Suzanne Brockmann - Team Ten 07 - The Admiral's Bride Page 4

  "The Vietnam era was a confusing time in history."

  Jake winced. "History. Jeez, it wasn't that long ago. Make me feel old, why don't you?"

  "I don't think you're old, Admiral."

  "Okay, then start by calling me Jake. You're on my team, we're going to get to know each other pretty well by the time this is over." Jake stopped at the elevators and punched his security code into the keypad. "And I am old. I've been around a half a century, and I've seen more than my share of terrible, violent, monstrous acts. The things people do to each other appalls me. But I'm going to use that in my favor. Everything I've seen and learned is going

  to help me keep Chris Vincent and the CRO from doing some awful, permanent damage to this country that I love."

  She laughed. Her teeth were white and straight. "And you claim you're not a hero." The elevator doors slid open and she followed him inside. "I think you're wrong. I think you can be a hero alone in a room. I think you would've shied away from the ticker-tape parade anyway."

  "Are you kidding? I would've eaten it up with a spoon." He punched in the code that would take them to the ground floor. "Look, Doc, I appreciate your support, I do. Just...don't believe everything you read in Scooter's book."

  "Four hundred and twenty-seven."

  "Four hundred and twenty-seven what?"

  "Men."

  His first thought was surely a sign that he'd had sex on his mind far too frequently of late. But there was no innuendo in Zoe Lange's face, no hint of a suggestion in her eyes that she wanted Jake to be number four hundred and twenty-eight in a very, very long line. In fact, such a long line, it was preposterous. He tried not to laugh and failed. "I cannot begin to guess what you're talking about. I mean, I'm trying, but..." He laughed again at his own clueless-ness. "You've lost me, Doctor."

  "My father was number four hundred and twenty-seven," she said quietly. "He's one of Jake's Boys."

  Jake didn't know what to say.

  It happened sometimes. Someone would come up to him with emotion brimming in their eyes and shake his hand, whispering that their husband or son or father was one of Jake's Boys. As if he still had some kind of hold over them. Or as if, upon saving their lives, he'd somehow become responsible for them until the end of time.

  He'd learned to be courteous and brief. He'd shake their hand, touch their shoulder, smile into their eyes and pretend he remembered Private This or Corporal That. The truth was, he didn't remember any of them. The faces stuck in

  his mind were only of the men he hadn't been able to save. The men who died, who were already dead. Empty eyes. All those awful, empty eyes...

  "Sergeant Matthew Lange," she told him. "He was with the forty-fifth—"

  "I don't remember him." He couldn't lie to this woman. Not if she was going to be on his team.

  She didn't even blink. "I didn't expect you to, sir. He was only one out of hundreds." She smiled and reached out to take his hand, to squeeze his fingers. "You know, I owe my life to you, as well. I wasn't born until a year after he came home."

  Which meant her father was probably younger than Jake was.

  Perfect.

  His one completely loyal ally, the one person on his team who honestly didn't have any reservations about his age or ability, had just managed to make him feel undeniably old.

  And not just old, but nasty and old. Like some kind of complete degenerate.

  As he gazed into her perfect brown eyes, as she held onto his hand and he felt the warmth and strength of her fingers, the smoothness of her skin against his palm, he forced himself to admit that for the first time in the two and a half years since Daisy had died, he'd finally met a woman he could imagine himself making love to.

  And he didn't want that. He didn't want to imagine himself capable of wanting anyone but the only woman he'd ever loved, the woman he still loved. But he couldn't deny that he missed sex, that he wanted sex. And he didn't know how to reconcile his physical needs with the indisputable fact that Daisy was forever gone.

  Forever, permanently gone. And she wasn't coming back.

  For just a second, he let himself really look at Zoe Lange. She was brilliant, she was brave, she was tough, yet her beauty held a sweetness to which he was powerfully drawn.

  Her eyes were alight with intelligent wit, her mouth quick to smile. Her laughter was contagious, and her body...

  Jake let himself look, for just a second, at Dr. Zoe Lange's near-perfect body. Her legs were long, her jeans slightly loose on her hips and thighs. She was not particularly tall, not particularly short, but average wasn't a word that could ever be used to describe her. Her arms were well-toned, lithe. She was trim in all the right places, and, God, all right, yes, he was a breast man, and she had a body that pushed all his buttons in a very big way. Her T-shirt clung to her full figure enticingly, making her demure little flowered print look decadent and sexy.

  In a flash, in his mind's eye, Jake saw her, tumbled back on his bed with him, her T-shirt and jeans gone, his mouth locked on hers, her perfect breasts filling his palms, his body buried deeply inside her as they moved together and...

  Oh God, oh God, oh God. Sheer wanting slammed into him so hard he nearly gasped aloud. But that wanting was followed just as quickly by guilt and shame.

  He still loved Daisy. How could he still love Daisy and want someone else so badly?

  Sweet Lord, he missed her so much.

  The hole in his gut that he'd been trying to heal for nearly three years tore wide open.

  And he released Zoe's hand and took a step backward, bumping awkwardly against the elevator wall. He realized almost instantly that he was well on his way to becoming completely aroused. Ah, jeez, terrific. Just what he needed—a souvenir from his little guilt trip.

  He didn't know whether to laugh or cry.

  So he did neither, casually holding his briefcase in front of him.

  Zoe kept her eyes carefully on the numbers above the elevator door, and he knew she'd seen something in his eyes that embarrassed her. No wonder—he'd been eyeing her like the hungry old fox checking out the gingerbread

  girl. Good job, Robinson. Way to feel even older and nastier. And somehow it was even worse since his attraction was clearly one-sided.

  But when she turned toward him, she was the one who apologized. "I'm sorry," she said. "I didn't mean to embarrass you. You must get approached by people all the time and—"

  "I like it when they've done something really right with their lives—the way your father obviously did. He must be very proud of you. God knows I'd be proud as hell if you were my kid." He tried his best to sound fatherly. But all he sounded was pathetic.

  She smiled tentatively. "Well, thanks."

  The elevator opened, and this time Jake stood back, courteously letting her out first. She looked both ways, up and down the deserted corridor as the elevator doors closed behind them.

  "Exit to the street's down that way." Jake pointed. "Take the—"

  "First right," she said. "I know, thanks. Listen, Admiral—"

  "Jake," he said. "Please."

  "Actually, Admiral works a little better for me."

  "All right," he said quickly. "That's fine. It's not like I'm ordering you to call me Jake or anything. It's not like—"

  "I know." She tried to meet his gaze, but couldn't hold it this time. She was nervous again. "I was just... I can't help but wonder about your willingness to put yourself at risk. I mean, you've earned the right to sit back and command safely from behind a desk, sir. And I can't imagine your, um, wife is very happy about your decision to go back into the field. Particularly after that assassination attempt a few years ago. You were in the hospital for months."

  Jake had been around long enough to recognize a fishing expedition when he heard one. But what information ex-

  actly was Zoe Lange fishing for? Was she looking to find his motivation for taking the mission or his reason for looking at her as if he wanted to eat her alive?

  He had
no need to hide anything from her—well, except for the extremely unprofessional fact that nearly every time he looked at her, he pictured her naked. And even if thoughts of Daisy didn't stop that, all he really had to do was think about those missing canisters of T-X. That cooled him down pretty damn instantly.

  "I know that's an extremely personal question," she continued quickly, "and you can tell me it's none of my business if you want and—''

  "Daisy, my wife, died of cancer," he told her quietly. "It'll be three years ago this Christmas."

  "Oh," she said. "I'm so sorry. I didn't know."

  "And I think you're probably right. If she were still alive, I'd be thinking long and hard about the risks of this mission. But even if she were still alive, I wouldn't be able to avoid the fact that I've got a connection to Christopher Vincent. I know I can get into the CRO's inner sanctions. It's just, this way, it makes the choice a complete no-brainer."

  She was looking at him with compassion in her eyes, and he glanced away, unable to bear the thought of looking closer and seeing her pity.

  "You better go pack," he said brusquely. "We go wheels up in ninety-eight minutes. If you make us wait for you, trust me, the team will never let you live it down."

  "Don't worry, Jake," she said. "I'll be the first one on the plane."

  He watched her walk away, and before she took that right corner, she looked back and gave him a smile and a little wave.

  And it wasn't until he was in his office, changing out of his ice-cream suit and into black BDUs, that he realized she'd called him Jake.

  Chapter

  She itched to call Peter.

  Five months ago, she would have. She would have called on a secured line and she would have said, "What does it mean—a man's been a widower for nearly three years, and he still wears his wedding ring?"

  Peter would've said, "That's obvious. He uses the ring to keep women from coming too close."

  And she would have said, "I think he still loves her."

  And Peter would've snorted and said, "Love's a myth. He just hasn't met anyone who could replace his dead wife. But you better believe when he does, that ring will come off faster than you can spit. The hell with him. What do you say you and I meet in Boston next weekend and set the Ritz Carlton aflame?"

  But that's what Peter would've said five months ago. Before he'd discovered that love was indeed not a myth.

  Her name was Marita and she was a TV news anchor based in Miami. She was of Cuban descent and lovely, but Zoe wasn't even remotely jealous. Well, maybe she was a

  _

  little jealous—but only of the fact that Peter, restless, hungry, insatiable, cynical superagent Peter McBride had finally found complete inner peace.

  Zoe was jealous of that. She'd liked Peter—she'd even loved him more than a little, but she knew just from one conversation with him after he'd met Marita that he finally had a shot at true happiness.

  And Peter deserved that.

  Zoe had liked talking to him, liked the way he could always make her laugh. And she had liked making love with him the few times a year that their work for the Agency brought them into each other's presence.

  But she'd known from the start there could be no permanence in their relationship. She was too like him. Too restless, too hungry, too damned insatiable, too jaded by a world bent on destroying itself.

  She hadn't spoken to Peter in five months, assuming his new bride wouldn't appreciate his getting phone calls from a former lover. But she missed his friendship. She missed talking to him.

  She missed the sex, too. It had been safe. She'd never once been in danger of completely losing her heart.

  "So," she said to Peter, even though he wasn't there, "what does it mean that I'm packing my sexiest underwear and this little black nightgown?"

  "To wear in Montana in September?" he would have mused, lifting one elegant eyebrow. "You're in trouble, Lange."

  "You wouldn't believe the way he looked at me in that elevator." Zoe closed her eyes, momentarily melting just from the heat of the memory. "Dear God, I am in trouble."

  "Doing your boss is bad office politics," Peter would have reminded her. "But on the other hand, he's not really your boss, is he? Pat Sullivan is. So, go for him. You've been fantasizing about the guy for years—how could you not go for him? And if he's looking at you like that... I'm surprised you didn't make a move right then and there. It

  wouldn't've taken much to disable the security cams in the elevator and..."

  "He'd been giving me go-away signals from the moment we met." She pulled her warmest sweaters from her closet shelf. Her warmest sweaters—and her skimpiest tank tops. Shorts. Her bathing suit even. It was a bikini—Rio cut. Not quite a thong, but not quite demure, either. Maybe she'd get lucky and they'd have Indian summer. "Besides, at the time I thought he was still married."

  "Ooh, there are those upright, golden, Girl Scout morals, shining through again." When Peter said it like that, it was as if it were something she should be ashamed of.

  "He seemed so embarrassed by the fact that he finds me attractive. As if it made him feel, you know, guilty." She'd come full circle. "He definitely still loves her. In his mind, he is still married."

  "So what are you going to do?" Peter would've asked.

  Zoe zipped and shouldered her bag. "He's a really good guy, Pete. I'm going to try to be his friend."

  He'd always hated it when she called him Pete. "And for that you definitely need all that underwear from Victoria's Secret?"

  "Six missing canisters of Trip X," she said, and Peter's evil spirit was instantly exorcised, instantly gone.

  She had a job to do. A very, very important, life-or-death job.

  Zoe grabbed her briefcase, grabbed her laptop and locked her apartment door without looking back.

  Day two. Oh-three-hundred.

  Jake had been out most of the night, silently creeping along the perimeter of the CRO compound with Cowboy Jones. Lieutenant Jones's father was a rear admiral. Jake had figured that out of everyone on the team, Jones would be most at ease with buddying up with a man of his rank.

  He'd been wrong.

  Ever since they'd inserted in Montana, his entire team

  .

  had been treating him with kid gloves. Let me carry that for you, Admiral. I'll take care of that, Admiral. Why don't you just stand aside and let me handle that, Admiral. Sit down, Admiral. You're getting in the way.

  Well, okay. No one had said that last bit, but Jake knew they'd been thinking it.

  Even Billy Hawken, the closest thing to a son Jake had ever been blessed with, had pulled Jake aside to tell him in a low voice that the technological advances in the surveillance gear in just the past few years had changed both the hardware and the software completely. If Jake needed any help understanding the readouts or if he needed any assistance with the equipment, Billy was standing by.

  And no doubt if Jake needed helped cutting his food, Billy would do that for him, too.

  What, was he suddenly ninety years old? And hell, even if he was ninety years old, that didn't automatically mean his brain had turned to oatmeal.

  As they'd done the sneak and peek, Jones kept asking him if he'd seen enough, if he'd wanted to turn around and head back to camp.

  The night had been crisply cold, but Jake had wanted to examine every square inch of the CRO compound he could see from the outer fence. He'd squinted through his night-vision glasses until his head had ached, and then he'd squinted some more. He'd done a complete circuit, and he'd lingered longer than he otherwise might have at the main gate, simply to show Jones he was capable of doing a complete, thorough job.

  Except Lucky and Wes had been sent after them, to see what was holding them up. Jake and Cowboy had run into the pair on the trail. It was obvious that his team had sent them out as a search-and-rescue party to drag the old admiral in from wherever he'd gotten himself entangled in barbed wire.

  It was discouraging, to say the least.
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  Jake needed these men to trust him. He needed their support, one hundred percent.

  Because he was going in there. He'd figured out a plan— and Zoe Lange's somewhat different surveillance tonight had given him cause to believe it would work.

  She sat across from him now, in the main trailer.

  Bobby and Wes had gotten hold of four beat-up old recreational vehicles that afternoon, and the SEALs had already outfitted them with enough surveillance equipment to make a destroyer sit low in the water. They were parked in a KOA campground fifteen miles south of Belle—just a group of happy campers, in town to do some hunting.

  Zoe stood up and opened the refrigerator, helping herself to a can of soda. Something without caffeine. She didn't look tired despite the late hour, but then again, he hadn't expected her to.

  Jake had been taking care to keep his distance from her from the moment he'd stepped on the plane at Andrews. He hadn't gotten too close, had barely let himself look at her. But he allowed himself to watch her now as she spoke.

  "The name of the bar is Mel's, and it's owned by Hal— Harold—Francke, spelled with a c-k-e. I didn't meet him. Apparently he doesn't come in often on Wednesday nights. The waitress I did meet was named Cindy Allora. She said Hal's always looking for new hired help." She smiled. "I guess he's a dirty old man with a wandering pair of hands, and the turnover rate of waitresses at Mel's is high."

  A dirty old man. Jake tried not to wince visibly as she sat at the table.

  Zoe looked different tonight. The flower-print T-shirt was gone. She was dressed all in black. Slim black flares, black boots, black hooded sweatshirt that slipped off one shoulder to reveal her smooth tanned skin and a body-hugging black tank top, its thin straps unable to hide the straps of her black bra.

  She was wearing quite a bit of makeup, too. Dark liner around her eyes, thick mascara, deep red on her lips. She