White Dawn: A Military Romantic Suspense Novel (5 page)

“Is there a need for me to know that
part of your operations?” Calli asked carefully.

Duardo glanced at Flores, then back at
her. “No, you would be better to not know at this stage. Thank you
for understanding.”

Calli gave him a smile. “I will leave
you to your deliberations, gentlemen. Thank you for the good
news.”

She slipped out of the tent and wished
heavily that Nick was here. She wanted to share the news with him.
Instead, she hurried back along the beach, heading for the stairs
up to the big house.

A gun-toting guerilla seemed to be a
perfect fit for Carmen, with her passion and drive. Minnie would be
pleased to know that Carmen was safe…well, as safe as a Resistance
fighter could be on Vistaria right now.

When the message came through by text, late that
night, Carmen untangled herself from Angelo’s arms, moving
carefully so she didn’t wake him. She dressed quietly, then went in
search of Garrett. He wasn’t anywhere near the big fire, but it was
close to midnight. He would probably be doing rounds in the
hospital rooms inside, with the eternally-patient Gracia by his
side.

She stepped inside and felt the
immediate difference in the air around her. She had been living
outside for so long that anywhere inside felt oddly muffled, too
warm and the air too thick.

Gracia was hovering by a sleeping
patient, taking his blood pressure. She straightened when Carmen
moved into the room and stripped the cuff from his arm. The man was
either sleeping or unconscious and didn’t move.

“I’m looking for Garrett,” Carmen told
Gracia. “I thought he would be with you.”

Gracia shook her head. The dark shadows
under her eyes were still there. “It is quiet here tonight. No
emergencies. I told Doctor Blackburn he should take the night off
and get some sleep.”

“While you slave over the patients?”

“Someone must,” Gracia said simply. “I
do not have two occupations to fill my hours like Doctor Blackburn
does.”

Carmen nodded. “Thanks. I’ll try his
room.” She hesitated. “Can I ask you a question?”

Gracia nodded, winding her stethoscope
into a neat coil.

“Does it bother you that Garrett spends
his daylight hours killing Insurrectos, then comes here and does
this?”

“Healing people?” Gracia clarified. “It
is not my place to judge anyone.”

“I didn’t say judge. I asked if it
bothered you. You’re a registered nurse, aren’t you?”

Again, Gracia nodded slowly.

“Don’t you swear an oath to protect your
patients?”

“Only doctors take the Hippocratic
Oath,” Gracia said.

“Where they swear that first, they will
do no harm,” Carmen replied.

Gracia pressed her lips together. “You
should ask Garrett that,” she said gently, but firmly.

Carmen gave up. Gracia wasn’t going to
rat on Garrett no matter what she said to persuade her. The woman
had all the ethics that Garrett didn’t.

She wended her way back through the
monastery to the small room where Garrett hung out when he wasn’t
doctoring or fighting. It had been given to Garrett as his office
and sleeping quarters. The door was shut, but then it was always
shut, so that didn’t mean anything.

Carmen rapped on the wood and got no
answers, so she pushed the door open a few inches. The chair behind
the rickety desk was empty, so she pushed the door open even
farther. The rest of the room was empty, too. The door to the tiny
bedroom was ajar and she could see that the bed was untouched.

She shut the door again and wondered
where Garrett was. The monastery was a big place, but they
discouraged any of the fighters from stepping inside unless
expressly invited by one of the brothers and that was a rare
occasion. Would Garrett have followed that custom, or had he found
a remote room somewhere where no one would find him?

The news from Cristián was urgent, or
she would have given up and gone back to her sleeping bag and
Angelo. Instead, she blew out her breath with some frustration and
went back outside again. She began to circle the exterior of the
main monastery building, checking behind out-buildings as she came
to them.

She found Garrett on the far side of the
monastery from everyone else. He had found himself a shallow trench
on the lee side of a small shed. The shed was old and falling down.
The stones that had made up the walls were piled against the
remnants of the wall itself. The trench wasn’t very deep, but
sitting at the bottom would protect against the tiny breeze that
had started up.

But Garrett wasn’t in the trench. He was
sitting on the pile of rubble that glowed a ghostly white in the
light of the full moon that had finally risen. He was a black
silhouette against the stones, his back against the section of wall
that still stood.

“Are you hiding from everyone?” Carmen
asked.

“‘parently, not well enough.” It was a
low growl.

“We heard from Pascuallita,” Carmen told
him. “They want to meet in two days, at Valle Leñosa, that little
village in the lowlands.”

“You couldn’t’ve told me this
tomorrow?”

Carmen stared at him, even though she
couldn’t really see any details in the dark. “Are you drunk?” she
asked at last. There was something in the way he was talking.

“Not hidden enough. Not drunk enough.
Can’t do anything right.” He lifted his arm and something clinked
against the stones at his side. He raised the bottle to his lips
and drank heavily.

“Where did you get that?” Carmen asked
curiously, for the camp had been dry ever since she had arrived.
Not because Garrett wanted everyone sober, but because alcohol of
any sort was impossible to obtain.

The label on the bottle in Garrett’s
hands was a familiar one. Carmen hadn’t seen it since before she
had left for college. It was Vistarian mescal. “Did Hernandez slip
you the bottle?” she asked.

“Go back to your skinny lover. Leave me
alone.”

He might not be drunk enough to suit his
tastes, but he was still very drunk. His speech wasn’t slurring,
though. Garrett’s super-human discipline didn’t take a breather
even when he was blasted.

Carmen sighed. “I need you to dig in and
focus for a moment,” she said sharply. “We need to send someone to
the rendezvous point. They need to observe it until we get there
for the meeting, so we can make sure it isn’t an Insurrecto trap.
It’s nearly a day away from here but twelve hours observation
should minimize the risk.”

Garrett smiled and his teeth were very
white in the moonlight, contrasting with the darkness over his
face. “Ms. Fix it,” he said.

“Garrett, snap out of it,” she said.

“Why?” he asked, his tone
reasonable.

“Because I can’t talk to you when you’re
like this.”

“Don’t want to talk to you anyway,” he
muttered.

“The feeling’s mutual,” Carmen shot
back. “You’re always talking about the chain of command. I
have
to talk to you and you have to give the order. So save
me from having to spend any more time listening to your self-pity.
Straighten up for thirty seconds and I’m out of here.”

He stretched out his legs, leaning back
to keep his balance on the top of the pile, then in one large
lunge, stepped back down onto the ground. He straightened up, the
bottle swinging from his fingers and making sloshing sounds. He
hadn’t bothered recapping the bottle.

Carmen crossed her arms, fighting the
anger rising in her. She had never seen Garrett drunk before, but
even drunk, he seemed formidable. He stood over her and spoke with
perfect clarity. “Send your scout. You will, anyway.”

“I wouldn’t!” she refuted hotly. “Not if
you haven’t said to.”

“Then you’ve surprised me.”

“After the weeks and weeks of you
bawling me out for not following orders, for trying to do my own
thing? Do you really think I’m so stupid I can’t learn
anything?”

He circled around her and with the
moonlight over her shoulder, his moon shadow lurched on the dry
ground. “You’re not stupid,” he said flatly. “But you’re reckless.
You let your emotions drive you.”

“You sound like Spock now,” she said
dryly, not trying to follow him as he walked around her. He was
speaking clearly, but there was a looseness about his gait that
betrayed him. He wasn’t staggering—not yet. But he was close to
it.

“He might have been right. ’motions are
grit.”

Carmen cocked her head. “That’s why
you’re hiding out here?”

He stopped circling. He was behind her,
so she turned to face him. He was looking at her. No, he was
looking
through
her, like what she had said had punched
buttons and now his brain was firing.

“Go back to the fire,” he said softly
and this time he sounded far more sober than he had since she had
stumbled across him.

“I can send the scout?”

He grimaced. “Send Angelo. He’s so good
at ingratiating himself. The locals will adore him.”

Carmen let out a breath, letting go of
the need to defend Angelo. She stepped away from Garrett. “I
suggest you get some sleep.”

“Nothing there but bad dreams,” he
muttered and this time, his words slurred.

Carmen hurried away, heading for the
refectory. She hugged herself, feeling an odd chill even though the
night wasn’t especially cold.

It was almost a relief to wake Angelo
and tell him what his orders were. She was doing something. She was
acting, rather than thinking. She wasn’t thinking about Garrett,
whom she didn’t want to think about.

Angelo was sleepy and protested about
having to get up and dressed and head out into the night.

“It’s an order, Angelo. Get up off your
lazy fucking ass and move it, soldier!” Carmen snapped.

His eyes had widened, but he got up and
thrust his feet into his jeans. Carmen watched him dress and hated
the little voice in her mind that whispered that Angelo really was
skinny. His thighs had no muscle to speak of and his ribs stood out
clearly.

When he was dressed, he tried to kiss
her goodbye, but Carmen stepped away from him. “Kiss me hello,
instead,” she said. “When we get back.”

His expression was one of surprise, but
there was a touch of bitterness in it, too. He turned and walked
away silently. His pack and belongings were on the other side of
the fire. He would only come to her sleeping bag when everyone was
asleep, even though the whole camp knew they were together in some
tenuous way that even she wasn’t sure she could define.

She watched him shrug on a jacket and
heavy boots, then shoulder his pack, pick up his rifle and slide
into the night. Once he was gone, she got into her sleeping bag and
hugged it around her for warmth.

The bag smelled faintly of Angelo. That
should have comforted her, but it annoyed her, instead.

The United States had not officially
recognized Nick as the President pro tem of Vistaria and diplomatic
relations had not been extended toward the Loyalists, so their
arrival in Washington was low key and almost the antithesis of any
official flight Olivia had ever been on. They flew economy on a
commercial flight to preserve the Loyalists’ dwindling funds, and
did not declare themselves in any way at the customs border.

The customs and immigration officials
stared at Olivia and then at her hastily put-together Vistarian
passport with a deep puzzlement that she could understand. She
waited them out patiently, until they decided that there was no
reason why she should be denied entry and stamped her passport.

Because neither of them were United
States citizens, both she and Nick were photographed and
finger-printed, which was a novelty for Olivia. It was interesting
to be treated as a complete nobody…and it was nerve-wracking being
back on American soil.

They hiked through the airport to the
luggage pick-up area and Nick stretched hard as they stood waiting
for the carousel to start turning. “I’m surprised they didn’t hold
us up back there,” he said quietly.

“Perhaps the calls are going through
now,” Olivia suggested. “I can’t see my father letting me walk free
around Washington when I’ve just declared myself a non-American. I
was counting on him trying to horn in and ask a question or
two.”

“Someone will let him know,” Nick said
evenly. He glanced toward the exit and nodded. “I think someone
already has. Look.”

There were five tall and very fit
looking men in suits, looking around the carousel area.

“FBI?” Nick asked.

“National Security,” Olivia said. “They
guard the White House . Dad probably sent them running here as soon
as the passports tripped everyone’s panic buttons.”

One of the guards spotted her and turned
his head to talk to the others. Then they all strode toward her and
Nick. Olivia stayed where she was, but Nick turned to face
them.

“Miss Davenport?” the lead man
asked.

“Actually, it’s Señora Castellano,”
Olivia replied. “You’re…Jerry, right? I think we’ve met once or
twice before. You’re on my father’s detail.”

Jerry didn’t react. “Señora Castellano,”
he acknowledged, “The Chief of Staff to the President of the United
States would like to have a word with you and your…companion.”

“Officially?” Olivia asked bluntly,
although she already knew that this was not an official meeting. If
it was going to be official, then the Deputy Chief Of Staff or the
Communications Director would be heading this posse and the demand
to come with them would have been phrased as a very polite
request.

But they had no political standing here.
Any meeting they could get would most likely be unofficial and
covert. Nick had warned her that it would be this way on the flight
up from Acapulco, but Olivia had already figured out how it would
go.