Dark Knight: A Loveswept Romance Classic

ONE

In the end, it was the Grinch that made her cry.

“This is ridiculous.” Scottie Giardi punched the off button on the remote, tossed her wadded-up tissue on the coffee table, and dragged herself off the couch. She wandered over to the glass doors that led to her tenth-floor balcony and watched the large, wet snowflakes drifting relentlessly downward, blanketing the downtown streets and buildings, promising that tomorrow morning the children of Denver would waken to a white Christmas. Soundless and glittering with light, the city looked even more magical than Dr. Seuss’s
Who
-ville.

She leaned her aching forehead against the glass. “Bah humbug.” But the catch in her voice gave her true feelings away.

She closed her eyes. The steady beat of her pulse clicked away in her head like an alarm clock, each beat the same, giving no clue as to which tick would be the last one. Then BOOM! One day the bell would ring, and it would be too late.

Too late for friendships. Too late for love. Too late for children. Too damn late.

She turned away and stalked to the bathroom. She didn’t want love. She didn’t need friendships. And she had long ago come to terms with the fact that she would never have children. A hot shower and a cold drink would loosen the tension that had been plaguing her all evening.

As head of a secret government task force, known privately as Delgado’s Dirty Dozen, she was always on call, but they were in the final phases of rebuilding and restructuring the team. The few assignments they were currently handling were all running smoothly.

There was very little chance anyone would need her tonight. The thought made her eyes suddenly burn. She blinked hard several times and yanked on the shower.

The steaming spray beat down on her head, pounded into her shoulders, ran over her face. She tried to relax, but it felt as if every muscle she had was an individual knot.
What in the hell is wrong with you, Giardi?

If she hadn’t felt so much like crying, she would have laughed. How many times had she heard those exact words?

The voice that echoed loudest in her mind was her father’s. Followed closely by her late husband, Jim’s. A humorless smile trembled on her lips. No doubt they’d both be amused to know their harsh indictments haunted her in death every bit as much as they’d haunted her when both men had been alive.

She abruptly shut off the shower, snagged a towel, and rubbed her body with brisk strokes. She knew better than to think she could rub away the memories as
easily as she could the water droplets, just as she knew she’d keep trying anyway. Especially tonight.

Eleven years. It had been exactly eleven years since her father and Jim had been shot in the line of duty, and she’d yet to feel remorse. Guilt? Yes. Self-recrimination? Boatloads of it. Relief … Oh yes. So much so, she still felt the rush of it now, all these many years and miles later. Which circled her right back to the guilt.

She pulled on a Washington Redskins jersey, then headed for the kitchen. Sipping a glass of chilled zinfandel, she avoided looking toward the balcony doors and flipped on the TV. CNN was always good for a distraction. She hated admitting she needed one.

If she couldn’t escape to some faraway place where they’d never heard of snow, much less Christmas, she could watch it and wish she were there. But instead of finding sanctuary with some hard-edged reporter spouting gritty details of this week’s current country in crisis, Cindy-Lou Who blazed onto the screen, looking up at the Grinch with her wide, innocent eyes. Scottie went to stab at the channel button, but somehow her fingers wouldn’t move. And the screen was all blurry. It took several seconds for her to realize she was crying.

Anger didn’t come to her rescue this time, nor did self-disgust. There was no escape. God knew she’d tried them all.

For the first time in ten years, since she’d left the Metropolitan police force in Washington, D.C., and taken Seve “Del” Delgado up on his lifesaving offer of a place on his special forces team, she had no convenient corner of the globe to run to. Earlier this year, Del had been forced to reveal his background during testimony in a mob trial. For his safety and that of the team, he’d
received a new identity, a new face, and had left the team in her hands, never to be heard from again.

Only now did she realize it hadn’t been ten years of freedom, but ten years of escape.

The sudden jangle of the phone made her jump. She swore at herself, then went on full alert as it registered that it was her private office line ringing.
Bless you
. She moved swiftly to the small office next to her bedroom, shamelessly not caring what emergency awaited on the other end of the line.

With utter relief, she let her mind slip back to her job, dismissing the hours of painful introspection as if they’d never existed. Safe once again in the sanctuary of her work.

She lifted the phone to her ear and waited for the current code to be recited. The code came. It was the voice that delivered it that stunned her into complete silence.

“Giardi, I know it’s a shock to hear my voice, but I’m short on time. I’ll explain later.”

“Del?” Her voice was a stunned whisper.

“
Sí
,” he responded in his usual clipped tones. “Now listen closely. We have a problem.”

“We?” Scottie straightened, her mind focusing quickly as the initial shock wore off. “
We
have a problem?” Her tone was just as abrupt. She’d learned more than espionage tactics from the man on the other end of the line.

A short pause followed. “Yes, we.”

Scottie had often speculated that Del was still somehow involved with the team. She’d always had a niggling sensation that he was hovering somewhere, keeping an eye on her and his precious Dirty Dozen. What was left
of them anyway. The fact that he had the code, a new one she’d just put into the system earlier that evening before finally making herself leave the office, proved he was doing a lot more than hovering—and from an inside position.

“Pack for Code Yellow, there will be a private transport waiting for you at the airfield on tarmac three.”

Scottie didn’t question the feasibility of flying out of Denver given the current weather system. If Del had a plane on standby, then it could fly her out. “Destination?”

“Montana.”

Their caseload was minimal at the moment. They had only three assignments running. One of them was in Montana. Lucas Blackstone was heading it. He was the last original team member still in the field. She stifled the swift pang of envy.

“Situation?” she asked.

“We don’t have a code for this one.”

That got her attention. “Excuse me?”

“Seems Blackstone has a brother. The brother has been searching for him and somehow managed to track him all the way to Montana.”

“To the Brethren? How did this guy find him? Not from Lucas.”

“That’s what we want to find out. And no, to our knowledge Lucas has no idea of this guy’s existence.”

That part didn’t surprise her, but she breathed a sigh of relief. One of the mandatory qualifications for becoming a Dirty Dozen team member was that one have no family, no friends. Invulnerable. “Who fell down on the job then? Why the hell didn’t someone notify me?
We could have had the brother picked up before he ever got so close.”

“Well, we didn’t know what was going on at first.”

“There’s that
we
again. Del, I’m thrilled to hear your voice, but I’m not real happy here.”

“There’s no time to go into that now. The reason we didn’t pick him up right away was because we didn’t know it was his brother. We thought it was Lucas.”

Scottie rubbed her temple. “What?”

“Lucas Blackstone has a twin brother. As in identical twin.” He didn’t wait for her reaction. “Name is Logan Blackstone. He’s a slippery
hombre
. Way too smart for his good or ours. You know we’re in the critical stages of this mission.”

“Apparently there’s a lot I
don’t
know,” she said. “I didn’t realize my job came with marionette strings, Del.”

He let loose a string of invectives, all in his native Spanish. She fought a sudden smile. She probably wouldn’t recognize him now if she bumped into him in broad daylight, but there was no doubting he was Seve Delgado.

“You’ll get no apologies from me on this, Giardi. You will get an explanation. But not now. This Brethren thing is going to blow wide by New Year’s Eve. Blackstone sent word out that the cult leaders are planning a Jonestown at the stroke of midnight.”

Scottie’s anger and irritation fled. “But we thought—”

“We thought wrong. The drugs they’ve been smuggling down across the border from Canada aren’t for distribution. They’re for—”

“Self-destruction.”

Del didn’t have to confirm. “Normally, I’d say let the crazy bastards kill themselves, including Senator Gladiston’s idiot daughter. But we have an official count of sixteen children. Most under age seven.”

“Oh, Del.”

“
Sí
. We have to get them out. Our original cover of rescuing the good senator’s daughter still gives us the perfect in. If all goes right, we can make everyone happy. I want you to get to Logan and do whatever you have to to keep him the hell out of the way until Lucas wraps this up. If any of the Brethren sight Logan and mistake him for Lucas …” He didn’t have to spell out the implications of having a look-alike blunder unknowingly into such a delicate situation.