
Seated in a dark wheelhouse, Charlotte asked Lucas, “Where are we going?”
“For now, a house on a nearby island,” he said, hovering close to her. “Tomorrow, we fly back to the States. Why don’t you come into the galley, ma’am, and out of the wind? It’s a long boat ride.”
Leaving Saul to assist the skipper in steering the boat through inky darkness, Lucas led Charlotte by the elbow down a short run of steps into a dark enclosed space. Faint blue lights illumined a galley that made Charlotte realize the boat was probably just someone’s private, midsized yacht.
“I have a lot of questions,” she admitted, as she dropped onto a cushioned bench.
“I’m sure you do,” he said with patience “But you can ask them in the morning. Right now, you should rest,” he said, handing her a pillow and a throw. “I’ll be right here, sleeping across from you.”
It occurred to Charlotte as she reclined on the cushion and watched Lucas Strong squirm onto the small bench across from her, that luck alone wouldn’t have gotten her this far. Her rescuer was quick to credit God, though Charlotte doubted God would have bothered Himself on her account.
Her mother, on the other hand, had addressed her from the grave. Take the key and run.
If not for the key, the guards would have caught her frozen like a rabbit in the hallway. She would never have found the back staircase leading her to the unguarded exit.
Some heavenly being had been looking out for her—that much Charlotte could admit.
Chapter 3
Lucas quit knocking at the door to the room where Charlotte lay sleeping and put his ear to the wood to listen. Could she have gotten up and left her room already?
Eric, Fitz’s friend, had brought them back to his house at 0400 hundred hours. Given Charlotte’s exhaustion, Lucas had expected her to sleep the day away, but since Eric was flying them back to CONUS—the continental US—in a matter of hours, Lucas thought he’d better wake her up.
The silence answering his knock had him spinning toward the living room, somewhat concerned. With relief, he spied Charlotte and Saul on the other side of a wall of windows, seated on the terrace by a pool overlooking the Caribbean Sea.
The scene looked like something straight out of a vacation magazine, complete with a red umbrella and brightly colored chairs. Eric was living the good life, and he was kind enough to share his resources with the FBI.
Heading outside, Lucas marveled at Charlotte’s transformation. Last night, with her hair plastered to her head, she’d resembled a wet Irish setter. Her limbs were long and lanky. She’d looked so worn out, with dark circles under her eyes, he’d thought he was going to have to strip off her clothes and tuck her into bed himself when they got to Eric’s house. Instead, she’d said good night and shut the door firmly in his face.
In just a few hours, she had morphed into a cover model. Eric must have given her a sundress from his wife’s wardrobe, along with a pair of sandals. Too bad it wasn’t a swimsuit! In the light of morning, Charlotte didn’t look lanky at all, but tall and graceful with well-toned arms. The dress’s peach color suited her fair complexion, and the morning sun turned her short hair into flame.
As she looked over to mark his approach, Lucas had to concentrate so as not to trip over his own two feet, which had suddenly grown unwieldy.
Her cherry-brown eyes, fringed by dark lashes, took frank appraisal of him. Even with a dusting of freckles across her nose, her skin was flawless. She had winging, russet eyebrows, a trim but strong nose, and lips that were wide and pink, even without lipstick.
As their gazes locked, awareness spurred Lucas’s heart rate, a circumstance that thoroughly annoyed him. He didn’t want to be attracted to Charlotte Patterson. It was unprofessional for one thing. For another, he doubted she was the sweet, uncomplicated female he was looking for. But here he was, stuck with her, at least until Fitz declared her safe from The Entity.
“Good morning,” she intoned.
Even her voice, a honeyed alto, pleased his senses.
“Ma’am.” He nodded rather stiffly.
Ever the enlisted officer, Saul had jumped to his feet. “Have a seat, sir,” he said, sounding in awfully good spirits as he gestured to one of the chairs at their table.
“Thanks.” Lucas folded himself into the brightly cushioned chair and looked back at Charlotte, who was clearly trying to reconcile him with the dark, camouflaged being she’d seen the night before.
“I’ll get us drinks,” Saul said into the silence. He promptly disappeared, leaving Lucas alone with a woman he’d held in his arms having no idea how gorgeous she was.
“So, how do you feel?” he asked, determined to ignore her effect on him. His gaze fell to the red marks on her forearms.
“Good,” she reassured him. “I had to pick some glass out with tweezers, but I think I got it all.”
“What happened?” he asked, curious to hear her story.
As she described how her captor had come to her room drunk, Lucas could only imagine how fearful she must have felt.
“Roger Holden?” he asked.
“Yes. You know his name? He pretends to be a pushover, but he’s actually more clever th
an he acts, and a fair fighter, too.” She described how she’d fought to overcome him long enough to slip away.
Lucas’s respect for her quick thinking rose.
Slipping a hand into a pocket on the side of her dress, she produced what looked like a hotel room key, only thicker. “I wonder if he’s still locked in,” she said with irony. “I think this is the master key. I used it to find a servants’ stairwell, which led to the exit near the kitchen.”
Glancing from the key to her wry smile, he marveled at her bravery.
“Sorry if I botched your plan by breaking out early,” Charlotte added kindly.
He felt bad for having grilled her on the dinghy. “No, I should apologize for being rude. You’re safely away from there, and that’s all that matters.”
“Thank you,” she said, conveying sincere gratitude. “If you hadn’t been there, right where you were, I doubt I’d have made it over the wall.”
“Don’t thank me. That was all God,” he said, repeating basically what he’d said the previous night.
“You think?” Her dubious tone told him right away she wasn’t a believer. All the same, he had to tear his gaze off her as Saul reappeared, bearing three glasses of vividly colored juice.
“Blend of papaya, pineapple, and orange,” the chief explained as he put them on the table.
Lucas and Charlotte both reached for a glass and their fingers brushed.
For Lucas, the contact felt like an electric shock. Draining his glass, he concealed her effect on his senses. Just last night, he’d comforted her as he would have comforted one of his sisters. Today, she possessed a quality that tickled his awareness.
The sweet juice sluiced over his tongue, bright and complex, rather like Charlotte. He fought not to look at her.
“We have a lot of catching up to do,” she said, giving him an excuse to regard her again.
“Yes, we do,” he agreed, sobering at the reminder.
“How’s Lieutenant Mills?” she asked, looking suddenly concerned.
Reminded of his teammate’s predicament, Lucas set his glass down with a thud.
“Unfortunately,” he replied, loathing the circumstance that had brought him and Charlotte together, “he’s been arrested.”
The ten-seater Hawker 800XP taking her home was just like the plane in which her parents had perished.
Gripping the arms of her seat, Charlotte peered out the window, determined to fight the fear that kept her stomach churning. She would never be successful in the CIA if she didn’t overcome her fear of flying.
Lucas, who was seated across the small aisle, with a long leg stretched into the aisle, had reclined his seat and was sleeping like a baby, while Saul did the same thing in the seat in front of him. Despite her exhaustion, and knowing she could never relax enough to sleep, Charlotte resigned herself to enduring the four-hour flight in fearful silence. In any case, she had plenty to think about after what Lucas had shared with her that morning.
What Commander Dwyer had done to Lieutenant Mills, turning the tables on him, made her shake her head in disbelief. More unbelievable, still, was the news that Dwyer wouldn’t be made to answer for his crimes—not yet, anyway. The FBI was building a case against not only him, but The Entity as a whole.
It was precisely as Lloyd Elwood, her supervisor, had begun to suspect before he’d been murdered—Dwyer wasn’t stealing and hoarding weapons on his own. A whole group of men with similar political leanings had banded together to safeguard the country. Or so they believed. Their leader was apparently so powerful and influential, the FBI needed hard and fast evidence before indicting him.
Questions chased through Charlotte’s mind like a dog chasing its own tail. Lucas had explained how the FBI had found her, but who had kidnapped her in the first place? She had assumed it was Dwyer. But Dwyer didn’t know about her photographic memory. Only NCIS, with whom she was interning, knew from her personnel file that she could remember stuff she’d seen and read, in detail, up to three weeks. Whoever it was, they’d intended Holden to “protect” her until she no longer posed a threat.
Sudden turbulence brought a panicked gasp out of Charlotte, waking up the warrior at her side.
“You okay?” he asked, clearing his throat and raising his seat-back.
Charlotte fought to keep the fear from showing on her face. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to wake you.”
He rubbed sleep out of his dove-gray eyes, then regarded her more closely. Charlotte looked self-consciously back at him. His all-American features, paired with his light-brown hair and amazing physique, made her think of Captain America.
“There’s nothing to worry about,” he assured her, shooting a look out his window and then hers. “Trust me, I have my pilot’s license, and these are optimal flying conditions. Low winds and almost no precipitation.”
Charlotte eyed him in surprise. “You have a pilot’s license?” The knowledge made her feel instantly more secure. “Do you have a plane, too?”
He shook his head. “Used to, back when I had more free time on my hands. Flying is fun,” he added. “Why don’t you like it?”
She looked away briefly. “My parents died in a plane crash three years ago,” she admitted.
“I’m so sorry.” The sincerity in his voice, coupled by his reaching across the aisle and squeezing her hand, brought tears to Charlotte’s eyes, appalling her. She never let herself cry in front of strangers, and she’d done it in front of him. Twice!
“That must have come as such a shock.”
His offering of comfort was similar to the way he’d held her on the dinghy the night before, only now she was supremely conscious of the large, warm hand cradling hers.
She mustered up a smile. “It did. I thought I’d have another thirty years with them, at least. Instead, I was just finishing college and about to go to The Farm for training.”
“The Farm?” He pulled his hand back and angled himself in his seat to regard her with astonishment.
“CIA training camp.”
“I know what it is. You’d been accepted into the CIA right out of college?”
“Well, yeah. Some might think I had an obvious advantage. My father was the Deputy Director of Talent. But I’d have got myself accepted no matter what,” she added, in case he concluded she’d been given special treatment. “It was always my goal.”
Studying his confounded expression, she could see him processing everything she said. The man was an open book.
“So, you didn’t go the CIA-route,” he deduced.
“Not then.” She shook her head with lament. “My parents’ death changed everything.”
“I’m so sorry,” he said again.
Grief threatened to resurface, so she made herself talk. “I have a younger brother named Calvin. He’s the spitting image of my father, while I look like my mom. He had just started college when my parents died. He’s going to school in Norfolk.”
“Old Dominion University?”
“Correct. They’d offered him a full scholarship, but because he was only sixteen—”
“Sixteen and going to college?”
“He’s brilliant, also like my dad,” Charlotte explained with a fond smile. “At the time, he was so vulnerable. I didn’t feel like I could just disappear on him by going off to training. Plus, the CIA would have sent me overseas the minute I graduated. So, instead, I moved to Norfolk to share an apartment with Calvin. I applied to be an intern with NCIS while earning a master’s degree at night. NCIS isn’t the CIA, by any means, but I figured the experience couldn’t hurt me.”
Lucas studied her face with interest. “You’re still going to the CIA, then?”
“Absolutely,” she said, ignoring a twinge of uncertainty as she recalled her fear of flying. “I can’t be an intern forever. When my brother graduates, I’ll put in my resignation.”
“In another year?”
“This December, actually. Calvin’s graduating early.
“Wow.” Wonder shone in Lu
cas’s gray eyes. “You’re pretty amazing, both you and your brother. Not every sister would stick around like you have.”
His praise warmed her to the core. “Do you have siblings?” she asked, tired of being the center of attention.
“I have two older sisters,” he admitted, smiling at the thought of them. “They tormented me when I was growing up. In fact, SEAL training was nothing compared to the hell they put me through.”
She laughed at what was obviously an exaggeration. “What did they do to you?”
He peered around the seat in front of him at his recumbent teammate, leaned across the aisle toward her, and whispered, “They used to dress me up and put makeup on me.” He launched into an elaborate tale of how Liberty and Justice—and, yes, those were their names—wrote a script for a play and made him take the role of the femme fatale.
“They curled my hair for that,” he added on a horrified note. “Why do you think I cut it so short now?”
Charlotte burst out laughing. “You’re pulling my leg,” she guessed, though his expression was the very picture of earnest suffering.
He sat back and sighed. “I wish I were.”
For the next half hour, he recounted still more stories of his sisters and their manipulative and humiliating shenanigans. Charlotte laughed until her stomach hurt.
“Oh, my goodness,” she exclaimed, wiping a tear of mirth from the corner of her eye. “You have to be making this up.”
He shook his head. “I can’t tell a lie.”
Maybe he really is Captain America, Charlotte thought.
“Speaking of honesty, there’s something I haven’t told you yet. Not that I’ve been lying. I just don’t like saying it because it seems to give me an unfair advantage.”
He looked at her with interest. “Go ahead.”
“My contact in the DIA, the one I was delivering the iPad to, he’s my Uncle Larry. Well, he’s not technically my uncle; he’s actually my godfather. He and my dad joined the CIA together, back in the eighties. My father stayed in, and Uncle Larry transferred to the DIA right after 9-11. He’s the director now.”
Every Secret Thing Page 4