entomology,” Brad affirmed, still rather impressed by the fact. “I did a quick background check. She teaches at a small private college in Georgia. She’s out here doing research on an endangered species of butterfly.”
Gibbons’s scowl made Brad take a deep breath before he added, “But there is another slight problem, sir. Someone else was with her. She says it was her sister. The sister split so fast there wasn’t any time to stop her. I radioed ahead and have a patrol out now to bring her in. She was way off the main road. I’m sure we’ll stop her before she gets back to Roswell.”
“You’d damn well better stop her!” Gibbons bellowed. “Do you have any idea what will happen if that woman hits Roswell screaming a strange aircraft carried off her sister? Hell, every news team in the country will be on top of us so fast we won’t know what hit us!”
Brad cringed. “That isn’t going to happen, sir. They should bring her in any minute now.”
Gibbons resumed his pacing, then stopped to glare at Brad again. “I want both of those women in my office within the hour. Do you hear me? We have a top secret operation to protect here, and I don’t intend to let a couple of tourists jeopardize our testing.”
Brad nodded. “I’m sure they can be convinced to keep silent, sir. It may take some fast talking, but…”
“Fast talking, hell!” Gibbons shouted. “I intend to scare the living crap out of them.”
“Well, we do have the upper hand here.” Brad threw that in for good measure, hoping he might spare his pretty prisoner and her sister some of the old man’s wrath. “I mean, the professor knows she was trespassing. I’m sure if you explain…”
“You leave those details to me.” Gibbons made another lap around the room, then flopped back down at his desk. “Now get the hell out of here and see if they’ve located that sister yet.”
Brad gave his commander a salute, turned on his heel and was one step from reaching for the door-knob when a loud knock brought him to a stop. The commander’s anxious-looking aide stepped into the room the second Brad swung the door open.
“Sorry to interrupt,” said the young lad who barely had a trace of peach fuzz on his face. “The patrol Captain Hawkins sent out just called in to say they weren’t successful in their search. They said you’d want to know.”
Brad prepared himself for the rage that immediately followed.
“Get your ass to Roswell, Hawkins. And do it now,” the voice of authority yelled from across the room. “And don’t step foot in my office again until you have this whole mess straightened out!”
After a quick salute Brad hurried from his commander’s office, already suspecting, however, that his new assignment would be his own personal version of Mission Impossible.
MADDIE CONTINUED TO PULL away every time Sergeant Baker tried to take her arm. “I’m perfectly capable of walking unassisted,” she told him in a frosty tone that should have turned the big goon into an ice sculpture.
“Just following orders,” Baker mumbled.
“Well, as far as I’m concerned your orders are every bit as ridiculous as you bailing out of the air to capture me like some common criminal,” Maddie huffed.
“You were trespassing,” Baker reminded her.
“And exactly what penalty does trespassing carry in the Air Force, Sergeant Baker? Does the rule book say jump out of the sky and pounce on your trespasser? Shove them facedown with their arms held behind them? Bruise and batter them? Does it say shoot those pesky trespassers if they dare try to run away?”
Baker didn’t answer. Instead he continued to shepherd her along in a lumbering fashion while looking straight ahead.
“And why is your captain so concerned about someone else seeing me?” Maddie grumbled when the man towering above her stopped only long enough to look up and down a long hallway before forcibly taking her arm again and steering her down the hall.
Again, Maddie wrenched her arm free, then sent a wistful look back over her shoulder. As luck would have it, they hadn’t seen a single soul since they’d emerged from the strange aircraft they’d been riding in. If they had, Maddie would have screamed bloody murder and begged for someone to rescue her. She even thought of screaming now, but the threat of being slammed to the floor again by a guy with the build of a professional wrestler kept her silent.
The big bully! Maddie thought with a frown.
Both of her knees were scraped, probably even bleeding, and it would be weeks before the skin grew back on her right elbow. And though it briefly occurred to Maddie that her injuries were mainly due to her own kicking and struggling, she much preferred to blame those injuries on her overgrown chaperone.
“Could it be possible Captain Hawkins told you to be so secretive about my existence because he knows keeping me against my will is totally illegal?” Maddie piped up again. “Tell me the truth, Sergeant Baker. Do the two of you routinely swoop down and pluck innocent women out of the desert and spirit them away to your private living quarters? Is Captain Hawkins the brains behind some type of illegal love slave trade the two of you have going on out here in the desert?”
Again, Sergeant Baker didn’t answer, but her whimsical assessment of the situation quickly filled Maddie’s mind with thoughts of what it might be like if Captain Hawkins did hold her captive as his love slave.
Would he be the type of man to aggressively force her into submission? Never, Maddie told herself, though her heart betrayed her and skipped a beat at the possibility of such unfamiliar excitement. Or would the hunky captain lure her into his arms with gentle whispers of the tantalizing things he planned to do to her while they made slow, unhurried love?
Oh, yeah. That would undoubtedly be his style.
In fact, her interaction with him so far left no doubt he was a man of few words, but exceedingly quick in the action department. Like the way his eyes had traveled daringly over her body when she’d made the mistake of asking him to take a good look at her. His intense gaze had left her breathless.
You idiot! Maddie scolded, when her apparently sex-starved mind began wandering again. And then she asked herself, Why on earth am I having these bizarre thoughts now?
She was an educated woman. A woman with the ability to stay completely focused on her career—a career that, thanks to Captain Fantasy, had possibly been sabotaged. Yet now, she was suddenly daydreaming about being this man’s love slave.
It was completely unlike her.
Totally preposterous!
Yet, so was her current situation.
For all practical purposes, she might as well have been spirited off to another planet, Maddie reasoned. Educated and focused or not, she was totally out of her element. Could she really expect herself to act normal? Expect to remain calm and collected when she’d lost complete control of the situation?
And, of course, there was also that stupid prediction Mary Beth had made earlier about some guy knocking her feet out from under her. That had to be what was jinxing her now and turning her into some wide-eyed silly twit because some hunky soldier had paid a little attention to her.
Damn
