But he wasn’t Stan.
Teri pulled away before he got his arms around her.
“Gotta go.”
He followed her into the lobby. “Hey, whoa, why wait till noon—Teri, I’m not busy now.”
“Yeah, but I am.”
“Noon, then,” he said, still following her. He nodded as they went past Lieutenant Paoletti and Jazz Jacquette, waiting until they were out of earshot, but then still lowering his voice, “I’ll come to your room.”
“You know,” she said, stopping short, “on second thought, I can’t have lunch with you. And as for having sex . . . ?” She pretended to think about it. “Nope, can’t do that either. Not in this lifetime.”
She started for the stairs up to the west tower where both she and Stan had rooms. But Muldoon grabbed her arm.
“Wait a minute,” he said. “You just . . .” He was completely confused and she almost felt sorry for him.
Almost.
“You’re just going to kiss me like that and then . . .” He shook his head in disbelief. “That’s it?”
“You know, Muldoon,” she said, making a very sympathetic face, “you’re just not a particularly good kisser.”
And with that, he instantly understood. “Oh, shit,” he said. It was the first four-letter word she’d ever heard him use. “You heard that?”
Teri nodded. “Let go of me.”
He dropped her arm. “I’m sorry. I’m . . . really sorry.”
“Great. That makes it all better.” She started for the stairs again, and again he followed her.
“Teri, I don’t know what I can say—”
She stopped. “Don’t say anything. Just leave me alone.”
He stood in front of her, blocking her path. “If you won’t let me try to explain now, then why don’t you meet me for lunch.”
Teri laughed in his face. “Oh, there’s an original idea.”
But he persisted. “You’ve got to eat, right? I’ve got to eat. Let’s sit at the same table, and please, let me try to—”
“Mike. Don’t you get it? You’re off the hook. You don’t have to have lunch with me. I know Stan set you up to—”
“But I want to have lunch with you. I need to have lunch with you. Please? Come on. Give me a break. I really like you, Teri. I don’t want to lose you as a friend.”
She looked at him. And she knew. The man was a Navy SEAL. He had pitbull-like tenacity. He was going to dog her every step until she agreed to meet him for lunch.
“Noon,” she said through gritted teeth. “Lunch and only lunch. As friends.”
“Absolutely.” He nodded. “If that’s the way you want to play it, that’s the way we’ll play it.”
For now. He didn’t say the words aloud, but they hung there as he walked away.
Teri knew that kissing him that way had been a stupid mistake.
And it was all Stanley Wolchonok’s fault.
“We got video!”
The negotiators’HQ room—mission control, so to speak—erupted in quiet cheers.
Quiet, because after three days of hemming and hawing and buying the SEALs in the Troubleshooters Squad time to rehearse the takedown of the plane, everyone in Max Bhagat’s team was exhausted.
Desmond Nyland stood in the doorway, watching Max watch the screen. Max himself looked fresh as a daisy. He was too much of a son of a bitch to let anyone know he was running on caffeine and nerves strung way too tight.
The man shaved two or three times a day so that his team never saw him looking anything but completely in control.
Although rumor had it he’d nearly broken Senator Crawford’s nose. And rumor had it that last night he’d actually gone out onto the runway in an attempt to trade himself for this Gina girl who’d been brave enough to step forward and say she was Karen Crawford when the tangos were about to start killing the other passengers.
That sure as hell didn’t sound like the Max Bhagat he knew.
The miniature cameras had finally been put into place, and the equipment was finally up and running. Two days those SEALs had spent there in the scorching heat and the chill of the nights, refusing to give up.
And now they had video.
Out of the three cameras Ensign MacInnough and his men had managed to get placed and working, two gave a snake’s eye view of the cabin—from the floor, of course. It was limited, but they were lucky they had that much. The third was in the cockpit.
Max stared at that screen, both hands on the table in front of him, leaning closer.
“Oh, God,” he breathed, more to himself than anyone standing around him. “She’s just a girl.”
Des moved into the room to look over Max’s shoulder at the screen.
The picture was amazingly clear despite the fact that, again, the camera was angled up from the floor to the ceiling. But there was a young woman sitting on the floor, knees in close to her chest. She had long dark hair and big dark eyes and a face that was more than merely pretty. She was striking looking—with cheekbones and a nose that announced her Mediterranean heritage.
And Max was right. She was little more than a girl. In a few years she was going to be a gorgeous woman. A real Sophia Lorentype beauty.
Of course, right now her life expectancy wasn’t more than a few days. Hours even.
Especially if what Des suspected was true—that this was a suicide mission for the hijackers, and had been right from the start.
“How old is she?” Des asked.
“Twenty-one—going on thirty-five. She’s been cooler under pressure than some of my agents who’ve been on the job for five years.”
“You might want to send over a skirt or pants or something so that girl can cover those legs.” Des tapped the screen. Not that he had any problem with it. She had legs like a movie star. Five miles long and gorgeously shaped.
“Yeah, and how do we do that without letting them know that we can hear and see what’s going on in there?” Max asked.
“Details, details,” Des said. “I’m surprised she hasn’t been hassled by the tangos for indecent exposure.”
“One of ’em, calls himself Bob—we’ve IDed him as Babur Haiyan—” Max told him, “was talking to her about it last night. But it didn’t seem exceedingly threatening.”
Des tapped on the screen again. “Lookee here. Whoever this is, he’s just waiting for the order to play rough so he can have at this girl. Look at him watching her. He’s going to be first in line for the gang bang.”
Max raised his voice. “I need a visual ID. Tango on screen three. Anyone match a name to that face, call it out!”
As he waited, a muscle jumped in his jaw. Now, wasn’t that interesting? Our man Max had let little Gina Vitagliano under his incredibly thick skin. Under what Des had always believed was impenetrably thick skin.
“Helga all right?” Max asked, still watching the tango watching Gina on the video screen.
Oh, damn. “She’s not here?” Des countered.
“I haven’t seen her.”
Max never missed anything, but right now it was possible he wasn’t up to his usual speed, glued the way he was to the video screen. Des quickly scanned the room, looking for that familiar head of gray hair, that beautiful round face that was always smiling.
Double damn. Helga was supposed to be here. She was scheduled to be.
But she wasn’t.
“She didn’t call in?” Des tried to sound casual. As if he weren’t picturing Helga wandering the streets of K-stan, confused and disoriented and in terrible danger.
“She didn’t call me,” Max replied.
“Alojzije Nabulsi”—the name he’d been waiting for—rang out.
“You stay the hell away from her,” Max said to the video screen. “She’s just a kid.”
When the power and air conditioning kicked back on, Stan closed the curtains in his room, shutting out the hot sun. It would take a minute or two for the air coming through the vent to turn cool, but at least it was moving again.
He was tempted to take another shower—to stand there under the water until the room cooled down, until the terrorists surrendered, until the team was on its way back to California, where he could return to his regularly scheduled life and not have to think or worry about Teri Howe ever again.
He was giving in to the urge and had just stepped out of his pants when someone started pounding on his door.
Holy Christ, whoever it was wanted him to open up in a hurry. He grabbed for a towel and lunged for the door. With that kind of lead fist, it had to be WildCard or Cosmo or . . .
“Is there a problem?” he asked as he yanked the door open.
Or Teri Howe. Oh, shit.
“You bet your ass there’s a problem.” She pushed past him, into his room, as he scrambled to pull the towel more completely around himself.
She was willing to bet his ass—she didn’t necessarily want to see it flapping in the breeze.
He knew exactly what this was about. Mike Muldoon had called on the hotel phone just minutes ago with the bad news of the hour. It seemed that Teri had overheard their entire conversation in the stairwell.
She turned to face him. “Close the goddamn door.”
Muldoon had told him that she was angry, but Stan had imagined that meant that she’d avoid him, maybe give him the cold shoulder until the end of time. Be passive aggressive at best.
But, damn, here she was. Ms. Nonconfrontation, getting right in his face about something he’d done to upset her. As bad as this was, it was also good. It was beyond good. It was amazing.
He was so fucking proud of her, he wanted to cry.
Christ, she was livid. And gorgeous. Her eyes were hot and bright, her delicate mouth a tight line in her flushed face. She was breathing hard, as if she’d sprinted five miles. Or gone up eight flights of stairs at a dead run.
She didn’t seem to notice—or care—that he was wearing only a towel.
Stan didn’t shut the door. “How about we just leave this open until I get some clothes on? I’m not comfortable being alone like this without—”
Teri interrupted him. Loudly. Loudly enough so that anyone standing in the hall would have no problem hearing her. “I’m not comfortable with you asking your friend to do me as a favor to you!”
O-kay. Stan closed the door. “Teri, look—”
“What is wrong with you?” Her voice shook. “Really, Stan, I want to know. Why would you spend all that time trying to set me up with Mike Muldoon when he’s not even remotely interested in me?”
“Well, that’s just it,” Stan told her. “He is interested.”
“Bullshit!”
“Teri, he is—”
“I heard you trying to talk him into—”
“He’s interested now, all right?” He took a step toward her. “Look, I thought he’d be good for you. He’s a sweet kid. I thought he could use some help, too, you know, getting—”
“Laid? From what I heard, I think he’s probably got that handled.”
Stan fought to keep his own temper from rising. “That’s not what I was going to say. That’s not what this is about.”
“Yeah, right,” she said, with a laugh that sounded an awful lot like a sob. “I heard you, Stan. I heard everything you said. You wanted him to go up to my room with me after lunch, and I don’t think you imagined we’d play cards when he got there. Why don’t you just admit it? You were trying to talk Muldoon into throwing me a—God—a pity fuck!”
Oh, dear Christ, did she really think that? Stan couldn’t decide whether to laugh or be insulted.
He took another step toward her. “That’s not true. Come on, Teri, you look me in the eye and just goddamn try to accuse me of ever treating you with anything remotely resembling pity—”
She wasn’t listening, she was talking right over him. “Poor Teri Howe. She hasn’t gotten laid in years because she’s too much of a loser to be able to hook up with any nice guys. She only attracts the scum of the earth like Joel Hogan and Rob Pierce. So come on, Mike, you’re a nice guy. Do the senior chief a big favor and throw her a bang. You don’t really mind, do you?”
Wildly she threw off her jacket and grabbed her shirt, pulling it out of her pants and over her head.
Stan couldn’t move. He was taken totally by surprise, completely stunned by the sight of her standing there in her bra. It was a sports bra—the kind she could have worn out for a jog in almost any Western nation without a shirt over it. But still, the sight of all that smooth, bare skin was unnerving after days of long-sleeved shirts and collars buttoned to her throat. Just the sight of her bare arms seemed erotic and impossibly daring.
What the hell was she doing?
As he stood there and gaped like an idiot, she unfastened her belt. Defiantly she kicked off her boots and shucked her pants down her legs.
And then, Christ, she was standing there, six feet away from him, in only her underwear.
“If you think I need a pity fuck so bad, then I want it to come from you.” Her voice shook with anger and emotion. “Come on, Senior Chief. Don’t you have some kind of rule about never asking your men to do something that you wouldn’t do yourself?”