Major Nanny

She shook her head. “If there’s any way to defuse the bomb, they’ll need me to do it. And the more we move around in here, the more likely we are to dislodge something that’ll bring everything crashing down around us. Just go back outside and make sure Mr. Bellows is okay.”

“Bart’s fine. One of our guys is here—Parker Mc Kenna—you know him?”

She nodded. “He and Bailey just got engaged.”

Poor fool, Harlan added silently. Marriage was a sucker’s game. “He got Bart and Bailey out of here.” Bailey Lockhart hadn’t wanted to leave her mother, but Parker had convinced her that the governor would be a lot less stressed out if she knew her daughter was safe.

“Good. Now you get out of here, too,” Stacy said.

“Mister, you need to clear out of here and let us do what needs doing,” a man barked from somewhere behind Harlan. He turned and saw a uniformed police officer peering through the maze stretching out a few yards behind him.

“You can’t go past this spot,” Harlan called back to the officer, tersely explaining the problem. “I think anything you try to do to shore it up will just bring it down.”

“Who are you?” the officer asked.

“Harlan McClain. I’m with the governor’s party.” It was close enough to the truth; he was with Bart, who was part of the governor’s entourage. “I work with a company who provides the governor with security,” he added, figuring a little more embellishment couldn’t hurt. For reasons he couldn’t quite define, he was reluctant to leave Stacy on her own in this hazardous maze.

He turned around to look at her, but she was already crawling back toward the governor’s position. He sighed, frustrated and worried.

“I’m still going to need to get in there, even if I can’t move past that support beam,” the officer behind him called out in a reasonable tone. “I need to get closer to the bomb if I’m going to help your friend disarm it.”

He was right. Harlan was just in the way at this point. He started crawling back out of the hole, emerging on the outside a few seconds later to find himself surrounded by bomb squad members. They were already assessing the debris pile to see if there was a better way to the bomb site.

“There’s a whole lot of junk in there ready to fall down on top of you,” Harlan warned the one who seemed to be in charge. He showed the man the cell phone photo from Stacy. “Here’s a picture of the bomb.”

The bomb tech frowned. “Semtex. Radio controlled, if I had to guess.”

“Which may mean he’s around here somewhere, waiting to send a signal,” Harlan said. At the bomb tech’s odd look, he added, “Three stints in Iraq.”

“Ah.” The bomb tech nodded. “It’s probably not going to blow if someone touches it—there don’t appear to be any trip wires. I think what we have to do is send in a blast blanket to the aide—”

“Stacy Giordano,” Harlan supplied.

“Ms. Giordano can detach the bomb—looks like it’s just taped to the post—and cover it with the blast blanket. We’ve got one that has a radio frequency jammer built in. It ought to block any remote signal he tries to send.”

“If he’s watching, he might send the signal as soon as he spots the blanket.”

“We can hide the blanket in something else so he doesn’t know we’re taking it in,” the bomb tech suggested. “We could send in a protective suit and shield the blanket with that.”

“I’ll take it in,” Harlan suggested. “Whoever’s watching will be less suspicious of me than of you guys. Plus, I know how the blast blanket works, so I can talk her through it.”

The bomb tech frowned, as if he were considering arguing. But finally he nodded. “Just tell her to make sure the yellow side is down.”

Harlan nodded.

The minute and a half it took for the bomb squad technicians to surreptitiously hide the blast blanket bag between the folds of the bomb suit seemed to drag on forever. Harlan found himself scanning the area the whole time, wondering if the bomber was watching him at that very moment.

Large numbers of police had finally arrived, keeping the curious onlookers away from the blast area, but a radio signal wouldn’t have to come from nearby to do the job. The bomb squad couldn’t run full force radio jammers now because it would interfere with the communications between the first responders, a potentially disastrous scenario.

So until Stacy could get that blanket wrapped around the bomb, the bomber had all the time in the world to make his move.

What was the bomber waiting for, anyway? The governor was a sitting duck. He could have already set off the second blast, the second it was clear that she was still alive.

Why hadn’t the bomber made his move?

“All set.” The bomb tech interrupted Harlan’s musings, handing him the bomb suit. He made sure Harlan had a tight grip on the handle of the blast blanket bag peeking out through a space in the suit and nodded for him to go back into the maze. “I’ll go around and tell Ms. Giordano what we’re doing.”

As soon as Harlan was pretty sure he was no longer visible to anyone other than people standing right outside the debris pile, he dropped the suit and pulled out the blast blanket contained in a nylon bag about the size of an artist’s portfolio. He hurried as quickly as he dared to the teetering support pole and found Stacy already waiting for him, the bomb lying next to her on the grass.

Somehow, he hadn’t expected her to bring the bomb with her. But it was probably smart—the area where she now crouched was about as wide a space as she’d find under the fallen platform.

“Here, let me help you get the blanket through,” she said, her dark eyes wide with terror but her chin squared with determination. Once again, Harlan had to give her extra points for sheer guts.

He helped her slide the bag through the narrow space between the sagging pole and the debris field blocking wider access, taking care not to let anything touch the pole.

Once Stacy had the bag clear of the pole, she looked back at Harlan. “What do I do?”

“Inside is a blanket and a smaller collar.” He watched as she unzipped the bag and pulled out the contents. “Wrap that collar around the bomb without letting it touch it. Use the Velcro fasteners to close it.”

As he took her through the steps of shielding the bomb with the blanket, he was struck by how calmly she was following his orders. Her hands shook a little, but she managed to do everything right the first time. Within a few minutes, the bomb was covered by the blast blanket and the low-frequency radio jammer was working.

Harlan released a sigh of relief. “Go see if you can get the governor out. I’ll wait here.”

He found himself staring at the dark blue blanket lying on the ground on the other side of the narrow gap, sweat dripping down his forehead. He’d seen an earlier version of the blanket used in Iraq, one with passive rather than active radio jamming capabilities. Most of the time, it had worked.

Once, it hadn’t, and he had the shrapnel scars on his trigger hand to show for it. That and an honorable discharge from the Marine Corps that amounted to “Thanks for your service—now get lost.”

He heard the sound of movement from the direction in which Stacy had disappeared. A few seconds later, the governor’s pale, perspiring face appeared in the gloom. She managed a quick smile as she caught sight of Harlan watching her through the narrow gap.

“You’re a hell of a lot more handsome than I remembered,” she said with a weak chuckle.

“Clearly you need immediate medical attention,” Harlan responded in a teasing tone, relieved to see the governor was able to move around under her own steam.

Bringing up the rear, Stacy Giordano looked wiped out, as if only her determination to help the governor escape had been holding her together over the past hour.

Gingerly, the governor slipped through the narrow gap, careful to avoid the precarious support beam. Harlan didn’t even have to call for help—one of the EMTs hurried inside and took charge of the governor, helping her out of the ruins.

Harlan turned to look after Stacy Giordano, catching her as she tripped and swayed precariously close to the slanting pole. Her fingers tangled in the fabric of his shirt, and her dark eyes flickered up to meet his.

The air between them heated, so volatile that Harlan wondered, for a crazy second, if it was enough to set off the bomb they’d so carefully neutralized.

Then Stacy found her balance and let go of his shirt. The tension eased, though it didn’t dissipate completely. She thanked him politely in a low, raspy voice and headed for the opening, leaving him to follow behind her.

Outside, the police took over, whisking them out of the blast area and into a squad car parked a safe distance away. Stacy closed her hand around Harlan’s arm, reigniting the spark between them for a moment. “I should be with the governor.”

He looked down at her hand. Her fingers were slim and small, neatly manicured, though several nails were now broken and ragged from the ordeal. He remembered his first sight of her earlier that day as she was helping the governor prepare for her announcement. The pale gray blouse that was now streaked with blood and grime had been spotless and crisp, businesslike yet still fiercely feminine.

Her dark hair had been up, also, he realized. Coiled at the base of her neck, not loose and tangled as it was now. And she’d had a dark gray jacket to go with her matching trousers, buttoned up and looking every bit the poised, perfect government aide—nothing like the lioness who’d just saved at least a dozen lives with her show of bravery.

“They won’t let you see her until they check her out,” he responded. “You know the governor’s going to get the full package of tests. Better for us to get our statements to the police over with, don’t you think? We’ll probably get back to the hospital before she’s even done.”

He turned out to be right. It didn’t take long for the police to realize Harlan and Stacy didn’t have much to add to what Parker McKenna and Bart Bellows had already told the police about what happened that day. Harlan found he had several of the same questions the police did about the bombing. For starters, why had the first bomb been so low-impact? It had been large enough to take down the dais and blast deadly shrapnel through the surrounding crowd, but there had been minimal impact to the area beyond the platform where the governor had given her speech.

“If the first bomb was so small, why was the second one so much bigger?” Stacy asked another of his questions aloud later as they were on the way to the hospital in the back of a detective’s sedan.

Damned good question, Harlan thought. “Maybe they were supposed to go off at the same time and something blocked the signal to the second device. Bomb squad will tell us more.”

“Maybe.” Stacy didn’t sound as if the explanation appeased her curiosity. “Have you heard any news from the hospital?”

“Not a word.”

“I hope they’re still doing well,” she murmured, gazing out the window at the sprawling campus of the University of Texas. Her profile looked pale and fragile, though Harlan knew now that she was a lot tougher than she looked.

“Did you get to call Zachary?” he asked aloud, wondering if she’d spill the beans about who the mysterious Zachary was to her.

She slanted a quick look his way. “I did. He hadn’t heard anything about what happened, so he wasn’t worried.”

“Good,” Harlan said, although he wondered how anyone with access to a radio or television could have missed the news about what happened at the capitol.

At the hospital, Parker McKenna was waiting for them in the lobby. “We’re all upstairs waiting for more word,” Parker told Harlan. “They’ve done a few tests, but so far everything’s looking good. They think she has a mild concussion, so they’re going to want to keep her here overnight.”

“What about Bart?”

“Him, too. He doesn’t seem to have sustained any real injuries—pretty miraculous if you ask me.” Parker pushed the button for the fourth floor. “They’re going to move Lila into her own room on the fourth floor as soon as they finish the last tests, so we’re all gathering in the fourth floor waiting area until they’ve brought her up.”

In the waiting room, Bailey and her sister Chloe sat talking to each other. They both looked up as Harlan, Parker and Stacy entered. Bailey’s eyes went soft at the sight of her fiancé, while Chloe Lockhart’s baby blues hardened at the sight of Harlan. She wasn’t exactly his biggest fan after his stint as her bodyguard a few months back.

“Oh, look. It’s Dirty Harry.” She greeted him with a roll of her eyes.

“Nice seeing you again, Chloe. Like the hair.”

Chloe’s right hand went defensively to her spiky pink-streaked hair. “I needed a change.”

Bailey pulled away from Parker’s hug and reached out to touch Stacy’s arm. “Mom told us everything you did for her back there. I don’t even know how to start thanking you.”

“Thank the Austin bomb squad,” Stacy said, looking uncomfortable at the praise.

“I will, but I’m not through thanking you,” Bailey said with a smile. “Listen, is there anything I can do for you?”

“I should get busy booking rooms for everyone who’s staying overnight,” Stacy murmured, looking as if the last thing she was capable of doing was playing social secretary for the governor’s entourage. But Harlan supposed that was her job, and the explosion had certainly put a kink in the plans for everyone to hop aboard the governor’s private jet and fly back to her home base of Freedom, Texas.

“Why don’t you let me do that for you?” Chloe Lockhart suggested in a gentle tone that caught Harlan by surprise. He was used to sarcasm and petulance from the governor’s rebellious youngest child.

“No,” Stacy snapped, making Chloe flinch. Looking horrified by her own rudeness, Stacy immediately added, “I’m so sorry. I guess I’m still a little stressed.”

“Understandable,” Chloe answered, her voice sympathetic.

“I just have everything I’d need to get this done on my phone,” Stacy added. “Plus, I could really use the distraction.” She flashed Bailey and Chloe a faint smile and headed out the door to the courtyard outside the waiting room. Once the door closed behind her, she pulled out her phone and seemed to get right to work.

Harlan watched her, a little worried by the pallor of her face and the way her back bowed with sheer exhaustion.

What if she’d sustained an injury worse than just the scrape to her head? She could be bleeding internally, for all they knew. The EMTs had barely spared a minute to slap a bandage on her head.

“Did the police tell you anything new?” Parker McKenna’s question forced Harlan’s attention away from Stacy.

With an apologetic look at Bailey, Harlan drew Parker off to the side.

“I’ll tell her what we’re talking about later, you know,” Parker murmured.

Harlan barely kept himself from rolling his eyes. Half the guys at Corps Security and Investigation were sappy in love these days. It was becoming an epidemic—one Harlan had no intention of getting sucked into. His ex-wife had done an excellent job of immunizing him against the love bug. He might thank her one of these days, if he ever decided to speak to her again.

“Regardless, the governor’s daughters don’t need to hear us analyzing who might want to blow up their mother and why,” he said aloud to Parker. “The situation’s scary enough.”

“Tell me about it,” Parker growled. “I thought when we caught Frank Dorian, this kind of thing was over.”

“What’s the chance that Dorian had an accomplice we don’t know about?”

“Believe me, I’ve been thinking about that myself,” Parker admitted. “But it just doesn’t make sense. Dorian’s motive was so personal. It’s not like he’s going to pass on his obsession to some random bomber he found in the phone book.”

Harlan knew Parker was right. Frank Dorian had blamed Lila Lockhart for her decision not to pardon his brother, who’d been on Texas’s death row. His brother’s execution had been too much for Dorian’s brokenhearted mother, and Dorian blamed Lila for her death, as well. His decision to go after the governor had been deeply personal rather than political, and his arrest had put an end to the threats against the governor and her family.

But at least it would have been a place to start looking.

Instead, they didn’t have a clue who’d planted the two bombs at the capitol today. People had been killed. Even more had been injured, some critically.

And for what? Just because Lila Lockhart had decided she wasn’t through serving her country?

The world was a crazy, crazy place.

Harlan’s gaze drifted toward the large plate glass window looking out on the concrete courtyard, where he’d last seen Stacy Giordano. She was no longer talking on the phone, nor had she reentered the hospital waiting room. Instead, she sat on one of the three concrete benches loosely circling a large potted evergreen tree, her back to the window. Her hunched shoulders and lowered head made her look small and fragile.

Harlan’s gut tightened with concern.

“Is she okay?” Parker’s gaze had followed Harlan’s, settling on Stacy’s slender form.

“She had a scrape on her head, but the EMT didn’t seem to think it amounted to much.” Of course, in the middle of all the chaos, the paramedic hadn’t exactly spent much time checking her out. “I’ll go check on her.”

As he stepped out onto the narrow fourth floor terrace, Stacy turned to see who had disturbed her solitude. In her pale face, her eyes looked big and haunted. “Has something happened?” she asked, her voice tinged with alarm.

“No. I just wanted to check on you.” He sat on one of the adjacent benches, squelching the urge to reach out and touch her folded hands. “You look tired.”

“Long day,” she murmured with a hint of wry humor.

“Hellish day,” he agreed. “Did you manage to get all your calls made?”

“I think so.” The humor in her eyes faded. “I just wish I were home.”

“I bet your husband does, too.” Even as the words escaped his lips, Harlan knew he was fishing for information about her marital status. He gave himself a mental kick.

She grimaced. “No. No husband.”

He quirked an eyebrow. “Um, sorry?”

She flashed a quick, humorless grin. “No, not sorry.”

So, another wounded warrior back from the marital battlefield? That was even more dangerous.

Her smile faded as quickly as it had risen. “Do we have a death tally from the blast yet?”

He shook his head. “I found two D.O.A. at the scene. At least two more who were in really bad shape.”

Her chin trembled and a sheen of moisture filled her dark eyes. “Damn it.”

The urge to pull her into a hug caught him off guard. He wasn’t a demonstrative guy. He didn’t do tea and sympathy. But something about Stacy Giordano’s vulnerability punched him right in the gut. He wanted to make things better for her.

And that scared the hell out of him.

“I’d better go see if Lila’s been asking for me.” Stacy pushed herself off the bench, wincing a little as if the movement caused her pain.

Harlan couldn’t stop himself from reaching out to steady her, his fingers closing around her upper arm. Her gaze shot up, a quizzical look in her eyes, and for a second, he felt as if his whole body had turned to liquid.

Heat quickly eclipsed that melting sensation. He pulled his hand back, disturbed by his reaction to her.

The door from the waiting room opened, and Parker stood in the doorway, his expression grim. “I just got a call from Wade,” he said. “Frank Dorian’s dead.”

Chapter Three

The governor stayed on the phone for most of the very early flight home from Austin the next morning, giving Stacy time to decompress from the past twenty-four hours. Staying busy arranging for the governor’s entourage to stay in Austin overnight had helped fill her afternoon, and the temporary drama of learning about Frank Dorian’s jailhouse death had occupied most of the early evening, as Bailey Lockhart’s fiancé, Parker McKenna, and his colleague Harlan McClain had stayed in constant touch with their counterparts at the Corps Security and Investigations office in Freedom, relaying information as it trickled in.

All evidence pointed to suicide—Dorian had fashioned a noose from his jail-issued shirt and hung himself from the bars of his cell—but Bart Bellows had selected the men who worked at CSI because they were thorough and resourceful. Stacy had tried not to eavesdrop on their conversations, but she’d gleaned enough to know that one of the CSI agents had a contact at the Freedom Police Department who was keeping them apprised of the department’s investigation. If there was anything strange about Dorian’s death, the agents of CSI were determined to figure out what it was and what, if anything, it had to do with the attack on the governor.

Stacy had found herself growing more and more impressed with the two CSI agents as the evening went on. She knew from Bailey that Corps Security and Investigations was made up of former military men. Parker had been an Army Captain, and it showed. He’d been a huge help in keeping everyone in the governor’s entourage calm and focused.

She wasn’t sure what branch of the military Harlan McClain had been part of. He wore his sandy brown hair short, but so did most of the other former military men she knew. He was hard-muscled, as she’d learned when she’d practically collapsed in his arms after tripping on their way out of the debris field. Clearly he’d kept himself in shape since parting company with whatever military branch he’d served in.

He smelled good, too, she thought, even when sweating out a bomb scare. He didn’t wear cologne like a lot of men, including her ex-husband, did. He smelled of good old soap and water, a light, clean scent that probably wouldn’t have smelled masculine on anyone else.

Harlan McClain was masculine to the core. It had showed in how he’d dealt with the aftermath of the bombing—taking charge, keeping things moving. He’d tended to the dead and wounded, delegated authority to others as needed, and jumped right in to help Stacy when they found the governor buried under the rubble.

Very different from her ex-husband, Anthony, who’d never met a problem he couldn’t analyze to death.

“Looking forward to seeing Zachary?” Lila murmured, drawing Stacy’s attention back to the cabin of the small jet.

“Yes,” she answered, even if there was a small part of her that was dreading seeing her son after the unexpected night away from home. Zachary hated changes to his routine, so he’d probably given poor Charlotte a hard time last night. Stacy almost envied Charlotte—at least a tantrum was a response. When Zachary was immersed in his own little world—a frequent event—he barely acknowledged Stacy’s presence.

They arrived in Freedom a little after 7:00 a.m. Stacy stayed with the governor for a few minutes, going over the changes to Lila’s schedule arranged in response to the events in Austin and planning ahead for a couple of television interviews to let the people of Texas see that the governor was ready to finish out her term with her usual sass and vigor.

Finally, Lila told her to take the rest of the morning off, but to come back to the ranch house for lunch. “I have something else I need to discuss with you.”

With curiosity niggling at the back of her brain, Stacy walked to the ranch guesthouse she shared with her son. She found Charlotte Manning in the middle of helping Zachary find a pair of socks to wear to school.

Charlotte looked surprised to see her. “How’d the governor get the hospital to let her go so early?”

“You know how the governor is. What doctor was going to say no?” Stacy smiled at Zachary, who looked up at her for a second, then looked away, showing no sign of interest.

He went back to his search, sorting through the socks to find the blue pair. Tuesday meant the blue socks. Always.

A cold ache settled in her chest. After a year and a half of trying to come to terms with Zachary’s condition, she now realized she wasn’t ever going to get used to it. She’d spent every available hour researching Asperger’s syndrome, reading books, blogs, dry medical journal articles and heartfelt newspaper stories from parents of aspies, as people with Asperger’s syndrome referred to themselves. She’d come across a blog by a young college student who had Asperger’s and found some comfort in how grounded the young woman seemed to be, despite her different way of experiencing life, but ultimately, she’d had to accept that life with her beautiful son would be a series of never-ending challenges.