Why in the world had she been avoiding that?
The sha-shink of the releasing lock was the only cue she needed to shove him against the door, pushing it open with his body. It was a good thing that Malcolm was fast on his feet or he might have been locked out in the hall and she’d have been helpless to pause long enough to let him in.
Jim let her pin him back against the wall. There was no questioning that he let her because even as strong as she was, he was in a whole other category.
“Reese?” Jim’s voice was tentative. Cautionary.
“Don’t you get,” she spoke between attacking different portions of his and her clothing. “There are times when you don’t talk. All you do. Is get naked.” Both of their sidearms hit the floor with a heavy thump.
“This is one of those times?”
She finally had his pants off and grabbed him. The way he filled her hand was amazing.
He grunted hard into their kiss when she simultaneously rammed their mouths together to stop any more words.
Okay, perhaps she’d grabbed him a little too hard, but he felt so incredibly good. So powerful. So…male. For the first time in her life she actually wanted all she could get of his pure, unadulterated maleness.
It wasn’t his anger at how she’d been treated in her past that wowed her—she’d already known he wasn’t one of those guys.
It wasn’t the way he stood up for her at every opportunity—though that was sexy as hell on several levels.
It was… She didn’t know.
That almost stopped her.
She wasn’t a wanton, not by any stretch of the imagination. But Jim Fischer made her feel so free at the moment that she wished she was one. Just for him. Even if it was just this once.
“I’m not stopping,” she told them both, then gave him another squeeze to prove her point. “You going to do something about it, dog boy?”
“Well, if you insist.” He kicked his shoes and pants free. With a shake of his arm, he managed to shuck the last of his shirt and jacket off his wrist. Then he squatted down just enough to shoot an arm between her legs. One hand grabbed her butt, the other wrapped around her shoulders; he scooped her aloft as if she weighed nothing.
Three steps later, he threw her down on the bed. Hard enough that if it had been a better mattress, she would have bounced.
“Ready?”
“Stop talking!” She was breathless from the magnificence of him. From that moment of flying before she’d struck the covers—floating loose in the instant before a gear shift once more threw power into her system.
And he did stop talking. He fell on her. His hands…his mouth…were everywhere.
Faster than had ever been possible, he drove her aloft until everything came apart.
But he didn’t stop there.
Again and again he showed her just what was possible, then found a new way to break through the envelope and find even more performance from her fracturing nervous system.
He stuck to her like perfect racing slicks on a hot track until she couldn’t know what was coming next and could only hang on for the ride. When he finally took her, when he finally pounded into her, there was little more left in her than a whimper.
But it was a whimper of joy from the body, not from her. Deep inside her, down at the heart of her body’s engine, it was so much more.
Somewhere inside her, the past was burning away.
That bastard who had thought rape was his due.
Gone.
The drivers who had harassed her on the track…crowded her car into corners so that she ate a wall and was out of the race…who had done everything they could to prove that a woman didn’t belong in a man’s sport.
Blown away.
All of the times she’d somehow thought it was her fault. Her fault that she’d cracked up another car, even though they were always tapping her rear fender to break her loose. Her fault that she had come in second, not first, despite the on-track battles she’d surmounted. Her fault that…everything!
Gone!
Jim Fischer had just shown her that, in his book, there was no woman who deserved more. That she was special beyond her body—that it was only the stock equipment that he’d driven like a master tactician to prove to her who she might one day become, beyond her body’s performance specs. There was a glimmer of light there that she’d never seen before.
Never imagined.
Yet Jim’s passionate need for her had revealed it as surely as lights illuminating a nighttime racetrack.
She clung to him. A tangle of limbs in a cheap hotel, unable to let go, unable to ease up her double-armed throttle hold around his neck. All she could presently do was feel and know that she held one man—one fantastically special man.
Chapter Twelve
Jim glared at the tires in frustration. The night had brought a fresh dusting of snow that was slick to walk on. Which meant it would be slick to drive on. Not what he wanted on his first real mission with the Motorcade.
Colorado Springs road crews had already sanded the primary Motorcade routes and were reportedly working on the alternates…drawing massive “shoot me here” targets to his way of thinking.
“At least they’ve put on studded snow tires,” he tried to find the bright side of it all, but wasn’t having much luck. Apparently chains would be a major problem if someone shot out the tires and they had to get away on the run-flat tires. Each one had an inner core of hard rubber, but if the outer tire deflated, then chains would become loose and could create a snarl. That had meant a change of tires. At the moment he wasn’t feeling very happy about anything changing.
“It will alter my spin rate, if I need to do one,” Reese seemed to be taking everything about the morning in that easy stride of hers.
He could only glare at the car as Reese headed off to consult with the other drivers. No question that his mood was foul this morning. And no question that he was doing a crappy job of hiding it from Reese. Even Malcolm had picked up on it, moping about his feet.
“I should have stayed on the goddamn fence line.” He understood that. He knew what to expect there.
Everything was confusing now. He’d spent two days trying to inhale Motorcade logistics but it was such a massive task that an entire vehicle was dedicated to just that. The ID car might run well back in the pack. Its sole task was route logistics and identifying any problems and changes on the fly.
So, he needed to let that go.
Even identifying his own role here was a challenge. He wasn’t on the drop-in ahead team, patrolling a route, building, or crowd. He deployed twenty to thirty seconds ahead of the President as if that was enough time to find anything that all of the other dogs had missed. It made no sense.
Yet Harvey Lieber had asked him to join the Motorcade itself. Because a single time he’d been faster thinking on the ground in New York than most others? That had nothing to do with Malcolm. It had nothing to do with the last three years of his life as a White House dog handler.
“What’s gonna become of us, buddy?” Malcolm looked up at him, clearly bored out of his skull. They were usually never bored. Not when they had the whole fence line to patrol. No tourists here inside the Peterson AFB hangar. No veterans in need of a little cheering up. No bad guys thinking they could directly breach the White House and live to tell the tale.
“C’mon, let’s check out the cars. Such!”
And at the simple seek command, the life surged back into Malcolm. He jumped to his feet, glanced up at Jim until he pointed toward the front of the parked Motorcade, and headed off with the same joy he walked the fence. The vehicles were lined up in three parallel rows so that they all fit in the hangar.
“You’ve got it way too easy.” Malcolm only had one thing in life to worry about. For himself, he couldn’t seem to stop finding new things to add to the worry list. It was already longer than an elephant’s leash and it just kept growing.
They circled both of the Spares and Stagecoach itself.
Then they went over the Lead Car that they’d be riding in. The police escort was already in place, so he checked out their motorcycles and Sweep Cars. He even went over the Pilot and Route Cars, though they’d be well ahead of the Motorcade to provide early warning of any problems.
Reese joined him as he circled back down the far side of the line.
And the anger surged back in so hard that he almost choked.
“What?”
He could only shake his head. He didn’t know! It wasn’t at Reese, he knew that much, but he couldn’t seem to put a good face on it—not even for her sake. It wasn’t her past. The assholes in her past were obviously losers who’d never understood what she was. She’d survived them and come out shining.
There was no real way for Malcolm to inspect Halfback. It was in line directly behind Stagecoach and the Spares and was armed to the teeth. It was filled with weapons that were fired frequently and with the men who fired them. They even had explosives, just in case they needed to cut the President out of a wreck quickly. Still, he gave Malcolm a treat each time he triggered on the vehicle. It wasn’t his fault that they lived in a crazy world that needed such things.
“Did I do something wrong last night?” Reese kept her voice low as they moved on to inspect Watchtower—the electronic countermeasures Suburban. It could block signals to IEDs, detect incoming aircraft or missiles, and a wide variety of other attacks. If anyone fired on the Motorcade, they’d discover to their dismay just how fast Watchtower could pinpoint their location and transmit it to Hawkeye Renegade—the counter-assault team vehicle farther back in the lineup.
“How could you possibly think that you did anything wrong last night, Reese?” He couldn’t quite bring himself to look at her. That was okay. He had to pay attention to what Malcolm was doing, didn’t he?
“Because you’re being very weird this morning.”
“Well it’s not you. Okay? I couldn’t imagine you being more incredible. You’re a goddamn fantasy brought to life.”
“I don’t want to be someone’s fantasy. I’ve had enough of that shit!” The anger shot to life in her voice.
“Doesn’t keep you from being one.” Reese Carver was certainly his fantasy. Gorgeous, amazing in the bedroom, skilled, intelligent, thoughtful… The best companion a man and his dog could ever ask for.
“Eat hot shit, Fischer!” And Reese spun on her heel and walked away.
“Well, that went well, didn’t it?” he asked Malcolm. Two of the agents managing the senior staffer vehicles looked at him in surprise, then turned to watch Reese. Even pissed as hell, she had an amazing walk from behind. Only by gritting his teeth did he manage to avoid beating the crap out of them for staring at her so blatantly.
Thankfully Malcolm was busy working and didn’t know enough to roll his eyes at Jim.
“Yeah. Total washout.” He guided Malcolm down the line: Control, counter assault (which gave Malcolm just as much trouble as Halfback had), intel division, hazmat, Roadrunner (that could connect them to a satellite feed, into the Situation Room, or provide a local cell tower when there wasn’t one), ambulance, and the rear guard vehicles.
About the time he reached the end of the last line, the two press vans rolled in, bringing the press corps back from their hotel. They tucked into the back of the middle row of vehicles so that they’d be in the right place for departure. The reporters moved clear, winding their way past the inner row of vehicles. They gathered around the base of the steps of Air Force One (there was a scheduled ten-minute press conference before they moved out, not as if anything had happened overnight). He and Malcolm moved in to check the vans.
Clean. Clean. Clean.
If he found one more thing that was clean and safe and secure he was gonna scream.
That was the problem.
They knew there was an attack coming. It was coming and there wasn’t anything he and Malcolm could do about it. How was he supposed to protect the President? How was he supposed to protect Reese, when any threat was so far out of his league? How was he supposed to find explosives from inside the Lead Car?
He squatted down to give Malcolm a good rub. At least his dog would know that whatever happened, it wasn’t his fault.
He squatted there, in front of the lead press van. There were two of the Chevy Express twelve-seaters. They were big enough, barely, to carry the press corps and their gear. It was the last of the all-American boxy vans. Even Ford had taken on the slick Euro-Japanese exterior profiling. He’d driven the delivery version of the Express plenty before he’d gotten old enough to pick up his commercial license and move into the big rigs.
There was a small box under the steel bumper that he didn’t recognize. He leaned in to inspect it. A Brickhouse Security micro camera, smaller than a pack of cards. It could shoot eight hours of HD video without a recharge. As far as he knew, they only saved to an SD card, but could one be modified to transmit? That hadn’t been included in his briefings about the Motorcade, but he’d come aboard so recently that it could be just one of a thousand things that there hadn’t been time to learn.
He leaned out and saw that there was a matching one under the second van’s bumper. On the next row of vehicles over he could see that neither the intel car nor the hazmat truck had them.
Turning the other way, he could see one under the bumper of Stagecoach. He was pretty sure that wasn’t supposed to be there.
He pointed out the small camera to Malcolm, “Verloren.” Lost. Maybe whoever had put them there had left the same scent on each of the cameras, just as Jurgen had left his scent on the explosives out at RTC. If they were all the same, that would be very suspicious. After Malcolm had a good sniff of it, Jim gave him the seek command and they began circling the vehicles once more.
Reese tried to think of the last time she’d felt this angry. All she could come up with was her pop’s former team owner. Jim had made her feel so…violated!
Last night had been such an incredible experience. And this morning she was just another hot fantasy calendar girl only fit to be a pin-up on some testosterone-laden grimy garage wall—her butt and breasts eventually coated in oily fingerprints from every mechanic who slapped it as they walked by.
One thing was certain, Jim Fischer was never going to touch her again.
Rather than feeling righteous, she felt impossibly sad.
“What the hell happened to you?” Harvey Lieber was suddenly at her elbow as she stood under Air Force One’s wing with nowhere to go. She should be waiting by her car, but Jim was there, circling around them once more. Her interest in joining the press conference at the base of the plane’s stairs was less than zero.
“I’m fine.”
Harvey looked over her shoulder toward the Motorcade. “God damn it. I warned him.”
“Warned him what?”
“That if he messed up my best driver, I was going to kill him.”
“Don’t!”
That earned her a Harvey Lieber scowl.
“I want the option to do that myself.”
At that he smiled.
“Now I know you’re okay. Get in your vehicle. We’re almost ready to roll.” Harvey walked over to join the President as he took last questions.
Okay? She was anything but okay. Though from Harvey’s perspective, maybe she was. If she was head of the Presidential Protection Detail, she’d want her drivers to be in a foul, run-over-anything-in-my-way mood. And she was definitely that.
She stalked over to Stagecoach as Jim rose from looking under the front bumper.
He froze and looked at her. She could see there was some question written across his features.
To hell with him.
She opened the driver’s door, slipped inside, and hauled it shut.
He came around to her window, the only one in the car that rolled down (though just three inches), so that she could talk to an agent or pay a toll if necessary.
Reese had no interest in talking to him and liked having the eight inches of
armored steel and five inches of armored glass between them. Instead she placed both hands on the wheel and stared straight ahead. Please, oh please. Let Jim Fischer get in her way. She would run him down in a heartbeat!
Suddenly everyone was on the move.
Jim had never seen the full Motorcade load up all at once and it was a daunting sight. Thirty-five vehicles including the police escort. Except for the motorcycles, most vehicles had four or five people. The press vans and the assault team Suburbans had even more. Two hundred people on the move in a highly coordinated flow.
One side of the hangar doors slid open and the Route and the Pilot Car shot out into the morning brightness. Now that the door was open, even though they were still inside the hangar, a phalanx of four agents surrounded the President as they escorted him into Stagecoach.
Once Harvey Lieber had the Beast’s door closed, he came sprinting around the nose of the vehicle. He shoved Jim hard enough to send him stumbling forward.
“You aren’t in your seat in the next five seconds, we’re leaving you behind.”
Even as he turned, Jim saw the momentary flash of the Lead Car’s backup lights as the driver shifted from Park to Drive. He sprinted over and opened the back door.
Malcolm leapt aboard and the car was moving while Jim still had one foot on the ground. He dove in, landing partly on top of Malcolm who thankfully had gone to the far side of the back seat. By the time he had the door closed and his seatbelt buckled, they were already well away from the hangar and racing for the airport’s nearest exit gate.
Mack and Mark—the two agents in the front seat—were laughing at him.
But Jim wasn’t in a laughing mood.
For twenty-seven minutes all he could do was stare out the window and worry as they roared across Colorado Springs, up I-25, and finally, at long last, onto the supposedly safe grounds of the Air Force Academy.
He’d sworn he wouldn’t look back at the three Beasts following on the Lead Car’s tail. They were busy doing their dance, playing a game of Three-card Monte at sixty miles an hour to hide which vehicle carried the President.
On Your Mark Page 14