Troubleshooters 02 The Defiant Hero Read online

  Four motorcycles on the sidewalk. No swastikas painted on any of them—always a good sign.

  She straightened her shoulders and took a deep breath, and went in the door.

  It was dark inside, with the perpetual dank of a room that never saw sunlight. It smelled like stale beer and mildewing particle board. A long bar lined the wall right by the door, and there was a worn path in the cheap tile leading to it.

  There were four pool tables in the back and . . .

  Starrett.

  He was there.

  He was standing off to the side of a game being played by a group of young women—college students from the look of them. As one of them set up her shot, the others hung on Starrett’s every word.

  From a safe distance, Locke could understand and even appreciate his appeal. He was handsome but not too pretty, with a face that was all masculine angles and edges. He wore his hair much too long for a Navy officer, tied back in a pony tail. She knew that meant he still spent much of his time in extremely hostile, dangerous places where looking like a U.S. Navy officer would have been bad for his health. On one level—a very distant level—she had to admire him for that.

  He was taller than most men, and well built, with long legs, narrow hips, broad shoulders, and the kind of muscles that meant he used his arms for picking up more than a pen and paper. He wore a snug black T-shirt tucked into a pair of worn-out blue jeans that were stacked over—what else? Cowboy boots.

  And that, Locke realized, was a hint that he probably wasn’t going to try to outrun her. Earlier today, when he’d lost her, he’d had his sneakers on.

  He probably wasn’t going to outrun her, she reminded herself. With Starrett, she could assume nothing.

  After all, why had he called her here if his goal wasn’t to humiliate her again in some way?

  Keeping an eye on him, Locke sat at the bar and ordered a soda. It wasn’t long before he came and sat down next to her.

  “Bored, huh?” she said.

  “To tears.” He smiled at her as if he were actually glad to see her.

  “Right.” He smelled good. She didn’t want him to smell good and she didn’t want him to smile that way. She took a sip of her soda, frowning across the room at the young women who were still glancing in Starrett’s direction. Anything to keep from getting swallowed up by the blue of his eyes.

  He turned to gaze across the room, too. “They’re a little too young for me.” He hooked his boots over the rungs of the stool and signaled to the bartender for another draft beer. “I prefer my women to be women, not schoolgirls.”

  “And you’re telling me this because . . . ?”

  “Because you seemed, I don’t know . . . interested?”

  “I’m not.”

  He toasted her with his beer. “My apologies. I guess it was just wishful thinking on my part.”

  “Someday,” Locke said as he drank a full half of the mug, “I’m going to head an FBI counterterrorist team, and you’re going to be assigned to assist me. I’m going to be in command, and you’re going to have to do exactly what I order, and you’re going to remember all those tired come-ons and innuendos that were designed to intimidate me and—”

  “I’m not trying to intimidate you,” he scoffed. “If I were trying, you’d be intimidated.”

  She rolled her eyes.

  “I’m just . . .” He squinted up at the TV in the corner, where a baseball game was playing in silence, the mute on. “I’ve always been . . . afraid of you, I guess.”

  Locke swiftly hid her surprise. Of all the things she’d expected him to say, that was not one of them.

  “I was always scared you’d actually talk someone into letting you join the SEAL units,” he explained. “Scared they’d meet you and realize you were good enough to make the Teams. And I’m sorry, Alyssa, but the entire dynamics would change drastically if we started letting women in. I guess I was always just afraid you were going to be the one to actually kick down the door. So I treated you like shit.”

  Never in a million years had she thought he’d admit any of that. Locke laughed—a mix of disbelief and surprise that she couldn’t contain. “You still treat me like shit.”

  Starrett shrugged. “I don’t treat you any differently than I treat anyone else.”

  “Yeah, right. You’re always trying to get Jenk or Stan Wolchonok to go back to your room and get naked with you.”

  “I wasn’t really trying to—” He laughed. “That was just talk.”

  “Meant to intimidate.”

  “Meant to be funny,” he countered. “Where’s your sense of humor? You know, women are always shouting about equality, but then when you get it, you don’t like it. Typical. So you want me to teach you how to follow someone without ever getting made?”

  She blinked at the sudden change of subject.

  He smiled. “That’s not a trick question.”

  “Yes.”

  Starrett nodded. “Good.”

  “What’s the catch?”

  “No catch.”

  She narrowed her eyes at him.

  “Really,” he said. “You’re already good—just not good enough. I’m bored, we’re both here in wait mode with nothing better to do.” He gave her another of those whole body cowboy shrugs and an aw shucks grin.

  Locke didn’t trust him. She didn’t like him. And she knew he didn’t like her.

  There had to be a catch.

  --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

  Fourteen

  “I NEED YOU to talk to me,” Nils said. The coveralls he’d put on were comfortably loose and warm despite the slight smell of gasoline that clung to them. They also had his name on them. John. Stitched in gold thread above the pocket. He’d laughed when he’d first seen it, but Meg hadn’t even cracked a smile.

  She shook her head now. “I don’t want to talk about this anymore. I’m sorry, John. I don’t want to hear it. You’re not going to get me to change my mind, so talking isn’t—”

  “No, we don’t have to talk about Razeen or the Extremists. We can talk about anything. Just to keep me awake. Seen any good movies lately?”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Yeah, actually I was.” He glanced at her. The hazy sunshine brought out the lines of worry and fatigue on her face. Her eyes were distant, as if she were hundreds of miles away. With Amy.

  Meg wouldn’t tell him where they were heading—or even if they were getting close to their final destination. All she would say was south. Route 95 south.

  Nils cleared his throat. “Actually . . .” Just say it. What was she going to do? Get angry enough to grab a gun and start taking hostages? “I was wondering about Daniel.”

  Meg kept her eyes glued to the road that stretched out into the distance in front of them, but he knew that he’d gotten her attention.

  “Until a few days ago I had no idea he was dead,” he admitted. “And the report I read didn’t go into detail—not beyond, well, ‘Car accident in Paris, dead on arrival at . . . Saint Something Hospital.’ ”

  “St. Luc.” She turned and looked at him. “What do you want me to tell you, John? That he was with his new mistress when he was hit by a drunk driver who killed them both? That he was coming back from an illicit weekend in the country while I was home with Amy, who had a stomach virus?”

  “No, I—” He broke off. Looked at her. Looked at her again. “Oh, shit, you’re serious.”

  “He tried. He really tried to be—” she started, then shook her head. “What am I doing, defending him?”

  “Jesus, I’m sorry,” he said. “Why—” He stopped himself, but then plowed forward. This topic was already painful for her, why not throw some of his pain onto the table, too? “Why didn’t you call me when he died?”

  “I couldn’t.”

  “Why not?” he pressed, knowing that the truth could crush him, but needing to hear it just the same.

  She wouldn’t look him in the ey
e. “I just couldn’t, all right? It was . . . I was . . . God, John, everyone knew about Ashley—that was her name—and it was like some freak show. It was so public. I had to deal with all this grief and anger and . . . and . . . shame while everyone watched. And then there was Amy. The worst was having to explain to Amy what that woman was doing in the car with Daniel.” She laughed, but there was no humor in it. “The son of a bitch.”

  “If you’d called me, I could’ve helped. Meg, I would’ve come. My CO’s great, he would’ve let me take the time.”

  Tears hung in her eyes. “If I’d called you, you would’ve been someone else for them all to stare at.” She slowly shook her head. Looked back out the window at the road. “Besides . . .”

  “What?” he asked, wanting to know. Besides, what?

  She just shook her head again.

  “So. Why didn’t you call me later?” he asked, trying not to sound as if he were in the process of committing emotional hara-kiri, as if his casual question weren’t the equivalent of taking a big knife and cutting himself open, exposing himself, raw and bleeding, for her to kick aside. “After you moved back to DC?”

  “I didn’t know where you were.”

  That was bullshit and they both knew it. “You could have found me easily enough—at least got a message to me.”

  She sighed. “It had been years,” she said, and he knew she was venturing closer to the truth. “For all I knew . . .”

  She looked out the window again.

  Nils waited fifteen seconds. Thirty. Forty-five. “What?” he asked, unable to keep his mouth shut a second longer.

  She shook her head.

  “What? Come on, Meg, for all you knew what?” Hurt rasped in his voice, but he couldn’t stop. “Don’t leave something like that dangling, god damn it!”

  It came out in a burst. “For all I knew, you didn’t even remember me!”

  Silence.

  Meg stared out the window again as Nils hung onto the steering wheel.

  He was stunned. He didn’t know whether to be aghast at her lack of self-confidence, or insulted by her lack of faith in him.

  What had she thought he’d meant that night?

  I want you so much. He’d kissed her mouth, her neck—her head thrown back, desire etched on her beautiful face. She’d opened her eyes and tugged him down the hall toward her bedroom, unbuttoning his jacket, sliding her hands up underneath his shirt. He could hardly breathe, hardly think, and he kissed her again, just kissed her and kissed her, pinning her against the wall, there in the hall outside her bedroom door.

  He knew they needed to talk more before they made love. If they made love. Jesus, she was married. And back then, that had mattered to him. Or maybe just she had mattered to him. He knew they should slow down. But what he knew hadn’t quite caught up with what he wanted.

  Nor with what she wanted. He felt her fingers on his belt and . . .

  “I’m offended,” he said, yanking himself back to the present, shifting slightly in his seat, wishing that none of this mattered anymore, that time had done what time was supposed to do and had taken the edge off of everything he’d felt for her, everything he’d wanted so desperately.

  Instead that edge had been honed to a razor sharpness that could slice him to pieces if he let it.

  It had been the last time he’d seen her in years. She’d unzipped his pants and . . .

  And he’d been all over her, too, pulling off that ridiculous jacket, slipping her dress down past her shoulders, filling his hands with her breasts as he kissed her again and again. I’ve never felt anything like this before. God, Meg, I’ve never wanted anyone as much as I want you. . . .

  “How could you think I wouldn’t remember you?” he asked her now. He’d lifted his head, looked into her eyes. I’ve been waiting my whole life for you. “Didn’t you think I meant anything that I said?”

  She didn’t. She hadn’t. She shook her head now, unwilling to admit it. “I didn’t know what to think.”

  “ ‘I want you so much,’ ” he quoted himself. “I think I must’ve said it five thousand times. Gee. What could I have meant?”

  “I thought it was just . . . you know . . .”

  “A line?” he supplied the word for her. “Yeah, I’ve found that always works really well. Tell a woman that you want her so much that you can’t even breathe, and then don’t sleep with her when she tells you in plain English that she wants you, too. If I hadn’t cared about you enough to remember you, I wouldn’t have walked out of there that night.”

  Jesus, talk about regrets. He should have taken what she’d offered, gone for the single night, to hell with what she’d feel in the morning.

  He’d done plenty of one-nighters since then—usually all with married women. He’d pretended that it was the excitement of breaking the rules, of taking something that didn’t belong to him that had attracted him to Meg in the first place.

  But he’d proven himself wrong again and again, waking up in some stranger’s bed, unsatisfied and disgusted with himself.

  And aching for Meg.

  “I thought—” She closed her eyes. “I didn’t know what to think. You were so young and everything about that entire situation was so emotional. I thought you were swept up in the moment. I thought . . .” She took a deep breath. “John, I never really felt as if I knew you. I mean, it always seemed to me as if you—the real you—were hiding behind this fiction you’d created, this make-believe life. And this, I don’t know, this earnest sincerity that you could do so well was just part of the charade. It was real for that moment, but I never really believed it was more than a game.”

  Nils didn’t know what to say. It was the biggest sacrifice he’d ever made in his entire life—walking away from Meg that night, knowing that he could have her, make love to her, spend the next few hours in paradise.

  And she thought he’d been playing some game.

  “I didn’t forget you,” he told her quietly. “Not for one minute.”

  He could see in her eyes that she still didn’t quite believe him.

  And he knew that that was his own damn fault.

  Alyssa Locke’s cell phone rang.

  If Sam hadn’t known she’d been waiting for some vital phone call, he wouldn’t have guessed there was anything going on.

  The expression on her face didn’t change one bit, yet without moving a single muscle, her tension level elevated from tightly wound to near breaking. Still, if he hadn’t been watching for it, if he wasn’t hyperaware of her every move and her every breath, he wouldn’t have noticed.

  She turned away from him to take the call, as if by presenting him with her back, she’d created some kind of cone of silence that would keep him from overhearing her conversation. “Locke.”

  Sam drained his beer and pretended not to listen.

  “Oh, my God, oh, my God!” Alyssa turned back, gripping the bar as if she’d fall out of her chair if she weren’t holding on.

  Sam stopped pretending not to listen.

  “Okay,” she said into the phone. “All right. I’ll . . .” She looked directly at Sam as if she’d just remembered he was there. “Shit! I can’t get over to the hospital right now. Tell her . . .”

  She had tears in her eyes. For the briefest split second, Sam was positive he’d actually seen tears in Alyssa Locke’s usually arctic eyes. But then she blinked and they were gone.

  “Yeah,” she said to whoever was on the other end of the connection. “And tell her I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

  “What’s up?” Sam asked as she slipped the phone back into her fanny pack. She was still clinging to the bar with one hand. “Are you all right?”

  She looked into his eyes. Normally she looked around him, above him or through him, but right now, she actually met and held his gaze.

  “That was the phone call you’ve been waiting for,” he said. “Anything I can do to help?”

  He’d surprised her, and as he watched, he could almost see her bra
in work, processing the fact that he’d known she’d been waiting on a call, processing . . .

  “Why do you want to help me?” she asked.

  “Which hospital is it?” he countered. “I was originally thinking you were waiting on a boyfriend to call, but that wasn’t . . .” Tell her . . . she’d said. Her . . . “Is it your mother? Is she sick?”