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Captain Zale checked in the doorway when he saw McKinnon, who stood up, and said to Alec, “We were done, weren’t we, Special Agent Jones? I’ll get back to you about what we discussed.” He smiled easily at the captain. “Good to see you again.” Then he was gone, passing Captain Zale in the doorway and closing the door softly behind him.
Alec took a deep, calming breath and arranged his face in stoic lines, refusing to betray his reaction to whatever the other man was going to tell him. He held himself so tightly, his muscles ached. “What about Lieutenant Mateja?”
“Are you aware the lieutenant is under observation by the secret intelligence service?” the captain asked abruptly. “As are all the members of the security details since the assassination attempt?”
Alec let himself breathe, let his muscles relax against the strict control he’d exerted when he thought he was going to be told the worst, that his Angel was dead. Not dead, his brain whispered. She’s not dead. For an instant nothing else mattered. Then he focused on what the captain had just said. If Zakhar’s secret intelligence service had Angelina under surveillance, then that meant...
“I wasn’t aware Lieutenant Mateja’s personal life was subject to military scrutiny,” he said with a nonchalance he was far from feeling.
“It would not be,” the captain snapped, “if you had not requested she be added to your team investigating the trafficking case. Can you not see you have compromised her?” he argued hotly. “Called her integrity into question? She is one of my best men, and now—”
Furious at having his own integrity impugned, Alec refused to let him finish. “My personal involvement with Lieutenant Mateja has absolutely nothing to do with this case, and you’d better believe it, Captain,” he said in clipped tones. “It’s crucial we find her cousin and convince her to testify, and Lieutenant Mateja can assist in that effort—that’s the only reason I asked the king to put her on my team.”
Both hot under the collar, both operating under intense emotion held under a tight rein, the two men stared narrow-eyed at each other for a moment. Then Alec took a mental step back from the brink. “Look,” he said reasonably, realizing honesty would serve him best here. “She didn’t want anyone to know— especially you—because she didn’t want you to think badly of her. She’s conscientious to a fault, devoted to her job and to you, and fearless in her determination to keep the queen safe.”
He waited for that to register with the other man. “But she’s human, and she has the right to be a woman as well as a fighting man. The king’s words—‘fighting man’—not mine,” he added dryly. “She has the right to keep her private life private so long as it doesn’t get in the way of doing her job. And it won’t. You should know her well enough to know that much about her. I shouldn’t have to tell you.”
An expression that in anyone else would be called chagrin crossed the captain’s face. “You are correct,” he said stiffly after a moment. “Lieutenant Mateja is, as I stated earlier, one of my best men. I can count on the fingers of one hand men I would pick for a mission before I would pick her. And not,” he was quick to add, “for any other reason than she is a woman, and there are still men in the Zakharian National Forces who resent women in the military. In every other way, she is an exemplary officer.”
He laughed unexpectedly. “She even threw me once in hand-to-hand combat,” he explained. “Me! She took me by surprise, of course, but still...” He shook his head in disbelief.
“Join the crowd,” Alec said with a self-deprecating smile.
“You, too?” Captain Zale asked.
“Yeah. And yeah, she took me by surprise, too, but still...” The two men shared a look of commiseration.
“Your secret is safe with me,” the captain assured Alec.
“Same here.” Now that they’d calmed down a little, Alec ventured to say, “Your respect means a hell of a lot to her. Even when you suspected her of being involved in the assassination conspiracy, even when she thought you were unfairly blaming her for having to kill Tcholek, she defended you to me. That kind of loyalty is rare.”
“I did not really suspect her,” Captain Zale was quick to say. “Majors Kostya and Branko—the king’s favorite bodyguards—they are the ones who raised the possibility. I knew in my heart she was innocent, but I also knew I could not prove it—not to their satisfaction. They are ruthless in their devotion to the king. So I allowed her to be questioned by them until it was obvious to all she was telling the truth.
