Daddy With A Badge. Paula Detmer Riggs

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СКАЧАТЬ parents are in Oregon. According to his wishes, they’re to be notified only in the event of his death.” He stopped, the unspoken question hanging in the air.

      “He’s alive,” the surgeon hastened to assure him.

      “Thank God.” He took a deep breath and cleared his throat. “I’m his immediate superior and his friend. Name’s Lincoln Slocum in case you need to know.” That done, he sharpened his gaze. “Fill me in.”

      Though he spoke quietly, she had a ridiculous urge to snap to attention. She recognized the name as the newly appointed Director of the Secret Service, though in reality the photo in the Washington Post hadn’t come close to portraying the powerful life force of the man.

      “Agent Cardoza was hit twice in the chest,” she related in a voice that was equally quiet. “One of the bullets punctured his left lung, the other may have nicked his aorta, which is why Dr. Forchet took him straight to the OR as soon as his blood pressure was stabilized.”

      He accepted that impassively, with only a slight movement of his stern mouth to betray his feelings. “Worst-case scenario?”

      “He’s lost a great deal of blood, which makes surgery extremely risky. His heart might also have been damaged. Dr. Forchet won’t know until he cracks the chest.”

      No one spoke. The tension was palpable, a lethal black energy that seemed to suck all the air from the surrounding space. The silence was broken by a frustrated curse.

      Finally Director Slocum released a long breath. “Rafe’s as tough as they come. He’ll make it.”

      She thought about the stripped-down body she’d seen only in clinical terms—lean and muscular and larger than average, bronzed where his skin had been exposed to the sun, paler where it had not. His shoulders were wide and packed with latent power, the torso long and corded with hard muscle, the waist narrow. Without an ounce of extra fat on the long frame, every superbly developed muscle, tendon and sinew had been outlined perfectly like an anatomy lesson come to life.

      In spite of the Latin name, the man had a Viking’s golden coloring and height. She’d had only a glimpse of his features before the second-year resident had inserted a breathing tube, but the rough-cut features had been overlaid with a rugged strength. Masculinity personified, she thought with a giddiness born of exhaustion. A beautiful tawny gold man with a heart that had faltered but fought on.

      Did he have a mate? she wondered, thinking of her own adorably rumpled husband waiting for her at home. A woman with enough courage and strength to keep from being overpowered by his? A romantic at heart, she fervently hoped so.

      “He’s tough,” she echoed, infusing her voice with a certainty she desperately wanted to feel. “He’ll make it.”

      With a lot of luck, she thought as she turned away—and perhaps a little help from whatever benevolent deity looked after men like him.

      Gut knotted even tighter now, Linc Slocum watched her until she disappeared behind the double doors to his left. Only then did he allow his stiff shoulders to relax.

      He’d been at the White House, meeting with the President’s Chief of Staff, when he’d been notified that one of his men was down, shot while guarding a witness at a government safe house in Maryland.

      No, not just one of his men, damn it. His best man, his go-to guy. In spite of the fourteen years difference in their ages, they had a bond, he and Rafe—an immigrant steelworker’s kid and the bastard son of a teenage runaway, brought up by a Mexican-American laborer and his wife after his birth mother had abandoned him in a horse barn.

      “Any word, yet, sir?” Preoccupied with his own thoughts he hadn’t seen Rafe’s partner of three months approaching. Each year the new hires seemed to get younger, he thought with an inner sigh. Even Rafe, at a lean and muscular thirty-eight, had started complaining about feeling old. But then Linc doubted that Rafe had ever truly been young.

      “He’s holding his own,” he said, smiling briefly to let the rookie know his concern had been noted and appreciated. “The doctor said it might take a while to patch things together.”

      Seth Gresham’s lips tightened as he struggled to settle his emotions. “Twenty more minutes and I would have been there,” he grated in an emotion rough voice.

      “Any idea how the shooter found her?”

      “Damned if I know, sir.”

      Rafe was too savvy to let himself be tailed. But this kid? It was possible, though unlikely. Among other things, Rafe had a way of getting the young ones up to speed fast.

      Apparently Rafe had been in the kitchen making breakfast when the woman he’d been protecting had inexplicably—and against express orders—opened the front door to a man who’d claimed to be Rafe’s relief.

      It had been damn clever, the way the shooter had worked it. Arriving not too early to alert Rafe, but late enough to minimize the chance of being spotted.

      “You think the shooter was Folsom himself?” Gresham asked tersely.

      “Could be. Or he could have hired a pro.”

      “Damn frigging flu bug. Rafe never should have had to pull that kind of routine duty.” Stan Vincent was head of the investigative branch—and Rafe’s immediate superior—although both he and Stan knew that Rafe played by his own rules, which, given the unshakable integrity at the man’s core, were far stricter than the ones in the book.

      “We both know there was no ‘should’ to it, Stan. The woman only agreed to testify because Rafe convinced her she’d be protected. Nothing but an act of God was going to keep him from looking out for her.”

      Slocum bit down hard on the rage that threatened to break free.

      Jacob Peter Folsom was a cold, calculating predator, a swindler and a cheat who raped with words instead of his body. The specifics varied, but his M.O. was always the same. Contrive to meet a lonely—and well-off—woman on vacation, romance her with flowers and dancing and a healthy dollop of charm, winning her trust during moonlit strolls and candlelight dinners.

      Alice MacGregor had been the principal of a prestigious boarding school located in Virginia’s horse country. A dedicated scholar and empathetic teacher, she had entered her fortieth year a virgin with a spotless reputation and an empty womb.

      While on a Mediterranean cruise she’d met a man who’d introduced himself as Jason Smythe-Jones. Cultured, sophisticated and well-read, he had claimed to be a history professor at Bennington in Vermont.

      Still fit and athletic at forty-seven, he had beautiful silver hair and piercing blue eyes. In her statement Alice, as well as several of his other victims, had mentioned his remarkable resemblance to George Hamilton.

      A highly intelligent, bluntly honest woman who knew all too well that her face would never be considered more than passably pleasant, she would have been immune to a traditional seduction. Instead, Smythe-Jones, aka Jacob Folsom, had praised her mind and her dedication to her students. To sweeten the pot, he’d asked her to be the mother of his children. For all her intelligence and sophistication Alice had been bedazzled.

      They’d married in a flower-filled chapel in Venice before returning to Alice’s small home on the school grounds. СКАЧАТЬ