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Grabbing her jewelry she went into the bathroom.
“No problem. I’ll let Paul know. He’s a proponent of flexible working hours, as I’m sure he told you, and you have a valid reason for coming in late.” Maggie’s soothing tone reflected professionalism and concern. “Are you okay, Joy?”
“Yes, yes. I’ll be in as soon as possible. Thank you.”
She hung up and hoped Maggie was right—that Paul wouldn’t think twice about her tardiness.
Joy hated being late for anything.
After she applied her makeup in record time, despite her trembling hands, she took a minute to take in her full appearance.
And snorted.
She threw her mascara into the vanity drawer. How could she care about her appearance when she’d witnessed what could very well have been a terrorist attack?
Her stomach churned, and she regretted that last cup of coffee as it threatened to come back up. GERD and its annoying symptoms was how her body handled the stress, the overload of information and emotions; she was aware of that. It aggravated her gastrointestinal problems. But understanding her physical coping mechanisms didn’t make them any less bothersome.
The beating of helicopter blades and wail of sirens had been constant. She should take the long route to the office and avoid the shore road, but she knew she wouldn’t. She’d want to see what kind of crash recovery site had been set up. Of course it would be on West Beach, practically next to her house.
Back in her sunroom she couldn’t take her gaze off the shoreline. Sure enough, several people were walking the rocky stretch in front of her house, two hundred feet below her vantage point. Most were in some sort of uniform, either Navy or local emergency management. A couple of the responders wore windbreakers with identifying letters like “OHPD” for Oak Harbor Police Department and “US NAVY.”
The police officer or deputy sent to take her statement probably wouldn’t learn anything new from her. The people who could use her eyewitness testimony were higher up on the chain of command and in Washington DC, able to make decisions that affected national defense. As a civilian, however, with no immediate access to official Navy communications systems, she had no recourse.
A sharp rap at the back door made her jump. She hadn’t seen anyone walk up the side of her property, most of which was visible from the sunroom.
That couldn’t be the police officer, not yet. It’d only been five minutes, and it took at least ten to drive to West Beach from downtown Oak Harbor, where the police station was located. And a sheriff’s deputy would have to come from Coupeville, twenty minutes away.
Maybe the sheriff’s deputy was already out this way. That was it. She forced herself to relax. And then froze.
Why hadn’t the cop used her front door?
She crept quietly into the kitchen, wishing like hell she’d left for work before she saw the explosion.
She saw the tall silhouette through the door’s window the moment she stepped onto the kitchen’s hardwood floor. The cream curtains she’d hung last weekend meant she couldn’t make out her visitor clearly, but based on the height and breadth of the shadow, it was a man. No evidence of a uniform hat.
Her new suit felt too tight, the tailored jacket too restrictive. What if she needed to defend herself? She tore off the peplum coat, her hands flailing as she freed her arms from the sleeves.
She didn’t have a weapon.
As her jacket fell to the floor she searched under the kitchen sink for something heavy.
She really needed to get a baseball bat to keep next to the kitchen door, besides the one next to her bed. She grasped the cool neck of the small kitchen fire extinguisher.
Tiptoeing to the door, her senses on high alert, she tried to remember every self-defense move she’d ever learned. Today’s events had been far from routine or normal. She wasn’t going to take a chance that her visitor was a friendly one.
* * *
BRAD HEARD HER moving around the house. Joy hadn’t had Spec Ops training, that was for sure—judging by the fact that she’d parked her car in the driveway, allowing any passerby to determine whether she was home. Not to mention that he’d been able to get to her side entrance so easily. She should have a tall fence around the back of her property, with a locked gate. And a more secure side door; this one wouldn’t be hard to kick in.
There’d been no barking, either, so she didn’t have a dog to protect her.
As he listened to her shuffle about in the kitchen, he wondered if she might be grabbing a weapon.
Unlikely. She’d never struck him as the type to harbor a weapon, no matter how legal it might be. That was the advantage someone like Joy had over him—she’d never seen what he’d seen, never had to face down the bad guys except on paper or in a courtroom. She could still believe in the inherent goodness of humanity.
The curtains moved a fraction, enough for her to see him, make positive identification. She’d remember him—but not like this, all muddy, wet, cut up and bruised.
It’d been a rough morning.
“What do you want?”
Her voice was clear despite the door between them.
“Joy, it’s me, Brad Iverson. From Norfolk.”
The door opened.
“I know who you are, Brad.”
He didn’t give himself a chance to absorb the freshness of her beauty, or to register the wariness of her eyes as she looked at him. With moves he’d employed countless times, he wedged his foot in the door before he reached in, twisted the fire extinguisher out of her hand and clamped a hand over her mouth—her very soft mouth. Then he pushed himself inside the house and maneuvered her up against the nearest counter. It took every bit of his focus, every ounce of his strength, to make sure he treated her as gently as possible.
He had one arm wrapped around her waist, confining her arms against her torso, with her hands on his chest. His other arm was across her chest, his hand over her mouth.
As soon as he looked into her eyes, he removed his hand. If she was going to scream—and she had every right—it would be now. There were law enforcement agents, all over the area and certainly within hearing distance. It’d taken him almost half an hour to climb up the cliff.
Joy stayed silent except for the shaky whoosh of her breath. It smelled sweet and minty, as if she’d just brushed her teeth. His palm seemed to burn where her lips had pressed against it, and he couldn’t stop looking at her full lips, her face. Her eyes were the same color he remembered. Cinnamon brown. They watched him with unnerving steadiness, missing nothing.
He lowered his arm but kept her in his embrace. This was the only time he’d ever felt her so close. Why rush it?
“I can’t explain everything, but I need to know if you’re willing to trust me. I’m in the middle of an undercover op, and I can’t get caught by the police right now. You’re my last hope before I get hauled away and blow the case.”
She blinked. He felt the tension in her legs, her thigh muscles. She wanted to kick him, to knee him. He got it—and had anticipated her tactics. He held her tight and secure.
“Odd habit you have, Brad. Getting yourself into serious trouble that isn’t your fault.”
God, he’d missed her honesty, the unshakeable confidence that bordered on sheer nerve.
And her beauty.
“You can say no and I’ll be gone. You can deny ever seeing me. I’m in a load of trouble and I need your help, Joy.”
CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_32e7cc29-dcb6-567c-ab02-6775bc26bf93)
“I WAS SUPPOSED to report to work twenty minutes ago. It’s my first day.” She hadn’t been able to take her gaze off Brad since he’d forced himself into the kitchen. And pressed his body against hers. She still hadn’t told him that she was waiting for the police.
He groaned. “Of course it’s your first day. It’d be too easy if you could’ve taken a day or two off.”
“A day or two?” She clutched the granite counter at her back. It was the only way to keep her hands from shaking because of the mini-shocks of awareness coursing through her veins.
Brad stood in the middle of the kitchen, his hands bloodied. His face was scraped and his clothing had dirt and sand on it. A briar stem clung to one arm of his torn black jacket, and his dark cargo pants were nothing like his Navy fatigue uniform. These pants fit him more tightly; they had to have a lot of stretch to let him move as well as he did. She could all too easily imagine the steely muscles beneath.
“Wait. How did you get here? Were you in my backyard?”
“Something like that, yeah.” He absently picked off some of the brambles.
“I never saw you. Are you hurt?”
“No. I’m fine. I’m on a tight timeline here, Joy. I don’t suppose you still have base access?”
“No, I mean yes—for two more days before my ID expires. I’ve been on terminal leave for the past two months. I got out, Brad.”
“I know. We’re Facebook friends, remember?”
How could she forget? Whenever she wanted to torment herself with the whys and why nots of her love life, she looked at his profile, which he’d made under a fake name. He’d messaged her when he requested she friend him on Facebook to make sure she knew it was him. He’d only ever posted one photo—of a sunset over the view of the Atlantic from Dam Neck, Virginia. She’d imagined them there, together, in different circumstances hundreds of times since they’d wrapped up Farid’s case.
Since she’d helped Brad stay out of trouble.
“What good will having my military ID do? Aren’t you still in the reserves? What about your ID?”
“I don’t have it. Truth is, I haven’t got any ID on me.”
Interesting.
“Any reason why?”
His green eyes revealed very little, but his slumped shoulders put the fear of God into her.
“Brad, what happened? Please tell me you weren’t involved in the explosion.”
His head snapped up.
“You know about it?”
She pushed away from the counter and crossed her arms. “I saw it. From my sunroom.”
“Did you see the aircraft?”
“I saw two F-18 Growlers, followed by a P-3 and a P-8. They flew west for a minute or two before I saw the fireball. I was worried it was one of the planes at first.”
“Did you see anything else that seemed suspicious?”
“No more from me, Brad. You said you needed help. If you want my help, you have to cut me in.”
He rubbed his hands across the back of his head and neck, much as she’d seen countless military men do after they removed their uniform covers. It was a habitual reaction for him, a sign of his stress, perhaps. His dark hair was longer than he’d worn it as a sailor, longer than Navy regulation by far. The lustrous curls at the nape of his neck made her grip her upper arms to keep from reaching across and touching him.
He was her idea of beautiful, if the adjective could be applied to a man.
“I’m FBI now. I’ve been working undercover trying to break up a cell.”
FBI. That was the “government job” he had. On Facebook he never got specific.
So he’d been out of the active-duty Navy this entire time. She’d thought his murky job description was because of his SEAL designation.
You could have gotten together.
No. She’d dismissed her attraction to Brad. Or rather, locked it away. Months ago.
Hadn’t she?
He shook his head. “Damn, it wasn’t supposed to go down like this.”
His profile was achingly familiar. Yet instead of the hardened strength she remembered, he gave off an air of uncertainty. Brad, vulnerable?
“How about some coffee?” She asked for him as much as for herself. She needed an immediate task to keep her thoughts where they belonged. If she was going to help Brad she needed to listen to his story instead of thinking about how sexy he looked standing in her kitchen.
* * *
“YOU’VE GOT UNTIL the police officer shows up. You can shower after I leave for work, wash and dry your clothes, make whatever food you need.” She handed him her largest mug, the one with the Navy JAG crest on it.
He raised his eyebrows in acknowledgement.
This was the man she’d come to understand first briefly in Cuba, and then Norfolk. He missed nothing; no detail was too minute to him.
“The cops?”
“I reported the explosion. They asked me to wait here until someone can take my report.”
“So I’m not safe here.”
“You’re safe for now. Tell me what you know, Iverson.”
“I’m working an undercover op. Let’s just call it against the bad guys for now. My job is to infiltrate them and monitor any suspicious activity. I assumed I was bringing in the suspects today. Things didn’t go according to my assumptions.”
He took a long pull of his coffee. The dirt under his fingernails made her wonder if he’d had to climb up from West Beach to get here.
Was that possible? The cliff was a straight drop.
Brad was a trained SEAL and now an undercover agent for the FBI. Scaling a cliff was all in a day’s work for him.
“You climbed up the cliff, didn’t you?”
He ignored her and continued his explanation. “This morning I was supposed to monitor the Sound from West Beach, as instructed by the suspects. I think, and so does my team at the Bureau, that they may want to hit the Naval Air Station since they’ve been surveilling the area for a month. Last night one of the suspects called and told me I should watch the horizon from West Beach very closely this morning.”
“And?”
“I had my team figure out what was on the docket for the squadrons on NAS Whidbey for the next several days. This morning is the start of a major West Coast Fleet exercise. When I put it together with what the suspects were feeding me, I took the initiative and decided to be out on the water instead of on the beach.”
Dread seemed to wrap itself around her.
