Fiancé by Friday

Gwen dipped the tea bag, and waited for a more elaborate answer. “How is your daughter?”

“Happy her mother is with her.” Gwen reminded herself that Neil used to give her such short and precise answers. Their time alone changed that.

“No one quite replaces our mum when we’re ill.”

The corner of Charles’s lip turned up again. “One of the things women are good for.”

Smiling when your back teeth are grinding is impossible. “Are there many women in the service under your command?”

His smile fell. “A few.”

“You don’t approve.” She could see it in his face.

“Women belong in a home fixing tea and not in the wild removing targets.”

Gwen crossed the room, made sure she had a way out without walking by him.

“Allowing women in must have been difficult for you to accept.”

He shrugged. “I’m a soldier. I do what I’m told.”

“As a major, don’t you do most of the telling?” She blew over her tea.

Charles’s hand rested on the counter and the index finger on his right hand started a slow, intermittent tap. “There are always people above you.”

She thought of the picture Neil had shown her of his troop, or whatever it was they called themselves. Friends. “True. And those under you don’t always survive their missions. That must be difficult.” She couldn’t imagine sending troops into battle and learning that some weren’t coming home. The entire concept of war boggled her mind. Didn’t every human want the same things? A happy and healthy family, food, a home? A world in which their children could grow to the best of their abilities and have families of their own? Truly, what more was there to need? Why fight? It made no sense to her.

“There’s always collateral damage.” His finger tapped a little harder. “A leader can’t dwell on death. Not here.”

If Gwen were to guess, she’d say that Charles didn’t dwell. In fact, he probably erased the name of the lost and penciled in the next. Cold.

She’d rather have her Neil, who did think about the men who’d followed him into battle.

It came to her then, that if a man returned from war unaffected she wouldn’t want to know him.

Gwen stared at a tree out the kitchen window, and noticed it bending in the wind. The desire to leave the major’s presence turned her thoughts to the outside garden. If not for the muscles in her back that had screamed since she woke, she’d make her excuses and find a flower bed.

“I would never make a proper soldier, I’m afraid. I have difficulty squishing a bug.”

“Let Neil stomp the life out of the insects.”

She allowed a passing grin. No, Neil set the bugs outside the door to fend for themselves.

“Would you mind if I searched your library again? Seems the book I chose isn’t helping me pass the time.” Actually, she’d noticed a few photo albums Ruth had pointed out and thought it would be helpful to look through them. Perhaps Charles wasn’t always so jaded.

“Help yourself.”

“Thank you.” She made as graceful an exit as she could. She was hungry, but not enough to stay in the man’s presence.

Instead of having his pilot fly him to Colorado, and potentially hand deliver Neil’s enemy to his side, Blake placed a call to Carter from his office in hopes of keeping some of what he had to say private. Once Blake brought his best friend up to date, he started pulling the hard favors.

“Do you have any contacts at the Pentagon? Anyone who can search out where Neil trained and who with? The men on his team? Anything?” Desperation seeped into his bones. More than the lack of control over everything unfolding, Blake hated the unknown. Where was Neil and where had he stashed his sister to keep her safe? He didn’t even want to consider the diamond ring that was purchased and the meaning behind it.

“My contacts there are shallow at best,” Carter informed him. “But we both know someone who might be able to get the information we want.”

Blake squeezed his eyes shut. “Your uncle?”

“Right.”

Senator Maxwell Hammond had been in the political game from the time he was in high school. Blake didn’t trust the man. Not that he was a known dirty politician, but Blake believed Max had no problem getting his feet in the mud to get his way. Oh, they washed up before he donned his shoes, but there was always a little dirt left behind. Being indebted to the man was not something Blake would choose.

What choice did he really have?

“You sure you’re ready to pull that card?”

“We need to know who birdman is. Need to find Neil and Gwen. The whole thing is smelling up our life. We’ve given Neil the quiet time he requested and we’ve not heard anything for what…three, four days? Anything could have happened.”

“What are we asking Max to search for?”

“Neil directed us to contact the president and use code name Raven. This has something to do with his time in the service. I know Neil spent time on a Colorado base, but there’s a bunch of them, several in Colorado Springs. We need to start there. Did he stash Gwen with one of his buddies? Did he solicit one of his old friends to help? Did he need something to catch this guy that he can only get from a military warehouse?”

“You’ve given this a lot of thought.”

“It’s all I’ve thought about. That and how much I miss my wife and son.”

“Do you have the picture from Neil’s room?”

Blake opened his desk drawer and removed Neil’s file. “Yeah.”

“Scan it in and send it to me. Maybe someone will recognize him…or someone else in the picture.”

While they talked, Blake placed the picture in his scanner and made the copy. “Makes me wish I’d had deeper conversations with the man.”

“Deeper with Neil is what exactly? Two sentences in a row?”

Blake grinned. “Best damn security agent I’ve ever had.”

“Well be prepared, Your Grace…Neil just might elevate to ‘best damn brother-in-law’ you’ve ever had.”

“Thanks for reminding me, Governor. Gwen could do worse.” Now that he knew Neil wasn’t nuts, it helped ease the concerns about her shacking up with the man.

“OK, I got the e-mail. I’ll get on the phone and see what Max can do. Let me know if you hear anything.”

“You’ll be the second to know behind Dean.”