A Question of Intent

At a nod from the captain, his exec added an overlay to the shield. When the transparent overlay settled, a milky-white winged stallion reared on the field of red, white, and blue. Westfall let everyone in the room get a good look.

“Welcome to Project Pegasus, ladies and gentlemen. We are now one team, with one mission. Before any of us leaves this corner of the desert, the new all-weather, all-terrain attack/transport vehicle known as Pegasus will be certified to run with the wind, swim the oceans and fly to the stars. Your country is depending on you to make it happen.”

The terse pronouncement killed any tendencies toward levity among the assembled personnel.

“You’ll receive more detailed briefings on the vehicle when it arrives tomorrow. Today you’ll get security and area threat briefings, be issued your site IDs and go through a medical screening.”

The captain collapsed his pointer with a snap.

“Major Bradshaw, I’ll turn the group over to you now.”

“Yes, sir.”

Jill stood at attention with the others while Captain Westfall departed. When he’d cleared the building, she moved to the podium. As she looked out over the sea of faces, the realization that she was responsible for both their safety and their adherence to ultrastrict security measures hit her smack in the chest.

One compromise of classified test information, and her neck would be on the block. One physical breach of the Pegasus site, and she could kiss her career goodbye.

Her glance slid to Cody Richardson, lingered a moment, shifted back to the crowd at large.

“Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. I’m Major Jill Bradshaw. My security forces and I are going to be watching out for you—and watching over you—for the next few months.”

Chapter 3

Cody hooked his stethoscope around his neck and scribbled an entry in the form on the clipboard. Sixty-five patients in three and a half hours. Seventeen more to go.

All that was really required today was an intake exam—temperature, blood pressure, heart rate, updated health history, etc. The small team of highly skilled corpsmen assigned to the Pegasus site could have handled those tasks easily. Cody had wanted to meet each of the test cadre members personally, however, and get their take on their physical, emotional and mental condition.

If the first sixty-five were to be believed, he thought wryly, Captain Westfall had assembled the healthiest military team in the history of the universe. Only one had a condition that required watching. Lieutenant Colonel Bill Thompson, the Air Force rep, had mild atrial fibrillation, the most common form of heart arrhythmia. It was a lifelong condition that didn’t require medication or he wouldn’t have been cleared to fly. As a result, Cody didn’t anticipate having to spend a whole lot of time here in the clinic. Good thing, since providing medical care to the folks on-site was only the secondary reason for his presence out here in the middle of the desert.

Thinking of the twists and turns his life had taken to bring him to this place and this time, he tipped his chair against the wall. Slowly, inevitably, the familiar poison of guilt and regret seeped through his veins.

How the hell had things gone so wrong? Why hadn’t he seen the train barreling along the tracks before it ran right over him? How had he managed to lose himself long before he lost Alicia?

Knowing he’d find no answers to the questions that had plagued him more than three years now, he shoved his chair back and rejoined his team in the clinic area.

“Who’s next?”

“Major Jill Bradshaw,” a white-suited corpsman replied, handing him another clipboard. “She’s in cubicle two.”

A ripple of completely unprofessional anticipation feathered along Cody’s nerves. He’d been waiting for this particular patient.

“Is Petty Officer Ingalls with her?”

“Yes, sir.”

Hospital Corpsman Second Class Beverly Ingalls was one of only two women on Cody’s medical staff. She’d assisted him in the exam of other females assigned to the Pegasus cadre. She’d assist him in this one, as well.

As he walked toward the curtained cubicle, Cody skimmed Jill Bradshaw’s chart. Her vitals looked good. Better than good. So did her physical stats. Age, thirty-one. Height, five-seven. Weight, 121. Nonsmoker. Occasional social drinker. No history of serious or debilitating diseases.

Lifting the curtain, he nodded to the woman seated on the exam table, swinging a boot impatiently. “Hello again, Major.”

“Sir.”

She ran a quick glance down the white coat he wore over his uniform and cocked her head. “No glasses?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“The photo in your background file shows you in a lab coat and wire-rimmed glasses. I sort of assumed the two went together.”

“Not anymore. It got to be a pain sliding my glasses up on my forehead whenever I bent to look in a microscope so I had Lasik surgery earlier this year.” He flipped through the forms on the clipboard. “I skimmed through your medical history. On paper you look pretty healthy.”

In Cody’s considered opinion, she looked pretty darned good in the flesh, too. Her skin glowed with a rosy tint that owed more to exercise and a sensible diet than cosmetics, and her corn-silk hair had a smooth, glossy sheen that dared a man to run his hands through it. Resisting the impulse, he handed Petty Officer Ingalls the chart and dragged his stethoscope from around his neck.

“Unbutton your shirt, please.”

While the major slipped the buttons on her BDU shirt, Cody wrapped himself in a cloak of professional detachment. Or tried to. For reasons he didn’t stop and analyze at the moment, he had trouble viewing Major Jill Bradshaw with his usual impassive objectivity.

If any of the patients he screened in the past ninety minutes was going to rouse the male in him, Cody would have bet money on the flame-haired knockout. Lieutenant Commander Hargrave filled out a uniform like no one he’d ever examined before. Yet he’d experienced no more than a fleeting appreciation at her perfect symmetry of face and form. In contrast, he felt his breath hitch as Jill Bradshaw’s hair parted to give him a glimpse of soft, white nape.

Suddenly Cody stiffened. Beneath that spun-gold silk lay one of the most vicious scars he’d seen since his E.R. rotation at Raleigh’s busy Memorial Hospital. The puckered seam of flesh tracked a path from just behind her left ear to her collar before disappearing under the crewneck of her regulation brown T-shirt.

“Someone left you quite a souvenir,” Cody commented, reaching up to finger the ridged flesh.

She jerked away as if stung. A quick rake of her fingers through her hair settled the sleek cap over the scar. The reaction intrigued him as much as the wound.

“Did you get that injury in the line of duty?”

“No.”

The curt reply suggested the subject was off-limits. Cody ignored the warning. “Knife or broken glass?”

“Neither.”

She flicked him an annoyed glance, saw he wasn’t going to go away, and shrugged.

“The cut was made by the jagged edge of an aluminum beer can. The jock I was out with had been demonstrating his intellectual prowess by ripping them in half with his teeth. I tripped, fell on one, and walked away with a permanent reminder of the consequences of consorting with idiots.”

“You’re lucky you walked away at all. Another inch to the right and you would have severed your carotid artery.”

“So I’ve been told.”

There was more to the story than that, but the glint in her brown eyes said that was all Cody would get. Today, anyway. He’d find out the rest of the tale sometime in the very near future, he promised himself as he plugged in the eartips of his stethoscope.

Jill left the clinic more rattled than she wanted to admit. What was it about the man that set off her silent alarms? It wasn’t just her usual conditioned response to big, too-handsome types. Or her still-unanswered questions about why he’d stopped to contemplate the night sky. This guy got to her in a way no man had in longer than she wanted to remember.

She’d had to force herself not to react when he’d leaned over her to press the stethoscope amplifier to her back. She’d also done her damnedest to ignore his unique blend of aftershave and antiseptic, but the scent seemed to follow her when she walked out into the slowly purpling dusk.

After two weeks she was still getting acclimated to New Mexico’s spectacular sunsets. With reds and pinks and blues pinwheeling across the sky, she reviewed her plans for the evening. She’d hit the northeast sector, she decided. Run the perimeter where it cut across the southern tip of the Guadalupe Mountains.

First, though, she would chow down. The fluttery feeling in her stomach probably had nothing to do with the doc and everything to do with the fact she’d gobbled a honey-oat bar and three cups of coffee for breakfast and been too busy for lunch.

The scent of sizzling steak drew her to the dining facility. With the arrival of two additional cooks, the kitchen was now in full operational mode. After two weeks of prepackaged meals supplemented by their one cook’s valiant attempts to set up the kitchen and serve at least one hot entree, Jill was ready for a full-course dinner.

As during the earlier in-brief, the dining facility buzzed with the lively conversation of people getting to know one another. A quick glance told Jill members of the individual services had pretty much clumped together. Natural, she supposed for the first night. Once the test project swung into full gear, the service lines would break down and they’d meld into a team. Hopefully!

To aid the process she opted not to join her military cops and took her tray to a table of Air Force blue-suiters instead. In quick order she met a range instrumentation technician, a vehicle maintenance specialist and a computer systems analyst. The motor pool sergeant talked the universal language of transmissions and drive shafts, but the instrumentation expert and the analyst soon lost Jill in the technical dust. She left the dining facility knowing at least three of the test cadre a little better.

When she returned to her quarters just after 10:00 p.m., she got to know her roommates, as well.

Kate Hargrave had obviously just returned from a run or a workout in the site’s small gym. A sweat-band held back her sweat-dampened hair. Tight biker shorts clung to her trim thighs, and her gray jersey top sported damp patches. She’d abandoned a pair of well-used running shoes and was busy applying a coat of cherry-colored polish to her toenails.

Caroline Dunn lounged in the one comfortable chair in the unit, a paperback novel propped in front of her nose. Like Kate, the brunette had changed out of her uniform and wore a stretchy lycra halter with elastic-waist shorts. Lowering the book, she sent the newcomer a warm smile.

“There you are. Kate and I were about to give up on you.”

Jill barely suppressed a groan. After running a long stretch of perimeter and checking on two patrols, sand had seeped into every pore. All she wanted was to hit the shower and the sack.

“We didn’t get a chance to talk much at the in-brief,” the Coast Guard officer said, laying her book across her bare midriff. “Since we’ll be sharing a head and a living space smaller than the ward room on my first patrol boat, I thought it might make the next couple of months easier if we confessed to any weird habits or personal preferences right up-front.”

Not a bad idea, Jill thought, giving the coastie full marks. With all her years aboard ship, Dunn had probably raised the art of sharing cramped quarters to its highest level.

“Sounds good to me,” she said. “Just let me shed my gear and grab something cold to drink.”

“I brought in a few emergency supplies,” Kate Hargrave put in, waving the polish brush toward the half-size refrigerator in the galley. “We have soft drinks, instant iced tea, a rather nice chilled Riesling, and beer.”

A nice chilled Riesling, huh? Maybe this roommate business wouldn’t be such a pain, after all.

Retreating to her bedroom, Jill shed her beret and heavy web belt. Ingrained habit had her extracting the .9mm Beretta from its holster and checking to see the safety was on before ejecting its magazine. A quick tug on the slide confirmed no round was chambered. Returning the weapon to its holster, she stripped off her boots and BDUs.

She was twenty pounds lighter and a good deal cooler when she returned to the living area in gray sweat shorts and an oversize red T-shirt with a grinning Goofy on the front. Placing her eBook on the counter that served as both desk and dining table, she poured some wine into a blue plastic cup and plopped down on one of the counter stools.

“Since this was my idea,” Lieutenant Dunn said with a lazy stretch, “I’ll start. I prefer Cari to Caroline and will warn you right up-front I’m addicted to gory police procedurals and international thrillers. Reach for one of my Tom Clancy’s or Robert Ludlum’s before I’ve finished it and you’ll lose an arm.”

If that was the worst of her roommates’ idiosyncrasies, Jill figured they’d all make it through the next few months in one piece. She took a sip of her wine, savoring its light, fruity bouquet, while Cari turned the floor over to the next in line.

“Kate? How about you?”

“I’m easy.” The weather scientist decorated another toe with a streak of cherry red. “Nothing very much bothers me—with the distinct exception of poaching on another woman’s territory. Comes from being cast in the classic cheated-on wife role.”

Cari winced. “Ouch.”

“Yeah, ouch.” Kate wiggled her foot to check out the paint job. “Don’t take me wrong. My husband and I didn’t have what you’d call the perfect marriage. I had pretty much decided to break it off. What got to me was that I was too busy—and too stupid—to realize he’d already made the same decision. Only he’d made it in the bed of a nineteen-year-old bim-bette. Now that hurt,” she admitted with a wry chuckle.

“I’ll bet.”

“Which is why I’m real careful to watch where I step. So what’s with you and the doc, roomie? Do you two have something going?”

Jill sputtered into the plastic cup, sending a spray of fruity bubbles up her nose. She sneezed them out and shot the other woman a quick frown.

“You’re kidding, right?”

“Nope. I got the scoop on that tussle Cody mentioned. Sounds like the two of you had some fun out in the desert last night.”

Cody, was it? Lieutenant Commander Hargrave didn’t waste any time. It also sounded as though the rumor mill was already up and working. Nothing like a small, isolated site to bare every wart and wrinkle.

“Look,” Jill said carefully, “I don’t want to get off on the wrong foot here, but I don’t think what happened between Dr. Richardson and me last night is—”

“Any of my business?” Kate finished with one of her flashing grins. “It might have been, if I hadn’t seen the way the man looked at you this morning. I was the invisible sidekick standing next to this woman,” she added for Cari’s benefit.

Somehow Jill didn’t think the flamboyant redhead could ever qualify for invisible status.

“I checked him out for you,” Kate announced, giving her little toe a final dab before capping the polish bottle. “He lost his wife several years ago, and he’s currently uninvolved, so you wouldn’t be poaching. Although I understand there’s a media consultant back in Virginia who’d like nothing more than to sink her claws into the man.”

Cari looked amused. Jill was astounded. “You’ve only been on-site a little over eight hours. How did you find all that out?”

“I asked him. Not directly, of course, but he gave me sufficient information for my purposes.”

“Good grief! You’re in the wrong profession. You ought to be in counterintelligence.”

“When I get tired of being buffeted around the skies, I might consider it. So back to my original question, Bradshaw. What are your intentions regarding our hottie of a doc?”

She probed with such breezy cheerfulness that Jill couldn’t take offense. “Dr. Richardson and I met for the first time last night. I barely know the man.”

“Hmm. My considered opinion is the doc would like to change that situation. It’s only an opinion, mind you, but…” She let her voice trail off suggestively.

Enough was enough. Jill wasn’t about to admit Cody Richardson already occupied too big a chunk of her thoughts. Deliberately she changed the subject.

“I doubt any of us is going to have time for playing the kind of games you’re suggesting. I had a peek at the preliminary test schedule. The whole on-site cadre goes into 24/7 mode after Pegasus arrives tomorrow.”

As she’d anticipated, she snagged the others’ instant attention. Whatever their personal idiosyncrasies, they were each top-notch professionals in their respective fields. Kate dropped her cherry-tipped feet to the floor and leaned forward, folding her arms across her knees. Cari tossed her paperback aside.

“After I was cleared for this project, I read every report on Pegasus I could get my hands on,” the Coast Guard officer said. “The test vehicle took some severe hits going through the research and development phase.”

Kate nodded. “Congress tried to cut the program at every major milestone. The fact that two of the three initial prototypes crashed and burned didn’t help matters.”

“From what I hear, the president and the joint chiefs of staff are pinning all their hopes on us.” Cari’s small, heart-shaped face took on a grim cast. “If we don’t demonstrate that Pegasus can swim…”

“And fly,” Kate put in.

“And climb,” Jill said, thinking of the steep mountains in the northeastern corner of the test site.

“…the services will be out a state-of-the-art, all-weather, all-terrain attack/transport vehicle capable of hunting down and ferreting out terrorists wherever the bastards try to hide,” Cari finished.

Silence invaded the small living area as the three women felt the weight of their individual responsibilities.

“Well,” Kate said after a moment, “I think I’ll hit the rack. I want a clear head for the briefing tomorrow.”

Cari pushed out of her chair. “Me, too.”

She started for her bedroom, paused and turned back to Jill. “You never got a chance to tell us your likes or dislikes. Anything Kate and I should be aware of?”

“Nothing other than a propensity to receive alerts from my Control Center at any hour of the night and day.” Jill palmed the small communications device that acted as her link to her on-duty controllers. “If I get called out, I’ll try not to disturb you.”

The Coast Guard officer tipped her a grin. “Don’t worry about us. I’ve learned to snatch catnaps aboard ships plowing through gale-force seas. Kate, I imagine, has had to curl up in the back end of a plane and ignore the drone of four turbo-prop engines for hours on end.”

“More times than I can count,” the hurricane hunter drawled. “Neither one of us will break a snore if you get paged in the middle of the night.”

Jill hadn’t planned on testing her roommates’ ability to tune out disturbances that very night. Some hours later, however, her communicator pinged and dragged her from a deep, dreamless sleep. She jerked her head up, blinking away the cobwebs, and fumbled for her communicator.

“Major Bradshaw.”

“This is Rattler Control, ma’am.”

Jill raked a hand through her hair and squinted at the digital clock beside her bed. Two forty-five.

“Go ahead, Rattler control.”

“We have a report of an S-80.”

Oh, jeez! Snakebite.

If Jill were ever dumb enough to let herself get talked into a show like Fear Factor, all they’d have to do is wave a harmless little garter snake in her direction and she’d concede the game right then and there. Anything poisonous—like the diamondbacks that owned this corner of New Mexico—sent chills skittering down her arms. Gulping, she keyed her communicator.

“I copy, Control. Who took the hit?”

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