Clive Cussler - Thriller 2 - Stories You Just Can’t Put Down

He’d done his best over the past six months, while Carter was dismantling IEDs-improvised explosive devices-in Iraq, to keep an eye on Carter’s girl. In between covert missions for the U.S. president, Nash had gone sailing with Morgan on Chesapeake Bay, laughed with her at a revival of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum at the Kennedy Center and picked crabs with her at the Crab Shack in Baltimore.

Nash hadn’t expected to fall in love with his brother’s girl any more than he’d expected her to disappear.

But he was in love with Morgan Hunter. And no one had seen hide nor hair of the woman for the past eighteen hours.

Nash felt a wave of guilt wash over him. This was his fault. Morgan had run from him. Because of what he’d done last night on her front doorstep.

He hadn’t meant to kiss her. They’d been convulsed with laughter, leaning helplessly on each other. She’d turned her face up to his, sharing the hilarious moment. On impulse he’d lowered his head, and his mouth had found hers. For a moment, she’d responded. Hungrily.

Then she’d gasped and backed up a step. And stared at him in the harsh porch light with wide, wounded brown eyes. Asking him without words how he could betray his brother. How he could betray her trust.

Nash didn’t want Morgan to be the victim of some accident, but he grasped at that possibility as something besides his behavior that might have caused her absence from work. “You’ve checked with the area hospitals?” he asked the commander.

“I called the hospitals, I checked with her father in Bethesda, I’ve left messages on her cell-which have gone straight to voice mail. I even sent another firefighter to her apartment in Avendale,” Captain Hart said.

“The front door was unlocked, but the place was pristine, no signs of disturbance. Her purse was there with her wallet inside. But her keys and her cell phone and her Jeep were missing.”

“Are you telling me no one has any idea where she might have gone?” Nash asked the station commander.

“I figured you would know, Benedict. You’re the one she’s been spending all her free time with.” Captain Hart made it an accusation.

“I don’t have a clue where she is,” Nash snapped. “She was fine when I left her about ten last night.” Except, perhaps, for feeling as guilty then about what had happened between them as Nash did now.

“I can’t believe you kissed me! What were you thinking? I’m going to marry your brother when he comes home. I love him.” She’d swiped the back of her hand across her mouth as though to wipe away his kiss, staring at him above that erasing hand through wary, watery eyes.

“I miss Carter,” she’d said quietly, using his brother’s name to stab him in the heart. “I think it would be better if we don’t see each other anymore,” she’d added, twisting the knife.

Nash shuddered at the memory.

“One of my best firefighters has disappeared,” the captain said. “If you know anything-”

“I don’t!” Nash could hear the affection and agony in the commander’s voice. He knew exactly how the man felt.

“I’ll be calling the local precinct to file a missing persons report when enough time has passed. I don’t like the looks of this, Benedict. I don’t like it at all.”

Nash closed his cell phone and slipped it back into the pocket of his cammies. He was scheduled to leave for El Salvador with his team on a covert presidential mission at midnight.

Which gave him just six hours to find his brother’s girl.

And make amends. Assuming she would let him apologize. Assuming that the reason she’d disappeared was nothing more sinister than an unwanted kiss.

Nash felt the hairs rise on the back of his neck as he thought of what else might have happened to Morgan Hunter.

What if Juan Espinoza, the drug lord whose coca crop Nash had ruined the last time he was in Colombia, had figured out the identity of his nemesis, “The Ghost,” and made good on his threat.

“I’ll find you, El Fantasma. Then I’ll find what you love most. And I’ll destroy it.”

Nash huffed out a breath. He hadn’t feared the threat because he’d been sure his cover was unassailable. No one except his elite team knew that Nash Benedict, son of presidential advisor Foster Benedict, was the scourge of the South American drug trade. And of Montana militiamen. And Basque separatists. And Somalian war lords.

What if one of his many foes had found him out? And come seeking vengeance-through the woman he loved. Maybe his kiss had nothing to do with Morgan’s disappearance.

Nash felt adrenaline spill into his veins. Felt his muscles cord with tension and his neck hairs hackle, a feral beast readying for battle.

But he was also a rational man, and his thoughts held him in place. If Morgan had been kidnapped, why hadn’t he received a ransom note? Or a vindictive message telling him that what he loved most was lost forever?

Maybe the note is on the way.

That thought sent a chill rattling down his spine.

And maybe you’re freaking out over nothing. Maybe Morgan took off for a while to think.

And missed work? Without calling her boss?

Morgan Hunter was the strongest, most confident, most “together” woman he knew, which was a great part of his attraction to her. She was a firefighter who often dealt with life-and-death emergencies. Would a woman with her self-confidence, her physical and emotional strength, fall apart from a single kiss, for which the perpetrator had been well-chastised on the spot?

He had to find Morgan and bring her home safe. That was the least he could do after kissing his brother’s girl.

Morgan Hunter couldn’t believe the predicament in which she found herself. She’d felt confused and upset when she’d grabbed her keys an hour after Nash Benedict had kissed her and gone for a drive to think.

She hadn’t planned to be gone long. She’d left the radio off in her Jeep, because she didn’t want to be distracted or soothed. She wanted to examine her feelings with brutal honesty. Because she had strong feelings for Nash Benedict that conflicted with her love for his brother.

She’d left home without thinking which direction she was going. When she finally noticed her surroundings an hour later, she was driving along a winding, deserted rock-and-gravel road. Almost at the same instant a deer appeared in her headlights.

The deer froze. And so did she.

At least, for that part of a second that would have allowed her to brake before she hit the animal. Or make a wiser choice than the one she made.

Morgan had seen enough accident victims as a firefighter to know that hitting anything head-on, even if she was only going forty-five, was a bad move. So she jerked the wheel to miss the deer, then jerked it again to miss the gnarled trunk of an ancient black walnut-and flipped her Jeep.

It rolled three times before it came to an abrupt and jarring halt right-side-up in the embrace of a copse of spruce. Sometime during one of those rolls, the driver’s side air bag had deployed. It was already deflating, but Morgan smelled the acrid scent of the cartridge that had exploded to fill it with air, and watched wide-eyed as a stream of white smoke rose behind the steering wheel.

It had all happened so fast!

Morgan couldn’t believe she was alive. And apparently unhurt. She gasped with relief and felt a sharp pain in her chest. Not entirely unhurt. She had either badly bruised or broken a rib. She reached down with a trembling hand to fumble at the seat belt release.

She felt tremendously relieved when she heard a click and the seat belt let go. With the constricting pressure gone from her chest, she took another deep breath.

“Ow,” she croaked. Could that excruciating pain be the result of a rib that was simply bruised? She would have to be very careful. If she put a broken rib through her lung out here in the middle of nowhere, it was goodbye, so long, adios, baby.