Never Say Die / Presumed Guilty: Never Say Die / Presumed Guilty. Tess Gerritsen

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      “Then you never met him?”

      “No, he went through closed debriefing. Totally separate channel. No outside contact.”

      Guy frowned, wondering about that closed debriefing. Why had Intelligence shut Valdez off from the others?

      “What about the other POWs from Tuyen Quan?” asked Guy. “Did anyone talk about Valdez? Mention why he was kept apart?”

      “Not really. Hey, they were a pretty delirious bunch. All they could talk about was going home. Seeing their families. Anyway, I don’t think any of them knew Valdez. The camp held its prisoners two to a cell, and Valdez’s cellmate wasn’t in the group.”

      “Dead?”

      “No. Refused to get on the plane. If you can believe it.”

      “Didn’t want to fly?”

      “Didn’t want to go home, period.”

      “You remember his name?”

      “Hell, yes. I had to file a ten-page report on the guy. Lassiter. Sam Lassiter. Incident got me a reprimand.”

      “What happened?”

      “We tried to drag him aboard. He kept yelling that he wanted to stay in Nam. And he was this big blond Viking, you know? Six foot four, kicking and screaming like a two-year-old. Should’ve seen the Vietnamese, laughing at it all. Anyway, the guy got loose and tore off into the crowd. At that point, we figured, what the hell. Let the jerk stay if he wants to.”

      “Then he never went home?”

      Nate blew out a cloud of cigar smoke. “Never did. For a while, we tried to keep tabs on him. Last we heard, he was sighted over in Cantho, but that was a few years ago. Since then he could’ve moved on. Or died.” Nate glanced around at the barren compound. “Nuts—that’s my diagnosis. Gotta be nuts to stay in this godforsaken country.”

      Maybe not, thought Guy. Maybe he didn’t have a choice.

      “What happened to the other guys from Tuyen?” Guy asked. “After they got home?”

      “They had the usual problems. Post-traumatic-stress reaction, you know. But they adjusted okay. Or as well as could be expected.”

      “All except Valdez.”

      “Yeah. All except Valdez.” Nate flicked off a cigar ash. “Couldn’t do a thing for him, or for wackos like Lassiter. When they’re gone, they’re gone. All those kids—they were too young for that war. Didn’t have their heads together to begin with. Whenever I think of Lassiter and Valdez, it makes me feel pretty damn useless.”

      “You did what you could.”

      Nate nodded. “Well, I guess we’re good for something.” Nate sighed and looked over at the Quonset hut. “At least 786-A’s finally going home.”

      

      THE RUSSIANS WERE SINGING again. Otherwise it was a pleasant enough evening. The beer was cold, the bartender discreetly attentive. From his perch at the rooftop bar, Guy watched the Russkies slosh another round of Stolichnaya into their glasses. They, at least, seemed to be having a good time; it was more than he could say for himself.

      He had to come up with a plan, and fast. Everything he’d learned, from Alain Gerard that morning and from Nate Donnell that afternoon, had backed up what he’d already suspected: that Willy Maitland was in over her pretty head. He was convinced that the attack in Bangkok hadn’t been a robbery attempt. Someone was out to stop her. Someone who didn’t want her rooting around in Bill Maitland’s past. The CIA? The Vietnamese? Wild Bill himself?

      That last thought he discarded as impossible. No man, no matter how desperate, would send someone to attack his own daughter.

      But what if it had been meant only as a warning? A scare tactic?

      All the possibilities, all the permutations, were giving Guy a headache. Was Maitland alive? What was his connection to Friar Tuck? Were they one and the same man?

      Why was the Ariel Group involved?

      That was the other part of the puzzle—the Ariel Group. Guy mentally replayed that visit they’d paid him two weeks ago. The two men who’d appeared in his office had been unremarkable: clean shaven, dark suits, nondescript ties, the sort of faces you’d forget the instant they walked out your door. Only when they’d presented the check for twenty thousand dollars did he sit up and take notice. Whoever they were, they had cash to burn. And there was more money waiting—a lot more—if only he’d do them one small favor: locate a certain pilot known as Friar Tuck. “Your patriotic duty,” they’d called it. The man was a traitor, a red-blooded American who’d gone over to the other side. Still, Guy had hesitated. It wasn’t his kind of job. He wasn’t a bounty hunter.

      That’s when they’d played their trump card.

      Ariel, Ariel. He kept mulling over the name. Something Biblical. Lionlike men. Odd name for a vets organization. If that’s what they were.

      Ariel wasn’t the only group hunting the elusive Friar Tuck. The CIA had a bounty on the man. For all Guy knew, the Vietnamese, the French and the men from Mars were after the pilot, as well.

      And at the very eye of the hurricane was naive, stubborn, impossible Willy Maitland.

      That she was so damnably attractive only made things worse. She was a maddening combination of toughness and vulnerability, and he’d been torn between using her and protecting her. Did any of that make sense?

      The rhythmic thud of disco music drifted up from a lower floor. He considered heading downstairs to find some willing dance partner and trample a few toes. As he took another swallow of beer, a familiar figure passed through his peripheral vision. Turning, he saw Willy head for a table near the railing. He wondered if she’d consider joining him for a drink.

      Obviously not, he decided, seeing how determinedly she was ignoring him. She stared off at the night, her back rigid, her gaze fixed somewhere in the distance. A strand of tawny hair slid over her cheek, and she tucked it behind her ear, a tight little gesture that made him think of a schoolmarm.

      He decided to ignore her, too. But the more fiercely he tried to shove all thought of her from his mind, the more her image seemed to burn into his brain. Even as he focused his gaze on the bartender’s dwindling bottle of Stolichnaya, he felt her presence, like a crackling fire radiating somewhere behind him.

      What the hell. He’d give it one more try.

      He shoved to his feet and strode across the rooftop.

      Willy sensed his approach but didn’t bother to look up, even when he grabbed a chair, sat down and leaned across the table.

      “I still think we can work together,” he said.

      She sniffed. “I doubt it.”

      “Can’t we at least talk about it?”

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