The Men In Uniform Collection. Barbara McMahon

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СКАЧАТЬ voice he heard after that wasn’t so benign. He knew immediately that it was distorted by a digital signal processor, and there was a low electronic hum in the background so that nothing could be traced.

      “Naughty girl, Christie. You know we can’t let your friend come between us. If he leaves now, he won’t get hurt. And neither will you.”

      There was a click, and then the dial tone. Boone opened the answering machine and lifted out the tape. Despite the tricks the prick had used, Boone was going to let Seth give it a look.

      He went back to the kitchen, debating the wisdom of telling Christie about the call. She was upset enough. What she needed now was confidence. The decision made, he went back to his duffel and put the tape in a small bag, ready for Seth. He’d drop it off later.

      He poured her a cup of coffee as soon as he heard her in the hallway. He’d already had one, but another wouldn’t go to waste. If he was going to be here for a while, he’d have to get to the market. She didn’t have much, and he was a stickler for his coffee his way. Besides, she needed to put on some pounds.

      She walked in, changed from her robe into a pair of jeans and a blue T-shirt that he guessed used to be her size. The jeans were big, and where the shirt had a V he could see too much bone and not enough flesh. Shopping, definitely. After he’d done another sweep outside. He wasn’t taking any chances. By tonight, he’d know everything the geek had planted in or around her house. He’d check out her car, too.

      “Is this for me?” She nodded at the mug he’d poured.

      “Yeah.”

      Her look was more suspicious than grateful.

      “You had questions?” he asked.

      She went to the fridge and got out her low-fat milk, then to the cupboard for a packet of sugar substitute. When the coffee was to her liking, she sat down across from him. “Tell me about you and Nate.”

      “We met at Fort Bragg. We’d both been recruited into the First Special Forces Operational Detachment, and we trained together. He became a team leader, I was the radioman. There were four of us, basically, and some UN personnel. We were all together in that picture I showed you. We did a lot of hairy missions. Never lost a man. Never fell short of the objective.”

      “Nate would never tell me what he did. Just that he was working for God and country.”

      Boone could hear him say just that. In bars, mostly, when he was trying to impress the ladies. As if he’d needed a line. The women fell all over him. Not that Boone had done so badly, but he’d never been the magnet Nate was.

      “Why are you smiling?”

      He hadn’t realized he was. “Just remembering.”

      Christie leaned forward, and he could see the hunger in her eyes. The need to hear about her brother, lost so young.

      “He was hell on wheels when we were out of pocket. It didn’t matter where we were. D.C. or Kenya or Panama. He’d own the room before we left, and leave them wanting.”

      She bit her lower lip, and he wasn’t sure if it was to stop from laughing or crying.

      “I can’t tell you how many times he’d fall back into his cot at three in the morning, totally AWOL, drunker than shit, then get up an hour later and outrun the whole team on the obstacle course. I still don’t know how he did it.”

      “God, he was just like that at home. Not the drinking part, he was too young, but he was always sneaking out of the house, and he never got caught. I ditch one day of school, and I’m on restriction for life.”

      “Sounds right.” He drank some coffee, more for the distance than the taste. He wasn’t here to get nostalgic and emotional. In fact, the last thing he needed was to care about anything but the job. He’d need to be on his game, and there was nothing that screwed up a man faster than letting his defenses down. “He talked about you.”

      “Yeah?”

      Boone nodded. “He worried about you. But he was proud. Real proud.”

      She turned to look at Milo for a long minute. The dog wagged his tail at the attention, then came to her for a pet. “He was a great brother, until a couple of years ago. Then, I don’t know.” She looked at Boone again. “He changed. He got paranoid, and he hardly ever called. When he did, he wouldn’t tell me squat. Just that he was in the middle of something. I only saw him the one time—”

      She stood up and put her mug in the microwave. “What were you guys doing in Kosovo?”

      “I can’t tell you that.”

      “Great. That’s just perfect. And I’m supposed to trust you with my life?”

      “Yeah, you are. And I’d hope you’d realize that my silence, Nate’s silence, was for your protection.”

      “Spy central. Jesus. Don’t you know your big-boy games can get people killed?”

      “Yeah. I know. But that’s not the issue now. What’s on the table is the stalker and how we’re going to stop him.”

      “Wait.” The microwave dinged and she came back to the table with the steaming coffee. “I’m not finished with the question portion. What’s with the pizza parlor?”

      Boone bit back his impatience. She was scared, she didn’t know him from Adam and he needed to make her trust him. “It’s got a special phone. One that monitors calls from the old team. Just in case.”

      “In case what?”

      “Things didn’t exactly end for any of us. Not for Nate, not for me. We needed a way to communicate with each other that wouldn’t get us noticed. So we have Gino’s.”

      “Didn’t end? You mean something bad went down in Kosovo, don’t you? Something that shouldn’t have happened. And someone isn’t happy about it, right? That’s why Nate left the service. That’s why he was killed.”

      Boone nodded.

      “Great. Are the feds going to bust in here and arrest us both? Because, while it would solve the stalker problem, it doesn’t seem like the best possible outcome.”

      “Now I really know you’re Nate’s sister. Don’t worry. No one knows I’m here. No one’s going to. And while this has been fascinating, we have work to do.”

      “What kind of work?”

      He leaned forward, glad the Q & A was over, although a little surprised she hadn’t pressed for more. “I’ve written an e-mail I want you to send. The geek installed key-logging software on your computer, and I want to use that.”

      “Wait, what?”

      “Do you know what key-logging is?”

      “Yeah. It’s for wives who want to spy on their husbands.”

      “And for stalkers who want to spy on their victims.”

      She closed her eyes and took СКАЧАТЬ