That she would try her best and still fail to stop him.
Nathan’s shoulders slumped, he leaned forward, bracing his hands on his knees, his feet on the floor. “Do you think the Kunz you saw here is the real Thomas Kunz, Kate?”
“Nathan, I—”
“If he is, then you have to know Gaston is probably right. Going toe-to-toe with Kunz…he’ll likely kill you.”
“It’s not out of the realm.” She had accepted that long ago.
Nathan clasped her hands in his. “I’m not ready for you to die.”
She squeezed his hand hard, amazed at how comforting it felt to have someone so strong and capable of crushing her bones, be so gentle with her. “I don’t want to die, Nathan. I’m not a martyr or a saint. But I can’t know all of this and not do something. It’s my job. It’s the way of life I chose to live.”
“You didn’t answer my question.”
She thought back, remembered the question. “I don’t know if he’s the real Thomas Kunz. I can’t know that without a DNA test. He’s done very well substituting records, and his plastic surgeons do nothing short of brilliant work. The saving grace is that it’s difficult to change someone’s voice. You can get close, but it’s impossible to get a perfect voice print match. Yet he’s substituted some of those records, too.”
“Then what’s left?” Nathan looked outdone.
“Not much,” she admitted. “We have an accurate DNA on him and an accurate intel audio intercept. I’ve studied
that audio intensely, Nathan, and the man I heard here sounded like the real Thomas Kunz. Inflections, phraseology—all of it. But he’s been too damn cunning too many times for me to believe it without hard evidence proving it.”
Nathan dropped his gaze for a long moment, working through all she’d told him. Finally, he finished processing, then said, “With all those substitutions, even hard evidence has to be treated as suspect. And Gaston was right about something else, too. Your not knowing your current location is for your own protection.”
Nathan dropped his voice, his tone calm but serious. “The CIA and Navy are involved in this, Kate. They know our location, but they have the protection of working in teams. You work alone. As your host, I have a responsibility to you. You need every edge that I can give you.” He paused, turned to her on the cot, lifted an unsure hand and stroked her face as if she were the most fragile thing he never touched. “As a man, I need to give you more, and it’s killing me that I can’t.”
She cupped her hand over his. “I’m a big girl, and a professional. I can take care of myself.”
“I don’t doubt that. But what I’m feeling has nothing to do with your abilities, or your job. It has to do with you, the woman. Is it so hard to believe that a man who cares about you wants you to be safe?”
Kate wasn’t sure she wanted to answer that. In fact, she was certain she didn’t want to answer. But the worry in his eyes was for her, and that was a rare gift she couldn’t ignore and wouldn’t pretend didn’t exist. “Yes, honestly speaking, it is hard for me to believe.”
He stood, turned back around to look at her, his arms at his sides. “Are you married?”
“Why?” What difference could that possibly make?
“Just answer the question, Kate.”
“No.” She shrugged. “I’m not married, never have been married, and likely never will be married.” She wondered if she was the only woman in the world whose parents didn’t nudge her to the altar to provide them with grandchildren. Her parents likely wouldn’t notice any grandchildren existed until their college graduation. She should be sad about that, but frankly, she’d grown too accustomed to their indifference to waste the energy.
“Good.”
“Good?” That she’d never been and likely never would be married?
Nathan Forester smiled. A wide, open, genuine smile that lit up his face and warmed her heart. “I don’t know how to play games. I don’t want to learn.” He paced the length of her cot, rubbing the back of his neck, his left eye doing that telltale twitch. “The truth is, you’re the first woman who’s fascinated me since I met my wife. She still fascinated me the day she died.” He paused and really looked at Kate. “Emily would have liked you a lot, Kate.”
Confusion rippled through her. “Is that why you like me? Because Emily would have?”
“No, of course not. But I trusted her judgment. She had an uncanny way of seeing through the garbage right into the souls of people.”
So it was a respect issue for him. Kate liked it that he had respected his wife and her judgment. So many men talked their wives down when they weren’t around. She hated that. Nathan was relying on what he found comfortable, but his feelings for Kate were all his own. And that was what she most needed to know.
She stood, letting the blanket fall away, and walked
over to him, stopping so close that she had to crane her neck to look up at him. “I’m not into games, either. I’ve never been inclined to play them, and I’ve rarely cared enough about a man to want to bother.” She lifted her arms, curled them around his neck and whispered close to his chin. “I’m going to kiss you, Nathan. If you don’t want me to, you’d better tell me now.”
Nathan swallowed hard. “Tell me you didn’t walk back from the shower dressed like that.”
Kate smiled and captured his lips in a kiss that was soulful and searing, sweet and seductive.
He shuddered against her, pulled her closer, winding his arms tightly around her. “I’m taking that as a no,” he whispered against her lips, and then deepened the kiss.
Kate wasn’t prepared for her reaction, for the weakening of muscle and melting of bone. She had kissed and been kissed, but this…this was more. Different. Enticing, exciting and terrifying. Each cell seemed to awaken and take him in, and while she loved the sensations, the liquid heat, the fire thrumming through her veins, she worried, too.
Having once known this kiss, would she ever again be content with less?
S
hortly after dawn, Kate and Nathan climbed into the jeep and headed for the shore. Not a word had been mentioned about their kiss last night, though Kate had had trouble holding two thoughts together about anything else ever since. What should she make of that?
Mulling it over, she was almost convinced it was best forgotten and definitely safer. Feeling a little pang of disappointment, she looked off toward the sandy horizon and allowed herself a wistful sigh. Some things should be mourned.
Nathan reached over, clasped her hand and brought it to his lips.
A warm glow lighted in her chest and spread to settle low in her belly. Her breathing hitched. Why would anyone choose to forget these tender moments? They were the jewels in life, all the more rare because she knew that, and
she’d known so damn few of them. She couldn’t forget that or this moment, and neither could be best forgotten.
Acknowledged or not, rare moments are still treasures and a jewel still gleams.
“You okay?” Nathan asked.
“Yeah. Never better.” Meaning every word, Kate smiled.
When they pulled in at the docks, Riley had the boat ready and waiting, as promised. After another scan for bugging devices and explosives, Kate dumped in her gear, while Nathan removed the mooring ropes. She slipped behind the wheel, cranked the engine and, when Nathan was seated, headed out across the open water for the caves.
Looking for Douglas was dangerous and she wasn’t fooling herself about that. But the sun sparkling on the calm water, seeing Nathan in the seat beside her, his hair slicked back by the wind, his face lifted to the sun…well, there was a moment of joy here, too, that had nothing to do with premission anxiety. She didn’t have the slightest inclination to flirt, though she wouldn’t object to another kiss. Yet considering how her body had reacted to Nathan, maybe that was wisest left for after their mission—a reward for surviving.
“I’m going to give them a little space,” she warned Nathan. Best to see how GRID would react to their return away from the cave where they could have a stash to protect.
“You’re not going to lull them into complacency, Kate.”
“I know that,” she told Nathan. “But we need to explore the vicinity. What if all the mines were a diversionary tactic?”
Nathan thought for a second and then answered. “Doubtful, but better to
know it
than to
suppose it.
”
Her feelings exactly. She’d bet her next paycheck it’d be question three or four on Colonel Drake’s list.
Within an hour, they were in the water and meticulously exploring several caves. When they’d gone through half a dozen and run only into dead ends, Nathan tugged at her sleeve and pointed skyward.
Kate kicked upward, broke the surface and caught her breath. They’d found nothing. No gouges, no open passages, no signs of any type of inhabitation.
“Have we taken sufficient precautions to satisfy S.A.S.S.?”
Kate nodded.
“Then let’s press on and check out the compound cave.”
More than ready to do so, Kate swam for the boat. “Better make sure the minesweepers have done their thing.” If not the mines, Kunz and Sandross would have something else waiting for them. She’d brought as much gear with her as possible, trying to prepare for anything. But the bottom line was, she could never prepare for everything. Her stomach gave a little lurch as she climbed into the boat.
Within minutes Nathan radioed Riley, who in turn relayed for the necessary verifications from the sweepers. When Riley got them, he’d report back.
“Okay,” Nathan said. “He’s on it.”
“Good.” Riley was a gem, too, and Nathan clearly knew it.
It seemed relatively apparent that Douglas had been hijacked and wouldn’t be found unless GRID wanted him found. Though without hard evidence, she had no choice but to keep an open mind. His drowning remained a possibility, just as it remained a possibility that her theory was on target and he had been lured into the cave when low on oxygen and had gotten stranded.
When she assessed the facts objectively, any of the three possibilities were viable. Of them, she considered Douglas’s drowning to be the most remote and GRID snatching him to be the most likely, though it chilled her down to the marrow of her bones.
Riley radioed Nathan. “Sir, verification just came in. The minesweepers have finished mopping up. You’re good to go.”
“Thanks.” Nathan turned to her. “We’ve got the all-clear.”
Kate hit the throttle, steering the boat toward the knuckle of land above the cave. “Where is everyone?” she asked Nathan. “Has the search for Douglas been officially called off?”
“No. General Shaw ordered all units to take up distant positioning.”
“Why?” And why hadn’t Home Base relayed the order to her?
“He wants GRID to consider everything business as usual.”
Kate guffawed. “Nathan, that’s absurd. Kunz and Sandross aren’t going to buy into that. I was in the damn cave leading to the compound and they know it.”
“And you killed Parton and gut-wounded Moss,” Nathan said. “Yes, I know.”
“Well, nothing is going to take their focus off that.”
“I know that, too.” Nathan frowned. “The only thing I can figure is the secretary has some other information that we don’t have. That, or his synapses are misfiring, in which case, we have more serious problems than just this.”
Kate accepted the inevitable and obeyed the order. Nathan’s agreeing with her helped take out some of the sting. Steering left, she passed the big rock that had saved
her neck when outrunning GRID the first time she’d explored the cave. On the far side of it, she tapped the throttle to idle the engine and checked her position relative to the compound cave. Anyone guarding the mouth of the cave from the water near it wouldn’t see the boat.
Nathan double-checked her, then dropped anchor.
Within fifteen minutes they were suited up and in the water. Another twenty and they were near the rocks where she’d first seen the gouges. The spiking temperature hovered at the hundred and ten degree mark, but the water felt cold.
“Nathan, take a look at this.” She pointed to that same telltale section of rock she’d first noticed. “Fresh gouges.”
Nathan swam over for a closer look. Treading water, he backstroked hard to keep the water from pushing him into the rocks. “Current’s really strong here.”
“Strong enough to pull something heavy into the rocks?”
“Oh, yeah. No doubt about it.” He ran his fingers over the face of the gouged section above the waterline where the rocks were dry, then slung crumbled bits from his fingers into the frothy white water. “These weren’t here yesterday. High tide would have taken the water up. It would have cleaned out any loose particles of rock.”
It would have. Kate swam out a little, retrieved her binoculars from her fanny pack and zoomed in for a closer look higher up on the rocks. “Wait. Nathan, there are new gouges above those, too.” A bubble of getting close to something burst low in her belly. “Maybe whatever gouged the rocks came in
with
the tide.”
“Weapons are too heavy to float. We’ve considered that. And anything substantial enough to float weapons would be so buoyant it wouldn’t gouge the rocks, it’d bounce off them.”
Valid point. Damn it.
Something
was here, just waiting for her to find it. Kate felt it in her bones.
Fighting the current was wearing Nathan down. He stroked back over to her, his breathing a little labored. “Didn’t you say that when you first went into the cave, Gaston had been outside it, pulling guard duty?”
“That’s what he said, but I didn’t see him.” That rankled Kate, too. How had he watched her and remained unobserved? She’d been all over the area, above and below water. Surely she would’ve noticed something. Never before had her instincts been on hiatus when she was on full alert.
“Something’s not making sense. GRID isn’t going to guard the mouth of this cave 24/7, not unless something extremely important is in it. And if they were suspicious enough of Gaston to keep him out of the cave, then why have him guard it?”
“He said he was a last-minute substitution,” Kate said. “Sandross got sick, so Gaston had to fill in.”
“Is Gaston high up in the chain of command?”
“No, he isn’t.” Where exactly was Nathan going with this?
“Then to use him, they had to have been really short on manpower and feel they couldn’t leave the mouth of the cave unguarded. Put that together with the fresh gouges and it means they had to have been waiting for something.”
Kate followed his logic, expounded on it. “Or maybe that something was already inside.” Could be Douglas or whatever had caused the gouges. “Maybe they knew Douglas had located the cave and feared he’d come back.”
“Or they knew he came back and thought someone else could stumble on to the cave looking for him.”
“Could be either—or neither. Could be whatever gouged the rocks needed protecting and Douglas hasn’t been detected.”
“Possible,” Nathan agreed. “Especially since they didn’t abduct the entire team. They might not have gotten Douglas.”
The potentials were numerous and the facts to knock out erroneous ones were too few. A swell crested and hit Kate right in the face. She shook her head, slinging water, then hiked her chin to keep from getting popped again. “Let’s take a look to see if we can find out what’s in there.”
Nathan shot her a level stare. “Technically, we’re supposed to have backup Tactical with us.”
“If Douglas was available, and your other teams weren’t deployed, we would have backup Tactical. But we don’t.” She reminded him of the obvious. “GRID knows we’re on to them, Nathan. I killed one of them and wounded another. We had an attempted assassin at the outpost. They dumped hundreds of mines right outside the cave to kill us and slow down backup forces to keep them out of here as long as possible. This can’t wait any longer. Kunz isn’t going to put operations in Park and wait for us to pull together tactical backup. He’s going to bug out.” If he hadn’t already.
Knowing Kunz, he’d left the compound for safer digs the moment she’d escaped. Him or his double, it didn’t matter. Whichever had been there would’ve hightailed it out of here before the heat ratcheted up. He’d run like the coward he was and leave his minions behind to do the dying.
“I wish I could disagree with you, but I can’t.” Nathan raised and lowered his brow, pinched his lips, his left eye twitching. “Let’s move.”
“Stick close, and be prepared for anything.” Out of
long-term habit, Kate checked her sheath, then her thigh holster and finally her waist belt and fanny pack. Knife, secure. Dart gun, secure. Darts, secure. The tips were poison-tainted and stored properly in their clip at her waist. The snub-nose .38-caliber pistol resting between her breasts inside her wet suit couldn’t move unless she moved it. Fanny pack of tools, including a brick of C-4 explosives, secure. And prayers that she wouldn’t have to use it, and sacrifice herself and Nathan, whispered and reiterated. Satisfied she had done all she could to prepare, she dove down toward the mouth of the cave.
Nathan followed, wearing matching headgear so that they could continue to communicate under water.
Kate swam along the perimeter of the formations, but she couldn’t find the one that had been so obscure she’d nearly missed it. She swam back and tried again. And again, failed to find it. “Damn it.”
“What’s wrong? Don’t you have the coordinates?”
“No. S.A.S.S. plotted my course after I entered the cave.”
“Can you plug those in, and go from there?”
“No, I can’t. This is a black zone. No activation.” She kept looking, straining to see, scouring the rocks.
She again swam the length of the formation, dipping into and out of crevices. “There.” Finally she spotted the telltale gouges. “This is it.” With a strong kick, she made the tight bend and entered the narrow cave.
With Nathan following, they began moving through, staying as close to the ceiling as Kate had the first time she’d explored it.
“Low-level light only,” Kate whispered, warning him to control the beam on his flashlight. “Otherwise, they’ll pick it up. Watch for trip wires, too. I didn’t hit any before,
swimming close to the ceiling, but they know that now, too. I’d expect them to adapt to make it more difficult for us.”
Nathan nodded, swept the low-level beam of his flashlight along the cave wall. “These walls have taken plenty of hits.”
“Yeah, they have.” They were beaten down smooth in places.
“This cave wasn’t easy to find. If you hadn’t led the way, I’d have missed it.”
“I did miss it the first few times I checked the formation.”
“Too much work for recreational divers. They couldn’t do this kind of damage to the rocks.” He swam a little further. “Incoming tide could be responsible for part, but not all of this. Something beyond the hand of nature is definitely going on in here.”
“That’s the way I see it, too. Weapons cache, compound or something else entirely—but something manmade.” Kate motioned to the right wall. “You check that side and I’ll check this one.”
Nathan veered to the right. “I thought you said there were air pockets in here.” He looked over at her, his eyes shadowed by his headgear. “Where are they?”
“Further up. When we round this next bend, the water level drops. We can surface there, and save our oxygen. But remember the audio wiring. Talk only when necessary.”
They swam on, looking for signs, for some small piece of evidence that would prove this cave was a GRID compound or a holding tank for GRID weapons.
When they rounded the bend and the water level dropped below the ceiling, Kate motioned to Nathan to surface.
Kate went first, barely breaking the water with her head
and stopping when the water level fell to just below her nose. She looked around, saw nothing unusual, no signs of life, then shoved back her headgear, took another look, and motioned to Nathan to join her.
Nathan came up and removed his headgear. “Wow, that’s potent stuff,” he whispered, conscious of the audio wiring Kate had mentioned.