The Stealth Commandos Trilogy (23 page)

Chase wore a chamois jacket with western fringe swinging from the sleeves; a brand-new black Stetson shaded his dark eyes in honor of the occasion. Several of the women in the small assemblage of guests regarded him with frankly admiring glances as he stood before the preacher, waiting for his bride. And Muriel Jensen, who sang the Lord’s Prayer, was overheard referring to the groom as “outlandishly handsome.”

The crowd hushed as Annie came forward to join Chase. Even the finches’ throaty chirping in the willows overhead went quiet as the bride took her place next to the groom. Anticipation peaked as the couple’s eyes met for one sweet, brief moment before they turned to face the priest. And then someone released a sigh.

Johnny Starhawk was Chase’s best man, his dark hair tied back, his expression solemn as the nuptials began. Next to Johnny sat Chase’s Border collie, his tail thumping noisily. The melodious rush of the river provided background music for the short ceremony, but as the priest pronounced the couple husband and wife, and they sealed their union with a lingering kiss, an odd rumbling noise could be heard in the distance.

As Annie and Chase finally turned to the crowd, the ominous sound built, roaring like a fleet of approaching helicopters. The earth seemed to vibrate, and the racket soared to a crescendo as a single streak of black and chrome burst into view. To everyone’s surprise, a huge motorcycle swooped around the bend in the road that led to the river.

“Who is he?” Voices in the crowd rose anxiously as a lone figure on a massive black Harley shot straight for the ceremony. The rider’s mirrored aviator glasses flashed in the sunlight, and the ties of the black bandanna he wore around his head streamed in the wind.

The rider looked as menacing as the demon machine he rode as he gunned the bike up onto the grass and wheeled it around, coming to a stop not six feet from the startled crowd. Sunlight glinted off his glasses as he scanned their faces, searching for someone. Unshorn and unshaven, his rich blond hair sun-whitened against the black bandanna, he was a blunt weapon to the senses. A golden mountain lion of a man.

Both Chase and Johnny seemed to recognize the rider as he dropped the bike’s kickstand and swung off. But it was Annie who said the man’s name. In his marine fatigues, olive-drab T-shirt, and flak vest, Geoff Dias looked exactly as Annie remembered him from five years before. He was a stark and beautiful specter from the past, reminding her of every tragic detail, every shining moment, of the commandos’ last mission.

She glanced at Chase beside her and realized that he was remembering it, too, every moment, as though time had turned in on itself and rushed backward. Even Johnny Starhawk looked oddly transfixed.

“Chase Beaudine?” said Geoff, approaching the gathering. “I was told I could find him here.” The crowd inched back as if the stranger really were a mountain lion.

Chase made a path through the throng, drawing Annie behind him. “Dias! It’s me, Chase.”

Geoff Dias stared at Chase’s wedding apparel in total confusion. “What’s going on, Beaudine? I got an urgent message. It said your life was in danger.”

“Sorry, buddy,” Chase informed him, a slow smile breaking. “You’re too late to save me now. I just got married.”

“Married?”
Geoff’s rugged features registered shock as he stared at his old friend. “I don’t believe it. Chase Beaudine married?” Husky laughter erupted, and he shook his head in disbelief. “God, man, I’m really sorry to hear that. Maybe if I’d been here an hour earlier, I could have saved you.”

“If you’d been here an hour earlier, you could have given away the bride.” The sardonic remark came from Johnny Starhawk as he moved through the crowd to greet the late arrival.

“Starhawk? What are you doing here?”

Johnny grinned, his dark eyes glinting as he clasped hands with his former partner. “Part of the conspiracy to get Chase Beaudine out of action.”

Geoff Dias glanced again at Chase, now wholly sympathetic to the man’s plight. “When you said you were in danger, Beaudine, you meant it!”

“Maybe you’d like to meet the danger in person.” Chase ushered Annie forward, draping an arm around her shoulder. “This is my beautiful wife. You may remember her as Annie Wells.”

Recognition slowly crept into Geoff’s emerald green eyes as he searched Annie’s luminous face. “She’s the girl you rescued,” he said finally. “The one they told us was dead.” He turned to Chase with new understanding. “She’s more than beautiful, Beaudine. She’s eerie. No wonder you lost your head.”

Annie reached out her hand and caught hold of Geoff’s. “Thank you,” she said, her eyes going misty, and very, very blue. A moment later Geoff pulled her into his arms.

It was a friendly enough welcome, but Chase broke them up anyway, drawing his tiny wife away from Geoff Dias’s bear hug of an embrace. “Find your own woman, Dias,” he said possessively, enfolding Annie in his arms. “This one’s mine.”

The other two men stepped back, laughing at their old friend’s uncharacteristic behavior.

“Don’t be so smug, compadres,” Chase warned them both. “It could happen to you.”

Both Chase and Annie laughed at the men’s vehement denials. But as Annie studied her husband’s former partners, a stirring of intuition warned her that these two men
were
inveterate loners, and probably as averse to emotional involvement as Chase had been. She didn’t envy the woman who tangled with either of them. As for Geoff Dias, she would not want to be the woman who tried to tame that lion. It would surely take a whip and a chair. Or one very smart lioness.

And as for Johnny Starhawk, he was as quietly dangerous as any jungle cat she’d ever come across, a black panther lying in wait. But for whom? If she could have looked into the future and seen the unsuspecting one who would cross his path, Annie would have warned her to run for her life.

She gave an involuntary shudder, grateful to be exactly where she was, warm in Chase’s arms. Laughing voices rose and champagne corks began to pop in the background, bringing her back to the celebration at hand—her own wedding! Glancing up at the love in her husband’s dark eyes, at her most secret dream realized, she joined in the joyous laughter. Miracle Number Two, she thought.
May there be many more.

Prologue

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Epilogue

A
SAVAGE WAR CRY
shattered the night.

Out of the blackwashed hills came a phantom on horseback, a rider as naked as his lunging stallion. His spear was tipped with blood, and his dark eyes were wild with triumph. The enemy was vanquished. He had won the fight for his life, for his sovereign soul. The great bear was dead.

An aura of strange light spilled over him as he raised his weapon to the hunter’s moon and howled like a wolf. A lone white hawk joined the cry, screaming as it swooped overhead. The warrior watched the bird soar and dip, its pale wings flashing silver in the icy moonlight. Struck by the creature’s haunting beauty, the warrior knew he had to have it. The white hawk was a prize that would make him the most powerful among his people.

He followed the bird’s flight on horseback, mesmerized by its glow as it glided toward the branches of a tree. The limb it settled on overhung a thunderous river. Majestic and solemn, the bird was silent and still as it watched the warrior pull an arrow from his quiver.

The bow vibrated in the warrior’s grip as he drew back the arrow. The bird’s sad gaze bore down on him, mystifying him. He could almost feel the creature’s mournful plea for forgiveness, its mute acceptance of the inevitable.

The hawk was sacrificing itself, he realized.

The warrior’s hand shook. A film of cold sweat coated his body, but the hunting instinct was too strong, too ancient, to be controlled. His muscles worked of their own will, straining for the last ounce of force, inching the arrow back.

As the missile struck its target, the warrior was stabbed with unbearable pain. His field of vision blurred as the wounded hawk unfurled its wings, creating a magnificent cape of white, then trans formed before his eyes into a hauntingly beautiful woman. The cape fell away, and long golden hair flew around her, exposing her nakedness. A look of anguish clouded her exquisite eyes.

She was bleeding, he realized. The arrow had pierced her heart, and the life force was ebbing from her in a bright crimson ribbon. She was dying. Heat seared his chest as if the arrow had struck him.

She tumbled from the branch into the water and disappeared in its turbulent depths. The warrior froze in motion. She had fallen into the river of memory. He couldn’t follow her there without drowning in his own past, in his own rage and despair.

“Johnny . . . forgive me!”

The anguished cry rose out of nowhere. It dragged him to the water’s edge where he could see her silvery form in the murky depths. Heedless of the river’s curse, he plunged into the water. . . .

The old man opened his eyes slowly, the flame of the crackling bonfire reflected in his trancelike gaze. He had been fasting for days, seeking wisdom. The dream had shown him what he must do. He had to find her, the woman with sunlight for hair and rainwater for eyes.
The woman who had betrayed Johnny.
She was the only one who could bring him back.

J
OHNNY
S
TARHAWK WAS
the one they’d all come to see.

The courtroom was packed to capacity with concerned citizens and curious spectators. Young lawyers squeezed together to catch a glimpse of the “renegade with a cause” in action. Outside, in the halls, the media waited, ready to pounce on the Irish-Apache attorney when the legal proceedings broke. The trial was a hotly contested one, a contract dispute between a small community church and a huge multi national oil company.

Starhawk was defending the church’s right to lease oil-company land, and he was arguably the most controversial, yet celebrated, attorney in the country at the moment. His recent victories in civil-rights and environmental law had made him a legend at thirty-five. Everyone wanted a piece of him. Nobody really knew him . . . with the exception of a quietly beautiful young woman sitting unnoticed in the back of the spectators’ gallery.

Honor Bartholomew had taken a seat there, hoping not to be seen. To that end, she had dressed in nondescript gray clothes, and covered with a scarf the long blond hair she’d knotted in a loose coil at the back of her neck. But it was Starhawk’s notice she feared, not the media’s.

Clutching a small turquoise stone in her hand, she kept a watchful eye on Starhawk, whose back was to her, his exotic black hair spilling over his shoulders as he sat at the defendant’s table and jotted notes. The stone grew warm as Honor worked its smoothness between her fingers.

Johnny Starhawk had given her the Apache good-luck charm a very long time ago, just days before another trial took place. Only Johnny wasn’t an attorney then; he was the sixteen-year-old defendant, and the trial’s tragic outcome had altered the course of both their young lives. That was eighteen years ago, and Honor hadn’t seen Johnny since . . . until today.

The question that tormented her now was why she was here, sitting in a courtroom in Washington, D.C., over a thousand miles from home. It had been an impulsive, emotional decision. She’d come at the behest of Johnny’s maternal grandfather, an uncanny old man with rattlesnake eyes who called himself Chy Starhawk. The Apache shaman had shown up in her Scottsdale, Arizona, bookstore a week ago with a bizarre request for help that had truly astonished her.

“Only you can bring Johnny Starhawk back to the white mountains,” he’d told her, transfixing her with his strange, lidless gaze. “Go to him,” he’d urged her quietly. “He will come back for you.”

At the mention of Johnny Starhawk’s name after so many years. Honor had been stunned and disbelieving. She’d had no idea what the old man was talking about or why it was so important that Johnny return to his tribe until the shaman began to describe the terrible setbacks on the White Mountain Apache Reservation. The tribe’s livelihood was in jeopardy, he’d explained. Its cattle were sick, dying. Pollution from a nearby uranium mine was fouling the streams and rivers, but the Apache hadn’t been able to get an injunction against the mining company.