Secret Agent Sam

  Secret Agent Sam

  Kathleen Creighton

  Reporter Cory Pearson's penchant for working in war zones had gotten him into hot water before, but this was uncharted territory, even for him. Because the pilot assigned to fly him into danger was none other than Samantha Bauer. Once she'd been Sammi June, an eighteen-year-old girl who'd looked at him starry-eyed. Now she was Sam, a very competent professional, whose eyes seemed to hold all manner of secrets.

  If Sam was thrown by learning who her new client was, she couldn't afford to show it-or the fact that her strong feelings for Cory hadn't changed. But if he couldn't accept who she was back then, what would he possibly want with her now-now that her life had taken a direction neither of them could have imagined…and left them both clinging to each other for their very survival?

  Kathleen Creighton

  Secret Agent Sam

  A book in the Starrs of the West series, 2005

  The second book in the Taken series

  FOR PAT TEAL,

  So much more than an agent…

  My beloved friend.

  Prologue

  He saw Samantha for the first time in the White House rose garden.

  “How many people can say that?” Cory Pearson said aloud to the computer screen as he slid the cursor to the Save icon and thumped the mouse.

  The words he’d written, black letters stark on a vast white field, seemed to shimmer in anticipation. He stared back at them, wrists propped on their ergonomic supports, fingers poised…

  Nothing. Hell.

  It wasn’t that he didn’t have the words. Problem was, he had too many. Memories, impressions, images, emotions-everything translated automatically into words in his mind, always had, as far back as he could remember. He hadn’t understood then, not until much, much later, that not everyone’s mind behaved like this. And the fact that his did was something he’d been both gifted and cursed with at birth. And that this was what made him, whether he liked it or not, a writer.

  By the time he’d come to that understanding, thanks to the combining of this gift-or curse-with a curious and adventure-some nature, he was already well on his way to becoming one of the most respected war correspondents-slash-journalists of his time.

  It was shortly thereafter that those same attributes got him thrown into an Iraqi prison. Which, in turn, had set in motion the chain of events that had resulted in his presence in the White House rose garden on that particular day in May. And was also how he’d come to know, only a few months before that, of the existence of a girl named Sammi June Bauer.

  Oh, he had plenty of words. Words swirled in his mind now like leaves in a whirlwind. Experience told him that attempting to force them into a semblance of order and paragraph form would be like trying to catch those windblown leaves in his hands. But he knew, if he was patient, eventually they would begin to settle and arrange themselves into patterns of their own making…

  He watched her from a distance as she wandered among the rose beds, noticing how she seemed separate from all the other guests, isolated even in a crowd. It struck him that this apartness must be natural to her.

  And, in retrospect, perhaps it was something he should have paid more attention to, perhaps…

  What if I had? Cory asked himself as he stared at the blinking cursor. Would it have made a difference?

  Probably not. He let out a breath and went back to typing.

  The humid heat of a May afternoon, thick with the scent of crushed grass, rose around him as he moved closer to her, stalking her the way a nature photographer stalks a leopard. Through the heat shimmer he saw her throw a furtive look over one shoulder before she bent toward a half-open rose blossom, rather as if she meant to steal the flower itself rather than merely a sample of its fragrance. After a moment she looked up and cocked her head. Her lips formed a pout of disappointment.

  “Try this one. It seems to have some smell to it,” he said, and felt a surge of strange delight when she gave a start, then turned with the slow dignity of an offended duchess.

  As she studied him, hands clasped behind her back, head tilted back and chin out-thrust, he couldn’t help but smile. Not much about her resembled the pictures her father had painted for him during those weeks in Iraq, but remnants of the scruffy, combative ten-year-old soccer-playing tomboy she’d been could still be found in that chin and jaw. And that attitude. Oh, yeah.

  But for the rest…

  For starters, she was a whole lot taller than he’d pictured her-nearly equal to his own six feet in the high-heeled boots she was wearing-and a good part of that seemed to consist of legs. Slim, tanned, well-muscled legs, judging from the portion visible between the tops of her boots and the bottom edge of her dark pinstriped skirt, which was, in fact, a considerable amount. The rest of her was slim, too, but strongly built and athletic, like her father. Her hair-thick and shaggy, a rich blond shot through with gold-was a gift from her mother, but the eyes were Tristan’s. Dark and mysterious as moonlit waters. A man could drown in those eyes…!

  “I’m Cory Pearson,” he said as he ambled toward her, wearing a disarming smile and trying to make it seem as if he’d just happened to be wandering by that way. “I was-”

  “I know who you are. I’ve seen you on television.” She gave her shoulder-length hair a toss and her chin jerked a notch higher, if that was possible. “You’re the reporter who was with my dad in Iraq.”

  “Yes. And you’re Sam-”

  “Samantha,” she said in a breathless rush.

  Not Sammi June. Not anymore. Of course not. The little-girl name had gone the way of the freckles and ponytails. She was a grown-up woman now.

  He accepted it with a solemn nod, and a peculiar quivering pressure behind his breastbone. “Samantha…”

  Cory sat back, his hands grown sweaty on the keyboard. The same pressure was there in his chest now, and letting out a long, slow breath didn’t ease it much.

  There’d been more to that day, of course. A lot more. He remembered every moment of it, every word, every look, every gesture.

  She’d confided in him, for some reason, although his intuition told him she was a private person by nature. She’d told him about ordinary stuff-her life, about soccer and school, and her newly born dream of becoming a pilot, like her dad. And some not-so-ordinary stuff-what it had been like to lose her father as a little girl and get him back again as a grown woman. Amazingly, in the midst of her own emotional turmoil she’d asked about Cory, too, how it had been for him.

  He hadn’t been able to hide his pain from her that day, not completely, though God knows he’d tried. Just the first of many times in his relationship with Samantha Bauer when his will had failed him…

  He’d listened to her speak of adult loss with a child’s simplicity, and of a child’s heartbreak with an adult’s passion.

  And he’d fallen in love with her. Right there, that day, in the White House rose garden.

  He let out another breath as he once more hit the Save icon, then darkened the monitor. He’d had enough. Couldn’t do any more, not now.

  Nor, he imagined, would he make another attempt any time soon. He should have known it was too soon. That it would still hurt too damn much.

  Writing had always been his lifeline in difficult times. His medicine, his therapy, his healing balm, his anesthetic, better than a bottle of Scotch. He’d thought, he’d hoped…it would help get him through this. But it seemed there was no medicine on earth powerful enough to dull the pain of losing Samantha.

  Chapter 1

  The tiny airstrip simmered in the afternoon heat, denied out of functional necessity even the small solace of trees. To Cory Pearson’s eyes the ragged cluster of clapboard buildings with rusting tin roofs t
hat apparently served as hangar and maintenance sheds as well as terminal and business offices seemed to have hunkered down beneath the pounding sun with the silent endurance of penned livestock.

  The taxi driver who had brought them from Davao City cut off the elderly car’s engine-to keep it from overheating, Cory imagined-which of course rendered the air inside the cab unbreatheable within roughly three seconds. Feeling his breath catch in an instinctive effort to keep that awful heat out of his lungs, Cory hurriedly thrust a handful of bills at the driver across the back of the seat and opened his door. On the other side of the car, his best friend and favorite photographer, Tony Whitehall, hefted the cases containing his cameras onto his knees and did the same. Hot air rushed inside the car like the breath of a ravenous beast.

  “God,” Tony said, the profanity halfhearted and forlorn.

  “Beats a monsoon, or so I’m told,” Cory said cheerfully as he hooked the strap of his laptop carrier over his shoulder and climbed out of the car. “Hard to see how, but if we’re still here in a few weeks, I guess we’ll find out.”

  Tony just grunted.

  The two men waited in stoic silence while the driver-spare, wiry and apparently eternally cheerful-retrieved their bags from the trunk of the cab. Returning their nods and muttered thanks with more nodding and smiling-Cory’s tip had been generous-the driver climbed back behind the wheel and started up the engine with a rackety explosion of noise and exhaust. He drove off with a full-armed wave of farewell from his open window.

  “You couldn’t have picked a hotter month to do this?” Tony inquired as they stood motionless and watched the taxi undulate and seem to hover above the ground in the distant shimmer of heat waves. Moving from the spot seemed almost too great a task; the heat sat on their shoulders like a burden.

  “Believe me, it was a whole lot cooler when I started negotiations last November.” Cory bent and picked up his bag and Tony did the same, and the two men began walking slowly toward the uninviting-looking cluster of buildings. “When Fahad al-Rami finally gave me the go-ahead to do the interview, I didn’t argue. I said, ‘Tell me the time and place, and I’m there.’”

  Tony paused and set his bag down long enough to fish an already damp handkerchief out of the pocket of his jeans. “Yeah, well, I just hope we get something out of this-besides one hell of an interview, I mean.”

  Cory glanced at him. “The hostages, you mean.” Tony, in the process of tying the handkerchief pirate-style around his shiny mahogany-colored head to protect it from the blazing sun, didn’t reply. Cory faced forward again, squinting even though the photosensitive lenses of his glasses had already adjusted to the glare. “Goes without saying. Not that I’m holding out much hope.”

  Tony’s sunglasses flashed toward him briefly as he picked up his bag. “Why not? They’ve released other hostages.”

  “For money. The Lundquists are missionaries-in most cases like this the churches back home are too poor to pay the ransom.”

  “Then why the hell’d they take ’em?”

  “Probably didn’t know who they were getting. Just scooped up a bunch of tourists from a seaside resort. The way I understand it, the Lundquists just happened to be vacationing there at the time.”

  “Poor devils,” Tony said. Then, in a blunt tone and with a thrust of chin that might have been taken for callous if Cory hadn’t known him so well, he asked, “So, why keep them? They’ve had ’em for what, going on a year, now? Why not cut their losses? Turn ’em loose or kill ’em. One or the other.”

  “I expect they’re hoping to get something for their trouble-leverage of one kind or another.” Cory pulled open a door marked Office and held it for Tony to squeeze through with his assortment of bags and cases. “Which is why I don’t hold out much hope for us securing the release of any hostages through this interview. It’s not like I have anything they want.”

  Tony grunted as he nudged past him, then paused to let his eyes adjust to the dimness. “Other than the interview, you mean,” he said as he began lowering bags to the dusty linoleum floor.

  “Hell,” Cory said with a grin as he let the door close behind him, “they had that for the asking.”

  Tony took off his sunglasses and tucked them into his shirt pocket, then threw him a grin back. “A favorable interview. Maybe they’re figuring on holding the hostages over your head so you’ll make sure and show them and their cause to the world in a sympathetic light.”

  It was a possibility that had already occurred to Cory, and another reason he didn’t entertain high hopes of bringing those hostages back with him. Not through negotiations, at any rate. As far as other means…he had some ideas on that score.

  Which he was keeping to himself, for the moment. What Tony didn’t know couldn’t hurt him. And it could probably save a whole lot of arguing.

  He dropped his overnighter on the floor and eased his laptop down beside it as he surveyed the room. Except for the two of them it seemed to be empty of people, the atmosphere rendered only slightly more tolerable than the outdoors due to the valiant efforts of a rackety fan sitting on a wooden countertop. The counter divided the room roughly in half. Furnishings in the half Cory and Tony occupied consisted of a wooden bench to the left of the entrance and a soft-drink vending machine on the right. Beyond the bench was a door marked with the universal male and female symbols indicating toilets. On the wall next to the door was a cork bulletin board sporting faded pictures of tropical resorts and sunset beaches, and above that, black letters individually pinned in an arch spelling out, WELCOME TO SEA CHARTERS.

  On the countertop, a stack of brochures fluttered intermittently in the breeze from the oscillating fan. Behind the counter, a computer monitor sat atop a gunmetal-gray desk, its screen turned discreetly away from public view in the manner of airline ticket counters everywhere. Beyond that, through a bank of windows partly obscured by bamboo blinds, Cory could see an expanse of sunbaked earth interrupted by splashes of yellow-and-brown grass. Beyond the grass, before a backdrop of distant palm trees, a large twin-engine plane sat waiting on a hard-packed dirt runway.

  In the shade of one low-slung wing, a slim figure wearing a dark blue baseball cap and khaki cargo pants belted over a white T-shirt lounged against the slanting fuselage. Nearby, moveable steps waited below an open doorway located in the rear of the plane, between the wing and the tail.

  “Holy Mary, Mother of God,” said Tony-who hadn’t been a practicing Catholic in years-as he came to stare past Cory’s shoulder. “S’pose that’s ours?”

  “Pretty much has to be, since it appears to be the only thing out there with wings,” Cory said absently, his attention distracted, for the moment, by that distant figure under the aircraft’s wing. Something about her…

  “That’s a damn Gooneybird,” Tony said as if Cory hadn’t spoken, his voice hushed. “I didn’t think those tail-draggers were still flying.”

  “Gooneybird?” Cory glanced over at him, laughing a little. “Come on. That would be Second World War, right?”

  Tony was staring reverently out the windows. “Yup. Douglas DC-3. They were the workhorse aircraft during World War Two. Commercial airlines flew ’em after the war-hell, they pretty much started commercial passenger service. That’s a damned antique out there.”

  “Didn’t know you were an airplane buff.”

  “Not me-my dad. His dad-my granddad, never knew him myself, he was in the Navy, in the Pacific. The Cee Bees-you know, the construction battalions? Anyway, before he got killed-Guadalcanal, I think it was-he helped build quite a few landing strips for those things. They used ’em for troop transport back then. Dad used to build models of all those World War Two planes-tried to interest me in doing it when I was a kid, but I was more into Nintendo.” He threw Cory a look, grinning. “Guess more of that stuff soaked in than I thought.”

  He looked back at the plane, then did a double take. “Damn. I think that’s a woman.” He launched into a string of his favorite cheerful profanities be
fore adding in an exaggeratedly ominous tone, “That wouldn’t be our pilot, would it?”

  “Sexist pig,” Cory said with a lopsided grin. Coincidence, he thought. An odd little twist of fate. “Women have been known to fly airplanes. Does the name Amelia Earhart ring any bells?”

  What surprised him-shocked him, actually-was the twisting he still felt in his guts when her name…her image…flashed through his mind. Not Amelia’s, of course.

  Samantha.

  Before Tony could reply, the door to the left of the windows opened and a man bustled in, showing tobacco-stained teeth in a wide, welcoming smile shaped like a lying-down half moon. He was of indeterminate age and ethnicity, with long salt-and-pepper hair pulled loosely back in a clubbed ponytail that left a halo of loose frizz around his broad, swarthy face. He wore rumpled light tan slacks and a Hawaiian-print shirt that hung unbuttoned over a dirty vest-type undershirt and a solid-looking mound of belly.

  “Welcome to SEA Charters,” he said, slightly out of breath, in an accent that sounded vaguely Australian, adding, “Sounds like a boat business, dun’it? Stands for South East Asia. We pretty much cover the islands from here to New Zealand…Indonesia…anywhere you want to go. That’s our motto. Anywhere you want to go, we can get you there. I’m Will, by the way.” In what appeared to be a habitual gesture, and probably explained most of the dirt on the undershirt, he brushed his hand across his belly before thrusting it over the counter to shake first Cory’s hand, then Tony’s.

  “I’m guessing you’re the reporters, right? Going to…” Still bustling, muttering under his breath, he dodged back behind the computer monitor, tapped some keys and bent over to peer at the screen. “Let’s see…” He glanced up, shaking his head as he whistled softly. “Not too many people going in there these days. Government warnings, you know. That province is in rebel hands. Well-off and on, anyways. Been a lot of government activity goin’ on up in those hills lately. ‘Government activity’-that’s a euphemism for fightin’, you know. They been warnin’ foreigners to stay away.”