Soldier of Fortune

“Will you be reasonable, J.D.!” the younger man argued, his lean hands waving wildly, his red hair almost standing on end around his thin face. “It’s a job for the police! What can you do?”

J.D. didn’t even look at him. He paused at Gabby’s desk, an expression on his face that she’d never seen before. Involuntarily, she studied the broad face with its olive complexion and deep-set eyes. He had the thickest, blackest eyelashes she’d ever seen. His hair was just as thick and had deep waves in it, threaded with pure silver. It was the faint scars on his face that aged him, but she’d never quite had the bravado to ask where and how he’d gotten them. It must have been some kind of man who put them there. J.D. was built like a tank.

“Pack a bag,” he told Gabby, in a tone too black to invite questions. “Be back here in an hour. Is your passport in order?”

She blinked. Even for J.D., this was fast shuffling. “Uh, yes…”

“Bring lightweight things, it’ll be hot where we’re going. Lots of jeans and loose shirts, a sweater, some boots and a lot of socks.” He continued nonstop. “Bring that radio operator’s license you hold. Aren’t you kin to someone at the State Department? That might come in handy.”

Her mind was whirling. “J.D., what’s going…?” she began.

“You can’t do this,” Dick was continuing doggedly, and J.D. was just ignoring him.

“Dick, you’ll have to handle my caseload until I get back,” he pressed on in a voice that sounded like thunder rumbling. “Get Charlie Bass to help you if you run into any snags. I don’t know exactly when we’ll be back.”

“J.D., will you listen?”

“I’ve got to pack a few things,” J.D. said curtly. “Call the agency, Gabby, and get Dick a temporary assistant. And be back here in exactly one hour.”

The door slammed behind him. Dick cursed roundly and rammed his hands into his pockets.

“What,” Gabby asked, “is going on? Will somebody please tell me where I’m going with my passport? Do I have a choice?”

“Slow down and I’ll tell you what little I know.” Dick sighed angrily. He perched himself on her desk. “You know that J.D.’s sister is married to that Italian businessman who made a fortune in shipping and lives in Palermo, Sicily?”

She nodded.

“And you know that kidnapping is sometimes a fast method of funding for terrorist groups?” he continued.

She felt herself going pale. “They got his brother-in-law?”

“No. They got his sister when she went alone on a shopping trip to Rome.”

She caught her breath. “Martina? But she’s the only family he has!”

“I know that. They’re asking for five million dollars, and Roberto can’t scrape it up. He’s frantic. They told him they’d kill her if he involved the authorities.”

“And J.D. is going to Italy to save her?”

“However did you guess?” Dick grumbled. “In his usual calm, sensible way, he is moving headfirst into the china shop.”

“To Italy? With me?” She stared at him. “Why am I going?”

“Ask him. I only work here.”

She sighed irritably as she rose to her feet. “Someday I’m going to get a sensible job, you wait and see if I don’t,” she said, her eyes glittering with frustration. “I was going to eat lunch at McDonald’s and leave early so I could take in that new science-fiction movie at the Grand. And instead I’m being bustled off to Italy…to do what, exactly?” she added with a frown. “Surely to goodness, he isn’t going to interfere with the Italian authorities?”

“Martina is his sister,” Dick reminded her. “He never talks about it, but they had a rough upbringing from what I can gather, and they’re especially close. J.D. would mow down an army to save her.”

“But he’s a lawyer,” she protested. “What is he going to do?”

“Beats me, honey.” Dick sighed.

“Here we go again,” she muttered as she cleared her desk and got her purse out of the drawer. “Last time he did this, we were off to Miami to meet a suspected mob informer in an abandoned warehouse at two o’clock in the morning. We actually got shot at!” She shuddered. “I didn’t dare tell my mama what was going on. Speaking of my mama, what am I supposed to tell her?”

“Tell her you’re going on a holiday with the boss.” He grinned. “She’ll be thrilled.”

She glared at him. “The boss doesn’t take holidays. He takes chances.”

“You could quit,” he suggested.

“Quit!” she exclaimed. “Who said anything about quitting? Can you see me working for a normal attorney? Typing boring briefs and deeds and divorce petitions all day? Bite your tongue!”

“Then may I suggest that you call James Bond,” he said, “and ask if he has any of those exploding matches or nuclear warhead toothpicks he can spare.”

She gave him a hard glare. “Do you speak any Spanish?”

“Well, no,” he said, puzzled.

She rattled off a few explicit phrases in the lilting tongue her father’s foreman had used with the ranch hands back during her childhood. Then, with a curtsy, she walked out the door.

Chapter Two

Gabby had seen J.D. in a lot of different moods, but none of them could hold a candle to the one he was in now. He sat beside her as stiff as a board on the plane, barely aware of the cup of black coffee he held precariously in one big hand.

Worst of all was the fact that she couldn’t think of anything to say. J.D. wasn’t the kind of man you offered sympathy to. But it was hard just to sit and watch him brood without talking at all. She’d rarely heard him speak of his sister, Martina, but the tenderness with which he described her had said enough. If he loved any human being on earth, it was Martina.

“Boss…” she began uneasily.

He blinked, glancing toward her. “Well?”

She avoided that level gaze. “I just wanted to say I’m sorry.” Her long, slender fingers fidgeted with the skirt of the white suit she was wearing. “I know how hard it must be for you. There’s just not a lot that people can do in these kinds of situations.”

A peculiar smile touched his hard features for a moment. He swallowed a sip of coffee. “Think not?” he asked dryly.

“You aren’t serious about not contacting the authorities?” she persisted. “After all, they’ve got special teams for these sorts of things….”

He glanced down at her. The look stopped her in midsentence. “Those special teams, Darwin, they are not infallible. I can’t take risks with Martina’s life.”

“No,” she said. She stared at his hands. They were so gracefully masculine, the fingers long and tapered and as dark olive as his face, with flat nails and a sprinkling of hair, like that curling around the watch on his wrist. He had powerful hands.

“You aren’t afraid, are you?” he asked.

She glanced up. “Well, sort of,” she confessed. “I don’t really know where we’re going, do I?”

“You should be used to that by now,” he reminded her dryly.

She laughed. “I suppose so. We’ve had some adventures in the past two years.”