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The smile broadened. “Okay then. The food will be arriving shortly. Our guys outside will take delivery.”
Clearly, Black wasn’t thinking of him. Pierce could be a vegan teetotaler for all anyone cared. Fair enough. It was Riley who needed relaxation, good food, a good night’s sleep. She was carrying too heavy a burden as it was.
Black was holding out a big hand to Riley, which she took gingerly. He shook her hand gently, briefly. “Riley. It was a pleasure meeting you. You’ve done something extraordinary for your country. I can’t tell you how much I admire you. Tomorrow we’re going to change history, and it will be thanks to you.”
She flushed at the unexpected compliment. To have Jacob Black say he admired you was something else. Good. She’d been as pale as ice and it was great to see her with a little color in her cheeks.
“Pierce.” Black gave him a look which was a summons and Pierce accompanied him to the door.
Black put a hand on his shoulder. “This is going to be hard,” he said.
“Tell me something I don’t know. But we do hard. We trained to do hard.”
“Yeah, we do. Like I said, I’m going to set up some meetings tomorrow in the Pentagon and in Congress. Maybe the White House, if I can. Riley is going to have to come to most of those meetings. I hate that because it exposes her, but there’s no other way.”
Pierce hated it too. If it were up to him, he’d pack Riley in cotton, put her in the panic room of this super secure safe house, and wait it all out. Keep her safe. But a lot of non-tech people would have to be convinced, and she was the best person for that. No way could he or Black get up to speed enough to convince others.
“Sommers will do anything to get to her. He’s dangerous.”
“It’s all dangerous. I can tell you right now that there’s a substantial number of people in power, inside the military and out, who are salivating at the thought of a limited war with China. Nobody wants to go nuclear—though that can’t be completely ruled out—but a nice little war, off in the China Sea, testing out new weapons systems, maybe securing the Taiwan Strait—that would suit them just fine. And they’d have no desire to hear that the proof they’ve got of Chinese provocation is fake. Not to mention that the woman who proved that is wanted for questioning for murder.”
“It’s up to us to make sure Riley can testify.”
“I’ll make sure she gets to see the right people. You make sure she stays safe.”
Pierce resisted the urge to salute. Neither of them was in the military, and anyway, Black wouldn’t have been his commanding officer. But the urge was strong.
Black turned in the doorway and looked at Riley sitting on the couch. He lifted a long forefinger and raised his voice. “Oh, and Riley!” She cocked her head. “No climbing buildings!”
His face contorted strangely, and an odd sound came out of his chest. Laughter. The Jacob Black version of laughter. Luckily Riley recognized it immediately for what it was and smiled back.
Black turned back to him and patted his shoulder. “Okay, food should be arriving very soon. There’ll be a little of everything, and some good wine. There are clean clothes in the bedroom. Women’s clothes, too. Oh, and Pierce—”
“Yeah?”
They were at the open door. Across the street Pierce could see a stake-out car, and he knew there were others. He was thinking about rota systems and convoy configurations when Black leaned over and murmured directly into his ear.
“Condoms are in the top drawers of the bedside tables in the bedrooms.”
7
By the time Riley took another shower and rummaged through the surprisingly broad choice of women’s clothing, food had arrived. She heard the front door open and male voices talking while she put on a sky-blue sweat suit and found a pair of slippers that fit her. There was a selection of footwear, too. Pumps to sneakers to sandals to boots, in a range of sizes. They were ready for anything and anybody.
God only knew what would be available to the men since she imagined more men used the safehouse than women. Except for her friends in the IT department, ASI was made up of all men, all—with one exception, Hope’s guy Luke Reynolds—former SEALs. And the Black Inc. people she’d seen so far were all men.
She was used to working in an all-male environment, though the people working at NSO were men in the sense of having a Y chromosome, but that was it, compared to men like Pierce and Mr. Black. Jacob.
The guys she worked with were either underweight or overweight, had no muscle tone at all, and had faces that never saw the sun. They all looked like ghosts—pale and insubstantial.
Not Pierce.
Nope.
Again, when she entered the dining room, he stood. Which wasn’t necessary but nice. He seemed to fill the room with his presence—tall, strong without being gym-rat muscly, at ease in his body. Most of the men she knew fidgeted, twitched, averted their eyes. Happiest alone at their desks with their computers and bag of Doritos.
Pierce kept his eyes right on her every step of the way. He circled the small table and held her chair out for her. Was that part of SEAL training?
The table almost groaned with food and he’d pulled over another table for the overrun. There seemed to be some of everything, in great abundance—two types of pasta, green and white; two types of red meat—ossobuco and tagliata; chickenal mattonewith onion rings; a big mixed salad with lots of aromatic rocket; baked peppers; four bruschette with bright red cherry tomatoes. The other table was filled with fresh diced fruits, a big bowl of panna cotta, six cannoli, and—
