Mercenary Trilogy - Willing Part 18

She hung up the phone and turned to Daniel. "He'll be here in an hour or so. He wants the backup copyof Dad's files.""He accused you of setting the bomb?" Daniel asked, his expression unreadable, but his body language all about tightly controlled anger.

"Not exactly. Apparently Dad and I are the number one suspects; at least we were until I told him about

the nature of yesterday's break-in and the GPS device on my laptop. He thought the current location wasreally interesting."Daniel relaxed slightly. "I do, too." He rubbed his chin with his thumb and forefinger. "So, Officer Devon isn't an officer after all.""Not according to the records division of the state police.""He acted like a soldier, but a lot of police officers are former military, so that didn't strike me as anything out of the ordinary. I'd like to know how he got a hold of a state police car."

"So would the state police." She frowned, wishing they had more to go on. The longer her dad wasMIA, the more chance something could happen to him. "The phony officer wasn't familiar at all."Daniel shrugged. "You've spent a lot of time away from your dad's school in recent years. There are probably a lot of people he's come into contact with that you've never seen."

"His records included photos of each student. I scanned them all into the computer. I don't rememberanyone looking like Officer Devon.""You probably weren't paying close attention to them.""That's true." She hadn't given any of the pictures more than a cursory glance."And although we know the school was as much a target as your dad, we can't a.s.sume we're looking for a former student.""Besides instructors, potential and current students are about the only people my dad sees.""That you know of.""True. He mentions a lot of Vietnam buddies in his diaries. I don't remember meeting any of them, but apparently they kept in contact.""That's not unusual.""No, but a lot of them have died. It must have been hard for him, and he never told me.""You and your dad are pretty close."

"Not as close as I thought, but our relationship is better than anything most of his buddies had with their families. Several who died didn't have anyone to mourn their pa.s.sing but my dad. I wish he'd told me. I would have mourned with him."

"He was protecting you from the ugly side of life.""I guess. Still, it's sad."Daniel's eyes narrowed in thought. "What exactly did he write about these friends that died?""Just their names and where they were from, the fact he went to their funerals. No one could accuse my dad of being a flowery writer."

"Do you remember their names, or would you have to go back through and search for them again?"

She had a semiphotographic memory, which was how she reread books in her mind during a lot of long,

dark, and of necessity, silent nights in the jungle or desert as a mercenary. "I remember them, why?"

"It's a lot easier to establish an alternate ident.i.ty using that of a person who has died, but sharessuperficial life traits with you.""You think Dad used the names of his former friends to establish aliases?""It makes sense."She thought about it. "You're right. It does. For whatever reason, he believed he needed a bolt-hole and made sure he had it in the form of several established alternate ident.i.ties.""He hinted as much to me once.""He trusted you a great deal to have done that."Daniel shrugged. "He didn't tell me names.""He didn't tell me either. He said it was safer for me that way.""Was your dad intelligence during the war?""No. He was LLRP, but it was enough. A lot of the soldiers that came out of the field had a hard time acclimating to normal life. I've never understood what sparked this particular paranoia, but for the mostpart, it doesn't impact our relationship, and no way will he ever seek counseling to deal with it."

"It's going to make it dam-uh...difficult if not impossible to find him.""If you're right about how he established his ident.i.ties, we have a place to start at least." She beganwalking toward the study. "We can investigate each name for activity since their deaths, things like buyingproperty, establishing residency, that kind of thing."

Daniel didn't say anything, but he followed her into the study.

He indicated a pile of print-out pages beside Hotwire's computer with his hand. "We've been goingthrough the school's files looking for some kind of anomaly, and so far we haven't found one.""When you don't know what you're looking for, it's almost impossible to find it," she said tongue-in-cheek.

He smiled. "That makes a convoluted kind of sense."She grinned back. "Yeah, it does."He sat down in a chair to the right of the computer desk, and she put herself in front of the monitor. She sent several search queries to databases she thought might have the information they were looking for.

When she was done, there was nothing to do but wait, so she said, "While my queries are beingprocessed, why don't we go through the student pictures?""Good idea."She moved her chair sideways a little. "Scoot over here, so you can see, too. We'll have a better chance of recognizing the fake officer if we're both looking."

He moved his chair beside hers, and as always, the closeness of his big body affected her breathing

pattern. He laid his arm across the back of her chair, hemming her in, and she had to fight the urge to lether head rest back against him. They had a job to do, and snuggling wasn't it.It took a few clicks of the mouse to bring up the image files related to her dad's school. She set the entire folder up to run as a slide show. The images began playing on the screen, each lasting three seconds,

enough time to study bone structure as well as take in surface features that could change.

She grimaced as the third one flashed onto the screen. "There are a few hundred; this could take a while.

"I don't mind spending time with you." His fingers brushed her neck, and he leaned closer so that hershoulder was against his chest. "You smell good.""I don't wear perfume."

"I know. I like it.""The smell of unadorned woman?" she asked jokingly, but warm bubbles of happiness fizzed throughher.

"Only one woman. You.""I like the way you smell, too," she admitted."How do I smell?" he asked as another picture flashed briefly on the screen."Safe." She didn't know why she said it, but something about the very essence of this man gave her a sense of security in his presence.

It had been that way from the first, which was why she'd been so shocked by his hostile att.i.tude toward her. Her instincts told her one thing while his actions had told her another. Or so she had believed. She

now knew what she'd mistaken for dislike and anger had been him trying to rein in a pa.s.sion thatconsumed them both completely when he let it go.Regardless of the reasoning, she'd come to identify his unique scent with both security and s.e.xual desire, not to mention happiness. She was beginning to wonder if that wasn't a pretty good definition of love."Safe?" he asked, his voice laced with shock and another emotion she couldn't quite define.

"Yes." She snuck a quick sideways look at him, but his attention was fixed firmly on the slide show. " When I'm with you, I feel as if you will never hurt me or allow anyone else to either. Which, when you think about it, is really funny. I mean, I've been keeping other people safe my entire adult life, and I've never been in a situation where I relied on someone else to fight for me."

He didn't say anything, and she took a deep breath, plunging on with an emotional recklessness she might regret later, but which felt utterly essential right now.

"I guess what I'm trying to say is that I trust you on a level I've never trusted anyone else except my dad, and all of my senses recognize it." It was hard admitting that, but she'd never been one to lie to get out of a tough situation, and his whimsical question had turned out to be just that.

His body shifted away from hers in what felt like a violent repudiation of her words. "I'm no white knight, Josie. Don't weave daydreams around me taking care of you because it's not going to happen."

"I didn't mean it like that." He made her sound like a parasite. "Didn't you hear what I said? I can take care of myself."

"Yes, you can. You don't need me watching over you. Remember that."

It was impossible to keep her focus on the computer screen. She jerked her gaze back to Daniel, who apparently was having no problem continuing to watch the slide show, his face impa.s.sive.

"If you are so intent on not watching over me, why did you refuse to allow me to go outside this morning? Why insist on helping me find my dad and investigate the bombing?"

His jaw looked hewn from granite. "I already explained that. I'm part of this mission because the school is half mine now and your dad is my business partner. Keeping you from taking unacceptable risks is part of succeeding with the mission."

"So, you're saying that I personally had absolutely no influence over your actions in the past three days?" she asked, unwilling to believe he could be as emotionally distant as he was implying.

"No."

Relief pulsed through her. She and Daniel were simply suffering another miscommunication, something she'd come to believe would always be a challenge for them. Their brains didn't work the same way. His thoughts were as alien to her as if he really were from Mars, like the popular book on male-female relationships said.

"The decision to take you to bed had nothing to do with the mission. It was entirely personal."

"But temporary," she heard herself saying.

"You said that was acceptable to you."

Had she, or had she agreed to the limitations he set for their intimacy because he hadn't given her any other choice? Did it matter? He hadn't changed his mind even if she had changed hers.

Having just convinced herself she'd misunderstood Daniel's earlier words, his confirmation that apart from s.e.x, she had no personal interest for him felt like a double bull'seye blow from a stun gun. The pain seared through her, leaving bruises that no one else could see, least of all him.

Her eyes flicked back to the computer screen, her brain screaming that she needed to focus on something besides her decimated emotions or she was going to break apart. And she saw him. Their state policeman had been one of her father's students.

She grabbed the mouse and clicked the back arrow three times, halting the slide show and taking them to the picture that had caught her attention.

"What are you doing?"

"I think I have an I.D. on our guy." Amazingly the words came out even and controlled, not giving away the wild torment inside her.

She'd used shaky evidence to convince herself that even though Daniel obviously didn't love her, he did care and even shakier reasoning to convince herself his caring was more than a temporary side effect of their s.e.xual compatibility.

"I didn't see him." Daniel's voice sounded odd, but that was probably a trick of her hearing.

"He looked different." Her own voice was starting to wear around the edges, and she made a conscious effort to rein it in. "Dad takes the pictures of his trainees when they come to the camp, before he enforces his crew cut, no facial hair rule. This guy showed up with longer hair, sporting a mustache and a beard."

The picture was frozen on the computer screen, the man a dead ringer for Officer Devon if you took away the beard and buzz cut the hair.

"What's his name?"

"I'll tell you in just a sec." She checked the number on the file and cross-referenced it with client records. "Abner Jones. If that's not his real name, he's incredibly unimaginative when it comes to aliases. "

"Your dad does background checks on his students before he admits them into the school."

"A determined person could fake his identification and past as effectively as Dad has set up his own aliases."

"Did Jones attend with anyone else?"

Josie checked. "His record isn't cross-referenced with any of the other soldiers in training during the same session, but their records are probably a good place to start for possible connections all the same."

"How will you do that?"

"Hotwire and I will compare their files and the information from their background checks for anything they might have in common. Dad's trainees are from all over the world; even coming from the same state would be a pretty significant connection for two students to have."

She brought up the list of soldiers who had attended the training camp with Jones and printed it off along with the individual files for each name. Thank goodness her laser printer had been left behind by the thieves. It had probably been too unwieldy to take, being larger than the small television they'd lifted from the living room.

When the reports stopped printing, she handed them to Daniel without meeting his eyes. "Why don't you start going through these while I see what I can find on Dad's possible aliases? You'd probably be more comfortable spreading them out on the table in the dining room."

And she would be more comfortable with him out of the room. Her heart was still hemorrhaging, and she had to cauterize the wound, but she needed some time to herself to do it. It wasn't his fault she'd fallen in love when he'd only fallen in l.u.s.t, but having him around while she came to terms with that truth was more than she could bear.

Daniel got up without a word, but stopped at the doorway. "You never asked what you smelled like to me."

"No. I didn't." What could he have said? Maybe that she smelled like s.e.x, or stupidity.

She recognized the thought as a bitter one, but not necessarily an untrue one.

He waited as if expecting her to ask the question she had no intention of asking. "You smell like everything a woman could or should be."

With that he walked out, and Josie sat staring at an empty doorway in a state of incredulity.

Had she heard him correctly? Because if she had, none of what he'd said earlier made any sense, or did it? Maybe he'd only been talking about female perfection in a s.e.xual sense. She smelled like everything a woman could or should be in bed.

She wasn't deluding herself into believing it could be anything else. Not this time.

Daniel made coffee and took a mug of it to a quiet, preoccupied Josie before sitting down at the dining room table as she'd suggested in order to go through the records.

It was hard going, though, trying to concentrate. He'd hurt her again, and that was the last d.a.m.n thing he wanted to do. When she'd said he made her feel safe, he'd felt as if someone had taken a shredder to his insides. Of all the things she could rely on him for, things he'd do everything in his power to give her, safety was not one of them. He wasn't trustworthy with a woman's life.

His mother had learned that the hard way, teaching him an indelible lesson in the process.

But he hadn't told Josie that. He'd merely told her not to count on him, like she didn't matter to him, which was nowhere near the truth. He hadn't been honest with her, and she deserved better than that from him. In fact, he'd out and out lied to her when he implied she had nothing to do with his decision to find her father and the men who'd tried to kill Tyler.

Unlike Josie, who had told him she didn't lie very well, Daniel was an old hand at it. He'd started young, explaining away the occasional bruises on his small body to teachers as nothing more than the result of horseplay or clumsiness. He'd been so good at it, they'd never once suspected the man who had sired him made a habit of beating his beautiful wife and small son when he drank too much.

Daniel had kept right on lying when he faked his age to enter the army at the age of sixteen. He'd been the size of a man, but as undisciplined and untrained in the art of fighting as a small child.

That had changed, but his ability to overcome an aggressor hadn't helped his mom when she needed it. Daniel wasn't any good at protecting women...even the ones he loved. Not that he would allow himself to love Josie. To do so would be nothing better than emotional suicide. That was another lesson he would never forget that his mother had taught him.

However, that didn't mean he could leave her believing she meant nothing to him. Very few people knew the truth about his past, but Josie had earned the right to be one of them.

Chapter 13.

D aniel didn't get a chance to talk to Josie alone for several hours.

First, the detective from the Arson and Explosives Division of the state police showed up ten minutes earlier than expected, and then Hotwire returned from dropping off Claire. He was carrying a box with a new laptop in it for Josie. She went into raptures, and Daniel and the detective both had to sit idly by while she quizzed Hotwire on what the computer could do.

Discussion eventually got back to the investigation. After Josie showed the picture of Jones to the detective, he unbent enough to tell them that a known white supremacist group had a paramilitary compound near the GPS coordinates for the laptop.

Unfortunately, FBI intelligence revealed there were only two ways into the compound: up a narrow path that could be traversed on foot or by a small, powerful ATV, or by helicopter. A clearing suitable for landing was located near the compound, but it would be impossible for the helicopter to land undetected.

"What about parachuting in?" Josie asked.

"It would have to be a long jump for the plane to be high enough not to be suspect," Daniel replied before the detective had a chance to. "And a drop from that alt.i.tude would make it difficult to land on target unless the clearing is fairly large."

The detective shook his head. "None of you are parachuting in anywhere, undetected or otherwise. This is an official federal investigation at this point, and while they are cooperating with state authorities, the FBI and National Forest Service aren't going to take kindly to a bunch of mercenaries stepping on their toes."