A Question of Intent Read online

  Evidently he hadn't forgotten their last conversation.

  "If I did have you under surveillance," Jill replied calmly, "I guarantee you wouldn't know it."

  "Then why are you here in Albuquerque?"

  She glanced around, saw no one was within listening range. Still, she couched her reply in terms that made no reference to Pegasus. "I wanted to check out some modifications the base security forces have made to their escort vehicles."

  Suspicion still lingered in his blue eyes. "So it's just a coincidence we both drove up the same day?"

  "Actually, I flew up, but the chopper had to return to base. The captain suggested I drive back with you tomorrow."

  "Did he?"

  The suspicion was still there. Jill saw she'd have to work to regain the ground she'd lost with the doc.

  "Yes, he did. He also suggested I treat myself to dinner at a local restaurant. Care to join me? If you don't have any other plans, that is."

  "I haven't made other plans," he said slowly, almost reluctantly. "But I need to swing back by Decker Labs afterward. They're running some special tests for me and should have the results later this evening."

  "Fine by me. You're already checked in, I see. How about I do the same and meet you here in a half hour?"

  Cody used the half hour to shower off the dust and heat of the August day. Rasping a hand across his chin, he decided he might as well scrape off his five-o'clock shadow, too. Luckily he'd thrown some jeans and a white shirt in his overnight bag along with a clean uniform shirt. He hadn't intended to turn this trip into an excursion, but certainly wouldn't mind blending into the background as an ordinary civilian for a few hours.

  When he exited the Visiting Officers Quarters and made his way to his vehicle, the mountains to the east formed a dark, jagged silhouette against an indigo sky. To the west, the sun was about to drop into the Rio Grande. The mesa above the river was an impossible blaze of red, pink, gold, and purple. The temperature had dropped to a comfortable ninety degrees or so, made bearable by the total absence of humidity in the air. Cody leaned against the fender of the Lincoln and let his gaze roam the darkening sky.

  As it had the first night he'd arrived in New Mexico, the incredible panoply of stars tugged at something deep inside him. With the universe spread out like that, a man should be able to put things in perspective Like his life. His work. His guilt.

  He waited for the regret and remorse to stab at him with their usual sharp-honed blades, but the cuts didn't go as deep as they usually did. To his surprise, he had trouble picturing Alicia's furious face the night of their last argument. Instead, the image of a strong, determined chin, gold-flecked brown eyes, and a smooth sweep of wheat-colored hair kept edging Alicia's aside.

  Well, hell! Here Cody had spent the first half of the four-hour drive up to Albuquerque telling himself he had to get Jill Bradshaw out of his head. He'd spent the second half trying to figure out how the heck she'd burrowed in so deeply. He'd known her for just over a week, had been on her ten-most-wanted list for almost that long. He was still carrying the scars of a stormy marriage that ended in tragedy. He didn't need to tangle with another woman all too ready to believe the worst of him.

  Yet he couldn't shake the memory of Jill's mouth under his. Or the urge to slide his lips down the column of her throat and kiss away any lingering pain from the scar she kept hidden under her sleek, shining hair. Frowning, he shoved his hands in his jeans pockets and scowled at the night sky.

  That was how Jill found him some moments later. Ankles crossed, shoulders hunched, indulging in a serious bout of stargazing. Another bout of stargazing.

  He didn't appear to be deriving a whole lot of enjoyment from the exercise. His jaw had set to a rigid line and the muscles of his forearms were taut beneath the rolled-up sleeves of his white shirt. He turned at the sound of her approach, his tight expression relaxing.

  "Ready?"

  "Ready."

  Sweeping a glance over her jeans and scoop-necked white tank top, he opened the door for her. She had to use both the hand grip and the raised running board to boost herself into the high-riding Lincoln. Sinking into buttery soft buckskin, she surveyed a dash that seemed to contain as many dials and screens as her Humvee.

  Cody walked around the front of the vehicle and took the driver's seat. He was like his vehicle, she thought, slanting him a glance as he hooked his seat belt. Built tough and handsomely packaged.

  Okay, she could admit the truth when it whapped her right between the eyes. Despite her usual aversion to big, muscled types, there was something about the doc that set her nerves to humming. All it proved was that she wasn't dead from the neck down.

  "How does Mexican sound?" he asked, keying the ignition.

  Jill's stomach leaped in delight. "Mexican sounds good. Very good."

  "The folks at Decker Labs recommended a restaurant not too far from the base," he told her, angling an arm across the back of her seat to twist around and look through the rear window before backing out of the tight parking spot. "I'm told the place doesn't look like much on the outside, but serves the hottest salsa in town."

  "I can handle it."

  He flicked her a glance. For the first time since their discussion in the dining hall, his eyes held something close to a smile.

  "Yeah, I bet you can."

  When he withdrew his arm, his rolled-up cuff riffled Jill's hair. Little pinpricks of sensation raced down the back of her neck.

  "Good Lord!" she gasped some twenty minutes later, "your friends at the lab got it wrong. This stuff isn't hot. It's subatomic!"

  Eyes watering, she fanned her mouth with one hand and snatched up her iced tea with the other. She downed half the glass before she doused the fiery conflagration started by one innocent tortilla chip and a scoop of hot sauce.

  "I've eaten a lot of Mexican food before," she commented, "but nothing like this."

  The waiter had warned them New Mexico's summer chili crop was just reaching peak potency, but she hadn't expected anything quite this hair-raising. When Cody ladled up a heaping scoop and crunched contently, Jill eyed him with new respect. Not so much as a single drop of sweat popped out on his brow.

  "You must have a cast-iron stomach."

  "As a matter of fact, I do." He grinned around another heaped chip. "I spent some time in Guatemala doing research a few years ago. Everyone on the team came down with an intestinal irritation at least once except me. I ate the produce, feasted on chiles rellenos and chicken pepian, and polished every meal off with bananas in a chili-spiked chocolate sauce."

  "The local cuisine sounds., interesting."

  The laugh lines crinkling the corners of Cody's eyes were even more interesting. He slouched back against the high-backed booth, relaxing in her presence for the first time. The restaurant lights gave his hair a blue-black sheen. The sides were trimmed close to his head in good military style, but not even the ruthless cut could tame the hint of a wave on top.

  He looked good in civvies, she had to admit. Almost as good as he looked in uniform. Unfortunately. Deciding this was as good a time as any to learn more about the man behind the uniform, Jill copied his slouch and slumped back against the booth.

  "Tell me more about Guatemala. I've pulled temporary duty in Colombia and took a side trip to Peru, but haven't hit the Central American isthmus yet."

  "Guatemala is one of the most beautiful places on earth," he said simply. "It's the heart of the Mayan world, with the Pacific on one side, the Caribbean on the other and everything you can imagine in between. Scruffy deserts, sky-scraping volcanic peaks, a rain forest so thick we had to hack our way back down a path we'd cut just eight or ten hours previously."

  "How long were you in the country?"

  "Three months. We spent most of it in the central highlands west of Guatemala City."

  "Doing research, you said?"

  "Right."

  And trying to sort through the mess he'd made of his marriage.

 
Cody dropped his glance to his iced tea. Idly, he traced a fingertip down the condensation clouding the glass. Alicia had been furious when he'd decided to head the team flying down to Guatemala. He was Ditech's senior medical researcher, for pity's sake! A member of their board of directors. He didn't need to trek out to some godforsaken little village in a backwater country and pick up who-knew-what bacteria. Cody's reminder that bacteria happened to be his business had only added fuel to the fire.

  Three months apart hadn't cooled Alicia's anger. She'd been armed and ready for him when he walked back in the house, and hadn't let up until the rain-soaked night he finally returned fire. The day after that, she was dead.

  "What kind of research?"

  Deliberately he focused on the woman across from him. Her warm brown eyes and steady gaze drew him from the dark pit of his memories.

  "We were testing a new ultraviolet water purifying system. Hurricane Mitch left half the country's population without safe drinking water. It also left them without electricity. The purifier Ditech devised could be powered by a car battery or a sixty-watt solar cell. Passing water through the system's UV light filter inactivated the DNA of pathogens and sanitized water at a cost of about five cents U.S. per one thousand gallons."

  "Is that good?"

  "Very good."

  For Ditech as well as for Guatemala, Jill guessed, but the waiter's arrival with two monstrous platters ended the conversation. The next few moments were taken up by an explanation of each item on the overflowing plates and another warning to go easy on the hot sauce. The ensuing half hour was devoted to enchiladas so spicy they burned a hole in her esophagus, pinto beans that seared the roof of her mouth and repeated refills of both her iced tea and water glasses.

  "I never realized I possessed such masochistic tendencies," she commented, surveying her near-empty platter. "I'm stuffed. Burning from the inside out, but stuffed."

  "Hope you saved room for a sopapilla. Doused in honey, it'll put out some of the fire."

  As if on cue, the waiter appeared to spirit away their plates and replace them with a basket of puffed dough squares still warm from the oven.

  "You're right," Jill said after the first bite made a slow descent to her tummy. "The honey helps."

  Tearing off another corner of the sugary bread, she squeezed on a generous dollop, popped it into her mouth, and chewed contentedly. Across the table, the laugh lines appeared beside Cody's eyes again.

  "What?"

  "You've got honey dribbling down your chin."

  Oh, nice! Nothing like displaying her couth or lack thereof. Jill daubed at her chin with her napkin and only succeeded in smearing the sticky stuff.

  "Hold still," the doc ordered, leaning across the table. "I'll get it."

  Jill surrendered her napkin, which he dipped in her water glass. She also surrendered her chin. He curled a hand under it and tipped her face to the light. His thumb grazed the side of her jaw, making a small circle while he worked. The cloth felt damp and cool against Jill's skin, Cody's touch disturbingly warm and erotic. She managed to keep her expression neutral, but it took some doing.

  He must have felt something of the tension snapping along her nerves. His brow creasing, he withdrew his hand and dropped the napkin.

  "I think I got it all. You finished? I need to stop by Decker Labs before it gets too late."

  Chapter 8

  Jill saw an entirely new side to Cody at Decker Labs.

  She'd fixed his Public Health Service officer persona firmly in her mind. If asked, she could describe-in precise detail his uniform cap with its anchor and caduceus, his knife-creased khaki shirt and pants, even the white lab coat and the stethoscope he draped around his neck while seeing patients at the clinic. On-site and at work, he was cool, calm and in charge.

  She'd also observed him twice in civvies, first when she'd put him facedown in the dirt and now tonight. Each time he'd left a definite impression. Under oath, Jill would have to admit Cody Richardson could certainly do justice to a pair of jeans.

  At the research center only a few blocks from the restaurant, she discovered another facet of this confusing, confounding man. To the folks at Decker, he was apparently a god.

  "Decker is a relatively small lab," he informed her as he pulled into an almost deserted parking lot. The Lincoln's headlights swept across the facade of a two-story tan stucco building decorated with turquoise trim and prehistoric Indian symbols. "They're doing some interesting studies on the nasal and respiratory irritation of Gulf War veterans."

  Nasal irritation didn't sound like a particularly vital research area to Jill until Cody elaborated.

  "We're just beginning to understand the long-term effects of blowing sand and the inhalation of intense hydrocarbons from the oil fires during Operation Desert Storm. Preliminary findings indicate the constant irritation could have weakened the nose-brain barrier."

  "That doesn't sound good."

  "It isn't. The theory is the weakened barrier allowed particles of the depleted uranium used in armor-piercing artillery shells to enter the central nervous system of soldiers in the field. We know DU is toxic to the kidney because of its properties as a heavy metal. The research is attempting to determine if it's neurotoxic, as well."

  Desert Storm had kicked off during Jill's senior year in college. She'd missed that action, but a number of the soldiers in the Pegasus detachment were Gulf veterans. That concerned her. So did the fact the military still fired the shells Cody had referred to.

  "The Army's been using depleted uranium armor-piercing shells for years," she said as she slid out of the cloud-soft leather seat. Thudding the car door shut, she joined him for the short walk to the front door. "So have civilian law enforcement agencies. Are you saying researchers are just now discovering DU particles can be inhaled?"

  "Not in most situations," he replied, pressing the buzzer beside the double glass doors. "But the combination of smoke from those oil field fires, blowing sand and extensive use of DU weaponry made for very unique circumstances. What's being studied now is whether that combination could have contributed to the variety of symptoms Gulf War veterans reported after the conflict."

  Jill was a little slow making the connection, but when she did, her stomach knotted. Blowing sand. Armor-piercing artillery shells. The only thing the Pegasus project lacked was a fire that billowed thick, black smoke. So far!

  Impatiently she waited until a security guard had buzzed them in, checked their IDs and called for an escort. Drawing Cody to the towering ficus that dominated the lobby, she asked the question now burning in her mind.

  "Do you think the unique circumstances you mention might have something to do with this mysterious bug Ed Santos picked up?"

  Cody cast a cautious look at the guard and lowered his voice. "Do I think he inhaled it? No, I think he either ingested it or was bitten by an insect that transmitted it. But until we identify the strain and the source, I'm not ruling anything out."

  Oh, great! As if Jill didn't have enough to worry about with two hundred square miles of desert to defend against intruders and a multimillion-dollar weapon system to safeguard! Resisting the impulse to gnaw on a fingernail, she waited with Cody under the drooping ficus.

  "Dr. Richardson."

  The researcher who came forward to greet them wore three-inch spike heels, a black silk sheath that clung to her slender curves and a silver necklace with a turquoise-studded squash blossom the size of Manhattan under her white lab coat. More turquoise and silver banded her wrists and dangled from her ear-lobes.

  "I'm sorry I missed you this afternoon. I hope my people took good care of you."

  "They did."

  Returning her warm handclasp, Cody introduced Jill to Dr. Sylvia Nez. The sleekly beautiful director of Decker Labs acknowledged the introduction with a friendly nod, but her fellow scientist clearly claimed her full attention.

  "I was on my way to a gala at the Santa Fe opera when my people called with the results of the secon
d round of tests. I had to come back and verify the findings myself." Her dark eyes glinted. "They're pretty exciting."

  An answering gleam leaped into Cody's eyes. "Are they?"

  "We think you've discovered a new strain of fla-vivirus. Its RNA and genomic nucleic-acid structures are similar to the Ntaya and Rio Bravo agents, but it has its own distinct serology."

  She led the way down a hall bathed with light so bright the glare off the tiled floor almost hurt Jill's eyes. Some doors stood open, revealing offices with furnishings buried under piles of books, medical journals and reports. Other doors were closed and prominently marked with Restricted Access in large red letters.

  Dr. Nez halted before a pair of doors near the end of the hall. As her long fingers worked the cipher lock, she gave Jill an apologetic glance over her shoulder.

  "I'm sorry, Major Bradshaw. We don't have your credentials or your clearances on file. You'll have to wait in the prep area with one of my assistants."

  "No problem."

  "Robert will take care of you," she said, indicating an earnest young technician. "Get the major some coffee, will you, Rob?"

  "Sure." The assistant's gaze turned almost worshipful. "How about you, Dr. Richardson?"

  Declining with a smile, Cody followed Dr. Nez through another set of doors. The lock clicked shut behind him. The young technician swallowed his obvious disappointment at being left out of the action and filled a foam cup.

  "Do you take cream or sugar?"

  "Neither, thanks."

  He handed Jill the cup and gave the closed inner door another glance, this one filled with reverence.

  "I can't believe I actually got to meet the man who developed the current universal protocols for immune electron microscopy."

  Whatever that was.

  "I understand Dr. Richardson is a big dog in his field," Jill commented, intrigued by the research assistant's awe.

  "Big! Cody Richardson is top dog as far as I'm concerned. I just about fell out of my chair when Dr. Nez called to say we were going to run some tests for him. Then, to have him show up at the lab in person this afternoon. Wow!"