flash of lightning lit up the room. They stood in silence, looking into each other’s eyes as the tropical storm raged outside, two people a little buzzed and a lot horny and a thousand miles from home. Secrets had been shared. Walls had come down. And they were a few hours from takeoff on a dangerous recon they might not come back from.
“Scott… I…”
He took her in his arms and they kissed.
He put his hand under her T-shirt and ran it along her back. His fingers did a recon, reporting back that her bra had a front clasp. He hiked her T-shirt up and unclasped her bra, then hiked his polo shirt up, and they pressed their bare skin against one another as they kissed.
A loud crash of thunder startled both of them, and Brodie could feel her skin getting sweaty.
She backed away from him. “Scott… I can’t.” She pulled her shirt down.
He looked at her. “You okay?”
She nodded, looked at him. “I just… I can’t make the same mistake twice.”
Well, he was her superior officer and partner, not a manipulative spy, so technically it was a different mistake. “Okay.”
She moved quickly back to the couch, grabbed her tablet, and said, “Call me when you’re ready to leave.”
“Right.”
She went into her bedroom and closed the door.
Brodie stood there, wondering how he had gone from rounding third base to striking out. Well… no use wondering. Game over.
He went into his bedroom, shut the door, and got out of his clothes.
Maggie Taylor was thinking about her career, and trying to reestablish a wall between her personal and professional lives. But Brodie’s instincts and experience told him there was more to her inner conflicts.
He got into the shower and let it run cold to sober himself up and cool himself down. He imagined she was doing the same thing.
He got out of the shower, dried off, and started packing his bug-out bag.
As his head cleared, he tried to put the best spin on what had just happened. Sex on the job had too many pitfalls. He was her superior officer, and sex would have changed the balance of power, thereby compromising and complicating the short chain of command. How could he give orders to someone who’d just given him a blow job? She’d be giving him orders.
The Army wasn’t just a job; it was a life—and Army life had rules about sex, and somewhat archaic laws about sexual conduct and morality. You could get laid all you wanted, but don’t fuck the colonel’s wife, or anyone’s wife, because adultery is still a crime, and don’t fuck anyone who takes orders from you. There were other commandments, and Brodie knew them all, and in fact he’d investigated a good number of sexual misconduct cases. Consensual sex was no defense if it violated the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So he was very happy that he hadn’t gotten laid tonight. He couldn’t wait to tell Dombroski that he hadn’t had sex with Maggie Taylor. The colonel would be proud of him. And probably call him a loser for not scoring.
On the other subject—Trent—Brodie was sure there was more to that. It would be a stunning coincidence if Warrant Officer Maggie Taylor had been randomly assigned to a case that might involve the Flagstaff Program. If Brodie was paranoid, he might suspect that the CIA had had a hand in Ms. Taylor’s assignment. If that was true, then Chief Warrant Officer Brodie had not been chosen for this assignment because he was the best of the best; he’d been chosen because his partner was Maggie Taylor. Was that possible? And if so, what was the purpose of getting her sent to Venezuela? Was she still a CIA asset with orders to report back? Or did the dark forces behind Flagstaff want her—along with Mercer—dead? When the Agency wanted someone dead, they made sure that person was first on foreign soil.
Brodie walked to the window and watched the rain falling on the dark city. And if they wanted her dead, and Mercer dead, then… Chief Warrant Officer Brodie could become collateral damage.
The fog of war had rolled out of the hills of Afghanistan, and into the Pentagon, Quantico, and Langley. And now it had followed them to Caracas, and it was waiting for them in the jungle.
A sane person would get himself back to Quantico and dump all this in the lap of his commanding officer. But as Maggie Taylor had discovered in Afghanistan, that was no