Hart's Last Stand

She watched him walk across the room, jerk the exit door open, and for just a moment look back at her, his eyes cold, wary and full of anger. Seconds later, as she ran after Hart, she heard someone call out to her.

“Suzanne?” the corps crew chief said. “Suzanne Cassidy?”

She stopped and looked at him. Everything about him was thick—his neck, chest, waist, arms, even his hands—while his eyes were a dull gray, nearly the same color as his hair, and his face was marred by a mass of craggy lines that reminded her of a metropolitan street map. “Chief Carger,” Suzanne said.

For a while, just after she and Rick had moved to Three Hills, Rick had thrown Monday-night-football parties, and some of the other pilots, the crew chief and a few mechanics had come to the Cassidy bungalow to eat Rick’s barbecued burgers and watch the game on television.

She remembered Rick telling her once that the chief had lost his family years ago in a house fire. The army had become his home since then, and the corps members his family.

At first she’d liked the chief, thought of him as a father figure, as the men did, and she and Rick had him over for dinner several times. But after a while something about him began to make her feel uneasy.

“Yes, ma’am. Nice of you to remember.” He nodded. “Good to see you again.” His gaze skipped over her quickly, and Suzanne suddenly remembered exactly what it had been that used to make her feel uneasy around him. “Hope everything’s been going okay for you.” He glanced at Hart. “Sorry, sir. If I’m intruding, I can—”

Hart hadn’t missed the quick, but thoroughly assessing once-over the chief had given Suzanne. Before Rick’s death Hart had suspected the chief had been more than a little interested in Suzanne, but he’d put it down to his own paranoid jealousy. Now he felt his hunch had probably been right. They’d both been attracted to their friend’s wife.

“No, what is it, Chief?” Hart snapped, damning himself as much as the chief.

“Just wanted to let you know, sir, that we’ve got a problem with one of the birds. Cowboy’s. Fuel line. May not be able to fix it for a couple of days, unless I can get the parts sooner.”

Hart nodded. “Fine. Reb is on leave. Have Cowboy use his chopper if need be.”

The chief nodded. “Yes, sir, that was my thought.” He glanced at Suzanne again. “Suzanne—Mrs. Cassidy. Nice to see you, ma’am.”

Suzanne waited until he’d left, then turned back to Hart. “Please, just consider—”

He averted his gaze. “No.”

She fought back the feeling of fear and desperation that threatened to send her to her knees sobbing and pleading with him. Instead, she found a very thin, very fragile thread of composure and walked past him and down the path to the street.

A phone booth stood beside another building a few yards away. She stepped into it and began flipping the worn pages of the dilapidated directory that hung on a chain, searching the pages through a blur of tears. “He can’t say no,” she muttered softly. “He can’t.” She finally found a number for a cab company and dialed it on her cell phone.

Hart would think over what she’d said and help her, she told herself. He had to. There was no other way, nowhere else for her to turn.

Hart hung up the phone and threw down his pen.

All his commanding officer would say was that no one was investigating him because of his pending promotion. But someone was investigating him.

Instinct, and the fact that he’d never believed in coincidences, told him that whatever was going on was connected to Suzanne.

He reached for the phone and dialed a number he’d never thought he would need.

“Senator Trowtin, please,” Hart said to the secretary who answered.

Three years ago terrorists had kidnapped Senator Keith Trowtin while he was on a goodwill mission in the Middle East. The CIA had tracked their movements and tried to rescue him three times. Four good men had died in the effort. Then they’d asked for the corps’s help. The senator was being held in a desert camp, less than ten miles from U.S.-friendly territory. Hart’s plan had been risky and dangerous, but no one had come up with anything better.

“Tell him it’s Captain Hart Branson,” he added.

The senator came on the line a moment later. “Captain, good to hear from you. I was just telling Julie—”

“Senator,” Hart interrupted, deciding to spare no words, “I need a favor.”

“I owe you my life, Captain.”

“I was just doing my job, Senator.”

“It was a suicide mission, Captain, and we both know it, but somehow you pulled it off and we’re both still alive. So whatever you need, you got it. What is it?”

“Someone’s investigating me, sir. I need to know who and why.”

“I’ll call you back.”

Hart replaced the phone receiver and began to pace the length of the room, uncertain whether he felt better or not. He hated asking for favors. Before he could decide which way his mood was swinging, the phone rang.

“Evidently the feds suspect you of treason,” the senator said.

Hart felt the breath stall in his lungs.

“And the word murder is also being bandied about.”

“Murder?” Hart gasped, incredulous.

“Top-secret plans for an experimental weapons-detection device that was being tested during a covert operation you led a year ago were stolen during the mission, Captain, or right after it.”

“Senator, you know I wouldn’t—”

“You don’t have to convince me, Captain, but you need to know—the feds have two theories. One is that either the pilot who went down in that chopper over there wasn’t killed, his death was faked and the two of you are accomplices, along with his wife. Or, you and the man’s wife conspired to steal the plans, killed him and she’s now selling the plans through a Los Angeles gallery she’s a partner in.”

“This is unbelievable,” Hart said. “I—”

“Listen, Captain,” the senator said, “this could get ugly. If you need me again, call. I’ll do what I can.”

Hart heard a click and the line went dead.

It was worse than he’d thought.

He remembered everything Suzanne had said, the fear in her eyes, the near panic in her voice. But was it real?

“Dammit to hell.” He pounded a fist on his desk. His only chance to save his career now, possibly his life, was to prove both of them innocent—or the woman whose image had haunted his dreams for months guilty.

He stared out the window on the opposite wall and contemplated the situation. Rick was dead, which meant he was innocent. But what if Suzanne was not? What if she was a spy? What if she’d used Rick? Hart swore viciously. The whole damned thing sounded too farfetched, but in the world he lived in, it wasn’t. She could be trying to set him up, could have come back not for his help, as she claimed, but to shift the blame.

He yanked the door open and stalked through his aide’s office toward the exit. Turning to Private Roubechard, he ordered, “I want you to do a background check on Second Lieutenant Rick Cassidy. He served under me in the corps a year ago.”

Hart paused, one hand on the exit’s doorknob. “Do one on his wife, too. Suzanne Cassidy. And I want them on my desk in an hour.”

The anger and resentment he’d lived with for the past year burned hot in him as he slammed out of the office and strode to his car. He slid behind the steering wheel and started the engine.

He didn’t trust Suzanne, but he had to talk to her again.