Jake remembered taking Morgan’s hand and leading her into the hall of the bar to be alone with her. He’d done something he’d wanted to do for years: kiss the hell out of her. Morgan, he’d discovered, had been watching him for a long time, too. He’d asked if she was protected, and she’d said yes, she was on the pill. They’d never made it back to the Academy until very early on Sunday morning. And their hearts and fates had been sealed, for better or worse.
He needed to stop remembering. Morgan wasn’t in his life anymore. Jake scowled and climbed the stone steps of the Pentagon. Up ahead were soldiers with M-16 rifles. Since the bombing of the Pentagon on 9/11, security had markedly changed. He would go through an X-ray machine before ever being allowed into the military bastion.
Jake aimed himself toward the outer ring, the E-ring. It was the only level that had windows looking out into the civilian world. Only senior military officers got those posh office assignments. This was where many top secret and black-ops missions originated. Curious as to why he was called off PRODEV, sixty days of leave granted to him after coming back from Afghanistan with his SEAL platoon, he arrived at the E-ring. Looking at the file he held, he saw the number of the office and turned to the right.
Captain Morgan Boland was sitting in a chair opposite the secretary’s desk when the door opened. Her eyes widened. Jake Ramsey, again? Her lips parted for a moment. What was he doing here? He stopped when he realized she was sitting there staring up at him. He had a stunned look across his normally unreadable expression. Shock bolted through her.
Morgan lowered her gaze, and her heart sped up. Why couldn’t she just ignore Ramsey’s darkly tanned face? His rugged good looks and those stormy-looking gray eyes of his? Her fingers tightened imperceptibly around the file in her lap. The only other empty chair in the small, cramped office was two feet away from where she sat. She listened as Jake went to the fortysomething-year-old blonde administrative assistant and gave his name to her.
“Thank you, Lieutenant Ramsey. General Stevenson will see you in just a bit. Would you like some coffee or tea while you wait?”
Jake took off his cap. “No, thank you, ma’am.” He hated having to sit next to Morgan, who was staring at him as if he were going to bite her. His traitorous body and heart clamored over being so close to this fiery woman. Jake wanted to be close. Wanted, somehow, to undo the wrong he’d done to her two years earlier.
Sitting down, he glanced over at her. Morgan was staring straight ahead, her hands tense over the file in her lap. He relished viewing her profile and then realized her once-perfect nose now had a bump on it. Had she broken it? He almost asked but thought better of it. There was an assistant sitting six feet away from them, and Jake didn’t want her to know how much Morgan hated him.
What to say to Jake Ramsey? Morgan felt heat radiating off his hard male body. The uniform showed how athletic and fit he really was. SEALs took exercise to a whole new level, plus six months climbing mountains in Afghanistan had honed his body into a dangerous weapon. She saw the SEAL gold trident on his well-sprung chest, rows of colorful ribbons beneath it. Jake was part of the best of the best black-ops teams the military had. She remembered those pale eyes of his going dove-gray as he’d made love with her. God, they were good in bed together. Too good. And above all, Morgan knew she had to keep a secret she would always carry from that last meeting they had. Jake would never know. Pursing her lips, she refused to say anything to him. Her mind churned with questions on why both of them were here, in the same office of the Pentagon. It made no sense to her.
A buzzer sounded on the assistant’s desk. She looked over at Morgan. “Go right through this door, Captain Boland. General Houston will see you. Room two, please.”
Rising, Morgan nodded, ignored Ramsey and opened the door. Inside, she saw two offices, one on either side of the hall. Turning to the left, she saw a frosted glass window with “2” painted in gold upon it and knocked firmly.
“Enter,” a male voice ordered.
Morgan’s heart picked up a beat as she opened it. Inside was a man in his late-fifties, fit, in a dark green U.S. Army uniform. The salad, or ribbons, across his powerful chest attested to his time and experience in the Army. There was silver on the sidewalls of his closely cropped hair. His eyes were sharp and intelligent-looking. Morgan came to attention in front of his desk.
“Captain Morgan Boland reporting as ordered, sir.”
“At ease, Captain. Have a seat. We need to chat.”
Indeed, Morgan thought as she took the only chair in front of the General’s desk. The man smiled a little as he clasped his hands and rested them on the dark cherrywood desk.
“What I’m about to tell you is top secret, Captain. But I already think you know what this mission is all about.”
“I’m hoping it’s an op to go after Sangar Khogani, sir. I’ve been pushing for it to find and kill him for the last couple of years.”
A grin leaked through the hardened line of his mouth. He handed her a file folder. “We’ve been listening, Captain. Read along with me?”
Opening the folder, Morgan felt her spirits lift. Her emotions shimmered as she quickly read the one-paragraph synopsis on the mission. Looking up, she saw the General giving her a penetrating look. Morgan waited for him to speak, even though she wanted to tear through the rest of the assignment and read the details. She hoped like hell she had been assigned to it.
“You’re a part of Operation Shadow Warriors,” he began, opening the file. “Forty women volunteers from all the military branches were trained either in Ranger or Special Forces schools and are now in ground combat to prove women have what it takes to do the job in the field. We’re in the third year of a seven-year top secret experiment. I’m pleased to tell you, it’s going very well in showing women can handle combat.”
“Yes, sir.” Hope rose in her breast. Morgan had never wanted an assignment more than this one. Was General Houston letting her have it or not? She couldn’t read the man’s deeply tanned face.
“You’ve been very active and vocal about mounting a mission to take out Khogani. He’s an opium drug lord with the Hill tribe near the border area with Pakistan.”
“Yes, sir, I have.” She’d spoken to General Maya Stevenson, who had spearheaded women in combat, starting with the Black Jaguar Squadron down in Peru years earlier. Maya had put together a plan of an all-woman Apache combat squadron to halt cocaine shipments out of that country. It had been approved and had been a spectacular success. Then Stevenson had organized Operation Shadow Warriors three years ago. It was a program putting women’s boots on the ground in various combat theaters.
Morgan wasted no time in pleading her case directly to the General to mount a mission. She wanted to even the terrible score over in Afghanistan. Morgan had been caught up in the battle along with a group of Green Berets, wounded and one of the few survivors of Khogani’s attack on a Shinwari tribe village.
Houston nodded. “You’re going to get your wish, Captain. You’ve been a SEAL trained sniper for three years now, and you’ve exemplified yourself in that department. You’ve been downrange with SEAL and Special Forces units for the past three years.”
“I have the background it takes to successfully complete this mission, sir.”
“There’s no question about that, Captain.”
“I’ve lobbied hard to get this op on the board, sir.”
Houston smiled a little at the brash woman officer. “If you could suffer a little more with me, Captain, let’s talk about the mission details?”
Chastised, Morgan relaxed against the chair. She saw humor in his eyes, as if he were putting