White Dawn: A Military Romantic Suspense Novel (11 page)

Carmen was uncomfortably aware of the
fact that her blouse had slid down one shoulder again. She reached
for it, intending to pull it up, but Garrett grabbed her hand. “No,
don’t draw attention,” he said and pulled her hand away, bringing
it back between them.

Carmen looked up at him. The Insurrectos
could recognize her at any moment. There would be a shout and guns
would be cocked. People would start screaming and in the panic that
came after that, any one of the Insurrectos could shoot her and
claim her to be an enemy of the state.

She let out a breath that shuddered.

“Breathe,” Garrett told her. “Slow and
steady. Keep looking at me. I’m shielding you.”

The Insurrectos were heading toward
their table.

Carmen kept looking at Garrett, trying
not to react to their approach. His gaze was steady, his gray eyes
deep pools of limpid calm. How had she not noticed his eyes before?
Of course she had noticed them, but now with his clean-shaved
cheeks, they stood out. They beckoned.

She wasn’t aware of leaning toward him
until his mouth met hers. His lips were soft, but there was a
firmness beneath them. He pressed against her lips and Carmen
gasped into his mouth. Her entire body seemed to come to the alert,
all the nerve endings sizzling. Her adrenaline surge was nothing in
comparison. But her heart kept thudding heatedly, this time with an
expected, powerful need.

“Excuse me, Doctor…?”

Garrett let her go. His gaze met hers.
“Now you’re very embarrassed,” he murmured in English, then turned
to face the Insurrecto. “Yes, officer?”

The man was a mere sergeant. He was
unshaved, overweight and Carmen thought she could smell him from
across the table. She covered her face with one hand, as if she was
dying of embarrassment over having been interrupted kissing in
public.

“We want your table, doctor. It is the
only one that will seat us all. You can find a private room for
your seduction, instead of sullying the world with your distasteful
conduct.”

Carmen lowered the coffee cup between
her knees to the floor, then pushed it back under the seat with her
foot, while she hid her face against Garrett’s shoulder, her
humiliation apparently complete.

Garrett slid along the seat, pulling her
with him. “Of course. Of course. Let me just…” He leaned down and
picked up the medical bag.

“Show me your bag,” the sergeant
demanded.

Garrett stood up, his back to Carmen.
She was blocked from sight of all but one of them, standing behind
the others. But he was reading one of the menus, not at all
interested in the little drama happening right in front of him. An
unearthly hush had gripped the rest of the café, though. Carmen
glimpsed white, strained faces and wide eyes as she slid farther
along the seat until she was just behind Garrett and hidden by his
body.

Garrett put the bag on the table
silently and opened it up so that it gaped, showing all the
contents in one glance.

The Insurrecto pawed through the bag and
picked up a bottle of tablets and shook it. “What is this?”

“Antibiotics. For infection.”

“What sort of infection?” There was an
intensity in the question that made Carmen wonder if the question
was as idle as it seemed.

“All sorts of infection,” Garrett said
flatly.

From just beyond the edge of Garrett’s
body, Carmen could see the sergeant’s hand holding the bottle. He
pushed the bottle into his pocket. “Get out of here and take your
whore with you.”

Garrett picked up her hand, took his bag
with the other and stepped around the Insurrectos, bringing her
with him. It cleared the way for them to slide into the booth,
their rifles clattering unmusically against the table edge.

With her back to them, Carmen
straightened up, as Garrett paused to drop Vistarian currency in
front of the cash register attendant, then picked up her hand again
and pulled her out of the café.

She breathed in the air deeply.
Trembling started up, making her breath shake.

“Ten minutes more,” Garrett told her.
“Then you can fall apart.”

She nodded. And she was very glad he
didn’t let go of her hand.

Joshua Benning hugged Nick, thumping him
on the back, while Olivia stood back, trying to put names and
relationships together. No one seemed to mind stepping around the
two men. This was Dulles Airport, after all. Greetings and
farewells were part of the fabric of the building.

Nick had a convoluted family and she had
not seen him greet anyone other than family with such familiarity.
But with Joshua Benning, he was leaning into the hug, looking at
pleased as Joshua was.

Then they stepped away from each other
and Nick looked at Olivia and held out his hand. “This is my…uncle.
Or cousin. We haven’t sorted that out yet. Joshua Benning, vice
president of intergovernmental relations at Astra Corp.” He glanced
at Joshua. “Congratulations on the promotion, by the way. And this
Olivia Davenport Castellano, the new Ambassador for Vistaria to the
United States.”

“Olivia, it is a pleasure to meet you,”
Joshua Benning said, taking her hand in a firm grip. “Are you a
long-lost cousin, too?”

“An honorary one,” Nick said, “but very
definitely family. Once we win back Vistaria, I’ll explain the
family connection to you.”

Joshua looked at his watch. “My flight
back to L.A. leaves in two hours. We should find a seat somewhere
and trade news.”

Nick raised his brow. “This really is a
flying visit, then.”

“I’m here because your message said
urgent.”

“I appreciate you dropping everything
for me. You’ll be glad you did, though.” Nick caught at his
shoulder. “Let’s find that seat.”

They found three stools at a bar and
snagged them. Nick ordered scotch, neat, for all of them and pulled
out his phone while Joshua stretched kinks out, between them. “Make
it Johnny Walker Blue,” Josh said. “I’m buying. You can take the
bottle back with you to the hotel.”

Nick raised his brow and looked at the
barman enquiringly.

“We have Blue,” the barman confirmed.
“But for a bottle of that price, we would need payment up
front.”

Joshua pulled out his wallet and dropped
a credit card on the bar. “There you go.”

The barman nodded and went away to get
the boxed bottle and open it.

“Expense account?” Nick asked.

“Nope. I’m doing pretty well since I got
back to the States. This is a personal thank you. How’s
Minnie?”

“Radiant,” Nick said, “and as overworked
as the rest of us.”

“I think she’s thriving wonderfully,”
Olivia added. “She looks like a woman who has found her role in
life.”

Joshua blew out his breath. “That’s good
to hear,” he said soberly.

Nick had been paging through his phone.
Now he laid the phone in front of Joshua. “Recognize that?”

Joshua picked up the phone and studied
it. Then he pulled glasses out of his breast pocket and put them on
and studied it more closely. “I’d say it was one of the test ingots
we smelted when the mine on The Big Rock was starting to roll, but
the seal on it is wrong.”

“Good guess,” Nick said quietly. “That
photo is what made me yell for you to come here. I didn’t want to
risk sending it over a public phone network. It was a risk having
it sent up from Vistaria. Serrano has opened the mine up, Josh.
He’s going to use the silver to buy himself respectability.”

Joshua was silent for a long moment,
absorbing the news. Then he blew out his cheeks. “Well, I knew the
bugger was crazy. I guess this just confirms it. He really thinks
he can get away with it?”

“What’s to stop him?” Nick asked and
Olivia looked at him, startled. It seemed like an odd response for
someone so driven and determined as Nick Escobedo.

“Well, you, of course,” Josh replied, as
if it was the most obvious thing in the world.

“It’s your mine,” Nick pointed out.

“We don’t have an army at our
disposal.”

“And I don’t have any reserve capital to
fund mine,” Nick said flatly.

Joshua started to laugh. The chuckle
began slow and soft, then evolved into a full hearted belly laugh
that had people turning their heads to see what was so funny. He
reached out for the glass of scotch the barman put in front of him
and lifted it up. “You sneaky son of a bitch,” he said finally and
sipped the scotch and sighed. Then he put the glass down. “I can’t
give it to you interest free. Not even for family. They’d skin me
alive.”

“But you could give me a family
discount,” Nick said. “Think of how good you’ll look when you
retrieve the company’s expensive asset for them.”

Joshua shook his head and looked at
Oliva. “I told Nick he should hit up international corporations for
a loan, months ago. Never thought he’d turn around and put the
squeeze on me.”

Olivia smiled. “You have skin in the
game, Joshua. Nick really is giving you a chance to get your mine
back.”

“Yeah, I know.” Joshua winked at her and
turned back to Nick. “How much do you need?”

“Not nearly as much as you’ve already
sunk into the mine,” Nick told him. “Twenty million.”

Joshua’s jaw dropped open. “
Twenty
million
?”

“I have three Black Hawk helicopters I
want to buy, just to begin.”

“I don’t know anything about military
transport, but I suspect even one of them is a lot more than twenty
million,” Josh replied.

“About fifteen million, new,” Nick said
calmly. “These are used and I can probably get them for about eight
million each. I’ll use your money to put a goodwill deposit on
them. About five million for the three, as we already have them in
our possession. The rest will be used for equipment and
supplies.”

“I had no idea war was so freaking
expensive,” Joshua muttered. He glanced at his watch. “How soon do
you need it?”

“Today,” Nick said flatly. “Olivia and I
have been shopping all day. The bill is due to be paid by end of
business.”

“There goes my sleep for the next twelve
hours,” Joshua said philosophically. He almost sounded
cheerful.

Carmen couldn’t sleep. She rested on top of her
sleeping bag, under the mosquito net that Ledo had found at the
markets. He had bartered for a dozen of the nets, in exchange for
his watch, which he saw as a win-win. “The watch loses time. Ten
minutes every day. It was a good deal.”

The net allowed Carmen to sleep where
the air could reach her, rather than wrapping herself in the
stifling bag, although the net itself seemed to halt some of the
cooler flow. Everyone else in the camp was asleep, for the fire had
burned low and the refectory was silent except for the occasional
pop of embers.

This was the third night after their
return from Valle Leñosa. Carmen hadn’t seen Garrett since he had
halted the Jeep at the back of the monastery, swung his long legs
out and stalked off into the building. He had, she supposed, been
working in the hospital. But he had spared a thought for the war
effort, for the next day after their return, he sent Archie and
Ledo out to obtain a radio transmitter. They had returned the day
after that, a transmitter in their backpack.

Garrett had also remembered Nemesis’
demand that the next shipment of silver had to be stopped. Llora
taped to the wall next to the kitchen area a schedule of sentry
duty shifts for the next week. Two people at a time, to watch the
rail line. Efraín and Ismael had wiped their mouths of food and
headed for the tracks immediately.

The night of their return from the
meeting with Nemesis, Carmen had found herself unaccountably
sleepy, to the point where she couldn’t stay sitting up at the
fire. Her head kept falling forward as she drifted off to sleep
even though it was barely eight in the evening.

Llora and Angelo had helped her to her
sleeping bag and arranged the net over her, but Carmen didn’t
remember that. She only realized the net was there when she woke up
six hours later. She woke with a start, panic threading hot slivers
through her blood and making her heart lurch.

It was two in the morning and the camp
was as still as it was now. She had been disoriented, that first
night. She barely remembered being helped to her bed. She rested,
breathing heavily, her heart hurrying along as she tried to calm
herself. Had she been dreaming?

But the snatches of images and emotions
that were lingering in her mind were from the café. The sense of
inevitable capture, that her fate was sealed and there was nothing
she could do to halt it, seemed to lie over her like a pall. But
she was here and safe.

She couldn’t stop thinking about the
near-miss, about how it might have gone horribly wrong, if not for
Garrett’s quick thinking. And she would shiver. She tried to
deliberately clear her mind and think of something else. Something
pleasant that would soothe her back into sleep, but the moments
from the café kept crowding out anything she tried to recall.

“Spineless woman!” she railed at
herself. “Get a grip, for heaven’s sake!”

If the memory was going to haunt her,
then she would use it. She would ruthlessly analyze every second of
it, looking for alternative actions, better reactions. What could
she learn from this?

So she settled herself back onto her bag
and considered each action and reaction that had happened, in their
correct order, from the moment Nemesis had glanced casually around
him and breathed “
Insurrectos
.”

Doggedly, Carmen kept bringing her
attention back to the next moment and the next, examining each one
with cold detachment.

Until she reached the point where
Garrett had kissed her.

Carmen curled up on her sleeping bag,
humiliation flushing through her. She had liked it! She had liked
his kiss. She had lost track of every external and let herself
enjoy the kiss.