Secret Agent Sam

His mouth…normally so sensitive. So incredibly skilled. She remembered the way it felt like warm silk on her skin…sometimes. And at other times like liquid fire. And it tasted like…

No. I can’t. I can’t.

A thrill of excitement, of—God help her—anticipation shivered through her, astringent and heady as chilled wine.

“Helluva small world,” she replied easily, nodding at him. “Hello, Pearse.”

She thought it best not to offer him a hand to shake, since hers were cold as ice. Hoping he wouldn’t notice, she tucked them casually in her back pockets to warm them.

And saw the quick flicker of his eyes. Of course he’d notice. He was a reporter. He noticed everything. Especially if it had to do with her. He always had.

“Been a long time.”

“Yes, it sure has.” And what a scintillating bit of repartee this is, she thought. How many more of these can we come up with? Long time, no see…. Fancy meeting you here.

“You two know each other?” The guy with Cory—he’d be the photographer—was looking back and forth between the two of them, a puzzled and suspicious frown apparent, even though sunglasses hid his eyes.

Tony Whitehall didn’t look like a man she’d want to mess with if she could possibly avoid it, being half a head shorter than Cory and probably outweighing him by fifty pounds, none of it fat. His head resembled an egg, both in shape and hairlessness, but from roughly his earlobes down he looked to be one hundred percent solid unbreakable muscle. His skin was a warm, glossy mahogany, although his features, including wide cheekbones and a jutting hawk’s beak of a nose, hinted at a heritage more Native American than African.

Taken feature for feature he was almost marvelously ugly, but at the same time, in an indefinable, ruggedly offbeat way, she thought, rather attractive.

“Samantha Bauer,” she said, smiling at him. And since the circulation seemed to have returned to her hands, she pulled one out of her pocket and offered it to him. “Cory and I go way back.”

He smiled as he took her hand. “He and I go back a ways, too, but I swear he’s never mentioned you.”

As she felt her hand being swallowed by one the approximate size and texture of a baseball mitt, she could feel Cory’s eyes on her, intent and unwavering. Broadening her smile to a grin, she said, “Doesn’t surprise me. He’s just—” she let her gaze slide casually across Cory’s “—an old family friend.” She was gratified by his barely audible snort.

“Hey, if you were a friend of my family’s, you can bet I’d mention you.” Now there was an unmistakable lilt in his voice. Obviously, the flirting lamp had been lit.

Cory gave another snort, a louder one this time, and said dryly, “Tony’s got a thing for your airplane.”

Sam retrieved her hand but kept her smile where it was. “Yeah? You familiar with the DC-3?”

“Familiar?” Tony’s voice climbed the scale to a squeak that was almost comically unsuited to a man of his size and shape. “Oh, yeah, sure…like at the Smithsonian.”

Sam laughed, then wished she hadn’t. The laughter served to ease some of the tension that had tied her belly in knots, but without that tension holding her together, she suddenly felt loose and shaky inside. Fighting to keep the shaking out of her voice, or at least camouflage it, she waved Tony toward the steps and turned to walk beside him. “The DC-3 is probably the most reliable aircraft ever built. This one’s been restored, of course. She’ll probably outlast both of us.”

As she followed the photographer up the steps, she felt Cory fall in behind her. Felt his eyes on her. Of course she did; she was conscious of every movement he made—always had been. And the worst part of it was knowing he’d know that. He’d know exactly how aware of him she was, no matter how earnestly she chatted with Tony about the history and merits of the DC-3 aircraft. He’ll know, no matter how I try to hide it. He always knows what I’m feeling. Damn him.

How, exactly, was she feeling?

I can’t think about that right now. I can’t think now.

I thought I was ready for this. Dammit.

At the top of the steps she moved aside and gestured for Tony and Cory to pass her. “Go ahead and get settled in. I just have a couple of flight details to go over with Will. Shouldn’t take but a minute. We’ll be underway shortly.”

To be truthful, she was feeling on the verge of suffocation as she stepped back through the doorway. At the top of the steps she paused and lifted closed eyes to the merciless sun and hauled in a great gulp of the syrupy air as if it were pure oxygen. After a moment, when her head seemed to have stopped swimming, she clattered down the steps and headed for the shimmering terminal buildings. Halfway there, in spite of the heat, she broke into a jog.

Inside the stuffy cabin, Cory was putting himself through the necessary mental fortifications to deal with the awful heat. It was an exercise he’d learned long ago, and one that had gotten him through far worse circumstances than these. Mind over matter, that’s all it was. Mind over matter. The air was only unbreatheable if he thought it was.

Seeing Samantha again was only unendurable if he let it be.

Originally designed to carry around thirty passengers, the restored cabin had been reconfigured to hold maybe half that many. The furnishings were spartan, but the seats were wide enough to accommodate even Tony’s massive shoulders, and set far enough apart to afford a lanky six-footer like Cory adequate leg room. By mutual and unspoken agreement, he and Tony selected seats across the aisle from each other about halfway up the sloping cabin and set about stowing their bags in heroic silence.

Having secured his precious cameras to his satisfaction, Tony again took off his sunglasses and hooked the earpiece in the neck band of his shirt. He took off the bandana, wiped his face and neck with it, then sank into his seat with a heavy sigh.

After a moment he sat up again restlessly and looked over at the man in the seat across the aisle from him, the man who was most likely the best friend he had in the world, and who he admired and respected probably more than any other living human being. Nevertheless, and in spite of the fact that the man had a good five years on him, Tony more often than not felt a big-brotherly need to look out for and protect this man. And, at the moment, he felt a strong urge to throttle him.

When looking over a couple more times failed to get his attention, Tony tried shifting around and clearing his throat—not too subtle and a little bit childish, sure, but in Cory’s case, it usually worked.

This time, however, Cory went on staring straight ahead at nothing, absolutely still but in no way relaxed, neck and shoulders rigid with tension.

Tony leveled a black scowl at him. He considered himself to be normally a good-natured soul, but his aggravation levels were rising rapidly. They were rising because he was trying to work himself up to doing something completely alien to his masculinity and that he was resisting with every macho bone in his body. And he was becoming royally ticked at his buddy for making all that necessary.

He was about to do something guys, in his experience, simply don’t do, which was ask a guy friend a personal question.

“So,” he said, after clearing his throat a couple more times and finally hitching himself around in his seat in the heavy, flopping manner of a landed marlin. “What’s with you and Amelia Earhart?”

Cory jumped as if he’d been a million miles away—which he probably had been, mentally—and threw him a frowning look. “Who? Oh—you mean—”

“You know damn well who I mean.” Tony jerked his head toward the tumble of buildings beyond the wavy window glass. “What’s the story?”

Cory took off his glasses and went to polishing them on the tail of his shirt, an activity Tony recognized for the delaying tactic it was. “You heard her. I’m just a friend of her family. Her father’s…actually.” He put the glasses back on and pushed them up on the bridge of his nose. Since his nose was slippery with sweat, they slid right down again.

“Friend of the family, my foot,” Tony said, and was rewarded with a sideways look and a lopsided grin.

“Your foot?”

Tony shrugged and grinned back. “I don’t know, my mom used to say that. I guess it was the best she could do, since Gramma wouldn’t let her swear. Anyway, you get my drift. You and I go back quite a ways, too, buddy. I was best man at your wedding, in case you’ve forgotten. What’s maybe more germane to this discussion, I was there during your divorce. I stood by you—”

“Not too much standing involved, as I recall, unless you consider perching on a bar stool—”

“Hey, I was there, that’s what counts. Ready and willing to lend you a shoulder if you needed one.”

“The way I remember it, you were the one needing a shoulder—not to mention a ride home, and on one memorable occasion, at least, bail.”

Tony gave an affronted snort. “Don’t try to sidetrack me, Mr. Wordman. Whatever was between you and Amelia Earhart had to be something major. Hell, you know me—when it comes to understanding women, I’m no Dr. Phil, and even I felt it. Out there. Just now. The way the sparks were flying back and forth, it’s a wonder you two didn’t set the damn plane on fire.”

Cory didn’t reply, just gave him a hard, steely stare, a look that normally would have had Tony backing off. This time it didn’t work, and after a moment Cory put his head back against the seat and closed his eyes.

It took a long, slow ten-count before Tony succeeded in throttling back enough to press on in a calmer, quieter voice. “Look, man, you know me, I don’t butt in where it’s not my business. But this isn’t exactly a picnic in the park we’re going on. I mean, here we are, heading into a place that’s supposedly so dangerous no commercial airline or boat or bus service is even willing to take us there, supposedly to interview a major terrorist who, if he had his druthers, would probably just as soon kill us as look at us. If you’ve got history with the woman we’re trusting to get us in and out of there alive, I think I ought to know about it.”

There was a long, suspenseful silence, during which Tony watched, with a sinking feeling in his gut, the little muscles working in the side of Cory’s jaw, and wondered if he was going to have to start looking for a new best friend.

Then, to his great relief, Cory straightened abruptly and said, “You’re right, you do.” Tony let out a silent, careful breath.

He waited, heart thumping, while Cory glanced over his shoulder toward the terminal buildings, again took off his glasses, rubbed his eyes. Put the glasses back on. Leaned toward him across the aisle and spoke in a soft, conspiratorial way, although there was no one else around to hear.

“You know I was a prisoner in Iraq, right?”

“Yeah, sure—about ten years ago, wasn’t it? Special Forces went in and got you out in the middle of the Second Iraq War. Didn’t you win the Pulitzer with some of the articles you wrote about it afterward?”

Cory nodded in a dismissive way. “So you probably also remember there was another guy rescued same time I was. Tomcat pilot—he’d been shot down over the no-fly zone between the two Gulf wars. Given up for dead. They’d had him for eight years, and nobody knew.”

“Holy jumpin’ jeezits,” Tony exclaimed, whacking the armrest with an open palm, “I remember that! I was working in Richmond at the time—I think it was maybe my second or third big assignment—they sent me to Andrews to cover his return. Had all us media people corralled away from the action behind a chain-link fence so we wouldn’t interfere with the big family reunion. Never got one decent shot. Let’s see…I seem to remember he had a wife…a daughter…”

Cory nodded, took a breath and let it out. “He did. And that pilot out there, Samantha Bauer—” he dipped his head toward the windows “—Amelia Earhart, as you call her…”

“Don’t tell me,” Tony said, in the same reverent tone with which he’d first spoken of the airplane they were sitting in.

“Yep,” said Cory, in a voice like the echoes of doom. “She’s the Top Gun’s daughter.”

Chapter 2

“I met her in the White House rose garden,” Cory said, following a gleefully profane exclamation from Tony.

He could still smile, remembering that day, but carefully, tentatively, with great care not to jostle the memories too hard. The turbulence of seeing her again had shifted and tumbled them—and the feelings that went with them—inside the compartment he’d stuffed them into years ago, and right now he feared if he opened that door too wide and too suddenly they might tumble out and bury him.

He spoke rapidly to get past the danger.

“There was a reception for us—for him, really—Lieutenant Bauer—I was more or less an afterthought. The guy was a genuine hero, and you know what the media does with heroes.”

“Aren’t you the media?”

“That’s why I get to bad-mouth—it’s like family. Anyway, you’re not the media when you’re part of the story.”

“But you wrote those stories.”

“Yeah, mainly to get through it. Get past it. I wonder, sometimes, how it would’ve been if I hadn’t had that outlet. I know Tristan had a tough time of it—of course he’d been gone a lot longer than I was. They only had me a few months. Him they’d had for eight years.”

“Hard to imagine. Impossible, maybe.”

Cory nodded, the knots in his belly relaxing a little. He was always more comfortable concentrating on someone else’s story. “It was tough on his family. They’d assumed all along he was dead. Jessie—his wife—hadn’t remarried, though, which was one good thing. What a mess that would’ve been. Still, it was hard—they had a lot of readjusting to do. But it was hardest, I think, on Sammi—on Samantha. She was just a kid, a ten-year-old tomboy when she lost her dad. That’s how he remembered her—how he described her to me, when we were together in that Iraqi prison. He talked about her all the time. A tomboy with ponytails. With bandages on her knees from playing soccer.” A smile fluttered like a leaf on the gust of his exhalation. “Let me tell you, that’s not what he came back to.”

Not even close.

Oblivious to nuances, Tony whistled. “I guess not. She’d have been what, then—eighteen?”

“Yeah. In college. A grown-up woman, the way she saw it.”

“Still just a kid, though,” Tony said in a musing tone, then threw Cory a quick frown as it finally hit him. “What, you’re telling me you had something going with her? I never figured you for a cradle robber, man. You must have, what, ten or twelve years on her?”

“It wasn’t my intention,” Cory said, putting his head back with a sigh. “Believe me. Well—” the smile this time was brief and wry “—not at first, anyway. Not that I didn’t fall for her. That happened probably the first minute I laid eyes on her.” He threw Tony a look and shifted uncomfortably. “Well, you’ve seen her.” He glanced toward the window and his heart gave a jolt as he saw the tall wavery figure in khakis and a baseball cap striding toward them across the scorched grass.

Alerted by what he saw in Cory’s face, Tony, too, turned to look out the window. After a long moment he said in a reverent tone, “I can see how she’d get your attention, yeah. Even dressed like that I can see it.”

“It wasn’t about her looks, though.” Cory waggled his shoulders, uncomfortable even with the thought. Blond hair, brown eyes, long legs…great legs…okay, sure, she’d had all that. So had any number of other women he’d met in his lifetime and over the course of his career, in one variation or another. But Sammi June—Samantha—there’d just been something about her. So much…more.

“So, you had it bad for the college kid,” Tony said. “So, what happened?”

“About what you’d expect, I guess. Didn’t work out.” Cory lifted one shoulder and closed his eyes, hoping maybe Tony would take the hint and let it drop.

Naturally, he didn’t. “Didn’t work out? That’s all you have to say?” His voice rose in pitch as it lowered in volume. “Look, man, I know you. You’ll make a story out of a trip to the 7-Eleven.” With his eyes shut Cory felt the voice come nearer, and drop to a conspirator’s mutter. “Hey—I saw your face when you recognized that woman out there a while ago. Like you’d been whacked upside the head with a plank.” There was another pause while Tony settled back in his seat again.

After a moment he exhaled in an exasperated way. “Look. Three years ago I stood by your side and handed you the ring while you got married to a woman who just happens to bear an uncanny resemblance to this pilot of ours—don’t think I didn’t notice that—and I gave up my couch when you divorced that same woman barely a year later—not that I minded. I never liked her that much, anyway. Now, I may be crazy, but I’m getting the idea there’s a connection there somewhere. So trust me, ‘didn’t work out’ ain’t gonna cut it.”

“What do you want me to do? I can’t very well get into it now,” Cory threw back at him in an exasperated whisper. “She’s gonna be back in here in a minute.”

“Yeah, well…don’t think I’m letting you off the hook on this one, pal. First thing when we get to Zamboanga—okay the second, but once we’ve got a couple of cold brewskies in front of us, I want the whole story. I’m not kiddin’, man.”

Cory let out his breath in a gusty sigh.

Of all things to happen, he thought. On this, of all assignments. It had to be the mother of all coincidences.

Or maybe just fate, catching up with him.

Outside on the steps, Sam paused with one hand braced on each side of the door as if she were preparing to withstand a gale-force wind. Which she supposed she was in a way, or at least the emotional equivalent. And so far she wasn’t pleased with the way she’d held up in the face of it. No excuses, she’d had plenty of time to prepare. She should have had her emotions battened down a whole lot better than this.

One thing, one small triumph she could cling to: the look on Cory’s face when he’d realized who his pilot was. Hah—complete and total shock. His face had gone ash-white. You might be able to control your expressions and voice, Pearse, but there’s not much you can do about your blood vessels.

He’d had absolutely no clue, she was sure of it. And his reaction to seeing her again told her one thing: The man still had some feelings for her.

Okay, so she was probably never going to know exactly what those feelings were, but at least she knew he wasn’t indifferent.

A little buzz of something—excitement? Triumph?—zinged through her and a smile curved her lips. Indifferent? Not by a long shot.

The smile stayed put while she got the steps pulled up and stowed away and the door secured. The smile was still in place, feeling as if it had been molded out of clay and drying fast, as she started up the aisle, nodding at Tony Whitehall, who had turned to look at her with an expression of unabashed curiosity, and a glint in his exotic golden eyes.

She wondered what Cory’d been telling him; she knew Tony had to have asked about her the minute she was out of earshot. And what an internal battle that must have been, she thought, between Cory’s two selves: On the one hand, the reporter, who’d made a life and a career out of finding out secrets, getting to the bottom of things, solving mysteries, telling the story. On the other, the intensely private man who’d mastered the art of protecting his own secrets.

He, naturally, seemed completely unperturbed by her presence, or anything else, for that matter, sitting square in his seat, face forward, head back against the headrest. He looked as if he might even be enjoying a little nap.

But she knew better.

Or did she? Had she ever been sure what was going on behind those deep, all-seeing eyes?

“Air controllers at Davao City airport have cleared us for takeoff. If you-all wanna fasten your seat belts, we’ll be getting underway in a few minutes,” she announced in her this-is-your-captain-speaking voice, pausing to check that the two men’s bags had been properly stowed in their compartments. “We should be in Zamboanga in about an hour and fifteen minutes.” She threw Tony Whitehall a smile and a wink.

She didn’t look at Cory, but to her great annoyance, felt a distinct prickling sensation between her shoulder blades as she continued up the sloping aisle to the cockpit, an awareness of eyes watching her with unfathomable intensity….

From his seat Cory could see clearly through the open cockpit door. He watched as she ran through her preflight checklist, and try as he would to deny it, felt a little burr of admiration, even pride, begin to hum beneath his breastbone. He’d never flown with Sam at the controls before.

The baseball cap had been replaced by a bulky set of white headphones that left her sun-streaked hair in the kind of sweaty disarray he’d always found particularly sexy. Sexy even now, cut short like this, shorter than he’d ever seen her wear it. Her strong hands and long-boned fingers moved nimbly over the complicated array of dials and switches in a way that brought back vividly the no-nonsense, straight-ahead way she’d always had about her, even when they’d made love. The way she’d had of touching him that was uniquely hers, without shyness or hesitation, with a certain bold edge and a hint…just a hint of wickedness.

And it was that more than anything, he thought, that had ignited the fires in his blood back then. Maybe that part of her had connected with the secret danger-lover and thrill-seeker within him, like two live wires touching….

Come off it, Pearse. It’s over. It was over long ago.

One after the other, the twin engines fired with a deep-pitched growling sound that hummed in his bones and put him in mind of old black-and-white war movies, or something he’d watch on the History Channel. The plane sat vibrating in place while the engine rpm’s climbed and the growling changed in pitch and intensity. Then it slowly began to move forward.

Cory felt his own pulse pick up speed as he watched the hands that had once stroked him to feverish arousal skillfully manipulate the throttles while she steered the plane in a tight right turn onto the runway, then tight left to straighten out. He saw her reach down with one hand to lock the tail wheel in place. The growling sound continued to grow in volume and intensity and he could feel the vibrating now in his belly as the plane began to accelerate down the runway.

Tearing his eyes away from the open cockpit door, he glanced over at Tony, who looked back at him and hummed the first few bars of “Off We Go, into the Wild Blue Yonder,” grinning like a madman. He felt his stomach drop and his body press heavy into his seat, and he jerked his gaze to the window in time to watch the scorched grass and palm trees and tin-roofed buildings drop away under him.

“Hot damn,” said Tony with a gleeful chortle.

Cory didn’t reply. He leaned forward to stare through the window as Davao City came into view, slowly spreading out below him, with the glittering blue of the water beyond. His stomach dropped and the earth tilted as the plane banked sharply, and when it slowly rotated back into position, he could see Mount Apo draped in haze on the horizon.

And still the plane climbed steadily, the deep growling of its powerful twin engines creeping into his bones and invading his brain until he almost felt as if he were a part of the plane himself, as if he were the one laboring skyward with the sun in his face and the wind solid beneath his wings. He felt a soaring, lifting inside himself, too, to think of the woman he’d held soft and naked and trembling in his arms, in control of such awesome power.

He found the notion damned exciting…a pure turn-on, in fact. Which surprised and unnerved him more than a little.

When he felt the plane level out and the engine growl ease off to a steady purr, Cory unbuckled his seat belt. He got a look from Tony when he got up and stepped into the aisle, but something Tony saw in Cory’s face must have warned him, because whatever it was he’d been about to say never got said.