Kathleen Creighton - Secret Agent Sam

A book in the Starrs of the West series, 2005

The second book in the Taken series

He saw Samantha for the first time in the White House rose garden.

“How many people can say that? ” Cory Pearson said aloud to the computer screen as he slid the cursor to the Save icon and thumped the mouse.

The words he’d written, black letters stark on a vast white field, seemed to shimmer in anticipation. He stared back at them, wrists propped on their ergonomic supports, fingers poised…

Nothing. Hell.

It wasn’t that he didn’t have the words. Problem was, he had too many. Memories, impressions, images, emotions-everything translated automatically into words in his mind, always had, as far back as he could remember. He hadn’t understood then, not until much, much later, that not everyone’s mind behaved like this. And the fact that his did was something he’d been both gifted and cursed with at birth. And that this was what made him, whether he liked it or not, a writer.

By the time he’d come to that understanding, thanks to the combining of this gift-or curse-with a curious and adventure-some nature, he was already well on his way to becoming one of the most respected war correspondents-slash-journalists of his time.

It was shortly thereafter that those same attributes got him thrown into an Iraqi prison. Which, in turn, had set in motion the chain of events that had resulted in his presence in the White House rose garden on that particular day in May. And was also how he’d come to know, only a few months before that, of the existence of a girl named Sammi June Bauer.

Oh, he had plenty of words. Words swirled in his mind now like leaves in a whirlwind. Experience told him that attempting to force them into a semblance of order and paragraph form would be like trying to catch those windblown leaves in his hands. But he knew, if he was patient, eventually they would begin to settle and arrange themselves into patterns of their own making…

He watched her from a distance as she wandered among the rose beds, noticing how she seemed separate from all the other guests, isolated even in a crowd. It struck him that this apartness must be natural to her.

And, in retrospect, perhaps it was something he should have paid more attention to, perhaps…

What if I had? Cory asked himself as he stared at the blinking cursor. Would it have made a difference?

Probably not. He let out a breath and went back to typing.

The humid heat of a May afternoon, thick with the scent of crushed grass, rose around him as he moved closer to her, stalking her the way a nature photographer stalks a leopard. Through the heat shimmer he saw her throw a furtive look over one shoulder before she bent toward a half-open rose blossom, rather as if she meant to steal the flower itself rather than merely a sample of its fragrance. After a moment she looked up and cocked her head. Her lips formed a pout of disappointment.

“Try this one. It seems to have some smell to it,” he said, and felt a surge of strange delight when she gave a start, then turned with the slow dignity of an offended duchess.

As she studied him, hands clasped behind her back, head tilted back and chin out-thrust, he couldn’t help but smile. Not much about her resembled the pictures her father had painted for him during those weeks in Iraq, but remnants of the scruffy, combative ten-year-old soccer-playing tomboy she’d been could still be found in that chin and jaw. And that attitude. Oh, yeah.

But for the rest…

For starters, she was a whole lot taller than he’d pictured her-nearly equal to his own six feet in the high-heeled boots she was wearing-and a good part of that seemed to consist of legs. Slim, tanned, well-muscled legs, judging from the portion visible between the tops of her boots and the bottom edge of her dark pinstriped skirt, which was, in fact, a considerable amount. The rest of her was slim, too, but strongly built and athletic, like her father. Her hair-thick and shaggy, a rich blond shot through with gold-was a gift from her mother, but the eyes were Tristan’s. Dark and mysterious as moonlit waters. A man could drown in those eyes…!

“I’m Cory Pearson,” he said as he ambled toward her, wearing a disarming smile and trying to make it seem as if he’d just happened to be wandering by that way. “I was-”

“I know who you are. I’ve seen you on television.” She gave her shoulder-length hair a toss and her chin jerked a notch higher, if that was possible. “You’re the reporter who was with my dad in Iraq.”

“Yes. And you’re Sam-”

“Samantha,” she said in a breathless rush.

Not Sammi June. Not anymore. Of course not. The little-girl name had gone the way of the freckles and ponytails. She was a grown-up woman now.

He accepted it with a solemn nod, and a peculiar quivering pressure behind his breastbone. “Samantha…”

Cory sat back, his hands grown sweaty on the keyboard. The same pressure was there in his chest now, and letting out a long, slow breath didn’t ease it much.

There’d been more to that day, of course. A lot more. He remembered every moment of it, every word, every look, every gesture.

She’d confided in him, for some reason, although his intuition told him she was a private person by nature. She’d told him about ordinary stuff-her life, about soccer and school, and her newly born dream of becoming a pilot, like her dad. And some not-so-ordinary stuff-what it had been like to lose her father as a little girl and get him back again as a grown woman. Amazingly, in the midst of her own emotional turmoil she’d asked about Cory, too, how it had been for him.

He hadn’t been able to hide his pain from her that day, not completely, though God knows he’d tried. Just the first of many times in his relationship with Samantha Bauer when his will had failed him…

He’d listened to her speak of adult loss with a child’s simplicity, and of a child’s heartbreak with an adult’s passion.

And he’d fallen in love with her. Right there, that day, in the White House rose garden.

He let out another breath as he once more hit the Save icon, then darkened the monitor. He’d had enough. Couldn’t do any more, not now.

Nor, he imagined, would he make another attempt any time soon. He should have known it was too soon. That it would still hurt too damn much.

Writing had always been his lifeline in difficult times. His medicine, his therapy, his healing balm, his anesthetic, better than a bottle of Scotch. He’d thought, he’d hoped…it would help get him through this. But it seemed there was no medicine on earth powerful enough to dull the pain of losing Samantha.

The tiny airstrip simmered in the afternoon heat, denied out of functional necessity even the small solace of trees. To Cory Pearson’s eyes the ragged cluster of clapboard buildings with rusting tin roofs that apparently served as hangar and maintenance sheds as well as terminal and business offices seemed to have hunkered down beneath the pounding sun with the silent endurance of penned livestock.

The taxi driver who had brought them from Davao City cut off the elderly car’s engine-to keep it from overheating, Cory imagined-which of course rendered the air inside the cab unbreatheable within roughly three seconds. Feeling his breath catch in an instinctive effort to keep that awful heat out of his lungs, Cory hurriedly thrust a handful of bills at the driver across the back of the seat and opened his door. On the other side of the car, his best friend and favorite photographer, Tony Whitehall, hefted the cases containing his cameras onto his knees and did the same. Hot air rushed inside the car like the breath of a ravenous beast.