Distinguished Service & Every Move You Make (Uniformly Hot!) (10 page)

17

“A
RE
WE
READY
?”

Funny, was it really only yesterday he’d asked Geneva the same question prior to going to lunch with his parents?

Was it really that morning he’d said those other words he’d never uttered in his life?

I love you…

Not only had he said them, he’d typed them. They were in black and white, unmistakable, permanently evidenced.

Was it possible he’d never said them before? Not even to Janine? Not even to his parents? His grandfather? His brother?

Yet he’d texted them to Geneva.

And he’d meant them.

He scrubbed the back of his neck, trying to ease the tension there.

Love. He felt it. For his family. His friends. And he had felt it for Janine.

And now for Geneva.

But it wasn’t something he’d thought about a great deal. It was an obvious statement that required action, not words, similar to his military lifestyle.

Then why had he been moved to say them this morning?

And were the words welcome?

He scrubbed his neck harder, fighting to review his checklist. Post-coital misstep. Yeah, that’s what he could put it down to. The sex had been so incredible, he’d still been half out of his mind. Capable of saying anything.

Still, that didn’t quite cut it. What was happening between them was different from the challenges he faced at work, even though they were no less intense. There were road signs posted all over the place. Unfortunately, he was spending so much time enjoying the ride, he wasn’t really registering the signs until after he had passed them. And there were no U-turns to be had.

And if he could? He didn’t know.

Reece came up. “Ready, willing and able, sir.”

“Ready, willing and able.”

And they were. At least as much as they could be.

When all was said and done, all they could do was their best.

“Good,” he said. “Oh, and Reece? I want you to take the lead today.”

The other man hesitated. “Sir?”

He grinned. “She’s all yours.”

“Are you leaving the premises?”

“No. But while I’ll be listening in, I won’t be in contact.”

At least not unless there was an emergency.

He planned to move at will, no worries about calling shots and overseeing details: all those had been taken care of and Reece was more than capable of overseeing them.

He needed to be on the ground.

Alone.

“Very well, sir,” Reece said.

“Good. There’s an hour before departure. Do what you need to do to prepare your men.”

Reece did as he was asked and Mace took the opportunity to slip from the room.

He ran into one of Norman’s men outside the door. The guy had been looking for him.

He shook his head. “Sorry. The man to talk to is Reece.”

He vaguely heard an objection but gave it little attention as he continued walking down the hall.

* * *

A
TAKE
ON
the street hustler’s shell game. Find the car, any car; which one held General Norman?

Except in this case the question wasn’t which one, but rather did any of the five hold the man?

That was the tact Mace decided to take en route to today’s lunchtime rally, scheduled to make the noon news coverage, not just locally, but nationally. He was coming to understand this was the way most of these rallies were done. Maximum exposure was the name of the game.

But with maximum exposure came maximum risk.

As he listened to the team communicate via his earpiece, he mentally reviewed the plans. The cars were due to pull out in five minutes. But that wasn’t all that was on his mind; he’d been working hard to try to uncover the identity of the gunman from the last outing. While his sources had spat up a couple dozen likely suspects matching his physical description and MO, Mace had the feeling they were dealing with someone off the grid. For the guy to have felt comfortable enough to move so freely, he had to be relatively sure he wouldn’t be easy to find.

Either that or he was psychopathic and was unconsciously looking to get caught.

It was a toss-up which was more dangerous…

He accessed his cell phone, checking for texts. He knew who he was hoping to hear from, but the queue was empty other than brief channel communications from Reece.

He rubbed his thumb pad over the keys then put the phone back into his pocket.

“We’re rolling…”

Reece’s announcement sent him into motion.

He’d changed from his security detail clothing into jeans, a green T-shirt, brown suede jacket and a Bronco’s ball cap, going for as nondescript as possible in the hopes that the suspect wouldn’t recognize him if their paths happened to cross again.

He stood across the street, half a block up from the hotel, which gave him a clear view of the parking lot entrance and all points in between. He’d just bought a paper from a corner kiosk and tucked it under his arm, looking everywhere but directly at the cars exiting onto the street one by one.

There were so many windows, both inside and outside the hotel. The suspect could be in any one of them.

He eyed pedestrian and automotive traffic, thinking everyone he saw could be the suspect…including the woman with blond hair and large glasses.

He headed in the same direction as the convoy and took out his cell phone, pretending to answer a call and consult his watch.

He made out the sound of a siren.

While the sheriff’s office was involved in the detail, they weren’t supplying an official escort. So that meant whatever was going on didn’t involve them.

He watched as a fire truck pulled into the intersection a block up.

Or did it involve them?

Shit.

He contacted Reece. “Looks like we’ve got a problem.”

And he didn’t think it was by accident…

* * *

G
ENEVA
SAT
AT
THE
DINER
counter, her fingers wrapped around a coffee cup although she couldn’t have swallowed if she tried. She was in a lull between customers, waiting for the local news to come on at noon in the hopes that they’d be covering Norman’s visit.

She checked her cell phone: nothing.

Not that she expected anything. She knew Mace was busy. Doubly so since the rally was due to begin in a few short minutes.

Still, she’d hoped for something.

Of course, she could always text him. But she didn’t want to seem needy. And after falling back to sleep for a while earlier, she’d wondered if she should have said something in response to his proclamation. At the very least, she should have acknowledged it. Had she said those same words and he not responded…

She turned her coffee cup in circle. Of course, Mace wasn’t like her. And she didn’t think he’d obsess the way she probably would have.

Of course, she wouldn’t have guessed Mace to be the type to say those words, either…

Trudy turned the television up, pretending it was something she always did, but Geneva knew she’d done it for her as much as to satisfy her own interest. Talk around the diner was still all about what had gone down the other day. And the fact that Trudy and the crew knew Mace…well, it only made it infinitely more interesting.

“We’re breaking into regular programming a couple of minutes early for the noon news update. There appears to be something unusual going on surrounding General Norman’s rally today. If you’ll remember, it was only two days ago that…”

Geneva tuned out the newscaster’s voice. Her gaze was glued to the live footage being run. There was a fire truck blocking an intersection in downtown Denver a couple of blocks up from where the reporter said Norman was staying, and a five-car procession stopped while traffic was backed up, bumper to bumper, behind them.

She felt like she’d swallowed her coffee cup and it was stuck in her throat as she tried to spot Mace.

“What’s going on?” Tiffany asked, coming up beside her.

Trudy was the one who answered from the other side of the counter, quickly explaining what they’d heard so far before hushing the waitress and everyone else. She grabbed the remote to turn the volume up even further.

“The guy’s a stationary target now,” Mel said, peeking his head through the service window.

“Looks like it’s just a fire or something,” Trudy said.

“Right,” another male customer said, leaving his table to stand closer to the TV in the corner. “Looks like a setup to me.”

Geneva felt suddenly dizzy at the thought that Mace was in one of those cars, an unwitting target of the man threatening Norman’s life.

She took out her cell phone: still nothing.

“You okay?” Trudy asked, taking the stool next to her.

She nodded, but couldn’t say anything as she continued staring at the television screen. She didn’t dare blink for fear she’d miss something.

The reporter filled them all in on the details from the other day and footage from the event was run.

“Wait, hold on a minute,” the reporter’s voice broke in during his explanation. “Looks like something is starting to happen…”

The footage continued to run even as he spoke, nearly driving Geneva straight out of her skin as she willed the camera to switch back to live action.

“It appears the police department is clearing the street behind the procession…yes, yes, they are. Officers are directing traffic to side streets. The last of the procession cars is backing up.”

Then, just like that, there was a flash of light and the camera went dead, cutting off the feed.

“Trent? Trent, are you still with us?”

The female news anchor held her hand to her ear as if listening through an earpiece when an image finally came back on. She appeared to realize she was back on the air and removed her hand, her expression one of shock.

Oh, God, no…

18

H
OLY
SHIT
!

Mace watched as the second to last car exploded in a bright, yellow ball of flame. Broken glass and flying metal moldings hit surrounding buildings, taking out windows.

For a split second, he was back in Iraq and a convoy car had hit an IED.

Then he blinked and brought the current sight back into focus.

“Stay put!” he shouted into his mouthpiece. “Repeat, do
not
get out of the car!”

He suspected taking the last car out was an attempt to get everyone out and allow for an open shot on Norman.

All the cars were designed with just such a scenario in mind—essentially the vehicle portions housed safety pods engineered to withstand just such an attack. That meant the two security personnel in the subject car should be okay, with little more than a few cuts and bruises.

Norman himself wasn’t in any of the cars. In fact, right about now he was arriving at the rally site in an unmarked, unrelated vehicle that had left the hotel ten minutes before the rest of them.

Had it been a car bomb? Seemed likely. Still, Mace found himself eyeing the surrounding buildings. His gaze caught on a wisp of smoke coming from an open window some ten floors up. His first clue that this was the real deal was that the window was even open at all in a business structure where windows were required to be closed due to safety issues that had nothing to do with rally processions and controversial political figures.

Even as he listened to Reece ably direct the action on the ground, he rushed the door to the business building, mentally mapping out exits. He was going to get this guy, come hell or high water…

* * *

W
HERE
WAS
HE
?

Geneva didn’t dare leave the support of the diner. Normally the lunch crowd was replaced by the dinner one, but today no one was leaving and the eatery was quickly filled to capacity by those watching the action being replayed on the local television station that had switched to live programming. It had been some time since Colorado Springs had seen this much activity and its residents were drawn together to experience it together.

Unfortunately, Geneva’s connection was a little more direct.

Why didn’t he call?

“Anything?” Trudy asked as she passed.

Geneva was standing in the middle of the diner floor, her arms filled with plates of burgers and fries even as she checked her cell phone. She shook her head, put her phone back in her apron pocket and continued on to Table Three.

Following the abrupt cut-off of live coverage earlier, the five-minute wait as a new connection was set up ranked up there as some of the longest of her life. The on-the-ground reporter and his cameraman were fine, it was explained, but their equipment had been taken out by the blast.

And what a blast it had been, too. At the first sight of the broken car sitting in the middle of a blackened circle on the downtown Denver street, Geneva had nearly projectile vomited, imagining Mace inside the vehicle.

That’s when she began texting…

She told herself not to. That he was probably fine and that Mace had his hands full and the last thing on his mind would be her and her active imagination. But she hadn’t been able to help herself.

Somewhere after the tenth panicked text, she’d forced herself to stop, even though her dread continued to grow.

It couldn’t be good, his unresponsiveness.

So instead she’d watched coverage along with everyone else, both of the rally that the general had made it to safely even though all five cars in the procession remained at a standstill on a downtown street, blocked on one end by a fire truck that was now needed, and the disable vehicle. She’d gasped when firemen had gained access to the car, pulling out two men. Were either of them Mace? She’d run up to the television and stood directly underneath, not daring to blink as the reporter narrated events.

Ultimately, it was decided both men were fine…and neither of them was Mace.

At one point, she’d ordered herself to stop. Mace was a military pro and episodes of this nature were a regular part of his job.

But this wasn’t Afghanistan: this was Colorado. And stuff like this wasn’t supposed to happen.

After delivering the plates and refilling coffee cups, she caught herself standing in front of the television again, coffeepot in one hand, thumbnail of her other between her teeth. At this point, they were merely rehashing earlier events. There was no new information, no footage that included a shot of Mace.

It was just after five and while “Breaking News” was stamped in a special red icon in the upper right of the screen, the station had rolled into its usual pre-news hour.

She found it ironic that one of her basic reasons for never dating a man in the military had been because of the long separations that frequently found the object of a stateside lover’s attention wandering. She’d never really considered the risk angle—the fact that the lover might wander off…permanently.

She’d turned her cell phone volume on high. It loudly chirped now.

Geneva fumbled to get it out of her apron pocket, nearly dropping it. Those aware of her connection to Mace stopped to stare at her.

A text.

From Mace.

Her relief was so complete, her knees nearly gave out.

She made it to the counter where she leaned against it for support as she accessed the text.

Running late. Meet you at the dance…

She stared, dumbfounded, reading it again.

He was okay.

The word swirled around and around her head.

He was okay.

“So?”

She looked to find Trudy hovering.

She blinked. “He says he’ll meet me at the dance.”

Dance?

She realized she’d completely forgotten about the dance.

“Girl, I need you here.”

She nodded, then pressed the needed buttons to respond to Mace’s text.

No way was she going to work overtime at the diner when she had a chance to see Mace.

She wrote, then rewrote the text. Finally, she settled on a simple
Okay.

She sat for long moments, cell phone crushed in her hand, staring at the television screen, attempting to connect the surreal scene continuing to play out with the mind-blowingly normal one going on in her life.

“Running late. Meet you at the dance…”

His words as casual as if a meeting he was in was going long or he’d been caught in traffic.

Not that he’d been involved in a car-bombing incident that nearly took two men’s lives.

“Table Five needs service,” Trudy said, passing her.

Geneva looked at her blankly, her words taking a moment to register.

An hour. That’s all she was going to give the diner. Then she was going home to stand in the shower until the water ran cold, or until her thoughts started to make sense. Whichever came first.

And then she was going to that dance.