Protector (2 page)

Scanlon scrubbed his face, sighed hard, his eyes too full of the hell that went down when they’d both been in Turkey two years ago. “Without question, you’ve sacrificed more than your fair share for your country. But this op, this enemy, these people…” His jaw clenched, and the pity shifted to something harder. “This is our chance to even the score for what they did to you and those other servicemen they kidnapped.”

Hunger. Mind games. Torture. Chuck’s grip tightened on his clipboard.

Thankfully, his thoughts were broken by another airman thrusting a folder at him. He opened it and took a few minutes to calm himself by reading the checklist before signing at the bottom. He embraced routine and monotony through the days and sweated through the nights.

Chuck passed the folder back to the airman and waited until he stepped away before meeting the colonel’s gaze dead on. “A very wise nun in the Hawaiian orphanage where I grew up always told me holding grudges is bad for the soul.”

“In case you didn’t notice, I’m not laughing.”

Neither was Chuck these days. But he was getting by. Surviving one step at a time, as he recovered from the ass kicking he’d taken overseas at the hands of a sadistic bitch bent on prying secrets from servicemen, then selling the info to the highest terrorist bidder.

She hadn’t gotten jack shit from him about the covert test missions he used to fly or the cutting-edge equipment he developed in the dark ops squadron. But he’d paid a heavy price for keeping those secrets.

“Pardon my bluntness, Colonel, but have you taken a look at me lately?” His eleven broken bones had healed as well as they ever would, and he was lucky to be on his feet again. Reconstructive surgery had taken care of most of the scars. External ones, anyway.

His ex-girlfriend claimed he was still an “emotional cripple.” Whatever the hell that meant. “Sir, I know exactly what I’m worth these days, or rather how little. You’re not fooling anyone here. Offering me a mission is the equivalent of a pity fuck. Sir.”

Scanlon’s thick eyebrow hitched upward through two shouts of “Next” before he pulled the clipboard from his hand and gave it to Chuck’s assistant, a surprised master sergeant.

The colonel guided Chuck away from the bustle and behind some pallets loaded for the deployment. “Chuck, this mission could be the backbreaker for what some of the intel spooks think is a major attack here in the States. Our equipment, equipment you helped test, is the only way to exploit the one hole we have been able to find in their organization—”

“Not interested,” he interrupted, desperate as hell to stop the colonel from taunting him with what he could not have anymore.

Scanlon continued as if he’d never been interrupted, “You’ll go in undercover as a blackjack dealer on an Italian cruise ship next week. You won’t be going in alone. I’ll have your back, and David Berg will be running the surveillance equipment on board the
Fortuna
. Think about it. At worst you’ll get some sun and great food. And at best, you’ll bring down a terrorist cell.”

Hunger for the chance to fight back gnawed at his gut. “You don’t need me as the front man.” Maybe…“Why not let me operate the gadgets? Nobody runs the packet analyzer and translator algorithms as well as I do. It’s more art than science.”

Shit, he was already envisioning himself there. “Forget I said that. I’m exactly where I should be—”

Pop!
A gunshot blasted from the other side of the pallets. A chunk of wood splintered into the air.

Chuck jerked hard and fast, looking over his shoulder even as he knew it had to be some dumb ass who’d slipped a round in his weapon then seriously screwed up with an unintentional discharge. He looked across the hangar—

And stared straight into the cold, emotionless eyes of a gunman who looked too damn much like one of their own firing wildly into the clusters of airmen.

So fast. Shouts and more pops. Bullets. From the gunman and the security cops, but no one could get a decent aim as the guy ran and bobbed. The gunman turned toward Chuck’s old crew. Fired. Jimmy spun back as a round caught him in the shoulder. The gun tracked Jimmy for another—

Chuck drew his sidearm before he could think and centered on the uniformed gunman’s chest.
Pop. Pop. Pop.
He squeezed off three shots, center of mass.

Everyone and everything in the hangar went unearthly still. The only sound was a haunting echo of Chuck’s shots.

The gunman crumpled to the ground a second before the acrid scent of gunfire bit the air.

Chuck’s fist clenched around the familiar weight of his 9 mm. The hangar seemed to freeze frame, imprinting itself in his brain. Cops with weapons drawn. Others with their fists wrapped around the butt of a gun. The unarmed huddled, hugging their heads protectively.

Slowly, sounds of sirens outside pierced his consciousness and snapped the frame back into motion. Security cops swarmed the downed gunman. His old crewmate, Jimmy, sat up, clutching his shoulder with blood pouring between his fingers while the rest of the crew checked him over. No one else had opened fire, but the edgy need to stay on guard seared the air as three other injured held on to a bleeding leg or arm. No one dead, though. Thank God.

Chuck scoured the hangar. Adrenaline coursed through
him, his pulse pounding in his ears. The gun felt right in his hands. Taking out an enemy felt even better.

The colonel secured his unfired weapon back in the holster and stared at Chuck’s smoking gun, now pointing upward. “Still think you’ve lost your edge, Tanaka? Because from where I’m standing, it appears you just stopped a massacre.”

Chuck lowered his weapon slowly, the inevitable flooding his veins with each slug of his heart. “That same old nun also told me gloating is as dangerous as grudges.”

“Fair enough, Captain. I take it then you’ll be joining Berg and me at the morning briefing?”

He nodded once without taking his eyes off the unconscious gunman.

“Good, good.” Scanlon righted his black-framed glasses. “Meanwhile, you may want to brush up on your blackjack skills.”

Chuck thumbed the barrel of his weapon, an undeniable thirst filling him. The need to get back in the fight. The need to defend his comrades.

The need to avenge.

There were still a lot of blanks to be filled in, but then that’s what briefs were for. He didn’t need to hear any more well-executed persuasive arguments. He already knew.

He was going all in.

* GENOA: CRUISE TERMINAL OF
PONTE DEI MILLE

“Who wants eight the hard way?”

“I’ll take that. Gimme twenty on eight.”

“Come on, little Joe from Ko-ko-mo!”

Jolynn Taylor parted the pervasive smoke with her body, winding around slot machines and frenzied gamblers. Her eyes stung, and she tried to blame the moisture on the thick cigarette haze. She wanted to be as far away from this sleazy, sometimes dangerous world as she could get.

Why hadn’t she just ignored the message and stayed in Dallas rather than racing all the way to Genoa, Italy? Security for intercontinental flights was hellish right now after that attack at the Nevada military base last week.

Sure, her father was recovering from a heart attack. But he employed plenty of people to care for him while he recuperated at a local rehab center and then in total luxury on one of his cruise ships.
He
was the one who chose to live overseas floating from port to port, Italy, Greece, Croatia…

She slipped between an aging Italian contessa playing the slots and a newlywed couple plastered together by the one-armed bandit chanting out their desire in French. The casino’s nerve-tingling clamor contrasted in her mind with the quiet sterility of a sickroom… her father’s sickroom, which she couldn’t avoid much longer. Nothing short of hearing he was at death’s door could have drawn her back into his seedy realm.

Bells chimed and lights flashed as she elbowed through the crowd in search of her cousin, Lucy, the director of operations. Once she dropped off her luggage and got the latest lowdown on her dad, she would drive over to his rehab center.

“Hello, love.” A Brit with slicked-back brown hair held a pair of dice in one hand and palmed her leg with the other. “Be a dear and blow on my dice. A pretty bird like you could change my luck.”

Jolynn offered him her best insipid drawl reserved for
soused morons who put on fakey accents. “Wish I could help you out, sugar.” She moved his hand firmly. “But I can’t be giving anyone a house advantage.”

She tapped her laminated security pass, resisting the urge to tell him to “sod off.” Forging ahead, she passed a young couple walking from machine to machine, silver mining for loose coins.

The ship’s lounge singer took the stage and started off her next set with a morose Italian ballad to some moony-eyed guy, which only darkened Jolynn’s already bottomed-out mood. She wanted no part of her father’s world. Yet she missed him with an ache as annoying as the blister developing on her heel.

Jolynn shouldered through the press of overheated bodies until she escaped the circle of gaming tables into the hollow center designated for dealers and the pit boss. The open area provided a clearer, and calmer, vantage point from which to scour the area.

She pivoted, only to pitch forward. Her feet tangled with someone crouched near the blackjack table. Her arms pinwheeled before smacking the floor, halting her gangly tumble. Jolynn’s body bridged the huddled individual’s back. A man’s back. Pressed against him, she could feel every whipcord muscle of his slim physique. His musky male scent pleasantly distracted her from the casino’s smoky odor.

“Excuse me.” She walked her fingers along the carpeted floor, inching up and using the man’s broad back as her final boost. “I didn’t see you down—”

“
Ooof.
Careful. That’s my kidney.”

His protest tickled her ears, his American accent bathing her in familiar sounds of home. Jolynn skimmed her hand over his spine to his shoulder, enjoying the sinuous trek a little too much. “So sorry. I was preoccupied and didn’t look where I was going.”

She grabbed the blackjack table for leverage as she stood. She shook her skirt in place with a little shimmy, not wanting to know how much she’d exposed during their impromptu game of Twister. “Did I inflict permanent damage?”

“Everything seems intact.”

“Good.” Jolynn looked down at the kneeling man staring back up with mesmerizing mocha dark eyes.

She’d never been much of a romantic, but his eyes seemed to glint with hidden depths… Okay, okay, light from the crystal chandelier may have added something to the dreamy effect. Even so, she couldn’t look away.

He shook his sleek black hair into place again. His forearm rested on his bent knee, his other hand pressed to the floor. He had a broad forehead, a firm chin, and fine creases around exotic eyes, perhaps with a hint of Polynesian ancestry. He was a total package kind of guy, with a strong, handsome face. She judged him to be in his late twenties or early thirties.

He rose, finally stopping just at her level, around six feet in her heels. Perfect. In her father’s world of burly men and overblown personalities, she found calming reassurance in the man’s understated power.

Safe. Sexy, yet safe. “Are you sure you’re all right? Your kidney, I mean.”

“I’ve taken worse hits and survived,” he said softly. “How about you?”

Better than three minutes ago. She welcomed the opportunity to think of something, anything other than where she was. “Just fine.”

“Glad to hear it.” He nodded slowly, his thick hair sliding over his brow.

Smiling, she backed away— and bumped into a waitress who shouldn’t have even been in the pit area. A tray of
drinks flew from the woman’s hand and crashed to the floor. Jolynn winced.

Not even back in her family circle for a full day and already she’d reverted to her gangly teen moves. Years of cultivating a poise that rivaled her father’s multitude of Greek and Roman goddess statues evaporated with a simple glance from this guy.

He grinned, creasing dimples in his cheeks. “Sorry to trip you up like that— again.” He extended his hand, offering her the silver token gleaming in his palm. “I didn’t mean to start such a ruckus just to retrieve this.”

“No harm done.” Jolynn accepted the token with an ironic smile.

“I’ll be happy to pay for your dry cleaning.”

“You don’t have to do that.” She would settle for another one of those distracting smiles instead.

“At least let me help you dry off.” He grabbed a stack of cocktail napkins and reached out to blot her travel-weary suit jacket. His fist clenched just beside the damp fabric covering her breasts.

He passed the wadded clump to her. “You may, uh, want to take care of this yourself.”

“Uh, thanks.”

Fantasy gave way to reality as she refocused on the man in front of her. He wore the standard casino uniform of creased black pants, a loose white shirt, a red bow tie… and a name tag.
Charles Tomas: Blackjack Dealer.

Her safe, beautiful man was a two-bit blackjack dealer. Of course he was. How could she have forgotten where she was?

Jolynn resurrected the vapid facade she used as a defense against the smarmy losers she attracted like flies to sticky paper. “See you around, sugar.”

She watched his smile fade.

“Jolynn Taylor!”

The high-pitched squeal of her only cousin carried over the mayhem, breaking into any further temptation to daydream.

Long ago, when she’d learned the truth about her father’s international mob connections, Jolynn had quit believing in fantasy princes. Trusting in fairy tales got people killed. She’d toughened up fast and didn’t plan to change.

As soon as she helped her father settle in on his floating barge of iniquity, she’d be back on a plane to a normal life. By then, the nagging ache to reconnect with the old man would be soothed and all thoughts of dark-eyed princes would be left behind with the Mediterranean Sea.

*  *  *

Chuck Tanaka watched Jolynn hug the casino’s director of operations, before the cousins commandeered stools at the bar.