Blogger Bundle Volume VIII: SBTB's Harlequins That Hooked You Read online

  “My office is polluted,” she muttered in an undertone into the tissues. “It’ll be months before all the pollen is out of here.”

  MacLendon looked down at her and saw that in spite of her grousing mumble, there was a smile on her lips. She was neither as tough nor as gruff as she pretended. Feeling faintly amused by her predicament, he crossed to the coffee maker she kept on the file cabinet and started a pot brewing. At last the final flower was gone and the door closed, leaving them alone.

  “You shouldn’t be out of bed yet, Andrea.” He sat in the armchair facing her desk and crossed his legs. Guessing she wouldn’t want his overt concern, he masked it behind what he hoped was a professional interest.

  She merely looked at him without arguing, an indication of just how weak she was feeling. Her smile was tight, her green eyes empty.

  “You may be right, sir. But my own company is driving me crazy.” She sneezed again, then sniffled. “Damn!”

  “The man you shot got away, Andrea. Considering what a .38 slug can do at that range, you must have just grazed him.”

  “They told me.” Her eyes were dark, unreadable.

  “And you’re going to get a commendation whether you want it or not.”

  “Yes, sir.” She sounded hollow, uncaring.

  MacLendon suddenly longed to seize her, shake her, force the tears out of her and then soothe away her pain. His knuckles turned white as he gripped the arms of his chair. He couldn’t do it, couldn’t bridge the gulf that had to remain between them for her sake. He’d known this woman was going to be a handful. He just hadn’t guessed what kind.

  “Andrea, you can’t come to work in a sweat suit.” It was a dumb remark, but all he could think of to say.

  “No, sir. Monday I’ll be in uniform. One of the nurses at the BOQ offered to help me dress until I can do it myself.” Please, she thought. Please don’t order me to take sick leave. Don’t lock me away all alone with the memory of the way the revolver kicked in my hand. Don’t leave me with the way I sighted him with perfect calm and deliberation. The way I never even hesitated.

  His icy blue eyes were watching her, assessing, measuring. She really did feel as if he could see through to the barrenness of her soul, and she wondered what he thought of her, really thought of her.

  “Captain,” he said quietly, “you’re not the first cop to shoot a man in the line of duty, nor will you be the last.”

  “No, sir.”

  “It’s not easy to live with. I know. But we do learn to.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Moreover, you didn’t kill anyone, so at least you don’t have that on your conscience.”

  “But I do,” she said grimly. “I aimed to kill.”

  “That’s what you’re supposed to do, damn it!” He jumped up in frustration. “The man had just tried to kill you! If he’d had something bigger than that peashooter, we’d be burying you in little bloody pieces. You had no choice.”

  “No, sir. And that disturbs me as much as what I did.”

  “I see.” He rubbed his chin and studied her. There was no argument for that. Deeply troubled, he asked, “Will you resign?”

  Her chin came up, a welcome spark of her old self. MacLendon was so glad to see it that he could have done a jig.

  “No, sir,” she said coolly. “I’m not a quitter. I’ll get over this, or around it or under it, somehow.”

  “I’m sure you will, Captain.” Thank God, he thought. Thank God.

  “Well,” he said when he had his relief under control, “I’ll let you come back to duty on one condition.”

  “Yes?”

  “That you take off and go home when you get tired. And that you don’t take that damn brick with you. Give Lieutenant Dolan a chance to discover the joys of command responsibility.”

  She cocked her head. “That sounds more like two conditions.”

  “So it’s two. Do you agree?”

  Andrea smiled faintly, glad to know her recent escapade hadn’t raised her to a level of holiness that prevented MacLendon from showing his irritation with her. Good grief, a couple of times he’d even looked at her as if she were fragile.

  “I agree, sir.”

  “Now, promise me you’ll take off when you get tired.”

  “I just agreed—”

  “Agreeing and promising to obey are two different things. I want your word on it, Captain.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Andrea,” he said silkily, “say it. In so many words.”

  She glared at him, then gritted out the words. “I give you my word to go home when I get tired and not take my radio with me.”

  “Thank you.” One corner of his mouth lifted, and the fan of laugh lines by his eyes deepened. Rising, he went to pour himself some coffee. “Can I pour you some?”

  “Yes, thank you.”

  He set a cup in front of her, then returned to his chair. “Now to the part that you’re really interested in.”

  Stifling another sneeze, Andrea looked up quickly at him. “Sir?”

  “The part about what we know and what we don’t know, and what I’ve done about it. You know the intruder got away. There was actually no evidence that he succeeded in crossing the perimeter, because none of the electronic alarms were triggered. At first we assumed that you scared him off before he achieved his purpose. It appears, however, that he either evaded the electronic systems somehow, or he wasn’t working alone, because something did happen.”

  Andrea was all ears now, aches and pains and sniffles forgotten. “What, sir?”

  “On Monday, one of my bombers returned to base with a six-foot diameter hole in the cockpit. The pilot figures he hit a goose.”

  Andrea nodded. It happened frequently in the kind of low-level flying B-52s did, when they practiced bomb runs, or practiced flying into Russia beneath the radar beams. A goose might not be terribly big, but it packed one hell of a wallop when it collided head-on with a plane traveling at five hundred miles per hour. “So?”

  “So, Andrea, I seem to remember the geese flew south quite a while ago.”

  So they had. She sat up straighter and winced when the wound in her shoulder pulled. “But…maybe there was a crazy goose, like that whale that got lost in Alaska.”

  “No goose feathers. No blood. I called in the OSI.”

  The Office of Special Investigations was the Air Force’s FBI. Nobody liked the OSI. Andrea liked least of all the thought of them tramping around in her domain. Anger flared in her green eyes. “Was that necessary, Colonel?”

  “I think so.” MacLendon rose, sighing, and began to pace. “I figured you’d be furious, but I’m afraid I can’t let that matter. If you’re honest, you’ll admit that they’re a hell of a lot better trained and better equipped to conduct an investigation of this sort than the Security Police Squadron. It’s no reflection on you, Andrea. None at all. It’s just the truth. You know damn well that if something like this happened to a civilian plane, federal investigators would be called in simply because they’ve got the expertise and equipment local authorities lack. We’re in the same boat here, and I expect your full cooperation.”

  Andrea eyed him grimly. “Yes, sir.”

  Dare came to a halt and looked across the desk at her with a faint, humorless smile. “And they’re here undercover. Only you and I know about it, and only you and I and a couple of aircraft mechanics know it wasn’t a goose that goosed that plane.”

  Andrea tried to smile at his attempted humor but failed miserably.

  “Aw, Andrea,” he said, his voice dropping. That valiant attempt at a smile was his undoing. He had just enough sense left to ensure that the door was tightly closed before he came around the desk to her side.

  The next thing she knew, he’d caught her by the waist, lifted her from her chair, and gently tucked her right side against him. His left arm wrapped snugly around her back, and his right hand caught her chin, lifting it. He looked down into her startled green eyes.

  �