Darkness(93)

“He always could find trouble,” the general concluded, and gave Cal a censorious look. “Here we are a decade and a half later, and as you can see, he hasn’t changed a bit.”

“He saved my life,” Gina said over her last sip of coffee. “I think he’s pretty great.”

Cal smiled at her, met his father’s gaze—the old man’s look said as plainly as if he’d shouted it, This one’s too good for you—and stood up. The agents at the adjacent table, who were tasked with providing security for Gina until she was able to confirm, or not, that Whitman’s was the voice she’d heard, stood up, too.

Having thus ended the meal before his father’s reminiscences could turn acrimonious, as they tended to do, Cal borrowed a couple hundred dollars from him—all he and Gina had were the clothes they were wearing, and he thought he might need some cash—and exchanged surprisingly civil good nights with the old man. Then Cal and Gina were driven to the base hotel, The Gold Rush Inn. As spare and utilitarian as was just about everything Air Force, the inn was a foursquare and solid three-story beige brick building with a small lobby and adequate but far from luxurious rooms. Agents escorted them to their room, waited while a bag of clothing and other necessities from the base shopping center were brought up to them, then stationed themselves in a room across the hall where they would remain to provide security through the night.

When they were alone, Cal looked at Gina, who was glancing around the spartan accommodations with a slight frown as she took off her coat and hung it in the closet just inside the door.

He was familiar with Air Force lodging, but he tried to see it through her eyes. A queen-size bed with the bag from the shopping center on it. A small table beside it with a lamp. A chest across from the bed that held a TV. A couple of narrow windows set high up in the wall. A couple of cheap, framed prints. Brown carpet, brown curtains, brown bedspread, beige walls. Basic, white-tiled bathroom, attached.

She’d had a hell of a trying day, and he could tell how tired she was by the strain around her eyes and mouth and the slight droop to her slender shoulders.

“You doing okay?” he asked.

“Mm-hmm.” She moved over to the bed, rummaged through the shopping bag, and extracted a few items from it. “I think I like your father.”

Cal managed to repress a snort. “He seemed to like you, too.”

Clutching what seemed to be a jumble of toiletries and a nightgown close against her body, she gave him a level look and said, “Are you going to tell me why we have intelligence agents escorting us everywhere we go and spending the night across the hall?”

Cal couldn’t tell her the truth, and he wasn’t going to lie to her. She knew nothing about the danger she was still potentially in, because neither he nor anyone else had told her that the man she called Heavy Tread might very well be Agent Lon Whitman, CIA. Or that her identification of Whitman’s voice, if identify it she did, would be what brought him down.

All she knew was that Cal was wrapping up the job he’d been carrying out when his plane had gone down, and that she was needed because she was a witness to what had happened on Attu. The agents felt, and he and his father agreed, that telling her anything more might conceivably compromise her ability to be impartial when she heard Whitman’s voice.

Cal said, “No.”

Gina’s lips compressed. “That’s what I thought.” Turning toward the bathroom, she said over her shoulder, “I’m going to take a shower.”

He nodded, and she went into the bathroom and closed the door. He thought about joining her—as tired as he was, the idea of taking a shower with Gina was enough to make him realize that he wasn’t that tired—but knowing how tired she had to be dissuaded him. When she emerged, looking sweet and slightly ridiculous and amazingly sexy all at the same time in a long-sleeved, ankle-grazing pink flannel granny gown that he was as sure as it was possible to be was like nothing she ever wore, he allowed himself one look before managing a gruff, “Go to sleep,” and retreating to take his own shower.

When he finished and came back out into the bedroom, he was wearing a towel around his waist, a fresh Band-Aid over his wound—the bullet was coming out in the morning—and nothing else, because the plaid flannel pajamas that had been folded into that shopping bag for him weren’t going to happen.

To his surprise, she was still awake, propped up in bed in a room that was dark except for the blue glow of the TV, flipping through channels.

He stopped beside the bed to look down at her. Her tawny hair was loose and fell in a silken slide over one shoulder. Her fine-boned face was a pale oval in the gloom. The covers were tucked up under her armpits, so basically all he could see of the rest of her was the pink ruffle at the neckline of her gown and the long, full sleeves that ended in more ruffles at her wrists.

He was a sick man, he decided. Pink flannel granny gowns obviously did it for him. One look and he was instantly hard.

“I thought you’d be asleep,” he said.

She shook her head, flicked him a look. “I waited for you.”

“Oh?” He dropped the towel and slid into bed beside her. Taking the remote from her unresisting hand, he turned the TV off, dropped the remote on the table, and leaned over her. “I hear you think I’m pretty great.”

There was just enough light from the halogens in the parking lot filtering in around the edges of the curtains to enable him to see that she was looking at him, to see her slight smile.