Dixon did neither. Instead, he took a step toward her so that they were standing even closer together. She hadn’t realized how big the SWAT officer was until that moment. He towered over her by almost a foot, and his shoulders were nearly twice as wide as she was. She decided she suddenly liked really big men.
Damn, it was going to be hard remembering this guy was the target of her next in-depth investigative article.
“I’ve never been very good at picking up subtle hints.” She gave him her best award-winning smile—the one she used on her editor when she wanted a really juicy story—and moved a fraction of an inch closer. He smelled nice. “I was simply waiting outside the compound so I could talk to you and straighten out the obvious misunderstanding the department had.”
“Of course.” He returned her smile with one of the sexiest grins she’d ever seen. “Because it must have been a mistake. After all, what cop wouldn’t want to talk to the ever-insightful Ms. Mackenzie Stone, right?”
“Exactly.”
Mac gave him a real smile this time. It was hard not to. He was one of those rare men who could be charming with a few carefully chosen words. And he seemed attracted to her—at least she was pretty sure he was.
She was just trying to figure out how to use that attraction to weasel an invite for an in-depth interview with the hunky SWAT commander when the door to the operations vehicle opened and two of his men climbed in. They hesitated for a moment when they saw her, as if surprised to find their superior alone with a woman in the back of the operations vehicle. She wasn’t sure why. It wasn’t as if they could know she was a journalist looking for a story.
One of the men was Senior Corporal Michael Taylor—the man who’d saved her life before. The other wasn’t one of the three she’d ID’d earlier, but she recognized him from the files anyway—Senior Corporal Xander Riggs. He must have been the one who’d slipped into the building before she and Zak got there.
Dixon took a step back, putting some space between them as Taylor closed the door behind him and Riggs.
“This is Mackenzie Stone from the Dallas Daily Star. Ms. Stone, meet Mike Taylor and Xander Riggs, two of my senior team members.”
Being surrounded by three guys so big and muscular in a confined space like the operations vehicle should have made her feel claustrophobic, but that definitely wasn’t how Mac felt right then. She had to make a serious effort to keep her mind in gear as she shook their hands.
She had a hundred questions about the operation she’d just witnessed, but there was one thing she needed to get straight first. “Sergeant Dixon said that one of the bank robbers was KIA. That means he was killed in action, right?”
Riggs glanced at his boss, his dark eyes questioning. Dixon nodded, signaling it was okay to talk to her. “Yes, one of the suspects was shot and killed by a member of the team. He left us no choice. When the power went out, he grabbed a hostage. We ordered him to drop his weapon, but he pointed it at the woman’s head and was about to pull the trigger. A disabling shot wasn’t an option because he was behind the woman.”
Mac noticed Riggs didn’t say which member of the team had shot the suspect, but based on the level of detail he provided and the way the muscle in his jaw flexed, she guessed it was him.
“That must have been a pretty tough shot, considering how crazy it was in there,” she said. “And in the pitch black, too.”
Xander’s eyes narrowed, but he didn’t say anything. She thought he would have taken it as a compliment, but instead he looked uncomfortable. Why did men find it necessary to downplay every heroic thing they did?
“We have excellent night vision goggles,” Taylor said. “They help.”
“Of course.” She smiled at him. “By the way, thanks for helping me out back in that alley. It’s possible I might have been in a bit of trouble.”
Taylor’s mouth curved. When he smiled, he seemed a lot less intimidating. “Something tells me you find yourself in trouble like that frequently.”
Mac shrugged. “Every now and then,” she said before turning back to Riggs. “I didn’t see you enter the building with the rest of the team. Did you go in before I got here?”
Riggs threw Dixon a sharp look. Instead of giving the corporal the okay, he answered her question this time.
“We dropped Corporal Riggs off a few blocks out from the scene. He hoofed it in over the rooftops while we were getting into position outside. He went in and set up the remote cameras and microphones while everyone inside was focused on us and the other police officers.”
Riggs and Taylor stared at their commander, clearly shocked by how open he’d been about their tactics to a member of the media. Mac was stunned, too. She’d been fishing when she’d asked the question. She hadn’t expected them to actually answer her.
Dixon chuckled. “You don’t have to look so alarmed. It’s not like I shared state secrets. Besides, Ms. Stone will be coming by the compound later today to take a look around and see how we operate.”
Mac did a double take. “Seriously?”
His amber eyes met hers. “That’s what you wanted, isn’t it? An in-depth look at a day in the life of a SWAT officer?”
She was more interested in finding out if they were hiding something, but she didn’t tell him that.
“I figured if I didn’t make the offer, you’d only hang around outside the compound for months until I agreed to let you in. Or until you tried to sneak into the middle of the next hostage situation,” he said. “This way we can do our job without worrying about you popping up out of nowhere,
