Texas Hero

“Hello, Jack.”

He’d expected to feel remnants of the old anger, the resentment, the fierce hurt. He hadn’t expected the punch to his gut that came with the sound of her voice. His head dipped in a curt nod. It was the best he could manage at the moment.

“Thanks for coming,” she said cooly.

He moved closer, wanting her to see his face when he delivered the speech he’d been preparing since Lightning informed him of the nature of his mission.

“Let’s get one thing straight, right here and right now. My job is to protect you. That’s the reason I’m here. That’s the only reason I’m here.”

Her chin snapped up. The fire he remembered all too well flared hot and dark in her eyes.

“I didn’t imagine you’d make the trip down to San Antonio for any other reason. We had our fun, Jack. We both enjoyed our little fling. But that’s all it was. You made that quite clear when you walked away from me nine years ago.”

His jaw tightened. He had no answer for that. There was no answer. Eyes hard, he watched her slide off the bar stool. Her scent came with her as she approached, a combination of sun and the delicate cactus pear perfume she’d always worn. It was her mother’s concoction, he remembered her telling him. He also remembered that he’d been nuzzling her neck at the time. Deliberately, Jack slammed the door on the thought.

When she raised a hand to shove back a loose tendril of hair, however, the gleam of silver circling her wrist brought another, sharper memory. The two-inch-wide beaten silver bracelet had cost him a half-month’s pay. He’d slipped it onto her wrist mere moments before her uncle’s police had arrived to arrest him.

“Let’s go upstairs,” he instructed tersely. “I want to see the message your friend left you.”

Chapter 2

Wrapping her arms around her middle, Ellie stood just inside the door of the trashed suite.

“I moved to another room. The hotel wanted to clean up the mess, but I asked them to leave it until you got here.”

His face impassive, Jack surveyed the mess. “Did the police find anything?”

“They dusted for prints, interviewed the hotel staff and asked for a complete inventory of the missing items, but as far as I know, they haven’t come up with any concrete leads. In fact…”

“In fact?”

Her shoulders lifted under the chili red top. “The detective in charge was somewhat less than sympathetic. Evidently he read the story about me in the Light and doesn’t take kindly to Mexicans determined to rewrite Texas history. It doesn’t seem to make a whole lot of difference to some folks that I’m as American as they are.”

“No, it wouldn’t.”

Jack had seen more than his share of bigotry during his overseas tours, both in the Marines and as an OMEGA agent. It didn’t matter what a person’s race, creed or financial circumstances might be. There was always someone who hated him or her because of them. With a mental note to establish liaison with the detective handling Ellie’s case as soon as he conducted his preliminary assessment of the situation, he eyed the message on the mirror.

The wording suggested a man, someone familiar with weapons and not afraid to let Ellie know it. The obvious inference was that the threat stemmed from her work. Jack never trusted the obvious.

“I want a complete background brief on the members on your team,” he told her, making a final sweep of the premises. “Particularly anyone who might or might not have a grudge against the team’s leader.”

Startled, she dropped her arms. “You think one of my own people is responsible for this?”

“I don’t think anything at this point. I’m just assessing the situation.”

Her eyes huge, she stared at him. Jack could see the doubt creep into their cinnamon brown depths, followed swiftly by dismay. Only now, he guessed, was it occurring to her that the leak to the press might have been more deliberate than accidental. That one of her team members might, in fact, be working behind the scenes on some hidden agenda of his or her own.

The years fell away. For a moment, he caught a glimpse in her stricken face of the trusting, passionate girl she’d once been.

He’d come so close to loving that girl. Closer than he’d ever come to loving anyone who didn’t wear khaki. Until Ellie, the Marines had been his life. Until Ellie, the Corps had constituted the only family he’d ever wanted or needed. He’d never known his father’s name. He’d long ago buried the memory of the mother who left her four-year-old son in the roach-infested hotel room and drove off with some poor slob she’d picked up in a bar. After years of being passed from one foster home to another, Jack had walked into a recruiting office on his eighteenth birthday, signed up and found a home.

He shot up through the ranks, from private to corporal to gunnery sergeant in minimal time. He learned to follow and to lead. Because of his outstanding record, he was selected for the elite Marine Security Guard Battalion. His first tour was at the U.S. Embassy in Gabon, Africa, his second at the plush post in Mexico City.

The debacle in Mexico City had ended his career and destroyed all sense of family with the Corps. Thankfully, he’d found another home in OMEGA. This one, he vowed savagely, he wouldn’t jeopardize by tumbling Ellie into the nearest bed.

“I also want a copy of your list of missing items.”

The dismay left Ellie’s face. Stiffening at his curt tone, she gave him an equally succinct response. “I’ll print you out a copy. It runs to more than fifty pages.”

“Fifty pages!”

The exclamation earned him a condescending smile. “My team’s been on-site for almost a week now. We’ve recorded hundreds of digital images, cross-indexed them and made copious notes concerning each. The data was all stored in the external FireWire drive that was stolen. Thank God I backed the files up via the university’s remote access mainframe!”

With that heartfelt mutter, she led the way down the hall to the new set of rooms the hotel had assigned her. Jack followed, forcing himself to keep his gaze on her back, her hair, the stiff set to her shoulders under her top. On anything, dammit, but the seductive sway of her hips.

A swift prowl around the spacious corner suite she showed him to had him shaking his head. “Pack your things.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“I’ll call the front desk and get them to move us.”

“Why?”

He dragged back the gauzy curtains covering the corner windows. One set of wavy glass panes fronted the street. The other set faced the brick wall of the River Center complex next door.

“See the roof of that building?”

“Yes.”

“It’s on a direct line with these windows. Anyone with a mind to it could get a clear bead on a target in this room. Or climb up on the roof of that IMAX theater across the street and stake you out.”

The color leached from her cheeks. “If you’re trying to scare me, you’re doing one heck of a good job.”

“You should be scared. That wasn’t a valentine your visitor left on that mirror, you know.”

“Of course I know! To paraphrase your earlier remark, the viciousness of that threat is the reason, the only reason, I agreed to the nuisance of a bodyguard.”

Hooking his thumbs in his jeans pockets, Jack tried to get a handle on the woman who’d emerged from the girl he’d once known.

“So why are you hanging around San Antonio, Ellie? Why offer yourself as a target to the kook or malcontent who issued that warning?”

“Because I refuse to let said kook or malcontent interfere with my work. In all modesty, I’m good at what I do. Damned good.” She speared him with a hard look. “You predicted I would be. Remember, Jack? Right about the time you and Uncle Eduardo jointly decided finishing college was more important to me than my… Let’s see, how did he phrase it? My passing infatuation with a hardheaded Marine.”

They’d have to scratch at the old scars sometime. Better to do it now and give the scabs time to heal again. If Jack was to protect her, he needed her trust. Or at least her cooperation. He wouldn’t gain either until he’d acknowledged his culpability for the hurt she’d suffered all those years ago.

“You were only nineteen, Ellie. I thought… Your uncle thought…”

“That I didn’t know my own mind.” Her chin came up. “You were wrong. I knew it then. I know it now.”

She couldn’t have made her meaning plainer. Jack Carstairs wouldn’t get the chance to wound her again. He accepted that stark truth with a nod.

“Why don’t we get settled in different rooms, and you can tell me exactly what it is you’re so good at. I need to understand what you’re doing here,” he said to forestall the stiff response he saw coming, “and why it’s roused such controversy.”

The hotel staff moved them to adjoining suites two floors down. The rooms looked out over the inner courtyard of the hotel instead of the street. Like the rest of the historic hotel, they were furnished with a combination of period antiques and modern comfort. A burned-wood armoire held a twenty-seven-inch TV and a well-stocked bar. The wrought-iron bedstead boasted a queen-size mattress and thick, puffy goose-down comforter.

While Jack checked phones, door locks and ceiling vents, three valets transferred boxes of files and equipment on rolling dollies. Ruthlessly rearranging the furniture to meet her work-space needs, Ellie promptly turned her sitting room into a functional office. She’d already replaced the stolen computer and hard drive, which she now hooked up to an oversize flat LCD screen.

A smaller unit sat beside the computer. Jack studied it with a faint smile. Mackenzie Blair, OMEGA’s chief of communications, would light up like a Christmas tree if she caught sight of all those buttons and dials and displays. The palm-size unit was probably crammed with more circuitry than the Space Shuttle.

Evidently Ellie Alazar shared Mackenzie’s fascination with electronic gadgetry. She gave the small metal box the kind of pat a fond mother might give a child.

“This holds the guts of a technology I developed the summer after we…” Her brown brows slashed down. Obviously impatient with her hesitation, she plowed ahead. “The summer after I met you. I didn’t make the trip to Mexico City that year. I didn’t go down for several years, as a matter of fact.”

Jack wasn’t surprised. Elena’s emotions ran close to the surface. In the short months he’d known her, she’d never once reined them in. Looking back, he could see that was what had drawn him to her in the first place. Everything she thought or felt was all there, in her eyes, her face. Impatience, passion, anger—whatever emotion gripped her, she shared. Honestly. Openly.

She’d certainly shared her feelings the day her uncle sent his police to arrest Jack. She’d been furious with Eduardo Alazar. But not half as angry as she’d became with the Marine who refused to stand and fight for her.

“You didn’t go to Mexico that summer,” Jack acknowledged, steering the conversation to less volatile subjects. “What did you do?”

“I worked for the National Park Service on a dig in the Pecos National Park. We were excavating the site of the battle of Glorietta Pass. The battle took place in 1862 and was one of the pivotal engagements in the Civil War.”

“The Gettysburg of the West. I’ve heard of it.”

She gave him a look of approval. “Then you know the battle turned the tide against Confederates and sent Silbey’s Brigade scuttling back to Texas in total disarray.”

Another Texas defeat. Evidently Ellie had started her career at the site of one disastrous conflict for the Lone Star state. Now she was up to her trim, tight buns in controversy over another. No wonder some loyal local citizens wanted to roll up the welcome mat and send her on her way.

“We used metal detectors to locate shell casings at the battle site,” she explained, warming to her subject. “We marked their location on a computerized grid, then categorized the casings by make and caliber. We also analyzed the rifling marks on the brass to determine the type of weapon that fired them.”

“Sounds like a lot of work.”

“It was. Three summers’ worth of digging and mapping. Plus hundreds of hours of detailed research into the weaponry of the time. The Confederates tended to carry a wide variety of personally owned rifles and side arms. Union weapons were somewhat more standardized. By matching spent shell casings to the type of weapon that fired them, we were able to map the precise movement of both armies on the battlefield. We also built a massive database. For my Ph.D. dissertation, I expanded and translated the raw data into a program that allows forensic historians to reliably identify shell casings from any era post-1820.”

“Why 1820?”

“The copper percussion cap was invented in the 1820s. Within a decade, two at most, almost every army in the world had converted its muzzle-loading flintlocks to percussion. More to the point where my research was concerned, the copper casing retained more defined rifling marks, which aided in identification of the type of weapon that fired it.”

Jack was impressed. He could fieldstrip an M-15, clean the components and put it back together blindfolded. He’d qualified at the expert level on every weapon in the Marine Corps inventory, as well as on the ones OMEGA outfitted him with. Yet his knowledge of the science of ballistics didn’t begin to compare with Ellie’s.

“So how do we get from the invention of the percussion cap to your finding that the hero of the Alamo deserted his troops and ran away?”

“It’s not a finding.” She shot the answer back. “It’s only one of several hypotheses I surfaced for discussion with my team. Honestly, you’d think simple intellectual curiosity would make folks wait to see whether the theory is substantiated by fact before they get all in a twit.”

“You’d think,” Jack echoed solemnly.

Flushing a bit, she backpedaled. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to snap. I’m just getting tired of having to deal with outraged letters to the editor, picketers at the site, skittish team members and a nervous National Park Service director who’s close to pulling the plug on our funding.”

There they were again. The fire, the impatience. She hadn’t learned to bank, either. Jack found himself hoping she never did.

“And this hypothesis is based on what?” he asked, the evenness of his tone a contrast to hers. “Start at the beginning. Talk me through the sequence of events.”

“It would be better if I showed you.” She speared a glance at her watch. “It’s only a little past two. If you want, we can start here at the Alamo, then drive out to the site.”

“Good enough. Give me ten minutes.”

With the controlled, smooth grace that had always characterized him, he executed what Ellie could only describe as an about-face and passed through the connecting door. It closed behind him, leaving her staring at the panels.

The old cliché was true, she thought with a little ache. You can take a man out of the Marines, but you never quite took the Marine out of the man.

Like dust blown by the hot Texas wind, memories skittered through her mind. She could see Jack the night they’d met. She’d accompanied her aunt and uncle to a formal function at the American embassy. As head of the security detail, Gunnery Sergeant Carstairs had stood just behind the ambassador, square-shouldered, proud, confident. And so damned handsome in his dress blues that Elena hadn’t been able to take her eyes off him all evening.

She’d been the one to ask him to dance. She’d called him a few days later, inviting him to join her for a Sunday afternoon stroll through Chapultapec Park. She’d let him know in every way a woman could that she was attracted to him.

And that’s all it was. A sizzling, searing attraction.

At first.

How could she know she’d fall desperately in love with the man? That she’d find a passion in Jack’s arms she’d never come close to tasting before? That she’d swear to give up everything for him—her scholarship, her family, her pride—only to have him throw them all back in her face.

If she closed her eyes, she could replay their final scene in painful, brilliant color. Jack was already under house arrest. Her uncle’s overly protective, knee-jerk reaction to his niece’s affair had forced the U.S. ambassador to demand Sergeant Carstairs’s immediate reassignment and possible disciplinary action.

Steaming, Ellie had ignored her uncle’s stern orders to the contrary, marched to the marine barracks and demanded to see Jack. He’d come to the foyer, stiff and remote in his khaki shirt and blue trousers with the crimson stripe down each leg. With brutal honesty, he’d laid his feelings on the line.

Ellie still had a year of college and at least three years of grad school ahead of her. He was going home to face a possible court-martial and an uncertain future. He refused to make promises he might not be able to keep. Nor would he allow her put her future on hold for his.

He was so noble, Ellie had railed. So damned, stupidly obstinate. Traits he continued to demonstrate even after they both returned to the States.

Cringing inside, Ellie recalled the repeated attempts she’d made to contact Jack. He wouldn’t return her calls. Never answered her letters. Finally, her pride kicked in and she left a scathing message saying that he could damned well make the next move. He never did.

Now here they were, she thought, blowing out a long breath. Two completely different people. She’d fulfilled the early promise of a brilliant career in history. Jack, apparently, had bottomed out. Despite his extensive training and experience in personal security, he’d evidently drifted from one firm to another until going to work for some small-time operation in Virginia. Ellie wouldn’t have known he was in the bodyguard business if one of her colleagues hadn’t stumbled across his company on the Internet while preparing for a trip to Bogotá, Colombia, the kidnap capital of the universe.

It was guilt, only guilt, that had made her insist on Jack when her uncle urged her to accept the services of a bodyguard. She’d caused the ruin of his chosen career. Her own had exceeded all expectations. The least she could do was throw a little business his way.

From the looks of him, he could use it. She didn’t know what was considered the appropriate uniform for bodyguards, but her uncle’s security detail had always worn suits and ties and walked around talking into their wristwatches. She couldn’t remember seeing any of them in thigh-hugging jeans or wrinkled, blue-cotton shirts with the sleeves rolled up. Or, she thought with a small ache just under her ribs, black leather boots showing faint scuff marks.

More than anything else, those scratches brought home the vast difference between the spit-and-polish sergeant she’d once loved and the man in the other room. Her throat tight, Ellie turned to gather her purse and keys.

Jack flipped open the palm-size phone and punched a single key. One short beep indicated instant connection to OMEGA’s control center.

“Control, this is Renegade.”

OMEGA’s chief of communications responded with a cheerful, “Go ahead, Renegade.”

As little as a year ago, operatives at the headquarters stood by twenty-four hours a day to act as controllers for agents in the field. Mackenzie Blair’s improvements in field communications allowed for instant contact with headquarters and eliminated the need for controllers. Instead, Mackenzie and her communications techs monitored operations around the clock.

Mostly Mackenzie, Jack amended. The woman spent almost all her waking hours at OMEGA. She needed a life. Like Jack himself, he thought wryly.

“I’ve made contact with the subject.”

The terse report no doubt raised Mackenzie’s brows. After all, the background dossier she’d compiled had included a summation of Elena Maria Alazar’s affair with Sergeant Jack Carstairs.

“Tell Lightning I’m working the preliminary threat assessment. I’ll report back when I have a better feel for the situation.”

“Roger that, Renegade.”

After signing off, Jack slid the small, flat phone into his shirt pocket and hiked his foot up on a handy footstool. His movements were sure and smooth as he drew a blue steel short-barreled automatic from its ankle holster. He made sure the safety was on, released the magazine, checked the load and pushed the magazine back in place. A tug on the slide chambered a round. With the 9 mm tucked in its leather nest, he shook his pant leg over his boot and rapped on the door to Ellie’s room.

“Ready?”

Pulling on a ball cap in the same chili-pepper red as her top, she hooked a bag over her shoulder.

“Yes.”

Chapter 3

Outside, the July sun blazed down with cheerful brutality. Exiting the hotel, Ellie turned right toward Alamo Plaza. Jack walked beside her, his eyes narrowed against the glare as he scanned the crowd.

It included the usual assortment of vendors and tourists, with a heavy sprinkling of men and women in Air Force blue. They were basic trainees, released for a few precious hours from the nearby Lackland Air Force Base. With their buzz-cut hair and slick sleeves, they looked so young, so proud of their uniform. So unprepared for the crises that world events could plunge them into at any moment.

What they didn’t look like were riled-up patriots seeking vengeance on a historian who dared to question the courage of a local legend. Nonetheless, Jack didn’t relax his vigilance.

“What do you know about the Alamo?” Ellie asked as they approached the mission.

“Not much more than what I absorbed from the John Wayne movie of the same name.”

And in the data Mackenzie had pulled off the computers. Jack kept silent about the background file. Right now, he was more interested in Ellie’s version of the Alamo’s history.

“It’s one of a string of five missions located along the San Antonio River, founded in the early 1700s,” she informed him. “Originally designated Mission Antonio de Valero, it didn’t become known as the Alamo until much later.”

With a sweep of her arm, she gestured to the adobe structure dominating the wide plaza ahead.

“There it is. The shrine of Texas liberty.”

The distinctive building stirred an unexpected dart of pride in Jack. As a symbol of independence, its image had been seared into his consciousness. Of course, all those John Wayne movies might have had something to do with the sensation.

“Originally the mission compound sat by itself, well across the river from the settlement of San Antonio de Bexar,” Ellie related. “Now, of course, the city’s grown up all around it.”

They wove a path through sightseers snapping photo after photo. A red-faced, grossly overweight candidate for a stroke backed up to frame a shot, banging into several fellow tourists in the process. Swiftly, Jack took Ellie’s elbow to steer her around the obstacle.

Just as swiftly, he released her.

Well, hell! Here it was, going on nine years since he’d last touched this woman. Yet one glide of his fingers along her smooth, warm skin set off a chain reaction that started in his arm and ended about six inches below his belt.

For the first time since Lightning’s call some hours ago, Jack conceded maybe Eduardo Alazar had reason to be concerned. The fires weren’t out. Not entirely.

Jack had been so certain the embarrassment he’d caused Ellie and himself had doused any residual sparks. The sudden flare of heat in his gut screamed otherwise. Clenching his jaw against the unwelcome sensation, he tried to concentrate on Ellie’s recitation.

“A series of droughts and epidemics decimated the mission’s religious population,” she related. “In 1793 the structure was turned over to civil authorities. At that point, Spanish cavalry from Alamo de Parras in Mexico took occupancy, and the fort became known at the Pueblo del Alamo. When the Spanish were driven out of Mexico, Mexican troops moved in. About the same time, the Mexican government opened the province of Texas to foreign settlers.”