to her shorter one. “Are you always this touchy?” he murmured.
“You haven’t seen anything, yet. We’re in public and I have to behave myself.”
“Good Lord.”
“Oh, praying won’t save you from me.”
He glanced down at her in something approaching shock and she continued, smiling sweetly all the while, “When we get back to the village, I’m going to give you a piece of my mind...and chew off a chunk of your hide while I’m at it.”
Amused. He was definitely amused. A grin crept across his features. She reminded him of a little angry sparrow—her feathers all puffed up and flapping her wings furiously at the big bad hawk. She looked ready at any second to fly at his head and peck at him.
“You’re cute when you’re mad,” he murmured as he took her by the elbow to guide her through a particularly thick cluster of drunks spilling out of a bar into the street.
Her biceps flexed under his fingers and he noted that her arm was rock hard within his grasp. She definitely worked out. But then, the Olympics drew the fittest people on Earth into one place.
Leaning in close to her and using his big body as a shield, he protected her from jostles and errant hands as they passed through a group of loudly singing young men wearing Irish national soccer team paraphernalia. One of them, carrying a brimming full pitcher of beer in each hand stumbled, and Avi spun in front of the woman, taking a hefty slosh of beer down his back for his trouble.
While the drunk mumbled a slurred apology, Avi merely rolled his eyes and ushered the woman onward. Cold, sticky wetness made his shirt cling to his back as the beer soaked through his suit.
“Thanks,” she muttered reluctantly.
“You’re welcome.”
There was a bit of a delay getting her scanned into the village since she hadn’t scanned out properly when she left, but the guard sorted it out quickly enough when Avi flashed his own senior security credentials.
“I have to make a phone call,” she announced, stopping just inside the fenced enclosure surrounding the large campus of dormitories, dining halls, workout facilities and delegation headquarters. Sighing in frustration at yet another delay, he nonetheless stopped and waited while she pulled out her cell phone.
He listened with interest as she said, “Tessa, it’s me. I need one of you to head over to the north village pool and take over babysitting the women’s softball team. I’ve got another situation to sort out right now.” A pause, then, “I’ll tell you about it when I get back to Ops. Speaking of which, could you call Major T. and have him meet me at the ops center ASAP?”
Avi heard an exclamation that sounded like surprise from the person on the other end of the call.
The woman snorted. Then, “He’s never off duty. He eats, sleeps and breathes the job. And I seriously have to speak with him. We have a potential situation.”
Spoken like a true security operator. Avi frowned. Who was this woman?
She was speaking again. “...join us after you fish the women’s softball team out of the pool and tuck them back in their rooms.” She added, “Oh, and their clothing is in a pile at the northwest corner of the pool. Yes. All of their clothing. It’s an orgy over there. Thanks. Bye.”
She pocketed her phone and glared up at him. “Let’s make this fast. I have someplace to be.”
He crossed his arms and smirked down at her. “All right. Let’s try this again. Who are you?”
“This is still far too public an environment for me to answer that. And I’m certainly not telling you anything without you showing me proper identification.”
“Fair enough. Come with me.” He turned and headed toward the Israeli security operations center. Returning the favor from earlier, he glanced back over his shoulder and asked wryly, “Are you coming, She-Woman?”
The woman lurched into motion, scowling. Smiling a little to himself, he led her to his delegation’s headquarters.
The atmosphere was all business inside the Israeli security operations center. Ever since Munich almost fifty years ago, the Israelis operated on the assumption that their athletes were active terror targets. And it was up to the men and women in this room to protect those athletes—the finest flowers of Israel’s youth.
He didn’t stop in the main area crammed with desks, video monitors, computers and mostly big, capable men. Spying an empty office, he stepped inside, turned on the light and waited for his prisoner to join him. Not that he would call her that to her face. His ribs and foot still ached from her initial assault. She might be tiny, but she had sharp elbows and knew how to use them.
In the bright light of the office, he got a good look at her face. She had smooth, soft-looking skin, regular features that grew more pretty the longer he looked at them, and those big, blue eyes of hers. They were her best feature, for sure. Her hair was a soft chocolate brown shot through with strands of gold, like she spent a fair bit of time outside. He already knew she was stronger than her small stature suggested.
She pulled out her credentials again and this time he did the same. Silently, they exchanged badges.
“Rebel McQueen,” he read aloud. “That’s an unusual name. Did your mother dislike you?”
“No. She was a fanatical Steve McQueen fan. He was an actor—”
“I know who he was. The Great Escape is one of my favorite movies.”
She mused, “Allied prisoners break out of Nazi prison camp. I could see why that movie would be popular in Israel.” The woman continued, “Anyway, McQueen’s nickname was ‘the American Rebel.’”
He commented sympathetically, “You must have to explain that a lot.”
“You have no idea.” She rolled her eyes, and they traded brief smiles of commiseration.
She glanced down at his identification. “Avi Bronson. Israeli Defense Forces? Mossad?”
“Sayerat Matkal,” he replied. Not that she would have any idea what that was. Which was the point. His team didn’t advertise their existence, let alone their presence at a venue as public as the Summer Olympics.
“Unit 269?” she blurted.
“You know who we are?” he blurted back, shocked that she’d heard of his special operations unit. It wasn’t the sort of thing most civilians knew about.
“Yes,” she replied impatiently. “You guys are the primary hostage rescue unit for the Israeli Defense Forces. I’d have thought most of you security types here would be Mista’arvim—counterterrorism units.”
He shrugged. “I did a stint with them a few years back. I also rolled with Shayetet 13 early in my career.”
“The Navy SEAL equivalent, huh? Well, aren’t you the overachiever?”
He frowned down at her “Okay, so you know more about Israeli Special Forces units than the average bear. How is that?”
“It’s my job?”
“Don’t be cute with me. What do you do as a member of the American delegation, Miss McQueen?”
“Lieutenant McQueen. US Navy. Roving security for the American delegation. Sometimes it’s handy to have female security guards. We can go places men can’t.”
He frowned. “Regular US military personnel aren’t assigned to Olympic security details.”
She shrugged, offering no further explanation of why she, a military member, was here on a distinctly civilian assignment.
His mental antennae wiggled wildly. She wasn’t telling him the truth. Or at least not the full truth.
“Why