He hadn’t even put the final m on team before Zoe Lange spoke up, her clear alto voice ringing out into the room. “I’m in and I’m behind you one hundred percent, Admiral.”
She was just too cute, standing there in her blue jeans and blue-flowered T-shirt. She looked like a college student, but Jake knew better. She was Pat Sullivan’s top operative. She’d come highly recommended. She was bright, she was beautiful and she was so freshly young it almost hurt to look at her.
Her hair was blond, long and straight. She wore it in classic California-girl style, with no bangs to soften her face. But she had a face that didn’t need softening—it was already soft enough. She had baby-smooth skin, a face that was nearly a perfect oval, and equally perfect, delicately shaped features. From her fair skin and her light coloring, he’d expected her eyes to be blue. But they weren’t. She had brown eyes. Not a light, hazel shade of brown, but deep, dark chocolate brown.
Was it possible for someone with eyes that dark to be a natural blonde? He knew exactly how to find out.
I’m all yours—if you’ll have me.
Don’t go there, pal! She hadn’t meant it that way.
Jake focused his attention on his SEAL team. Harvard Becker. He’d never worked with the African-American senior chief, but when it came to electronic surveillance, he was the best. And right now Jake needed the best.
Seamen First Class Wesley Skelly, short and skinny, and Bobby Taylor, built double-wide, could’ve been any of the enlisted guys he knew back in Nam. Loyal to the bitter end, they drank too much, played too hard and were always right where you needed them, when you needed them. Right now, their loyalty was to Harvard, though, and they waited for their senior chief to nod his acceptance before they, too, agreed to sign on.
Lieutenant Billy Hawken, nicknamed Crash, was Jake’s wife, Daisy’s, cousin. Jake had helped raise him from the time the boy was ten. He thought of him as a son, but there was real reservation in the kid’s eyes as he gazed at Jake across the table. Are you sure you know what you’re doing? He could read the words in Billy’s eyes as clearly as if he’d spoken them aloud.
Jake nodded. Yeah. He knew exactly what he was doing. He’d thought about it long and hard. This was more than just an excuse to get back into the real world. Although—he couldn’t kid himself—he did want to do it just a little too much. Still, the timing was right and he trusted himself, trusted his instincts.
Billy turned to look at Lieutenant Mitchell Shaw, sitting on his right. Mitch and Billy had both worked for Jake’s Gray Group more times than any of them could count. Mitch had been there at the conception of the group. He’d been part of the first mission. At five feet ten, he was shorter than most of the other SEALs, lean and compact, with long, dark hair and hazel eyes that gave nothing away.
Including his doubt.
His silence broadcast that, though, loud and clear.
Jake knew how Mitch thought, and he could practically see the progression that led to the lieutenant’s short nod. He was in—but only because Mitch believed he and the rest of the SEALs would be able to keep Jake out of harm’s way.
Jake was going to have to set him straight, but not here, not now.
“I’m in,” Lieutenant Luke O’Donlon announced, his words echoed by Lieutenant Harlan Jones. Lucky and Cowboy. Both blond and blue-eyed, Jake had chosen them based on their fair-skinned complexions as well as their reputations. Both were hotshots, that title well earned, and both would be accepted into the CRO as easily as possible, if they had to go that way.
And that was that. He had his team. The SEALs had all agreed, if not quite as enthusiastically as Zoe Lange.
“Gather your gear, gentlemen—and Doctor,” Jake said, glancing at the young woman. “And prepare to meet at Andrews in two hours. Bring a sweater or two. We’re going to Montana.”
Senior Chief Harvard Becker was the first to reach the door. He hit the buzzer that signaled the guards in the outer chambers and the hatch swung open. The SEALs cleared out, none of them uttering another word.
They probably knew Admiral Stonegate would handle all the uttering necessary.
“I will be registering my official protest,” he told Jake stiffly. “An admiral’s place is not in the field. You are far too valuable to the U.S. Navy to put yourself into a position of such high risk that—”
“Didn’t you hear anything Dr. Lange said?” Jake asked the older man. “With the magnitude of this kind of potential disaster, we’re all expendable, Ron.”
“It’s been years since you’ve been in the field.”
“I’ve been keeping up,” Jake told him evenly.
“Mentally, perhaps, but physically, there’s just no way—”
Since he’d gotten out of the hospital, Jake had put himself into the best physical shape he’d been in since Vietnam. “I can keep up physically, too. Ron, you know, fifty-three’s just not that old—”
“Dammit, this is all John Glenn’s fault.”
Jake had to laugh. “Excuse me for laughing in your face, pal, but that’s ridiculous.”
Stonegate was offended. “I will be registering a protest.”
“You do that, Admiral,” Jake said, tired of the noise. “But not until this mission is over. Everything you’ve heard today in this room is top secret. You leak any of it—even in the form of a protest, and I will throw your narrow-minded, pointy ass in jail.”
Well, that did it.
Stonegate stormed out.
Mac Forrest followed. “And I’ll help,” he murmured to Jake with a wink. “Anything I can do, Jake, you just let me know.”
The room was finally empty.
Jake drew in a deep breath and let it all out in a rush as he collected and organized his notes and papers.
That had gone far better than he’d hoped. He’d been sure his age was going to be an insurmountable issue, that none of his first choice of SEALs would accept the assignment. He’d gone so far as to have his hair colored for the occasion, covering the silver at his temples with his regular shade of dark brown. He’d figured looking as young as possible couldn’t hurt.
And it had made him look younger, there was no doubt about it.
He’d liked the way his colored hair looked more than he cared to admit. But he had admitted it. He’d forced himself to confront the issue. He hated the thought of growing old. He’d fought it ever since he’d turned thirty with every breath he took, cutting red meat and high-cholesterol-inducing foods out of his diet. Eating health foods and seaweeds and exercising religiously every day. Aerobics. Weights. Running.
He hadn’t lied to Ron Stonegate. He was in top-notch, near-perfect shape, even for a man fifteen years his junior.
There was only one type of exercise he no longer participated in regularly and that was—
Jake closed his briefcase with a snap and turned around and found himself staring directly into Zoe Lange’s eyes.
Sex.
Yes, it had definitely been nearly three years since he’d last had sex.
Jake swallowed and forced a smile. “God, I’m sorry,” he said. “How long have you been standing there? I didn’t realize you were still in the room.”
She shifted her briefcase to her other hand, and Jake realized that she was nervous. He made Pat Sullivan’s top operative nervous.
The feeling was extremely mutual—but for what had to be an entirely different reason. He found her attractive, college-girl getup and all. Much too attractive.