Linda Johnston - Operation - Reunited

She bit her bottom lip to prevent it all from spilling from her. She looked up into John’s curious and kind gaze.

He was a salesman. A people person. He seemed outgoing, yet full of empathy.

Could he help her?

No, shouted a voice inside her. You’re still mistaking him for Cole. He’s not here to save you.

You have to do that yourself.

She was alone here, in the midst of all these people. And she didn’t dare forget it.

“There’s nothing,” Alexa said firmly, though she glanced away from the inquisitiveness and sympathy in John’s eyes. “Nothing at all.”

“If you change your mind,” John said, “all you have to do is—”

“Alexa!”

She turned to the glass door to the house. It slid open, and Vane stood there, fully dressed, as if he had been out somewhere.

“I’ve been looking for you,” he said, his tone almost accusatory.

“Sorry,” she said. She glanced toward John, intending it to be firm but apologetic. Hoping, for her own sake, to see in his continued stare the sympathy she had noticed before.

Instead, his glare had turned furious. But why? Alexa shivered as she turned to accompany her fiancé back into the house, but it wasn’t the night air that chilled her.

Cole got out of his borrowed car and stretched his jeans-clad legs.

The area around Skytop Lake lived up to its name today. It was August, well into summer, and the mountaintop community that extended high into the air was baked by the brilliant sun.

Resting one arm, bare beneath his T-shirt, against the vehicle’s roof, Cole squinted, using the opportunity to glance around the Skytop Lake Village shopping center—including the entrances to the blacktop parking lot.

He recognized no one, saw no familiar vehicles. Good. That was no guarantee he hadn’t been noticed, that he wasn’t being followed, but he would remain alert.

He glanced at the calm, sparkling lake, visible between buildings, then entered the convenience store where he’d checked out the pay phone the day before. Its air-conditioning was working overtime so the entire store seemed as cool as the inside of the glass-fronted refrigeration units lining the walls. The place was nearly empty, and the phone was not in use. This must be his lucky day.

He made a skeptical noise that only he, and not the long-haired teenage girl behind the register, could hear. Luck? He had run out of it at least two years earlier. Now, he operated on instinct and wiles.

He shunned all feeling. Feeling meant pain.

Pain for the loss of the man he had once considered a brother: Vane.

Pain at seeing Alexa again. Knowing what she was. Wanting her, anyway, with a deep, gut-wrenching desire.

He strode single-mindedly toward the pay phone, punched in the numbers for his credit card and waited.

“Bowman.”

“It’s me, Forbes. I’m on a pay phone—not secure, but unlikely to be tapped.”

“Good. What have you found out?”

Cole could picture his friend and mentor sitting at his desk in his office in Washington, D.C.

Not the Pentagon, though their elite counterterrorist detachment had evolved as a Special Forces Unit that incorporated agents from all military branches. It was smaller, sleeker and more secretive than the elusive Delta Force, with the mission of infiltrating terrorist groups to terminate them. Despite being military, its members were constantly so far undercover that they seldom wore uniforms.

They called their group, simply, the Unit.

Forbes had insisted on a small, inconspicuous rented office for the Unit along E Street, between the areas that housed the FBI and the White House. “The better to keep us humble and alert,” Forbes had said when he had first shown it to Cole.

“I haven’t found out much yet,” Cole replied now to his boss’s question. “I’m still getting the layout of the place. The inn is fairly small. I’ll need to hack into the computer to get information about the guests, but I suspect it’s all a cover, anyway.”

“How many are there?” Forbes’s voice was gruff and in-your-face, as always. Cole’s silver-haired mentor was nearing retirement age, though he was likely to be hauled from the Unit screaming and kicking—using the most injurious of self-defense maneuvers. As old as he was, he would do damage to guys much younger. Forbes was a large man—nobody’s fool, nobody’s wimp.

“Sixteen, I think,” Cole said. “At least, that’s how many appeared for dinner last night.”

“And was it a good meal?” Forbes asked sarcastically.

“The best.” The food had been great. It had been cooked by Alexa. Her graceful, slender hands had prepared it and served it. Hands he recalled touching him, once upon a time, so erotically—

He shifted and leaned against the wall.

“You still there?” Forbes demanded.

“Sure.” Cole forcibly refocused his thoughts. “I talked to a few, and most spoke excellent English. I happened to sit at a table with a couple of exceptions. They claimed to be from Bolivia.”

“Bolivia?” Forbes snorted.

“More like Libya. Anyway, their training is well under way. I didn’t see anyone using utensils in anything other than the good old U.S.A. method of both cutting food and eating with the right hand. I joined the group for television afterward, and some even knew the language well enough to guess at game show answers.”

He had also seen Alexa at the door, and had lived dangerously. Tempted fate, and her memory.

From the corner of his eye, he had seen her grow pale when he had answered a question about a tree. Did she remember Cole Rappaport’s knowledge about trees? Did she somehow associate John O’Rourke, home improvements salesman extraordinaire, with the man she had helped to kill?

“Damn.” Forbes’s voice interrupted his thoughts. “If those suspects are doing that well, it means they’re nearly ready.”

“Could be. You got anything for me? Has anyone else reported finding other locations yet?”

“Not yet. You’re on your own. It all depends on you.”

“How can that be?” Cole demanded. “After last time, we know there has to be a host of agents ready to go underground.”

“Maybe they changed tactics,” Forbes said. “Numbers got them nowhere, after all.”

“But the intelligence I learned in the field—”

“Never mind what’s going on elsewhere,” Forbes insisted. “I’ll handle that. You just figure out what’s happening there, hear?”

“Yes, I hear you. What about backup? Are you sending anyone here from the Unit to follow this crowd when they disperse? I already told Maygran and Bradford to expect your call.”

Colonel Jessie Bradford and Major Allen Maygran were a couple of Cole’s most trusted co-agents in the Special Forces Unit. They were among the very few who knew who he really was, for Cole used yet another alias within the Unit. Both had only recently joined other special operations military units. Vane would not know them.

“I’ve told you before to let me handle the details.” Forbes did not sound pleased, although he seldom did. “But, yes, I’m working on getting together an inconspicuous crew to join you there soon.”

“Good.” Cole drew in his breath suddenly, as a familiar figure walked into the convenience store: Minos Flaherty. The squat, muscular thug had not been at the inn last night, and Cole hadn’t been in a position to figure out where he may have gone. He had half hoped that the guy had disappeared for good—but only if he had taken a long dive over a short Skytop cliff. If he had simply disappeared, as all the guests were expected to do soon, it could mean that the operation was commencing before Cole was ready to deal with it.