Texas Hero

Her chin snapped up. The fire he remembered all too well flared hot and dark in her eyes.

“I didn’t imagine you’d make the trip down to San Antonio for any other reason. We had our fun, Jack. We both enjoyed our little fling. But that’s all it was. You made that quite clear when you walked away from me nine years ago.”

His jaw tightened. He had no answer for that. There was no answer. Eyes hard, he watched her slide off the bar stool. Her scent came with her as she approached, a combination of sun and the delicate cactus pear perfume she’d always worn. It was her mother’s concoction, he remembered her telling him. He also remembered that he’d been nuzzling her neck at the time. Deliberately, Jack slammed the door on the thought.

When she raised a hand to shove back a loose tendril of hair, however, the gleam of silver circling her wrist brought another, sharper memory. The two-inch-wide beaten silver bracelet had cost him a half-month’s pay. He’d slipped it onto her wrist mere moments before her uncle’s police had arrived to arrest him.

“Let’s go upstairs,” he instructed tersely. “I want to see the message your friend left you.”

Chapter 2

Wrapping her arms around her middle, Ellie stood just inside the door of the trashed suite.

“I moved to another room. The hotel wanted to clean up the mess, but I asked them to leave it until you got here.”

His face impassive, Jack surveyed the mess. “Did the police find anything?”

“They dusted for prints, interviewed the hotel staff and asked for a complete inventory of the missing items, but as far as I know, they haven’t come up with any concrete leads. In fact…”

“In fact?”

Her shoulders lifted under the chili red top. “The detective in charge was somewhat less than sympathetic. Evidently he read the story about me in the Light and doesn’t take kindly to Mexicans determined to rewrite Texas history. It doesn’t seem to make a whole lot of difference to some folks that I’m as American as they are.”

“No, it wouldn’t.”

Jack had seen more than his share of bigotry during his overseas tours, both in the Marines and as an OMEGA agent. It didn’t matter what a person’s race, creed or financial circumstances might be. There was always someone who hated him or her because of them. With a mental note to establish liaison with the detective handling Ellie’s case as soon as he conducted his preliminary assessment of the situation, he eyed the message on the mirror.

The wording suggested a man, someone familiar with weapons and not afraid to let Ellie know it. The obvious inference was that the threat stemmed from her work. Jack never trusted the obvious.

“I want a complete background brief on the members on your team,” he told her, making a final sweep of the premises. “Particularly anyone who might or might not have a grudge against the team’s leader.”

Startled, she dropped her arms. “You think one of my own people is responsible for this?”

“I don’t think anything at this point. I’m just assessing the situation.”

Her eyes huge, she stared at him. Jack could see the doubt creep into their cinnamon brown depths, followed swiftly by dismay. Only now, he guessed, was it occurring to her that the leak to the press might have been more deliberate than accidental. That one of her team members might, in fact, be working behind the scenes on some hidden agenda of his or her own.

The years fell away. For a moment, he caught a glimpse in her stricken face of the trusting, passionate girl she’d once been.

He’d come so close to loving that girl. Closer than he’d ever come to loving anyone who didn’t wear khaki. Until Ellie, the Marines had been his life. Until Ellie, the Corps had constituted the only family he’d ever wanted or needed. He’d never known his father’s name. He’d long ago buried the memory of the mother who left her four-year-old son in the roach-infested hotel room and drove off with some poor slob she’d picked up in a bar. After years of being passed from one foster home to another, Jack had walked into a recruiting office on his eighteenth birthday, signed up and found a home.

He shot up through the ranks, from private to corporal to gunnery sergeant in minimal time. He learned to follow and to lead. Because of his outstanding record, he was selected for the elite Marine Security Guard Battalion. His first tour was at the U.S. Embassy in Gabon, Africa, his second at the plush post in Mexico City.

The debacle in Mexico City had ended his career and destroyed all sense of family with the Corps. Thankfully, he’d found another home in OMEGA. This one, he vowed savagely, he wouldn’t jeopardize by tumbling Ellie into the nearest bed.

“I also want a copy of your list of missing items.”

The dismay left Ellie’s face. Stiffening at his curt tone, she gave him an equally succinct response. “I’ll print you out a copy. It runs to more than fifty pages.”

“Fifty pages!”

The exclamation earned him a condescending smile. “My team’s been on-site for almost a week now. We’ve recorded hundreds of digital images, cross-indexed them and made copious notes concerning each. The data was all stored in the external FireWire drive that was stolen. Thank God I backed the files up via the university’s remote access mainframe!”

With that heartfelt mutter, she led the way down the hall to the new set of rooms the hotel had assigned her. Jack followed, forcing himself to keep his gaze on her back, her hair, the stiff set to her shoulders under her top. On anything, dammit, but the seductive sway of her hips.

A swift prowl around the spacious corner suite she showed him to had him shaking his head. “Pack your things.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“I’ll call the front desk and get them to move us.”

“Why?”

He dragged back the gauzy curtains covering the corner windows. One set of wavy glass panes fronted the street. The other set faced the brick wall of the River Center complex next door.

“See the roof of that building?”

“Yes.”

“It’s on a direct line with these windows. Anyone with a mind to it could get a clear bead on a target in this room. Or climb up on the roof of that IMAX theater across the street and stake you out.”

The color leached from her cheeks. “If you’re trying to scare me, you’re doing one heck of a good job.”

“You should be scared. That wasn’t a valentine your visitor left on that mirror, you know.”

“Of course I know! To paraphrase your earlier remark, the viciousness of that threat is the reason, the only reason, I agreed to the nuisance of a bodyguard.”

Hooking his thumbs in his jeans pockets, Jack tried to get a handle on the woman who’d emerged from the girl he’d once known.

“So why are you hanging around San Antonio, Ellie? Why offer yourself as a target to the kook or malcontent who issued that warning?”

“Because I refuse to let said kook or malcontent interfere with my work. In all modesty, I’m good at what I do. Damned good.” She speared him with a hard look. “You predicted I would be. Remember, Jack? Right about the time you and Uncle Eduardo jointly decided finishing college was more important to me than my… Let’s see, how did he phrase it? My passing infatuation with a hardheaded Marine.”

They’d have to scratch at the old scars sometime. Better to do it now and give the scabs time to heal again. If Jack was to protect her, he needed her trust. Or at least her cooperation. He wouldn’t gain either until he’d acknowledged his culpability for the hurt she’d suffered all those years ago.

“You were only nineteen, Ellie. I thought… Your uncle thought…”

“That I didn’t know my own mind.” Her chin came up. “You were wrong. I knew it then. I know it now.”

She couldn’t have made her meaning plainer. Jack Carstairs wouldn’t get the chance to wound her again. He accepted that stark truth with a nod.

“Why don’t we get settled in different rooms, and you can tell me exactly what it is you’re so good at. I need to understand what you’re doing here,” he said to forestall the stiff response he saw coming, “and why it’s roused such controversy.”

The hotel staff moved them to adjoining suites two floors down. The rooms looked out over the inner courtyard of the hotel instead of the street. Like the rest of the historic hotel, they were furnished with a combination of period antiques and modern comfort. A burned-wood armoire held a twenty-seven-inch TV and a well-stocked bar. The wrought-iron bedstead boasted a queen-size mattress and thick, puffy goose-down comforter.

While Jack checked phones, door locks and ceiling vents, three valets transferred boxes of files and equipment on rolling dollies. Ruthlessly rearranging the furniture to meet her work-space needs, Ellie promptly turned her sitting room into a functional office. She’d already replaced the stolen computer and hard drive, which she now hooked up to an oversize flat LCD screen.

A smaller unit sat beside the computer. Jack studied it with a faint smile. Mackenzie Blair, OMEGA’s chief of communications, would light up like a Christmas tree if she caught sight of all those buttons and dials and displays. The palm-size unit was probably crammed with more circuitry than the Space Shuttle.