honor and duty—if they’d been interested in money, they would have been accountants.
“Hey, O’Toole. Let me take a look at that arm.”
Flynn glanced at the lanky man who was walking toward him. Sergeant Jack Norton had the easy gait and whipcord leanness of a marathon runner. His specialty was field medicine, but no one made the mistake of believing that made him soft. Norton could pop dislocated joints back into place or fish through a guy’s guts for shrapnel in the morning, then proceed to take advantage of their grogginess to rob them blind at poker in the afternoon.
“Forget it, Norton,” Flynn said, moving toward the mess area. He grabbed a can of soda from one of the cases on the floor, opened the top and took a long swig. “It’s just a flesh wound.”
“Yeah, I’ve heard that before,” Jack said as he followed him. His soft Louisiana drawl echoed in his loose-limbed strides. “Humor me, anyway. It’s the major’s orders.”
Flynn looked around. “Where is the major, anyway?”
Jack tipped his head toward the far corner where some extra canvas tarps had been strung to partition off a small room. “Back there, doing his best to keep any more, ah, surprises from hitting the fan. He told me to send you in when I’m done.”
“Fine,” Flynn muttered. He pulled one of the chairs close to the trestle table, sat down and extended his arm. “Knock yourself out.”
Jack sat across from him and opened up the red tackle box where he kept his medical supplies. He let out a low whistle as he peeled back the blood-encrusted sleeve of Flynn’s shirt.
Flynn gritted his teeth. Not from the pain—he was trained to ignore far worse than this—but from embarrassment. He was a Delta Force commando. He was an expert marksman. He could use his feet and his hands as lethal weapons. He’d disabled three LLA terrorists less than an hour ago without breaking a sweat.
But he hadn’t been able to stop a five-foot, four-inch schoolteacher from stabbing him with a screwdriver.
Why? Sure, the grip he’d used to restrain her hadn’t been all that solid because he hadn’t wanted to give her bruises, but he should have been able to catch her before she’d bolted into the parking garage. The truth was, she’d distracted him with all that wriggling in the elevator.
What normal man wouldn’t have been distracted? Flynn asked himself. His hand had been clamped over the backs of her thighs, his face had been level with the curve of her buttocks and her unbound breasts had been jiggling against his shoulder blades. He’d been engulfed by the warm scent of fresh-washed female. Even with the voices of his team giving curt reports through his earpiece, he’d been aware of every panting breath she’d drawn.
Yet the lapse in his concentration could have been more than embarrassing. It could have been dangerous. If Sarah hadn’t shown up with her van when she had, the outcome might have been entirely different. The mission could have been compromised because, instead of focusing on his job, Flynn had been thinking about how good Abigail Locke had felt against his body.
He scowled. Hell, she wasn’t even his type.
“Hold on there, son. I’ll be done in a minute.”
Flynn returned his attention to Jack. “Did Captain Fox get in yet?”
“Uh-huh. She and your little friend are in with the major.”
Flynn’s gaze strayed to the partition that defined the major’s “office.” He should be wondering how the security background check had panned out, or how Abigail was handling the situation. Yet instead he wondered whether her blouse had dried.
“This looks ugly,” Jack added, his voice suspiciously sympathetic as he cleaned the dried blood from the area around the wound. He swabbed on a generous amount of disinfectant. “I have to give the schoolteacher credit. She got some good penetration after she pierced your sleeve.”
“It wasn’t that deep. The bleeding stopped after a few minutes.”
“I can’t tell the caliber or the make of the screwdriver she used.” Jack took a pair of tweezers and picked out some shirt fibers that clung to the sides of the hole. “Was it a Robertson?”
“It was a Phillips,” Flynn said.
“Ah, yes. Now that you mention it, I can see the four points of the star.” He gave the wound a final cleaning, laid a piece of gauze over the top and taped it in place. “Next time, make sure your tool belt isn’t loaded.”
Flynn folded the bloodstained sleeve above his elbow and flexed his arm, watching the white bandage ride up on a ridge of muscle. He wasn’t going to respond to Jack’s ragging. If the men knew how much this bothered him, they’d never let him hear the end of it. “I’ll ask Rafe to install safeties on all the screwdrivers, okay?”
Jack packed up his supplies. “Good idea.”
Flynn finished his soda and got to his feet. “Thanks for the Band-Aid, Jack. Got any lollipops to go with your usual, sweet bedside manners?”
“I’m fresh out of both.” He lowered his voice. “If you’re going to see the major now, you might not want to go in there unarmed.”
“He’s not still pissed about the mix-up at the ransom drop, is he?”
“Not him. I’m talking about his guest.” He raised an eyebrow. “I heard she might be armed with a pencil.”
Unbelievable. That’s all that came to Abbie’s mind. The whole situation was simply beyond her comprehension. Things like this didn’t happen to people like her. She glanced around the canvas cubicle. It didn’t look like a rabbit hole, and her name wasn’t Alice, but any minute now she half expected to see a white hare in a waistcoat and top hat—
The bubble of hysteria that rose in her throat frightened her almost as much as the events of the past hour. Had it only been an hour? She rubbed the empty spot on her wrist where her watch should have been. She felt naked without it, but she hadn’t been able to find it when she’d been scrambling in the dark for her clothes, and then she’d gone to answer the door, and Flynn had talked his way inside, and her life had turned upside down….
Oh, God. She had to get a hold of herself. She took a deep breath, and her head reeled at the strong aromas of canvas and dusty cement. This cubicle was the only private area of the hidden tent Sarah had brought her to. It was tiny, with barely enough space for a small table and a handful of folding metal chairs. A bare lightbulb hung on a cord from one of the poles that propped up the roof, adding a stark glare to the already-grim surroundings.
“These are standard government nondisclosure forms, Miss Locke. You’re welcome to read them over before you sign.”
Abbie jerked as a sheaf of papers was pushed across the table in front of her. She looked at the man who sat on the other side.
Major Mitchell Redinger wasn’t wearing a uniform—in his knit golf shirt and pleated khakis he should have looked more like a lawyer on his day off than an army officer—yet he radiated an air of authority. Maybe it was from the distinguished-looking silver that threaded the dark hair at his temples or the ramrod stiffness of his posture. Or maybe it was the unwavering gray steel in his gaze. Whatever the cause, the overall effect made her grateful she was facing him across a table and not a battlefield.
She took the papers from his hand, but when she tried to focus on the words, her shaking fingers made the print blur.
“We’re sorry for the inconvenience,” the major continued. “We’ll take you home as soon as it’s safe to do so.”
Inconvenience? she thought wildly. Was that how they described having her door broken down by three armed men and being kidnapped by a bunch of soldiers?
Abbie moved her gaze to the third person in the room. Sarah Fox stood by the canvas flap that formed the door, her arms folded over her chest. Like the major, she didn’t need a uniform to