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  Joe shrugged. “I’m a language specialist,” he said, shortly. “It’s no big deal.”

  “How many languages do you speak?”

  “Eight,” he said.

  “Eight,” Veronica repeated. The way he said it, it was nothing. She spoke English and French and a very small bit of Spanish, and that hadn’t been nothing. In fact, it had been a great deal of work.

  “Someone in the team has to be able to communicate with the locals,” he said, as if that explained everything. His SEAL Team needed him to speak eight different languages, so he’d learned eight different languages.

  “What else do you specialize in?” she asked.

  Joe shrugged. “The usual SEAL tricks.”

  “Balancing beach balls on your nose and barking like a dog?”

  He finally smiled. “Not quite,” he said.

  “I assume some kind of swimming is involved,” Veronica said. “Or else you wouldn’t be called SEALs.”

  “Yeah, swimming,” he said. “And scuba diving. Skydiving. Parasailing.” He started ticking the list off on his fingers. “Explosives, underwater and on land. Weapons and other high-tech war toys. Martial arts and some less conventional hand-to-hand techniques. Computers. Locks. Alarm systems. And so on.”

  “Admiral Forrest said you were a sharpshooter,” Veronica said. “An expert marksman.”

  “Everyone in SEAL Team Ten is,” he replied, shrugging it off.

  “Besides languages, what else do you specialize in?” Veronica asked.

  He gazed at her for several long seconds. “I know a little more than the other guys when it comes to the high-tech war toys,” he finally said. “I’m also a classified expert in jungle, desert and arctic survival. You know about the languages and my…ability to mimic. Comes in handy at times. I can fly any type of aircraft, from a chopper to a Stealth.” He smiled, but it lacked the wattage of his usual grins. “Hell, I could probably handle the space shuttle if I had to. And I’m an expert mechanic. I could fix it if it breaks. There’s some other stuff that you don’t want to know, and some that I can’t tell you.”

  Veronica nodded slowly. Admiral Forrest had told her much of this before, but she hadn’t believed it. She probably still wouldn’t believe it if she hadn’t heard Joe speaking perfect French. He could do all those incredible things, superhuman things, and yet it was his humanity—his compassion and kindness for a dying child—that had moved her the most. Moved her profoundly.

  She looked down at her hands, folded nervously in her lap. “Joe, about this morning,” she started to say.

  “It’s okay, Ronnie. You can forget about it,” he interrupted, knowing that she was talking about their kiss. His eyes were guarded as he glanced at her again. He looked away, out the window of the jet. “It was…something we both needed right then. But, it…didn’t mean anything, and I know you’re not going to let it happen again. No more mistakes, right? So we don’t need to talk about it. In fact, I’d rather not talk about it.”

  “But…”

  “Please,” he said, turning to look at her again.

  It didn’t mean anything. His words suddenly penetrated, and Veronica stared at him, her mouth slightly open. She closed her mouth, and looked back down at her hands.

  She sat there in silence, afraid to move, afraid to breathe, afraid to think, because she was afraid of what she’d feel.

  It didn’t mean anything.

  That kiss had been more than a kiss. It had been an exchange of emotions, a joining of souls. It had been filled with feelings she didn’t want to feel, powerful feelings for a man who scared her more than she wanted to admit. A man who specialized in making war. A man who risked his life as a matter of course. A man she’d tried to keep her distance from. Tried and failed.

  She’d kissed him. In public. And he thought it didn’t mean anything?

  The seat-belt light flashed on, and the pilot’s voice came over the loudspeaker.

  “We’re approaching Boston. Please return to your seats.”

  Joe stared out the window as if he’d never seen Boston before, as if the aerial view was infinitely more interesting than anything he could see inside the jet.

  Veronica forced her voice to sound even and controlled. “We’ll be arriving in Boston in a few minutes,” she said. Joe lifted his head in acknowledgment, but still didn’t look in her direction. “From the airport, it’s only about a fifteen-minute drive downtown to the hotel where the charity luncheon is being held. Your speech will be on a TelePrompTer. It’ll be brief and all you’ll have to do is read it.

  “This evening, there’s a private party on Beacon Hill,” she said, wishing she felt as cool and detached as she sounded. Wishing she didn’t feel like crying. It didn’t mean anything. “The host and hostess are friends of Wila’s. And mine. So I won’t be in the surveillance van tonight.”

  He turned and frowned at her, his dark eyes piercing. “What? Why not?”

  “Ambassador Freder will be in the van,” Veronica said, purposely not meeting the intensity of Joe’s gaze. “I’ll be attending my friends’ party. There’ll be virtually no risk for you. Consider this another one of Tedric’s obligations that couldn’t be gotten out of.”

  She could feel him watching her, giving her a long, measuring look. “There’s never no risk,” he said. “I’d feel much better if you were in the van.”

  “We won’t stay long,” she said, glancing up at him.

  “Just long enough to get shot, maybe, huh?” Joe said. He forced a smile. “Relax, Ronnie, I was kidding.”

  “I don’t think getting shot is ever funny,” Veronica said tightly.

  “Sorry,” he said. God, she was strung as tight as he was. Probably the tension from worrying about his reaction to this morning’s kiss. No doubt the relief hadn’t set in yet.

  Sitting next to her like this was torture. Joe jerked his thumb toward the window. “It’s been a while since I’ve been in New England,” he said. “Mind if I…?”

  Veronica shook her head. “No, that’s… Go right ahead and…”

  He’d already turned to look out the window.

  She’d been dismissed.

  Rather than stare at the back of Joe’s head, agonizing over his impersonal words, Veronica ignored the seat-belt sign and stood, moving toward the front of the plane where there were several empty seats.

  It didn’t mean anything.

  Maybe not to Joe, but that kiss had meant something to Veronica.

  It meant she’d been a real fool.

  14

  Salustiano Vargas, the former right hand of the man known by most of the world only as Diosdado, stared at the telephone in his cheap motel room as it rang. It was hotter than hell in there and the air conditioner chugged away to no avail.

  He had told no one, no one, where he would be staying. Still, he knew damn well who was on the other end of the line. There was nowhere he could run where Diosdado couldn’t find him.

  He picked it up after the seventeenth ring, unable to stand it any longer. “Yes?”

  Diosdado said only one word. “When?”

  “Soon,” Vargas replied, closing his eyes. “You have my word.”

  “Good.” The line was cut without a goodbye.

  Vargas sat in the heat for several moments, not moving.

  It truly was hotter than hell in this cheap room.

  When he stood, it took him only a few minutes to pack up his things. He carried his suitcase to his rented car and headed across town—toward a fancy, expensive resort. He couldn’t afford to stay there, but he would put it on his credit card. He wanted luxury. He wanted clean sheets, a firm bed. He wanted room service and a view of a sparkling swimming pool with young girls lounging around it. He wanted the cool, sweet, fresh air of a fancy hotel room.

  He didn’t want hell. He’d be there soon enough.

  As the applause died down, Joe smiled in the direction of the TV news cameras. “Good afternoon,” he said. “It is an honor and a p