Forged in Fire (10 page)

Cold silence throbbed down the line. “We are told the plane’s been grounded.”

So they had their own contacts within PacAtlantic, or perhaps the FBI.

“Yeah, it was the damnedest thing. There was some kind of altercation at the gate across from mine. A woman was attacked. Airport security poured in and started detaining people.”

The silence chilled to ice. “You’re in custody?”

Best to own the information and play it how he wanted. “I tried to help the woman.” He forced a rueful laugh. “Got detained for my efforts. I’m sure it’s just a formality, but I suspect I’ll be taking a later flight than expected. It shouldn’t affect our plans. I’ll still arrive in time for the convention.”

“You’ve switched to the alternative?” A different voice broke in. Flat, rather than cold.

“Yes. I’ll give you a call as soon as I know more.”

“You do that.” The flat voice said. “In the meantime, you should call your sister and let her know your flight’s been delayed.”

Russ’s stride faltered. He almost stopped dead in the hall before he caught himself. “My sister?”

“Jillian Michaels. You’ve got quite the collection of nieces and nephews too, don’t you?” The voice paused, and Russ’s stomach twisted. “We’ve found in the past that it’s in our best interests to know the people we do business with.”

The line went dead.

Very slowly, Russ closed the cell and shoved it into his pocket. His sudden tension, he was relieved to see, hadn’t registered with the guards. Unlike cops, security details weren’t trained to look for signs of stress—like the sudden dampness gluing his shirt to his spine, or the tightness of his fingers.

He’d taken supreme effort to make sure his true identity never surfaced. He’d masked his fingerprints. Altered his appearance. Changed his name. Paid to have his true identity erased from every data bank in existence. The price to delete himself had been exorbitant, but well worth the cost. Because he had a huge weakness which could be used against him.

A sister.

A twin.

How in the hell those bastards had tracked down his true identity, and discovered his erased family, didn’t matter.

They had. End of story.

And if he didn’t deliver exactly what he’d promised, he might not be the only one suffering the punishment of failure.

Jilly and the kids could end up suffering alongside him.

Chapter Seven

Beth was handling the whole someone-just-tried-to-kill-her-thing fine, until she glanced down to find her attacker glaring up at her. Her dead attacker. His muddy brown eyes were starting to glaze, but still fixed on her face with uncanny focus.

An icy tingle started at the crown of her head and slowly, steadily drained down, crystallizing every cell in its wake, immersing her from ears to toes in glacier water. She broke off in mid-argument with Zane and started to shake. She shook so hard she thought her bones were going to shatter, so hard her muscles ached.

The icy shroud sank deeper, chilling her from the inside out.

“Hey.” Zane’s scowl vanished. Concern darkened his eyes. He drew her into his arms, running his palms up and down her rigid, trembling back.

“I’m fine.”

Which was a stupid thing to say, considering her body had frozen into a giant block of ice. Desperate to soak in his warmth, Beth pressed closer, but this time, his heat didn’t penetrate the permafrost enveloping her.

“Shock,” Rawls murmured and she felt a pair of hands that weren’t Zane’s touch her face and reach for her wrist.

“Her pulse is fast, a little thready. She should be sitting down.”

Rawlings voice came from a distance. Somehow it seemed important that he’d lost his southern twang, and she realized that she was using his accent as a barometer—he seemed to lose it when things got tense.

“I’ll find a blanket. Get her down on the floor.”

Suddenly she was moving, but without her legs doing any of the work. And then they were back against the wall, sitting on the floor, with her cradled like an infant in Zane’s lap.

She burrowed closer to his hot body, pressing her face against his chest, the cotton of his t-shirt soft and warm against her cheek, and concentrated on the steady, strong thump-thump-thump of his heart.

How embarrassing.

She hadn’t expected to fall apart like this. She had always been the go-to person in emergencies. The person everyone relied on. Of course, surviving a murder attempt was a lot different than dealing with a broken window or leaking washing machine. She didn’t have any practical experience when it came to life and death situations.

Unlike the man cradling her in his lap.

His heart rate remained slow and steady. His breathing even. His skin warm and dry. There was no sign of adrenaline. No sign of fear. No sign of shock.

But then he was a SEAL, and if she could believe the romances she’d read, the men who graduated onto the teams were a breed apart. His training would have heightened his natural predisposition toward calm action in emergencies. Still, she would have expected some sign of adrenaline.

The fact it was completely absent illustrated how polar opposite they were. While the situation had thrown her into a full blown panic attack, his pulse hadn’t even accelerated.

What in the world would a man like that want with a woman whose life was so dull that fixing a leaky water pipe constituted an emergency?

Chemistry aside, which would eventually burn itself out, they had nothing in common. Nothing to build on. He’d be bored with her the moment the sparks faded. Just like Brad had been. Just like her father had lost interest in her mother.

While opposites might attract, that attraction never lasted. Chemistry might prove a nice distraction for a recreational fling, but counting on it for the long-term would lead to a lifetime of regret.

“Here, tuck this around her,” Rawls said from somewhere above her head.

A lightweight, crinkly space-blanket was draped over her shoulders. Zane anchored it in place by clamping the edges beneath his armpits.

“I’m fine, really,” she said, relieved the words were coherent.

His arms tightened, locking her in place. “Relax. You’re white as snow and still shaking. This material will reflect our body heat. It’s the quickest way to warm you up.”

She was already warming up, almost toasty, as a matter of fact.

“I’m sorry about wigging out on you,” she told his chest, the ice giving way to lethargy.

He ran a soothing hand down her spine. “Someone tried to kill you. You’re entitled.”

“You didn’t.”

“No one tried to strangle me.” His hand continued that slow, comforting glide. Up. Down. Up. Down.

She scrunched her nose in disgust. He wouldn’t have freaked out even if all three terrorists had tried to kill him—at the same time. He would have dispatched them with his habitual calm and coolly cleaned up the mess.

He must have read her mind because he gave a ghost of a laugh and a quick hug. “There’s a big difference, sweetheart—I’m trained for combat. You’re not. Trust me, you’re handling yourself just fine.”

She sighed and snuggled closer. “I’m surprised nobody’s questioned us.”

“They’re waiting for the feds.” Zane shifted her weight, easing her away from the ridge of hard flesh pushing against her bottom.

Good Lord, the man had a perpetual erection.

To her surprise, an answering rush of heat softened the flesh between her legs and her nipples started to tighten. Apparently, now that her muscles were warming up, her libido was too.

Lovely.

“Where do you think they’ll take us?” Not that she cared, but they needed something to distract them.

“It will depend if they have a large enough area here to hold everyone, and enough rooms to separate people during interviews. They may end up shuffling everyone to a different location.”

He cocked his head slightly and studied her face, then stroked her cheek with his knuckles. Whatever he saw must have satisfied him, because he visibly relaxed.

“Your skin’s picking up color.”

“I told you, I’m fine.”

She should be moving, but it felt so good to be held like this. Too good, actually. Her reluctance to distance herself was a clear sign she needed to.

Straightening, Beth forced herself to back out of his lap. His arms tightened, but just for a moment, then released her. She shook off the weird sense of loss and scrambled to her feet.

“We should be looking for the other hijackers,” she said, concentrating on folding the silver blanket.

“We won’t find them. They’ve been warned off.” He rose to his feet with economical ease.

Beth’s hands stilled, slowly she raised her head and searched his face. “Warned off? By who?”

“By whoever warned our three. They were in full flight by the time we got back to the terminal.”

“They knew their operation was compromised,” Cosky agreed, his voice grim. The gaze he turned on Zane was flat. “We’ve got a leak.”

“Not us. Mac didn’t go through channels. He called the FBI directly. The leak didn’t come from HQ1. It had to be the feds.”

“Wait a minute,” Beth protested. “That seems too convenient. I mean how likely is it that your superior would go directly to the people working with the hijackers? Even if the hijackers did have someone on their payroll, the chances they are the same agents your boss talked to is… well… astronomical.”

“Think about it.” Zane turned his head toward Beth. He was in full warrior mode again. Expressionless. Cool. Competent. “Hijacking’s considered an act of terrorism. It wouldn’t take much to find out which agency would be assigned to the investigation. If you control the people assigned to the case, you’d control the investigation and ransom negotiations.”

Cosky surveyed the crowd of curious passengers—dozens of eyes were locked on their small group by the wall—and lifted a dark eyebrow. “Who did Mac talk to? That will give us a place to start looking.”

“I don’t know, but you can bet your ass he’ll be asking his contact some hard questions.”

Rawlings cleared his throat. With a lazy nod, he drew everyone’s attention to the main corridor.

Beth’s gaze deviated to the left. She breathed a sigh of relief on finding a silver hump where she’d been attacked. Somebody had covered the hijacker’s body with a blanket identical to the one Zane’s friend had brought her.

“They found the guns.” Cosky watched impassively as an army of blue suits and plain clothes approached.

Beth turned to stare at the cluster of men. “How can you tell?”

“There’s too damn many of them for anything else.”

“Surprised?” Beth asked, a sense of vindication stirring. She got the distinct impression that Simcosky still didn’t believe her.

He turned his head toward her, those black eyebrows climbing. That small telltale gesture seemed to be the only expression he allowed himself. He was taking the whole Spock thing to extremes.

“I attacked a complete stranger. Knocked him out. Trussed him up like a Thanksgiving turkey. If I hadn’t believed you, he’d still be on his feet.”

Okay, then… Beth didn’t have a clue what to say.
Thank you
didn’t quite fit under the circumstances. Luckily, Cosky didn’t seem to expect a response.

“Game’s on.” Zane stepped up and wrapped his arm around her shoulder. “You remember how we met?”

Obviously, he wasn’t talking about their
real
meeting. “Over the weekend, while hiking.” She frowned; they needed more of a story than that. “What trail? What time? What was I wearing? How did we actually meet? What did we have for dinner? Breakfast the next morning? What time did we leave on Sunday?”

“Lake Nada trail, on the way to the Enchantment lakes. We met Saturday morning, at a stream, filling up water bottles. We hit it off, hiked the trail together, camped together. Dinner was beef stew and chili. Breakfast was bacon and eggs. We left at noon. You were wearing jeans and a t-shirt. Pick a t-shirt.”

She cast her mind over her wardrobe. “I’ve got a Pink Panther t-shirt.” That would be easy enough to remember.

“Pink Panther. Got it.” He bent to nuzzle the side of her neck and chills feathered across her skin.

They’d expect her to know more personal information about him too, wouldn’t they? Even if they’d just met, an exchange about family would have taken place at some point. She tried to convince herself the sudden rise of curiosity was because of what the agents might ask. “Have you been married? Any kids? Do you have brothers? Sisters? Where did you grow up? Are your parents still alive?”

He straightened, and cast a quick glance across the gate room. “No. No. Four brothers—Chance, Webb, Gray, and Dane—no sisters. I was a Navy brat, so I base-hopped. Both parents alive.” Interest sharpened his gaze. “You?”

“Never married, but engaged once.” She felt him tense. Frowning, she waited, but when he didn’t comment she continued. “No children, raised here, in Burien. No siblings and I lost my mom years ago.”

For a moment, it looked like he was going to say something. His hand rose toward her face, before it made contact he shifted and shot another glance toward the corridor. When he turned back, his face had gone flat. Professional.

His arm tightened around shoulders. “Relax. You’ll be fine.”

Beth wasn’t so certain; their story seemed awfully sketchy. What if someone asked her a question that wasn’t on their list? Plus, she’d spent the weekend at home. Granted, she’d been alone, inside the condo and her car had been parked in the garage. Still, one of her neighbors could have seen her. What if the authorities actually checked into their story and someone contradicted their account? A dozen terrifying possibilities loomed in her mind.

“We should just tell the truth.” She dropped her voice and leaned toward Zane. “Eventually someone’s going to expose us, and we’ll both be in trouble.”

Zane shook his head and smiled reassuringly. “It’s too late. Changing the story affects more than us. Mac told the FBI the info was picked up through border-op intel.”

Well, crap, he was right. Plus, they’d identified and subdued the hijackers on the basis of her dream—which meant they had no pictures, no descriptions, no actual proof that the three men Zane and his buddies had incapacitated were a danger to anyone. If she confessed, they’d let the hijackers go. At least this way the terrorists would remain in custody until they found enough proof to nail them.

His attention drifted down to her mottled neck and his eyes darkened. “How are you feeling?”

Beth reached up to brush her throat, wondering how bad the bruises looked. Pretty ugly, she suspected, since every time Zane glanced at them his face turned all grim and tight.

“I’m fine. Really.” Which was surprisingly true. The shaking had vanished and while her neck felt a little swollen and achy, it was easy enough to ignore.

“What do you think’s going to happen next?” She turned to stare across the terminal. An army of blue-suited police officers were gathering in the mouth of the gate room.

“They’ll start moving everyone. Separating people. Conducting interviews.”

He glanced toward the front of the terminal. The cops were mingling with the security guards and heads were turning in their direction.

After a few minutes of discussion, two overweight men in dark slacks and ill-fitting jackets broke away from the cluster of law enforcement and approached them.

“Lieutenant Commander Winters?” the taller of the two said. “I’m Detective Sheridan. If you and your group would follow me.”

They were escorted through a series of corridors and hallways until they were deep within the bowels of the airport. Minutes later they arrived at a conference room. A pair of uniformed officers flanked the double doors. Their detective escorts ushered them inside, only to disappear back down the hall.

The room was moderate in size with a long rectangular table and plastic orange chairs. Rather than taking a seat, the three men lounged against the spackled wall. Did they have some weird distaste for sitting? With a disgusted shake of her head, Beth marched over to the table, pulled out a chair and plopped down. After a pregnant pause, Zane joined her.

Maybe a quarter of an hour crawled by before the conference room doors finally blew open and two hard-faced, middle-aged men strode in.

“Feds,” Cosky said, without lowering his voice.

Beth wondered how he could tell. Other than the fit of their clothing, they looked like the detectives who’d escorted them through the terminal. Sharp, assessing eyes surveyed the group before zeroing in on Zane.