Free Body Double by Vicki Hinze Page B

you like to fish?”
    “Yeah.” What woman in her right mind could resist putting the world on hold for a few minutes when Mark Cross looked at her with little-boy hope and eagerness? Even if he had made the suggestion only so she’d relax and let her mind shut down for a while. She appreciated the gesture, especially knowing he remembered everything about his experience and how challenging it was to reorient and transition.The hardest part was cutting off the adrenaline flood. Fishing, being calming and soothing and slow-paced, would help.
    “Come on.” He pushed back his chair. “I’ve got a killer Ultra Lite rod you’re going to love.”
    An hour later, they were barefoot, sprawled in low chairs at the end of the dock, rocked back with their lines in the water and their thoughts lost in the quiet of twilight. Neither of them seemed particularly inclined to talk. The quiet settled around them, soothed them, and the tension knotting the muscles in Amanda’s neck and stomach slowly melted away. It was the first time in over a year she’d felt so relaxed.
    After a while, Mark sighed. “Amanda?” He sounded tentative, and he kept his gaze fixed on the water.
    What should she think of that? “Yeah?”
    “I, um, have a confession to make.”
    Interesting. “Oh?”
    “Yeah.” He dragged his gaze to hers and, judging by his sour expression, he felt pretty rotten about whatever he had done and was about to confess. “The VOQ wasn’t overbooked.”
    Her heart rate kicked up to warp speed. “It wasn’t?”
    “Not exactly.”
    “Not exactly?” She rolled her neck and rubbed at a knot of tension in it. Available guest accommodations were fixed, not flexible. “Either it was or wasn’t booked up, Mark.”
    His face reddened. “It wasn’t.”
    “Then why did you say it was?” Afraid to read too much into this, she treaded cautiously. They were attracted to each other on a lot of levels, but that didn’t mean either of them would choose to act on that attraction, and assuming it did could cause consequences that ranged from bad to downright embarrassing.
    He gave his shoulder a little shrug. “I wanted you here.”
    The pulse in her throat throbbed and her chest cinched tight. “Because…”
    A cigar boat sped through the water, cutting an angrywhite-foam trail, and heading straight for the dock. Mark grabbed her arm and pulled her into the water.
    Cold, Amanda gasped and choked. When she broke the surface, she pegged the boat’s position and swam under the dock, following Mark.
    A bullet hit the post, three inches from her head. Splinters of wood flew.
    She dived underwater, swam out from beneath the dock, and took cover behind Mark’s boat.
    The cigar boat veered away, spewing water ten feet up off the water’s surface, and streaked toward the mouth of the bay. Two men in blue parkas, wearing dark glasses and baseball caps, stood on deck.
    Amanda looked at Mark, bobbing in the water beside her. “Aren’t we going after them?” She looked at his boat.
    “We won’t catch them. Those things are speed demons.” He looked from the vessel disappearing into the distance back to Amanda. “We should report the incident. Shots were fired.”
    Mark was right, of course, but bottom line was it would cost them more than they would gain. “It won’t serve any purpose except to get Colonel Gray crawling all over you, and Colonel Drake crawling all over me again. The Coast Guard isn’t going to catch them in that thing, anyway.”
    “You’ve got a point,” Mark conceded. “Colonel Gray wouldn’t miss any opportunity to stomp on Drake.”
    Having to work around the Providence Air Force Base commander irked Amanda. “This man sounds like a real charmer.”
    “He isn’t all bad, but he is a major work-in-progress. Little-big-man syndrome—a bad case of it. Mostly, he’s a retired-on-active-duty pain in the ass. Since he didn’t get the S.A.S.S. command promotion, he’s just doing his time until next