Cheryl Biggs - Hart's Last Stand

How many nights since she’d left Three Hills had he lain in bed unable to sleep, his thoughts all on her, almost feeling her body next to his, wondering where she was, what she was doing, who she was with?

Some nights he’d felt as if his memories were slowly killing him. Other nights he’d wished they would.

But he hadn’t dreamed about her now for at least a month. He’d thought that was all behind him, that his feelings for her were dead. Now he knew he’d been wrong.

But what he was feeling wasn’t all memories and nostalgia, or even desire, because he also wanted to slam a fist through something and frighten her into telling him the truth. He wanted to grab her, jerk her to her feet and demand she stop lying.

“Hart, please,” Suzanne said. “You have to listen. I…”

He shook his head and strode past her to the door. “Rick’s dead, Suzanne. You know it, I know it, the army knows it, and I have no doubt the damned FBI, if they have any reason to want to—knows it, too.”

“May I help you, miss?” The aide looked up from the file cabinet he’d been rifling through.

“Yes, I…” Suzanne glanced at the door to Hart’s office. She knew he was in there. Listening. Nerves, fear and desperation skittered through her veins. “I…I’d like to see Captain Branson, please.”

“Let me see if he’s available,” the private said. “Your name, miss?”

“Suzanne Cassidy.” Why didn’t he just come to the door? He surely could hear her.

The aide closed the file drawer, turned and disappeared into Hart’s office, closing the door behind him.

A moment later he returned, but instead of saying anything to her, he merely nodded and walked directly to the exit and left.

She looked back toward Hart’s office and felt a start of surprise. He was standing in the doorway, leaning one shoulder against the doorjamb. Sunlight, streaming in through his office windows, shone at his back, turning his hair to a golden halo and creating myriad shadows about his face.

Suzanne tried to stop staring, ordered herself to look elsewhere and couldn’t.

“Suzanne,” he said, breaking the silence between them and the spell that seemed to have dropped over her.

“I…” Her throat was suddenly as dry as the desert, and her fingers were wrapped around the strap of her bag so tightly she realized her nails were pushing painfully into her palms. “I have no one else to turn to, Hart,” she said finally, retrieving at least a small part of her senses.

He straightened.

She felt an involuntary start of alarm, but forced herself to remain still. He was an old friend and he was a stranger. She needed him and she feared him.

Strength exuded from every line of his body, hardness shone in his eyes. Fine lines radiated from the outer corners of his eyes and bracketed his mouth, but Suzanne knew Hart was not a man who laughed easily or frequently.

She also knew that, in spite of needing his help, there was no way she could afford to trust anything he said.

“There’s nothing I can do for you, Suzanne,” Hart said, stiffening. He couldn’t let her back into his life, he thought coldly. He wouldn’t.

She watched him walk across the room, jerk the exit door open, and for just a moment look back at her, his eyes cold, wary and full of anger. Seconds later, as she ran after Hart, she heard someone call out to her.

“Suzanne?” the corps crew chief said. “Suzanne Cassidy?”

She stopped and looked at him. Everything about him was thick—his neck, chest, waist, arms, even his hands—while his eyes were a dull gray, nearly the same color as his hair, and his face was marred by a mass of craggy lines that reminded her of a metropolitan street map. “Chief Carger,” Suzanne said.

For a while, just after she and Rick had moved to Three Hills, Rick had thrown Monday-night-football parties, and some of the other pilots, the crew chief and a few mechanics had come to the Cassidy bungalow to eat Rick’s barbecued burgers and watch the game on television.

She remembered Rick telling her once that the chief had lost his family years ago in a house fire. The army had become his home since then, and the corps members his family.

At first she’d liked the chief, thought of him as a father figure, as the men did, and she and Rick had him over for dinner several times. But after a while something about him began to make her feel uneasy.

“Yes, ma’am. Nice of you to remember.” He nodded. “Good to see you again.” His gaze skipped over her quickly, and Suzanne suddenly remembered exactly what it had been that used to make her feel uneasy around him. “Hope everything’s been going okay for you.” He glanced at Hart. “Sorry, sir. If I’m intruding, I can—”

Hart hadn’t missed the quick, but thoroughly assessing once-over the chief had given Suzanne. Before Rick’s death Hart had suspected the chief had been more than a little interested in Suzanne, but he’d put it down to his own paranoid jealousy. Now he felt his hunch had probably been right. They’d both been attracted to their friend’s wife.

“No, what is it, Chief?” Hart snapped, damning himself as much as the chief.

“Just wanted to let you know, sir, that we’ve got a problem with one of the birds. Cowboy’s. Fuel line. May not be able to fix it for a couple of days, unless I can get the parts sooner.”

Hart nodded. “Fine. Reb is on leave. Have Cowboy use his chopper if need be.”

The chief nodded. “Yes, sir, that was my thought.” He glanced at Suzanne again. “Suzanne—Mrs. Cassidy. Nice to see you, ma’am.”

Suzanne waited until he’d left, then turned back to Hart. “Please, just consider—”

He averted his gaze. “No.”

She fought back the feeling of fear and desperation that threatened to send her to her knees sobbing and pleading with him. Instead, she found a very thin, very fragile thread of composure and walked past him and down the path to the street.

A phone booth stood beside another building a few yards away. She stepped into it and began flipping the worn pages of the dilapidated directory that hung on a chain, searching the pages through a blur of tears. “He can’t say no,” she muttered softly. “He can’t.” She finally found a number for a cab company and dialed it on her cell phone.

Hart would think over what she’d said and help her, she told herself. He had to. There was no other way, nowhere else for her to turn.

Hart hung up the phone and threw down his pen.

All his commanding officer would say was that no one was investigating him because of his pending promotion. But someone was investigating him.

Instinct, and the fact that he’d never believed in coincidences, told him that whatever was going on was connected to Suzanne.

He reached for the phone and dialed a number he’d never thought he would need.

“Senator Trowtin, please,” Hart said to the secretary who answered.

Three years ago terrorists had kidnapped Senator Keith Trowtin while he was on a goodwill mission in the Middle East. The CIA had tracked their movements and tried to rescue him three times. Four good men had died in the effort. Then they’d asked for the corps’s help. The senator was being held in a desert camp, less than ten miles from U.S.-friendly territory. Hart’s plan had been risky and dangerous, but no one had come up with anything better.

“Tell him it’s Captain Hart Branson,” he added.

The senator came on the line a moment later. “Captain, good to hear from you. I was just telling Julie—”

“Senator,” Hart interrupted, deciding to spare no words, “I need a favor.”

“I owe you my life, Captain.”

“I was just doing my job, Senator.”