Everyday, Average Jones

He hated to think what they might do—had already done—to this young woman who could’ve been the poster model for the All-American Girl. But all day long, he’d kept a careful eye on the three heat sources he suspected were the hostages. And all day long, none of them had been moved.

“Fourth floor, interior room,” he said quietly into his mike. “Northwest corner.”

“I don’t suppose in your free time you found us a way into the embassy?” Cat asked.

“Minimal movement on the top floor,” Cowboy reported. Those windows were broken, too. “Roof to windows—piece a cake.”

“And gettin’ to the roof?” The south-of-the-Mason-Dixon-line voice that spoke over his headphones was that of Lt. Blue McCoy, Alpha Squad’s point man and Joe Cat’s second-in-command.

“Just a stroll from where I’m at. Connecting roofs. Route’s clear—I’ve already checked.”

“Why the hell did I bother bringing along the rest of you guys?” Cat asked. Cowboy could hear the older man’s smile in his voice. “Good job, kid.”

“Only kind I do,” Cowboy drawled.

“That’s what I really love about you, Junior.” Senior Chief Daryl Becker, also known as Harvard, spoke up, his deep voice dry with humor. “Your humility. It’s rare to find such a trait in one so young.”

“Permission to move?” Cowboy asked.

“Negative, Jones,” Cat replied. “Wait for Harvard. Go in as a team.”

Cowboy clicked an affirmative, keeping his infrared glasses glued to the embassy.

It wouldn’t be long now until they went inside and got Melody Evans and the others out.

* * *

It happened so quickly, Melody wasn’t sure where they came from or who they were.

One moment she was sitting in the corner, writing in her notebook, and the next she was lying on her stomach on the linoleum, having been thrown there none too gently by one of the robed men who’d appeared out of thin air.

She felt the barrel of a gun jammed into her throat, just under her jaw, as she tried to make sense of the voices.

“Silence!” she was ordered in more languages than she could keep track of. “Keep your mouths shut or we’ll shut ’em for you!”

“Dammit,” she heard someone say in very plain English, “the girl’s not here. Cat, we’ve got three pieces of luggage, but none of them’s female.”

“If none of them’s female, one of ’em’s a tango. Search ’em and do it right.”

English. Yes. They were definitely speaking American English. Still, with that gun in her neck, she didn’t dare lift her head to look up at them.

“Lucky, Bobby and Wes,” another voice commanded, “search the rest of this floor. Find that girl.”

Melody felt rough hands on her body, moving across her shoulders and down her back, sweeping down her legs. She was being searched for a weapon, she realized. One of the hands reached up expertly to feel between her legs as another pushed its way up underneath her arm and around to her chest. She knew the exact instant that each hand encountered either more or less than their owner expected, because whomever those hands belonged to, he froze.

Then he flipped her onto her back, and Melody found herself staring up into the greenest eyes she’d ever seen in her life.

He pulled off her hat and touched her hair, then looked at the black shoe polish that had come off on his fingers. He looked down at the mustache she had made from some of her own cut hair darkened with mascara and glued underneath her nose. He smiled as he looked back into her eyes. It was a smile that lit his entire face and made his eyes sparkle.

“Melody.” It was more of a statement than a question.

But she nodded anyway.

“Ma’am, I’m Ensign Harlan Jones of the U.S. Navy SEALs,” he said in a soft Western drawl. “We’ve come to take you home.” He looked up then, speaking to one of the other hooded men. “Cat, belay that last order. We’ve found our female hostage, safe and sound.”

* * *

“Absolutely not.” Kurt Matthews folded his arms across his narrow chest. “They said if any of us attempted an escape, they’d kill us all. They said if we did what we were told, and if the government complied with their modest list of demands, we’d be set free. I say we stay right here.”

“There’s no way we can get out of here undetected,” the other man—Sterling—pointed out. “There’s too many of them. They’ll stop us and then they’ll kill us. I think it’s safer to do what they said.”

Cowboy shifted impatiently in his seat. Negotiating with damn fools was not one of his strengths, yet Cat had left him here to try to talk some sense into these boneheads as the rest of the squad went on to complete the rest of their mission—the destruction of several extremely confidential files in the ambassador’s personal office.

He knew that if worse came to worst, they’d knock ’em over the head and carry ’em out. But it would be a lot easier to move through the city, working their way toward the extraction point, without having to carry three unconscious bodies over their shoulders.

Not for the first time in the past twenty minutes, he found himself staring at Melody Evans.

He had to smile. And admire the hell out of her. There was no doubt in his mind that her quick thinking had saved her own life. She’d disguised herself as a man. She’d cut her long hair short, blackened it with shoe polish to hide its golden color and glued some kind of straggly-looking mustache thing onto her face.

Even with her hair shorn so close to her head and that ridiculous piece of hair stuck underneath her nose, she was pretty. He couldn’t imagine that he’d looked at her when they’d first come in and not seen right away that she was a woman. But he hadn’t. He’d thrown her onto the floor, for God’s sake. And then he’d groped her, searching for hidden weapons.

She glanced at him as if feeling his eyes on her, and he felt it again—that flash of sexual awareness that jolted to life between them. He held her gaze, boldly letting his smile grow wider, letting her take a good long look at this mutual attraction that hovered in the very air around them.

That photo he’d seen had made her look like someone’s little sister. But meeting Melody Evans face-to-face made him well aware—and grateful—of the fact that while she may indeed have been someone’s little sister, she sure as hell wasn’t his.

With the exception of the silly mustache, she possessed damn near everything he liked most in a woman. She was willowy, with a body that he knew firsthand was trim in some places, soft in others. Her face was pretty despite her lack of makeup and the smudges of shoe polish that decorated her forehead and cheeks and hid the shining gold of her hair. She had a small nose, a mouth that looked incredibly soft and crystal blue eyes surrounded by thick, dark lashes. Clear intelligence shone in those eyes. Tears had shown there, too, moments after he’d introduced himself to her. But despite that, she hadn’t let herself cry, much to Cowboy’s relief.

As he watched, she rubbed her left shoulder, and he knew whatever pain she was experiencing was his fault. That shoulder was where she’d landed when he’d first come in and thrown her onto the floor.

“I’m sorry we had to treat you so roughly, ma’am,” he said. “But in our line of work, it doesn’t pay to be polite and ask questions first.”

“Of course,” she murmured, glancing almost shyly at him. “I understand—”

Matthews drowned her out. “Well, I don’t understand, and you can be damned sure your superiors are going to hear about this little incident. Holding the ambassador’s staff at gunpoint and subjecting us to a body search!”

Cowboy didn’t get a chance to defend Alpha Squad’s actions because Melody Evans stood up and defended them for him. “These men came into this embassy looking for us,” she said hotly. “They’re risking their lives to be here right now—the same way they risked their lives when they opened that locked door and came into this room. They had no idea who or what was on the other side of that door!”

“Surely they could’ve seen just from looking that we were Americans,” Matthews countered.

“Surely there’s never been a terrorist who dresses up as a hostage and hides with his captives, waiting to blow away any rescuers,” she lit into him. “And of course there’s never been an American who’s been brainwashed or coerced or bribed into defecting to the other side!”

For the first time since they’d let the hostages up off the floor, Kurt Matthews was silent.

Cowboy had to smile. He liked smart women—women who didn’t suffer fools. And this one was more than smart. She was strong and clearly courageous, too—able to stand up and defend that which she believed in. He admired the swift action she took to disguise herself in the face of sheer disaster. Surely a woman with that much fight in her could be made to see how important it was that she leave here—and leave soon.

“Melody,” he said, then corrected himself. “Miss Evans, it’s now or never, ma’am. These tangos aren’t gonna let you go, and you know that as well as I do. If you let these gee—gentlemen talk you into staying here, you’re all as good as dead. Forgive me for being so blunt, ma’am, but that’s the God’s truth. It would make our job a whole hell of a lot easier if you would simply trust us to get you safely home.”

“But Chris is right. There’s only a few of you and so many of them.”