McCloud's Woman (38 page)

That was unfair. Martin had been in the Balkans on a peacekeeping mission. Martin would never harm Mara.

But then, TJ reflected, it was conceivable that Martin
had profited from the crimes of others. Maybe he didn’t really know the
colonel as well as he believed he did.

“I thought she knew the guy,” Jim intruded, as if reading TJ’s mind.

“If she trusted him, she would have let him drive instead
of taking my only transportation.” Give her credit for some sense, TJ
told himself. Mara wasn’t a fool.

“He dangerous?” the driver asked warily.

“Yeah, but it’s me he wants. He has no argument with
Mara.” Martin didn’t even know what Mara was to him. She should be fine.
He was worrying needlessly.

But he knew that wasn’t true. Martin wouldn’t have traveled to a Podunk town at a time like this if he wasn’t desperate.

The limo slid around the curve from the main highway into
Cleo’s sandy lane. The long rear of the car didn’t respond well to the
lack of traction and fish-tailed half way down the drive.

TJ spotted a strange vehicle in front of Cleo’s garage and ordered Jim to halt.

“That’s his car,” Jim verified.

“Go in, tell them you’re security, verify his identity. If
it’s Colonel Martin, tell him I’ll be with him in a minute. I’m going
to check the beach in case Mara went there.”

This time, Jim responded to orders. TJ breathed a sigh of
relief, let himself out, and slipped into the shrubbery leading toward
the dune.

He should have brought a flashlight. He’d had a lantern at
the dig, but he’d packed his gear and hauled it to Cleo’s garage. The
well-worn path beneath his feet crunched with dead branches and old
clamshells. He couldn’t arrive quietly if he tried.

He wasn’t trying. The colonel was back at the house, and
TJ was racing after Mara, worrying—as he’d promised himself he wouldn’t
do.

The mayor had said she was upset. How upset? Had she
reconsidered since they’d talked this morning? He’d never believed she
would harm a child, but then he’d never believed Brad would kill
himself. He was lousy at predicting what people he loved would do.

People he
loved.
He should have told Mara how he
felt. What was the matter with him? Why couldn’t his damned intellectual
brain grasp that women needed words? If he’d just given her the right
words—

“That you, TJ?”

The unexpected sound of a male voice ringing from the
direction of the dune stopped TJ in his tracks. The colonel was supposed
to be back at the house waiting for him. Where was Mara? Fear
blossomed into panic, but TJ clenched his teeth and quelled it, groping
for an adequate response.

“I just want to talk, McCloud. You never gave me a chance
to explain. Why didn’t you call and ask before you threw me to the
wolves?”

Oh hell. Feeling as if Martin had shredded his soul with that plea, TJ walked out of the bushes to the bottom of the hill.

He could see the glowing tip of the colonel’s cigarette at
the top of the dune, where Martin was apparently examining the
abandoned excavation. TJ had removed the fence and ripped off the board
supports in preparation for the bulldozer’s arrival. It wasn’t the most
stable place to stand, but that was a minor argument next to the major
one.

“I didn’t want to be judge and jury,” he called, letting Martin know where he was.

He remembered cold winter nights with the colonel standing
much as he was now, cigarette in hand, staring into the distance as
some Balkan city in the countryside echoed with artillery fire. They’d
talked of politics and peace, holidays and home.

Now that he might be a father, TJ truly understood how
much those nights had meant to him. The colonel had filled the place of
father that TJ’s own parent had vacated. Should he have a son, he wanted
to be there for the boy as the colonel had been there for him.

Reminded that he might never have the chance to know his
child, TJ tried to find some sign of Mara, to verify she was all right,
but it was dark. She was supposed to be at the set, taking night shots.

“You played judge and jury when you didn’t destroy the boxes as I asked,” Martin pointed out with inexorable logic.

Guilt froze TJ’s tongue. He hadn’t listened to the
colonel, as he hadn’t listened to Brad. He could have cost the colonel
his career, as he’d cost Brad his life. He’d chosen to do things his own
way, instead of doing as his friend had expected him to do—as his
friend had needed him to do. Had he been acting as judge and jury by
handing the boxes to an objective third party?

“Your incompetent staff disobeyed TJ’s order to destroy the boxes.”

Mara
. TJ cursed and ran his hand through his hair in disbelief at her angry defense.

“Your staff shipped the boxes back with TJ’s gear. He knew nothing about it until he returned from Africa.”

TJ didn’t know whether to wring her neck, shout at her to
get out of here, or throw himself between her and a man on the brink of
self-destruction. He didn’t know what the colonel was doing here, but he
knew his arrival wasn’t the decision of the rational man he knew and
admired. “Mara, Jim’s back at Cleo’s. Go find him, why don’t you?”

“The tabloids call you two an item,” the colonel said
casually, flinging down the cigarette and rubbing it out with his foot.
“How do you like sleeping with a traitor, Miss Simon? I trusted McCloud
with my life, and he shot me in the back.”

“He did no such thing!” The indignation in Mara’s voice would have made a more timid man wince. “
I
told him to turn those papers over. They were tearing him apart. He
hoped they would prove your innocence. But you’re not so innocent, are
you?”

Oh, shit
, TJ thought. Now all hell would break loose. The colonel despised having his authority challenged.

Quietly, TJ edged through the bushes at the bottom of the
dune to the beach side, hoping to put himself between Mara and a
dangerous man behaving erratically. “Why are you here, Colonel?” he
called, letting Martin know he was close and available, hoping to
distract him from Mara.

“You were like the son I never had, TJ.” Martin’s voice
changed from belligerent to weary. “I love my daughters, but they don’t
understand. I thought you did.”

The gaping wound inside TJ tore wider at this admission.
He should have made more effort to listen when the colonel talked, to
understand what made him tick. Maybe Martin had had some problem that
they could talked out and resolved. Maybe the reason he didn’t have
relationships was because he was incapable of communicating with anyone
but dead people. He’d lived inside his head for so long, he didn’t know
how to listen to others.

“I didn’t read most of the material, Martin,” TJ called,
making a last-ditch effort to understand. “I’m not a military expert, so
I gave it to a man I trusted, hoping the truth wouldn’t be buried in
government red tape.”

He could hear Mara breathing in the shrubbery at the base
of the hill, and a trickle of fear slithered down his gullet. He was
torn between grabbing her and running, and staying to hear what the
colonel obviously needed to say.

As if hearing his unspoken fear, Mara whispered, “I have a
black belt in karate, but I didn’t know whether to take him out or
not.”

TJ hugged her pragmatism close to his heart. She knew how
to take care of herself—and the baby. “Just don’t get between us until I
work this out, okay?”

He waited for her whispered agreement before he would act.

“I’m safe here. Just take care of yourself, all right?”

Accepting this as her way of agreeing, TJ challenged
Martin. “I’d hoped that the evidence in those boxes would clear your
name, Colonel.”

“You should have given me a chance to explain.” The man on
the hill sounded sad and disapproving. “I had my reasons. You should
have known that.”

Fighting off the adrenaline that demanded he protect Mara
first, TJ positioned himself between her and Martin, shielding her with
his bulk. Right now, his major concern was the colonel. The man never
talked about his feelings. Something was definitely off-kilter.

But TJ wasn’t listening to logic. He was listening to random sounds, hoping Mara was moving away.

“I did know that, Colonel. That’s why I gave the boxes to
Roger.” Instinct screamed warnings, but TJ couldn’t see any obvious
threats. Martin didn’t appear to be armed.

He couldn’t take any chances. Keeping to the bushes, he crept further up the dune.

“Hey, Colonel Martin,” Mara shouted, covering the rustle
of TJ’s movement. “I’ve got wine back at the inn. I’ll introduce you to
Glynis Everett and my PR people. We’ll tell your story to the press, let
the world hear your side.”

The colonel snorted and lit another cigarette.
“Interesting female you’ve hooked up with, McCloud. A little fantasy to
hide the reality?”

No doubt about it—the colonel was a menace to himself and
to others. Still hidden, TJ searched Martin’s silhouette for signs of
firearms. “Mara’s my reality, sir. She’s right. If you have a story to
tell, she’s in the best position to do it.”

“My story won’t play well in the press,” the colonel said
in resignation. “I didn’t do it for profit. I’m not guilty of all the
crimes they’d like to pin on me, but I
am
guilty. Do a job well and unrewarded for thirty years, slip up once, and I’m a condemned man.”

Warning sirens clamored in TJ’s head. Lowering himself to
all fours, he crawled upward, out of the cover of shrubbery. Sand
shifted and crumbled beneath his fingers. “I’m sure you did what you
thought best at the time.” TJ even believed what he was saying. The
colonel he knew was an honorable man.

The man at the top of the hill wasn’t the colonel he knew.

“I just wanted you to know the truth.”

From where he was positioned, TJ could see the colonel
bouncing a ball between his hands, and he froze as he recognized the
grenade.
Mara! Get Mara out of here
.

“Milo Turkosevic is my mother’s uncle,” the colonel announced without warning.

Oh shit. TJ tried not to slide back down the hill. Milo
Turkosevic—the war criminal who’d ordered untold hundreds of women and
children raped and killed because they were a different religion from
his. He really hadn’t wanted to hear that.

“I suppose he said he was fighting for his country?” TJ
couldn’t resist asking. Stupid thing to say to a man with a grenade in
his hands, but this was the kind of heated discussion he and the colonel
used to share, and he needed time to think. Could he run back down the
hill, grab Mara, and haul her to safety? Or should he stop the colonel?

“In war, you do what you have to do. I did it in ’Nam. War is about principles and strategy, not about people.”

“War is about rich people getting richer and powerful people holding on to power,” TJ replied with scorn. “We were there as
peacekeepers
.”

Mara, get out of here
, his mind screamed. The colonel could only harm himself—if she would run.

“I know. I regret what I did, and I’ll pay the price,”
Martin said, as if they were discussing world news over a beer. “I just
wanted you to know why I did it. I knew about the protection scam, the
graft that freed prisoners for a price. I’d gathered the evidence to put
them out of business—until Milo got arrested. He swore he was innocent,
swore he would leave the country, and instead of arresting the
profiteers, I used them to free Milo. He was family, and I believed him.
You’ve got to believe in
something
.”

TJ heard Martin’s desperation and couldn’t answer it. He’d
protected the colonel for weeks because he believed he was a friend. He
didn’t know what he would have done if Martin had been one of his
family.

The colonel took his silence as condemnation. “I thought
you’d understand, even if no one else would. Better get out of here,
McCloud, take your movie star with you. I won’t dishonor my family any
longer.”

“TJ!”

He heard Mara’s cry of alarm, knew she understood as well
as he did. He couldn’t let the colonel do it. He’d spent seventeen years
in hell at his failure to prevent Brad’s death. His life wouldn’t be
worth living if he couldn’t at least attempt to stop another friend from
becoming a grisly statistic.

“You aren’t dishonoring anyone,” TJ shouted back. Somehow,
he had to find the words that always failed him. He had to talk Martin
out of this.

Scrambling to his feet, he advanced up the hill. “You’ll
devastate your family if you pull that pin. Have you ever known anyone
who committed suicide? Do you have any idea what havoc suicide wreaks on
the people left behind? You’ll destroy your daughters, your wife, rob
them of their happiness for the rest of their lives. They’ll go to their
graves wondering if there was anything they could have done to stop
you. The burden of guilt will cripple them more than the dishonor you
fear.”

“They’ll be glad to see the last of me,” the colonel
countered. “The press hounds them night and day. They’re afraid to step
out the door. Get back from here, McCloud. I’ve made up my mind and you
won’t change it. I don’t mind taking you out with me, if I have to.” The
colonel hefted the grenade in the light of the pale moon.

“TJ, don’t!” Mara screamed from the safety of Cleo’s side of the dune. TJ prayed she was going for help.

This time, he was mature enough to listen and see the
danger and act on it. Without another thought, TJ vaulted toward the
colonel.

Martin crumpled beneath TJ’s tackle. TJ’s shirt seams
ripped as he wrestled with the older man, straining to grasp the
grenade. TJ knew he was larger, but Martin was trained in hand-to-hand
combat. The colonel locked him in an arm-hold that toppled TJ to the
sand. Grappling for a stronger position, TJ twisted, but the colonel
held him in a vise-like grip. They rolled down the hill—toward the
beach and away from Mara. Her screams of terror echoed in his ears.