Silent Warrior: A Loveswept Classic Romance (2 page)

John did not want to think about why she’d been here ten years before. He pulled out the sturdiest chair and sat down while Cali put the cut flowers in a heavy, chipped ceramic vase. She started to set it on the table, but left the lush centerpiece by the sink. One less shield between them.

“You want some bottled water?” she asked. “A beer?”

“Water sounds good.”

It wasn’t until she sat across from him, fingering the condensation on her bottle, that he realized she’d been playing for time.

“I’m sorry I make you uncomfortable,” he said. “But you did ask me to come.”

She stilled, then pulled her hands into her lap. “That’s not it.”

“You said this had to do with Nathan.” He didn’t want to delve into awkward territory any more than she did. “He’s been gone a decade. What could he have done that would come back to haunt you now?”

She looked up, holding his gaze more assuredly. She was focused; in control. But she always had been where Nathan was concerned. It was why he’d purposely
given her the mental foothold. Anything to get her mind off of him and their particular shared past.

“It’s pretty complicated. I don’t have all the pieces yet.”

“Give me what you’ve got.”

She smiled. “I still can’t quite believe you’re here.”

Neither can I
. He frowned. “I haven’t done anything yet.” He didn’t want her gratitude. Not now or ever again.

“You’re willing to help. It’s more than I expected.”

He sighed in frustration. “Cali, I told you a long time ago that if you ever needed anything—”

She held her hand up. “And I told you—promised you—that I’d never ask you for anything again. I meant it. If this weren’t so serious, if I had anyone else to turn to, I’d never have contacted you again. I know I’m exploiting the hell out of your strong sense of duty. Just as I know you don’t want to be here.”

I wish
. He ignored the twinge in his heart. He’d decided when he’d left her in that hospital room ten years earlier that he’d never see her again. He’d had no choice, as he’d seen the situation. So her honest declaration now shouldn’t bother him. It was the same one he’d made to himself many many times.

She folded her arms. “So just take my thanks and deal with it, McShane.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She eased some of the defiance out of her posture
and her tone. “You can’t imagine what this means to me.”

“I’m trying not to imagine anything. I’d rather have facts. It’s not like you to stall. Spit it out, Cali.”

She straightened. “And it’s just like you to turn gratitude and sincere thanks into a fault. I already owe you a debt I could never—”

“Stop. Don’t go there, Cali.” His tone was just as hard and cold as she accused him of being. He didn’t care. “I’m here. Let’s let the rest go, okay?”

She glared at him, but finally raised a hand in resignation. “Fine. But I want you to know one other thing.”

“Why I’m here perhaps?”

She ignored his sarcasm. “If after you hear me out you don’t want to help me, say so. I’ll understand. Though any other path you could steer me to would be greatly appreciated.” Her temper drained as fast as it had boiled over. Her shoulders rounded again. “You really are my last hope, John.”

Then you really are in trouble
. His eyes were gritty from lack of sleep and an excess of repressed emotion. He curled his fingers into a fist to keep from rubbing at them. “I’ll do what I can, Cali. Now enough of this. Tell me.”

She took a slow swallow of water. He worked hard not to push her any further, but his patience was riding a very thin line and what control he had left was close to gone.

Then she looked directly at him. John saw in her eyes something he hadn’t seen since that night ten
years earlier when she’d called him, panicked, unable to track down her father, who was en route to California for Nathan’s funeral.

The night she’d lost Nathan’s baby.

He saw fear. Vulnerability. Emotions he knew she kept well managed and hidden from public view.

But he’d seen them and more. Cali Stanfield Ellis had pride, too much of it sometimes. Considering her background, which included being the only daughter of one of the United States’ most revered and honored ambassadors, as well as an acclaimed developer of leading-edge computer technology, it was understandable.

And in a span of less than a week she’d been robbed of most all of it. He’d seen her completely undone by what life had handed her. It had handed her a horrific burden that would have crumbled most women. Married less than six months, it hadn’t been a slow descent either, but viciously ripped from her with a two-fisted yank.

He’d been the sole witness to her private destruction.

He curled his fingers tightly around the bottle to keep from reaching for her hand.

To do what, John?
his mind queried.
Help her? The way you helped her last time? Offering heartfelt, but ultimately worthless advice about how unfair her double loss had been?

How much had it really helped her to have him sit by her side day and night, telling her he was there for her no matter what, that Nathan had not only been
his partner but his friend, and death didn’t keep him from standing by his friends?

Had he really helped her when every single second of that devastating time in her life he’d sat there knowing that, more than anything in the world, he’d wanted her to belong to him?

Yeah. A real knight in shining armor he was.

He downed the rest of his water, then plopped the bottle back on the table harder than was necessary. She flinched.

He didn’t feel bad about that either. Not one bit. He was a son-of-a-bitch. She’d told him that herself. She’d been right. Ten years hadn’t changed that. Ask anyone who’d worked with him.

“Who’s after you, Cali, and why?”

“Your boss,” she shot back, feeding off his frustrated energy. “The U.S. government.” Her green eyes flashed bright and hard.

Anything to extinguish the pain he still saw there, he thought. “Your old boss too,” he reminded her. “And Nathan’s.”

“Yeah, well, it turns out they have a rather undesirable retirement program. Instead of an engraved gold watch you get an unmarked lead bullet.”

Internal battles were instantly forgotten. John leaned forward and gripped her forearm. “Someone shot at you?”

She looked first at his hand, then at him. He let her go.

“Several someones, yes,” she replied.

She absently rubbed her arm where he’d touched
her. He doggedly kept his attention on her face. “What do you have that they want? Information? What are you into these days? Still doing new tech development in decoding? Did you go back to work for Uncle Sam?”

Keeping track of her over the years would have been easy. He hadn’t done so. Only now did he realize how foolish he’d been to believe that proved anything.

“I freelance,” she said. “I have since Nathan died. Most of my clients are L.A.-based like me. Mostly cyber technology. All civilian. After we married, I never took on government contracts. That was Nathan’s department. He died so soon after that, he never got very far into the contracts he’d signed with them.”

“Is that what has come back to haunt you? One of Nathan’s specialized projects?”

“Yes. You know how good he was. Nathan, the technology wizard. The man who could take the most archaic PC and turn it into a tool of global espionage. You remember the way he ferreted out information. It was mind-boggling. We both knew he’d have no trouble getting civilian work, and he didn’t. He hadn’t been gone from the Blue Circle long, we hadn’t even been married a few weeks, and the offers were already coming in.”

John wasn’t at all surprised. He had worked with Nathan closely for several years, doing highly sensitive work for an adjunct branch of the CIA known as the Blue Circle, the name referring to the global
range of their assignments. The Dirty Dozen handled similar, if tougher, assignments. They just weren’t as tightly supervised. Then, as now, John was strategist and lead coordinator of the missions assigned to them. Nathan had been just what Cali had described him, the techno wizard.

“Whatever the assignment,” John said, “I can’t believe that with the technological strides we’ve made in the last ten years, anything he was working on then could be that sensitive now.”

Cali snorted and crossed her arms. “Maybe I shouldn’t feel so appallingly naive. I thought the same thing. Until I came home from work one afternoon about a month ago.”

“Your place had been searched?”

“At some earlier point I’m sure it had been. I never knew it then. But this time they were far more thorough. They simply took it all with them.”

“What?” If the sudden tightness in his voice fazed her, she didn’t show it.

“Emptied it out. Didn’t leave so much as a paper clip or roll of toilet paper behind.”

Tension crawled through his muscles at the same time adrenaline pulsed into his bloodstream. He welcomed both even as he hated the cause.

“All I have is what I stored in my safety-deposit box, which is next to nothing. It was my mother’s. Father set it up years ago. After she died, I just never got around to getting one of my own.” She blew out a long breath and raked her hand through her hair. When she looked at him again, the pain was edging
back into her eyes. “They took it all, John. All my pictures, everything that was personal to me. All gone.”

“Start at the beginning.”
Think business, McShane. Not haunted green eyes
. “Leave nothing out.”

She sighed again, but pulled herself together. “Nathan’s first contract came in right after he left the Blue Circle. The security clearance required was extensive.”

“But he already had top clearance.”

“That’s what I thought. They even went over my background and security clearance. I know, I know,” she said, waving him silent. “Between being Ambassador Stanfield’s daughter and doing some top security clearance work myself, you’d think I was clear too. But they—”

“Who’s ‘they’ in this case, Cali? Which branch hired him?”

She smiled but there was no humor in it. “That’s just it, I didn’t even know. Neither did Nathan. It went through several channels before getting to him. His contact was actually someone high up in the Blue Circle chain of command.”

“What was the contract?”

“To write a computer program, but I have no idea for what. They made it very clear I wasn’t to be told anything. Even after he underwent the clearance they weren’t too keen on Nathan working at home. They offered—if you could call it that—to set him up in an office.”

“Where? D.C.?”

“No, we could have stayed in California.”

“Well funded, whoever they are.”

“Yes, we both realized that. Even with the Circle contact and apparent approval, Nathan was suspicious. But the dollar figure attached to the contract was too good to pass up.”

“He never struck me as the type to have a price.”

Cali bristled. “He didn’t. But the highly mysterious nature of the job intrigued him. The money would allow him to pick and choose what clients he took on as a civilian. There was also an implied offer of other work for this group if they approved of his work on this project. For someone just starting out, even someone with his government contacts, it was too lucrative to pass up. And I’ll admit that both of us wanted to know more about what was really going on, and we knew that the only way to find out was for Nathan to take the job.”

“So he talked to you anyway. About the job.”

She nodded. “Even Nathan understood the rationale for secrecy. And to protect me more than anything, we had decided that he would share with me only what he felt he could.”

“What did he tell you? Did he leave any notes?” John leaned forward. “I want to see everything you have on this.”

She smiled wearily. “You haven’t changed, McShane. Once a bulldog, always a bulldog.”

“It’s why you asked me here, isn’t it?”

She glanced away, her frame looking suddenly frail to him. The image was so at odds with the Cali
Ellis he’d known, he felt his nerves string even tighter. Struggling with emotions was something John McShane never had to worry about. He was a champ at tucking them away. Only once in his life had they roiled to the surface and threatened to drown him. The woman across the table had been responsible then too.

He wouldn’t let it happen again.

“It’s been ten years, Cali. Surely talking about Nathan’s death shouldn’t make you fall apart.”

Her gaze swung fiercely to his. “You don’t know everything. And I don’t fall apart.” When he opened his mouth, she braced her palms on the table. “Don’t, McShane,” she warned him. “I didn’t go there. Don’t you either.”

Keeping her on the defensive helped. He should be ashamed. He was, but he didn’t back down. He was too busy keeping his head above the tide to worry about the life preserver he’d chosen. “You’re the one who wanted to talk about it. It was a tough time, Cali. Worse than anyone should have to deal with. No one blamed you for falling apart.”

“
You
did.”

She’d caught him off guard with that one, and he was certain his expression reflected it. “What in the hell gave you that idea?”

“Gee, I don’t know, McShane. Maybe it was the hostile way you treated me. I lost a baby and a husband in the span of one week, and you patted me on the head, told me how sorry you were, then all but
ordered me to get over it and on with my life. You didn’t nudge, you shoved.”

“Someone had to.” His tone was no more gentle now than it had been then.

She pushed from her chair and paced the small room. Her skin shone with perspiration, her T-shirt clung to her breasts and stuck against her stomach. The same stomach she’d clutched in agony as blood and a life had ebbed from her body. He’d never felt so incredibly, horribly helpless. He’d never been so angry. At the senseless injustice. At himself for feeling sorry for himself when she was the only one who deserved sympathy.

He hardened his mind to the memories of what had followed that awful night. And later … in the hospital. What had happened between them had been a fight for survival. Only he knew his methods had been every bit as much for himself as for her.