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“Buy American,” Shane told Carly as he retrieved his Beretta from the guard at the front door and holstered it, handed Carly her .22, then helped her on with her coat before donning his own. He turned over his valet ticket outside the Zakharian embassy, but kept a watchful eye on their environs as they waited for his car to be brought around. “That’s the first thing my political advisors insisted on when I ran for Congress. Buy American.”
She pointed toward the pistol already tucked away. “A Beretta isn’t American made.”
“No, but it’s standard issue for the US Marine Corps, and I’m familiar with it. I do own a Smith & Wesson I inherited from my dad—I just prefer the Beretta I’m used to. I figure if the Corps uses it, the public can’t complain.” He smiled. “Besides, a gun isn’t in the public eye the way a car is. So I used the ‘Buy American’ dictum as an excuse to buy my dream car—a Mustang GT.”
“What had you been driving?”
He laughed. “A Toyota Corolla. I’d wanted a Mustang ever since I was a kid. But for one reason or another, I’d always driven practical cars, even before I was married.”
He stopped abruptly. He hadn’t talked about his deceased wife in years. At first he hadn’t mentioned Wendy’s name because it made his friends uncomfortable—they didn’t know what to say to him. Then it had gotten to be a habit. Not that he didn’t think about her. He did. Especially on certain days, such as her birthday, their anniversary and the anniversary of the day she’d been murdered. And at Christmastime. He always thought of Wendy at Christmas.
“Her name was Wendy, wasn’t it?” Carly asked. “What was she like?”
Their eyes met, and Shane knew the question wasn’t just idle curiosity on Carly’s part—she really wanted to know. He automatically turned his gaze back to the street, on the alert for any betraying movement while he thought about what to tell her. “She was special to me. To everyone who knew her, really. We were high school sweethearts—stereotypical, I know. I joined the Corps out of high school while Wendy went to college. And when I realized I wanted to make the Corps my career, she supported my decision, even though she was scared to death whenever I was deployed. We were married the day after I graduated from OCS. That’s—”
“Officer Candidates School,” Carly finished for him. “Yes, I know.”
He glanced at her, then focused on the street again. “It’s funny,” he said. “Wendy was always worried about me, but I was never injured in combat. All the theaters of war I served in, and not a single scratch. But Wendy...” He trailed off.
“I know what happened, Shane,” Carly said softly. “You don’t have to tell me.”
A pang went through him as it always did when he remembered the details. When he remembered having to identify his wife’s mutilated corpse. “She was seven months pregnant,” he rasped. “What kind of twisted monsters kidnap a pregnant woman, then use her to send a political message?”
“Subhumans,” she stated. “Not sick. Not twisted. Not even men. Just subhuman.”
That’s the perfect word for them, Shane thought. Subhuman. He’d tracked down Wendy’s murderers—a terrorist cell operating from Belgium. He’d wanted so badly to take them down himself, to avenge Wendy and their unborn son by wiping their murderers from the face of the earth. But he hadn’t been able to do it. Some spark of humanity had remained, and he’d called in the Belgian army instead.
But he hadn’t shed a tear when the terrorists had blown themselves up rather than be captured.
Shane was relieved when he saw his black Mustang pull up in front of the embassy. Not that he was in a hurry for his evening with Carly to end, but because he really didn’t want to think about Wendy anymore tonight.
He’d been involved with a few women in the fifteen years since Wendy’s death. But none who touched his emotions the way Carly did. He’d gone from admiration—and, okay, lust—to anger at how careless she was with her safety in the blink of an eye. Then the pendulum had swung back to admiration and—yeah, yeah, yeah—lust again. She was a complex woman with more facets than a diamond, and he wanted to delve beneath the surface to discover what kind of woman she was at heart.
