LITMIR.BIZ

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held the front door open for him. “After you.”

      He stepped onto the covered porch that stretched all the way across the front of the lodge. From this vantage point, there was a clear view of the gravel drive leading up to the lodge and the vehicles that were parked in the front, including a Hummer that probably belonged to the general.

      He sat in one of the rocking chairs, and Julia climbed onto the porch swing. She didn’t speak right away, but the silence wasn’t uncomfortable. He liked her self-assurance—a maturity that didn’t require the constant chatter that filled his house when his girls got revved. “How do you feel about kids, Julia?”

      “Love them.” Her face lit up. “My one regret about living here is that I don’t get to spend more time with my niece and nephew back in Wisconsin. They’re practically teenagers now.”

      “I have two daughters. Seven and nine.”

      “They must keep your wife busy.”

      “Not so you’d notice. My ex-wife left a long time ago. I guess we didn’t have much in common.” Not like you and me, he wanted to add.

      “Raising two little girls on your own must be hard.”

      The way she looked at him, giving him her full attention, made Paul feel like spilling his guts. He wanted to tell her about how frustrated he got when the girls burst into tears for no reason he could understand. Or how confused he was when they changed clothes five times before walking out the door. He wanted to tell Julia about the feeling of sheer happiness when one of the girls hopped onto his lap and told him he was the best daddy in the world.

      Julia’s smile encouraged him, and he wanted to tell her everything, wanted to hear her laugh. Or maybe he just wanted to sit here on the porch and watch as the last rays of sunset tangled in her thick, curly hair. His gaze stuck on her lips, and his thoughts turned toward kisses. Caresses. Making love in the afternoon.

      “What are their names?” she asked.

      “Who?”

      “Your kids.”

      “Jennifer and Lily.” His thoughts had moved far beyond the kids. “Maybe sometime when you’re not busy, you’d go out to dinner with me.”

      Those beautiful lips pinched, and he was pretty sure she was going to tell him to take a hike. Instead, she said, “Next week?”

      “It’s a date.”

      He leaned back in the rocking chair and grinned. A date with Julia. Damn, this was going to be good.

      A glint of sunlight caught his eye. When he looked toward the roof of the covered porch, he spotted the camouflaged lens of a surveillance camera. Again, he wondered what was really going on here.

      SHE SHOULDN’T HAVE agreed to go out with him. Alone in the kitchen, Julia loaded the last of the dinner dishes into the washer. And she thought about her date with Paul Hemmings. The pros and the cons. Her mind seesawed.

      A chirpy little voice whispered in one ear, “Go on the date. Paul’s a good-looking man. Have some fun for a change.”

      In the other ear was a stern professional tone. “Paul is too smart. He’ll figure out that this is a safe-house. Your career will be ruined.”

      She couldn’t take that chance. Julia had worked too hard to get to this level. Her FBI career was her whole life.

      “That’s pathetic,” said the chirpy voice that sounded a little bit like her mother. “You’re thirty-two years old. Don’t you want to have a family? Children of your own?”

      Paul already had a family. Two girls.

      Julia shook her head. She was getting way ahead of herself. He hadn’t asked her to marry him, after all. It was only a date.

      David Dillard, the FBI computer specialist, saun-tered into the kitchen. “Any coffee left? I’m going to be up late.”

      “I was just about to make a fresh pot.” Julia and the other two agents at the safehouse would be staying up all night in shifts to monitor the surveillance cameras that were posted in the hallways and outside. To stay alert, caffeine was a necessary evil.

      David pushed his glasses up on the bridge of his nose and took a seat at the kitchen table. Of all the Homeland Security specialists who were staying here, she liked David best. He was an average looking guy—pleasant and unassuming. “This is a excellent facility,” he said.

      “You’ve hardly been outside.”

      “I was talking about the lower level.”

      “The basement? But it’s all white and sterile.”

      “For a computer geek like me, that’s heaven.”

      To each his own. Julia spent as little time as possible in the basement where the charming, rustic lodge transformed into a high-tech operation with computers, communication devices and surveillance monitors. Most of the meetings for the Homeland Security group would take place in a bland windowless room on the lower level.

      “I thought you brought your own computer with you,” Julia said. “And that collapsible screen thing.”

      “Tools of the trade.” He gave her a weary grin. “I’m setting up a series of simulations over the next several days.”

      “Simulating what?”

      “Our project is to establish a protocol for first response teams handling crisis situations. We want to set up five-person teams of experts who can step in and run things in the chaos following a disaster. They would be the ultimate authority.”

      Thus far, no one else had bothered to explain the purpose of this meeting. Though Julia had been curious, she was accustomed to FBI people who played it close to the vest. Apparently, David didn’t have reservations about talking.

      “Isn’t there already a chain of command?” she asked as she ground the fresh beans for coffee.

      “Too many commanders,” he said. “That’s the problem. The people who are here represent various authorities. The senator to handle political issues. The general for military. RJ is a financial specialist. I’m a communications person. And, of course, there’s Gil representing the CIA.”

      “What’s Gil’s specialty?”

      David shrugged. “He looks like an assassin to me.”

      A charming thought. But she suspected David was correct. The sneaky but muscle-bound Gil Bradley looked like the kind of guy who could be dropped behind enemy lines to take out the opposition.

      “What kind of crisis would you deal with?” she asked.

      “There’s the obvious big stuff, like a terrorist bombing. I have that simulation set up for the last day, and it’s got really amazing effects. But there are smaller issues. Attacks on a high-profile target, like the Golden Gate bridge. A siege at a survivalist compound. Hostage-taking.”

      Julia shuddered as she watched the coffee slowly drip through the filter into the pot. “That’s the worst,” she said. “Hostages.”

      When it came to her own personal safety, she was fearless. But a threat to someone she loved? To her mother and father? She remembered the horror and pain she’d felt when she learned of her older brother’s death three years ago. He’d been a Marine. In harm’s way.

      “Setting up an official response team is an exciting project,” David said. “On paper, it looks like a snap. The problems come in dealing with all these authoritative personalities. Like the general, for example. His plan is always the same—Send in the Marines.”

      “Like my brother,” she said. “He was a Marine.”

      “No kidding,” David said. “Mine, too.”

      “So you know that the Marines are well trained for crisis.”

      “If

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