someone very close to him, as well. He knew the pain, the loss and bewilderment of her entire world evaporating in an instant. And maybe that was why she answered his question.
“When I was going through his personal effects, I found something.”
Jeff waited patiently, merely patting her hand a little in encouragement.
“My birth certificate. I’d never seen it before. I didn’t know-” She hadn’t even known her mother’s name until then. It had never occurred to her that Hidoshi might have tracked the woman down in the opium dens of Seoul’s slums and found a nameless orphan’s identity for her. His quiet, un-swerving love, even in death, had moved her to her first and only tears after he’d died.
Kat glanced up and realized she’d just been standing there, remembering, and Jeff was still patting her hand.
She continued, startled by the catch in her voice. “I didn’t know my father was American. I took my birth certificate and went to the American consulate in Seoul. They researched it and found out he was a serviceman stationed in Korea at the time I was born and was known to keep a Korean mistress. They decided my birth certificate was legitimate and issued me a U.S. passport. All of a sudden, I was an American citizen.”
“Have you ever met him?”
“I doubt he knows I exist.” A spurt of shame took her by surprise. She’d thought she’d gotten over that long ago. She shrugged. “But it’s okay. I had everything I needed growing up. I had no need to drop into some foreigner’s life and ruin it.”
“You’re a remarkable woman. Any man would be proud to call you his daughter.”
Suspicious heat filled her eyes. She said lightly, “I have to give your mother credit. She certainly taught you good manners.”
He grabbed her roughly by the shoulders. “I didn’t say that to be polite, dammit. I mean it. You’re smart and beautiful and athletic as hell. You’ve got it all.”
That’s what they all said. Hearing the same old line from Jeff disappointed her. She sighed, then replied emotionlessly. “You’re doing what everyone does-judging me purely based on what you can see. You don’t know me at all.”
“Ahh, but that’s where you’re wrong. We’re alike, you and I. We’re soldiers. We live by a code of honor most other people scoff at, but we don’t care. We can and do kill without regret. It’s part of keeping our country safe, so we do it. We take our work seriously and have both made sacrifices, particularly in our personal lives, to do this job we love.”
She blinked up at him as he fell silent. She supposed they did know a lot about each other after all, just by the nature of the profession they shared. It took a certain type of person to do what they did.
“Sorry,” he muttered. “I don’t usually climb on that soapbox. And besides, you know that chorus already.” He turned and they continued down the beach in silence.
They’d walked for maybe another ten minutes when Kat noticed lights nestled in the midst of a verdant forest carpeting the mountain that rose steeply on their right. “What’s that up there?”
“The Gray estate.”
“It looks white to me.”
Jeff chuckled. “The mansion is white. But the owners are Carson and Lucy Gray. They own about half of this island.”
“Seriously?”
“Yeah. He comes from a shipping family. Owns a big fleet of container ships. He donated the caves to us, in fact. His wife is American. A geologist of some kind. Supervised the construction of the H.O.T. Watch facilities. They have three or four kids now. Nice family. I see them on the beach sometimes.”
“How long has the H.O.T. Watch complex been operating?” Kat asked curiously.
“Construction started about five years ago. It’s been up and running for about a year.”
She nodded. “That would explain why I haven’t heard of it before now.”
He grinned over at her. “You have your secret Medusa Project, and I have mine.”
She smiled back. “Touche.”
Without warning, her purse erupted into sound, her cell phone emitting the custom ring that indicated the office was calling. Simultaneously, Jeff reached for his buzzing cell phone.
She flipped open her phone. “Go ahead.” No need to identify herself. Anyone who had this number knew who she was.
“Jennifer Blackfoot here. Sorry to interrupt your evening, but we need you and Maverick back here. There’s been another robbery.”
Chapter 5
Jeff thought fast. They needed to get back to the Bat Cave right away. It would take them a good hour to hike from here to a road, get a taxi to the south beach, and board the minisub for the long ride back to the H.O.T. Watch complex. Or they could use the emergency entrance, which was quite a bit closer.
He looked over at Kat’s filmy silk dress and asked regretfully, “Is there any chance you can run in that outfit?”
She glanced down in surprise. “Sure. I could do a marathon in this if I had to. Although I’d tear my feet up. I haven’t conditioned them for long distances barefoot.”
“How ’bout a couple miles on a sandy beach?”
She shrugged. “No problem.”
“Let’s go, then.” He took off running and Kat followed suit. “You set the pace,” he told her.
“How big a crisis is this?” she asked, breathing deeply but easily.
“Don’t kill yourself, but we need to get there with dispatch.”
“Six-minute mile okay, or do you need faster? I can do one four-thirty mile in a pinch. Although on sand…maybe five minutes would be my best time.”
He stared in shock.
She loped along beside him as easily and lightly as a gazelle. “I run marathons in my spare time.”
He just shook his head. “You’re one of a kind.”
“Actually not. One of the women on our team is a triathlete. Now
Jeez. They were all superhuman. Scary.
They settled into a hard but steady run down the beach. He tried not to notice how her silk dress fluttered back against her body, outlining it in glorious, flowing detail. She was as graceful in motion as she looked standing still. He immensely enjoyed the pounding surf, the cool night air rushing in and out of his lungs, the wet sand giving gently beneath his feet and the unison he and Kat fell into, side by side, step for step with one another.
After a good two miles at the killer pace, Kat glanced over at him. “How much farther?” she asked.
“Why? You winded?”
She chuckled. “Not at all. Just curious. Actually, I’m just getting warmed up.”
He was more than “just warming up,” but he could certainly hold this pace for a good long while. “We’re almost there. Emergency entrance to the H.O.T. Watch. Highly classified. I’ll have to kill you if you tell anyone about it.”
She nodded, smiling, and kept running. At least she had the grace to be working hard enough beside him to avoid chatty conversation. But damn, she was in good shape. He’d never met another female who could keep up with him in a full-out run like this.
They rounded a point, and Pirate’s Cove arced away before them. The low, ramshackle shape of Pirate Pete’s Delivery Service came into view. The courier business was a cover for the H.O.T. Watch’s more visible operations on the island, like airplanes and helicopters coming and going and deliveries and departures of large, unmarked crates.
“Over there.” He directed her to Pirate Pete’s and they stopped under the porch’s shadowed overhang. As he dug keys out of his pocket, he commented, “This is the part where you breathe hard after that run and make me
