Tall, Dark And Deadly

“Smoker?” he asked, almost apologetically. Almost, but not quite. He was just a little too amused to be truly sorry.

“No,” she said. She was more out of shape than she’d realized. She’d always enjoyed running, but this spring and summer she hadn’t quite managed to get started again.

The door opened, and standing in the inner office was a man who could have been a mirror reflection of Lucky. His hair was a slightly different color, and his face was more craggy than pretty, but the widths of the two men’s shoulders were close to exact.

“I have a meeting with Admirals Forrest and Stonegate,” the man said in a way of greeting. “Lucy’s already here. Hear her out, and do whatever you’ve got to do to catch this guy. Preferably before the end of this week.”

He looked from Lucky to Syd. His eyes were different from Lucky’s and not just in color. He seemed capable of looking past the unruly hair that was falling into her own eyes, past the high neck of her shirt, past her near-permanent expression of slightly bored, slightly raised-eyebrow disbelief that she’d adopted after too many years of being given nicknames like Stinky.

Whatever he saw when he looked at her made him smile.

And it wasn’t a condescending smile, or a “wow, you are such a freak” smile, either.

It was warm and welcoming. He held out his hand. “I’m Alan Francisco.” His grip was as pleasantly solid as his smile. “Welcome to Coronado. If there’s anything you need while you’re here, I’m sure Lieutenant O’Donlon will be more than happy to provide it for you.”

And just like that, he was gone. It wasn’t until he was out the far door that Syd realized he’d moved stiffly, leaning heavily on a cane.

With a jolt, she realized she was standing there gazing after Alan Francisco. Lucky had already gone into the lieutenant commander’s office, and she followed, shutting the door behind her.

Surprise, surprise—Lucky had his arms wrapped around Detective McCoy. As Syd watched, he gave her a hello kiss.

“I didn’t get to say hello properly before,” he murmured. “You are looking too good for words, babe.” Keeping his arm looped around her shoulders, he turned to Syd. “Lucy’s husband, Blue, is XO of SEAL Team Ten’s Alpha Squad.”

Lucy’s husband. Syd blinked. Lucy had a husband, who was also a SEAL. And presumably the two men were acquaintances, if not friends. This guy was too much.

“XO means executive officer,” Lucy explained, giving Lucky a quick hug before slipping free from his grasp, reaching up to adjust the long brown hair that had slipped free from her ponytail holder. She really did have remarkably pretty eyes. “Blue’s second in command of Alpha Squad.”

“Blue,” Syd repeated. “His name’s really Blue?”

“It’s a nickname,” Lucy told her with a smile. “SEALs tend to get nicknames when they first go through BUD/S training. Let’s see, we’ve got Cat, Cowboy, Frisco—” she ticked the names off on her fingers “—Blue, Lucky, Harvard, Crow, Fingers, Snakefoot, Wizard, Elmer, the Priest, Doc, Spaceman, Crash…”

“So your husband works here on the Navy base,” Syd clarified.

“Some of the time,” Lucy said. She glanced at Lucky and what that look meant, Syd couldn’t begin to guess. “Alpha Squad went wheels up while we were downtown.”

Syd couldn’t guess the meaning of Lucy’s words, either. “Wheels up?” She was starting to sound like a parrot.

“They’ve shipped out,” Lucky explained. He leaned back casually, half sitting on Lieutenant Commander Francisco’s desk. “The expression refers to a plane’s wheels leaving the ground. Alpha Squad is outta town.”

Again, Lucy and Lucky seemed to be communicating with no words—only a long, meaningful look. Was it possible that this blue-eyed blond god was having an affair with the wife of a superior officer? Anything was possible, but that seemed a little too sordid.

“What you’ve done,” Lucy said quietly, breaking the silence, “is going to mean everything to Ellen. Looking back, you know it’s going to be worth it.”

“I could still be shipped out myself,” he countered. “If something big came up, and I was needed, I wouldn’t even be able to attend my own wedding.”

Syd cleared her throat. She didn’t know what they were talking about, didn’t want to know. She wasn’t interested in Ellen—whoever she was—or what Lucky and Lucy McCoy did behind her husband’s back. She just wanted to help catch the rapist, get her story and be off to New York.

“I’m okay, you know,” Lucky told the detective. “And I’ll be even more okay if you’ll meet me for dinner one of these nights.”

Lucy gave him a quick smile, glancing at Syd, obviously aware that the two of them weren’t alone. “You’ve got my number,” she said. She sat down at the conference table that was over by the window. “Right now, we need to go over some task-force rules, talk about your team.”

Lucky sat at the head of the table. “Great. Let’s start with my rules. You let me form a team of SEALs, you don’t hammer me with a lot of useless rules and hamper me with unqualified people who will only slow us down—” he shot Syd an apologetic version of his smile “—no offense—and then we’ll catch your guy.”

Lucy didn’t blink. “The members of your team have to meet Chief Zale’s approval.”

“Oh, no way!”

“He—and I—believe that since we don’t know who we’re dealing with, and since you have plenty of alternatives for personnel, you should construct your team from SEALs or SEAL candidates who absolutely—no question—do not fit the rapist’s description.”

Syd sat down across from Lucky. “So in other words, no one white, powerfully built, with a crew cut.”

Lucky sputtered. “That eliminates the majority of the men stationed in Coronado.”

Lucy nodded serenely. “That’s right. And the majority of the men are all potential suspects.”

“You honestly think a real SEAL could have raped those women?”

“I think until we know more, we need to be conservative as to whom we allow into our information loop,” she told him. “You’d be a suspect yourself, Luke, but your hair’s too long.”

“Gee, thanks for the vote of confidence.”

“The second rule is about weapons,” Lucy continued. “We don’t want you running around town armed to the teeth. And that means knives as well as sidearms.”

“Sure,” he said. “Great. And when we apprehend this guy, we’ll throw spoons at him.”

“You won’t apprehend him,” she countered. “The task force will. Your team’s job is to help locate him. Track him down. Try to think like this son of a bitch and anticipate his next move, so we—the police and FInCOM—can be there, waiting for him.”

“Okay,” Lucky said. He pointed across the table at Sydney. “I’ll follow your rules—if you take her off my hands. After we do the hypnotist thing tomorrow afternoon, all she’s going to do is get in the way.” He looked at Syd. “No offense.”

“Too bad,” she said, “because I am offended.”

Lucky looked at her again. “I don’t know what Zale has against you, but it’s obvious he doesn’t like me. He’s trying to make it close to impossible for my team to operate by assigning me…”

“I’m a reporter,” Syd told him.

“…what amounts to little more than baby-sitting duty and…” His impossibly blue eyes widened. “A reporter.” Now he was the parrot. His eyes narrowed. “Sydney Jameson. S. Jameson. Ah, jeez, you’re not just a reporter, you’re that reporter.” He glared at her. “Where the hell do you get off making us all sound like psychotic killers?”

He was serious. He’d taken offense to the one part of her story the police had actually requested she include. “Cool your jets, Ken,” she told him. “The police wanted me to make it sound as if they actually believed the rapist was a SEAL.”

“It’s entirely likely our man is a SEAL wannabe,” Lucy interjected. “We were hoping the news story would feed his ego, maybe make him careless.”

“Ken?” Lucky asked Syd. “My name’s Luke.”

Oops, had she actually called him that? “Right. Sorry.” Syd gave him the least sorry smile she could manage.

Lucky looked at her hard before he turned to Lucy. “How the hell did a reporter get involved?”

“Her neighbor was attacked. Sydney stayed with the girl—and this was just a girl. She wasn’t more than nineteen years old, Luke. Sydney was there when I arrived, and oddly enough, I didn’t think to inquire as to whether she was with UPI or Associated Press.”

“So what did you do?” Lucky turned back to Syd. “Blackmail your way onto the task force?”

“Damn straight.” Syd lifted her chin. “Seven rapes and not a single word of warning in any of the papers. It was a story that needed to be written—desperately. I figured I’d write it—and I’ll write the exclusive behind-the-scenes story about tracking and catching the rapist, too.”

He shook his head, obviously in disgust, and Syd’s temper flared. “You know, if I were a man,” she snapped, “you’d be impressed by my assertive behavior.”

“So did you actually see this guy, or did you just make that part up?” he asked.

Syd refused to let him see how completely annoyed he made her feel. She forced her voice to sound even, controlled. “He nearly knocked me over coming down the stairs. But like I told the police, the light’s bad in the hallways. I didn’t get a real clear look at him.”

“Is there a chance it was good enough for you to look at a lineup of my men and eliminate them as potential suspects?” he demanded.

Lucy sighed. “Lucky, I don’t—”

“I want Bobby Taylor and Wes Skelly on my team.”

“Bobby’s fine. He’s Native American,” she told Syd. “Long dark hair, about eight feet tall and seven feet wide—definitely not our man. But Wes…”

“Wes shouldn’t be a suspect,” Lucky argued.

“Police investigations don’t work that way,” Lucy argued in response. “Yes, he shouldn’t be a suspect. But Chief Zale wants every individual on your team to be completely, obviously not the man we’re looking for.”

“This is a man who’s put his life on the line for me—for your husband—more times than you want to know. If Sydney could look at Skelly and—”

“I really don’t remember much about the man’s face,” Syd interrupted. “He came flying down the stairs, nearly wiped me out, stopped a few steps down. I’m not even sure he turned all the way around. He apologized, and was gone.”

Lucky leaned forward. “He spoke to you?”

God, he was good-looking. Syd forced away the little flutter she felt in her stomach every time he gazed at her. She really was pathetic. She didn’t like this man. In fact, she was well on her way to disliking him intensely, and yet simply looking into his eyes was enough to make her knees grow weak.

Obviously, it had been way too long since she’d last had sex. Not that her situation was likely to change any time in the near future.

“What did he say?” Lucky asked. “His exact words?”

Syd shrugged, hating to tell him what the man had said, but knowing he wouldn’t let up until she did.

Just do it. She took a deep breath. “He said, ‘Sorry, bud.’”

“Sorry…bud?”

Syd felt her face flush. “Like I said. The light was bad in there. He must’ve thought I was, you know, a man.”

Lucky O’Donlon didn’t say anything aloud, but as he sat back in his seat, the expression on his face spoke volumes. His gaze traveled over her, taking in her unfeminine clothes, her lack of makeup. An understandable mistake for any man to make, he telegraphed with his eyes.

He finally looked over at Lucy. “The fact remains that I can’t possibly work with a reporter following me around.”

“Neither can I,” she countered.

“I’ve worked for years as an investigative reporter,” Syd told them both. “Hasn’t it occurred to either one of you that I might actually be able to help?”

CHAPTER THREE

THIS SHOULDN’T BE TOO HARD.

Lucky was a people person—charming, charismatic, likeable. He knew that about himself. It was one of his strengths.

He could go damn near anywhere and be best friends with damn near anyone within a matter of hours.

And that was what he had to do right here, right now with Sydney Jameson. He had to become her best friend and thus win the power to manipulate her neatly to the sidelines. Come on, Syd, help out your old pal Lucky by staying out of the way.

His soon-to-be-old-pal Syd sat in stony silence beside him in his pickup truck, arms folded tightly across her chest, as he drove her back to her car which was parked in the police-station lot.

Step one. Get a friendly conversation going. Find some common ground. Family. Most people could relate to family.

“So my kid sister’s getting married in a few weeks.” Lucky shot Syd a friendly smile as well, but he would’ve gotten a bigger change of expression from the Lincoln head at Mount Rushmore. “It’s kind of hard to believe. You know, it feels like she just turned twelve. But she’s twenty-two, and in most states that’s old enough for her to do what she wants.”

“In every state it’s old enough,” Syd said. What do you know? She was actually listening. At least partly.

“Yeah,” Lucky said. “I know. That was a joke.”

“Oh,” she said and looked back out the window.

O-kay.

Lucky kept on talking, filling the cab of the truck with friendly noise. “I went into San Diego to see her, intending to tell her no way. I was planning at least to talk her into waiting a year, and you know what she tells me? I bet you can’t guess in a million years.”

“Oh, I bet I can’t either,” Syd said. Her words had a faintly hostile ring, but at least she was talking to him.

“She said, we can’t wait a year.” Lucky laughed. “And I’m thinking murder, right? I’m thinking where’s my gun, I’m going to at the very least scare the hell out of this guy for getting my kid sister pregnant, and then Ellen tells me that if they wait a year, this guy Greg’s sperm will expire.”

He had Syd’s full attention now.

“Apparently, Greg had leukemia as a teenager, years and years ago. And before he started the treatment that would save him but pretty much sterilize him, he made a few deposits in a sperm bank. The technology’s much better now and frozen sperm has a longer, um, shelf life, so to speak, but Ellen’s chances of having a baby with the sperm that Greg banked back when he was fifteen is already dropping.”

Lucky glanced at Syd, and she looked away. Come on, he silently implored her. Play nice. Be friends. I’m a nice guy.

“Ellen really loves this guy,” he continued, “and you should see the way he looks at her. He’s too old for her by about seventeen years, but it’s so damn obvious that he loves her. So how could I do anything but wish them luck and happiness?”

Syd actually graced him with a glance. “How are your parents taking this?”

Lucky shook his head, glad at the perfect opportunity to segue into poor-little-orphaned-me. This always won him sympathy points when talking to a woman. “No parents. Just me and Ellen. Mom had a heart attack years ago. You know, you really don’t hear much about it, but women are at just as much risk for heart disease as men and—” He cut himself off. “Sorry—I’ve kind of turned into a walking public service announcement about the topic. I mean, she was so young, and then she was so gone.”

“I’m sorry,” Syd murmured.

“Thanks. It was roughest on Ellen, though,” he continued. “She was still just a kid. Her dad died when she was really young. We had different fathers and I’m not really sure what happened to mine. I think he might’ve become a Tibetan monk and taken a vow of silence to protest Jefferson Airplane’s breakup.” He flashed her a smile. “Yeah, I know what you’re thinking. With a name like Lucky, I should have rich parents living in Bel Air. I actually went to Bel Air a few years ago and tried to talk this old couple into adopting me, but no go.”

Syd actually smiled at that one. Bingo. He knew she was hiding a sense of humor in there somewhere.

“Now that you know far too much about me,” he said, “it’s your turn. You’re from New York, right?”

Her eyes narrowed suspiciously. “How did you know that? I don’t have an accent.”

“But you don’t need an accent when you come from New York,” Lucky said with a grin. “The fact that you do everything in hyperspeed gives you away. Those of us from southern California can spot a New Yorker a mile away. It’s a survival instinct. If we can’t learn to ID you, we can’t know to take cover or brace for impact when you make the scene.”

Sydney might’ve actually laughed at that. But he wasn’t sure. Her smile had widened though, and he’d been dead right about it. It was a good one. It lit her up completely, and made her extremely attractive—at least in a small, dark, non-blond-beauty-queen sort of way.

And as Lucky smiled back into Sydney’s eyes, the answer to all his problems became crystal clear.

Boyfriend.

It was highly likely that he could get further faster if he managed to become Sydney Jameson’s boyfriend. Sex could be quite a powerful weapon. And he knew she was attracted to him, despite her attempts to hide it. He’d caught her checking him out more than once when she thought he wasn’t paying attention.

This was definitely an option that was entirely appealing on more than one level. He didn’t have to think twice.

“Do you have plans for tonight?” he asked, slipping smoothly out of best-friend mode and into low-scale, friendly seduction. The difference was subtle, but there was a difference. “Because I don’t have any plans for tonight and I’m starving. What do you say we go grab some dinner? I know this great seafood place right on the water in San Felipe. You can tell me about growing up in New York over grilled swordfish.”

“Oh,” she said, “I don’t think—”

“Do you have other plans?”

“No,” she said, “but—”

“This is perfect,” he bulldozed cheerfully right over her. “If we’re going to work together, we need to get to know each other better. Much better. I just need to stop at home and pick up my wallet. Can you believe I’ve been walking around all day without any cash?”

Hoo-yah, this was perfect. They were literally four blocks from his house. And what better location to initiate a friendly, low-key seduction than home sweet home?

Syd had to hold on with both hands as Lucky quickly cut across two lanes of traffic to make a right turn into a side street.

“Don’t you live on the base?” she asked.

“Nope. Officer’s privilege. This won’t take long, I promise. We’re right in my neighborhood.”

Now, that was a surprise. This neighborhood consisted of modestly sized, impeccably kept little houses with neat little yards. Syd hadn’t given much thought to the lieutenant’s living quarters, but if she had, she wouldn’t have imagined this.

Sure enough, he pulled into the driveway of a cheery little yellow adobe house. A neatly covered motorcycle was parked at the back of an attached carport. Flowers grew in window boxes. The grass had been recently, pristinely mowed.

“Why don’t you come in for a second?” Lucky asked. “I’ve got some lemonade in the fridge.”

Of course he did. A house like this had to have lemonade in the refrigerator. Bemused and curious, Syd climbed down from the cab of his shiny red truck.

It was entirely possible that once inside she would be in the land of leather upholstery and art deco and waterbeds and all the things she associated with a glaringly obvious bachelor pad. And instead of lemonade, he’d find—surprise, surprise—a bottle of expensive wine in the back of the refrigerator.

Syd mentally rolled her eyes at herself. Yeah, right. As if this guy would even consider her a good candidate for seduction. That wasn’t going to happen. Not in a million years. Who did she think she was, anyway? Barbie to his Ken? Not even close. She wouldn’t even qualify for Skipper’s weird cousin.

Lucky held the door for her, smiling. It was a self-confident smile, a warm smile…an interested smile?

No, she had to be imagining that.

But she didn’t have time for a double take, because, again, his living room completely surprised her. The furniture was neat but definitely aging. Nothing matched, some of the upholstery was positively flowery. There was nothing even remotely art deco in the entire room. It was homey and warm and just plain comfortable.

And instead of Ansel Adams prints on the wall, there were family photographs. Lucky as a flaxen-haired child, holding a chubby toddler as dark as he was fair. Lucky with a laughing blonde who had to be his mother. Lucky as an already too-handsome thirteen-year-old, caught in the warm, wrestling embrace of a swarthy, dark-haired man.

“Hey, you know, I’ve got an open bottle of white wine,” Lucky called from the kitchen, “if you’d like a glass of that instead of lemonade…?”

What? Syd wasn’t aware she had spoken aloud until he repeated himself, dangling both the bottle in question and an extremely friendly smile from the kitchen doorway.

The interest in his smile was not her imagination. Nor was the warmth in his eyes.

God, Navy Ken was an outrageously handsome man. And when he looked at her like that, it was very, very hard to look away.

He must’ve seen the effect he had on her in her eyes. Or maybe it was the fact that she was drooling that gave her away. Because the heat in his eyes went up a notch.

“I’ve got a couple of steaks in the freezer,” he said, his rich baritone wrapping as enticingly around her as the slightly pink late-afternoon light coming in through the front blinds. “I could light the grill out back and we could have dinner here. It would be nice not to have to fight the traffic and the crowds.”

“Um,” Syd said. She hadn’t even agreed to go to dinner with him.

“Let’s do it. I’ll grab a couple of glasses, we can sit on the deck,” he decided.

He vanished back into the kitchen, as if her declining his rather presumptuous invitation was an impossibility.

Syd shook her head in disbelief. This was too much. She had absolutely no doubt about it now. Lieutenant Lucky O’Donlon was hitting on her.

His motive was frightfully obvious. He was attempting to win her over. He was trying to make her an ally instead of an adversary in this task-force-coupling from hell. And, in typical alpha male fashion, he’d come to the conclusion that the best way to win her support involved full-naked-body contact. Or at least the promise of it.

Sheesh.

Syd followed him into the kitchen, intending to set him straight. “Look, Lieutenant—”

He handed her a delicate tulip-shaped glass of wine. “Please, call me Lucky.” He lifted his own glass, touching it gently to hers, as he shot her a smile loaded with meaning. “And right now I am feeling particularly lucky.”

Syd laughed. Oh, dear God. And instead of telling him flat out that she had to go and she had to go now, she kept her mouth shut. She didn’t have any plans for tonight, and—God help her—she wanted to see just how far this clown was willing to go.

He continued to gaze at her as he took a sip of his wine.

His eyes were a shade of blue she’d never seen before. It was impossible to gaze back at him and not get just a little bit lost. But that was okay, she decided, as long as she realized that this was a game, as long as she was playing, too, and not merely being played.

He set his wineglass down on the counter. “I’ve got to change out of my Good Humor man costume. Excuse me for a minute, will you? Dress whites and grilling dinner aren’t a good mix. Go on out to the deck—I’ll be there in a flash.”

He was so confident. He walked out of the kitchen without looking back, assuming she’d obediently do as he commanded.

Syd took a sip of the wine as she leaned back against the counter. It was shockingly delicious. Didn’t it figure?