Devil in Dress Blues by Karen Foley Read Free Book Online Page B

hard she tried to come across as sophisticated and independent. He recalled the look of confusion in her eyes when he’d refused to accept her hand at the charity ball. The memory still made him cringe. He’d behaved like a dick, and all because she’d reminded him a little too much of Ann Lonquist, with her big blue eyes and guileless smile. His initial reaction to Sara had been too reminiscent of his reaction to Ann, only on a bigger scale. He’d been rendered momentarily brainless. He might have rejected her handshake, but he’d spent the night of the ball wondering what it would be like to have her lips on his body, and to fill his hands with her amazing breasts.
    He took a hefty swallow of the dark stout, telling himself again that he was an idiot. He might find Sara sexy as hell, but he wasn’t stupid enough to get involved with her.
    A journalist. A freaking reporter.
    Go figure.
    He wondered again how she had discovered his involvement in the rescue of the aid workers in Pakistan, and who her source was. There were only a select few people who knew about his role in the rescue, and aside from his own men, most of them were in the higher echelons of the Pentagon.
    Rafe was in the process of taking another swig of beer when he paused, the glass raised halfway to his mouth. Sara Sinclair strode past the window of the pub, her coppery hair swinging over her shoulders, her breasts gently bouncing beneath her blue sweater. Rafe barely resisted the urge to press his face to the glass and watch her retreat down the sidewalk. Shaking his head at his own foolishness, he raised his glass again and then paused, the motion arrested by what he saw outside on the sidewalk. A man followed Sara, and as Rafe watched, he gestured to someone on the other side of the street.
    Rafe’s heart rate kicked up a notch and he swiftly set down the beer and threw some money on the table. Even as part of his brain argued not to get involved, that it was none of his business, he was out the door of the pub before he’d fully realized it. The gesture had been swift and subtle, no more than several flicks of the man’s hand, but Rafe recognized the hand signals. He’d used them himself numerous times during close engagements in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
    Follow. Intercept. Stay out of sight.
    The hand signals were used almost exclusively by the military or law enforcement, but instinct told Rafe the man following Sara was neither. Glancing down the sidewalk, he saw the first man striding purposefully along, keeping five or six pedestrians between himself and his target. Across the street, Rafe saw a second man working his way swiftly through the crowd, presumably to head Sara off.
    Even as he watched, Sara turned a corner and disappeared, and the man across the street sprang into action, sprinting into oncoming traffic in order to cross to where she’d vanished down a narrow passageway between buildings. Rafe guessed she was headed for a parking lot on the next street and the alley was a shortcut through. Even if he ran, he wouldn’t be able to catch up with Sara before the two men reached her, and every instinct in his body told him this wasn’t going to end well for her.
    With a muttered curse, he ducked back into the pub and headed for the rear exit, ignoring the surprised exclamation of a waitress as she came around the bar with a tray of drinks.
    “Sorry,” he muttered, then pushed through the exit door onto a narrow service road and quickly orientated himself. If he sprinted, he could approach the alley from the opposite direction, but he’d need to move fast if he wanted to reach Sara before the two men did. He took off at a dead run, estimating it would take no more than ten seconds to reach the far end of the alleyway.
    The lane behind the pub was blocked off and he had to scale the security fence to reach the next road, but it took him no effort to leverage himself over the chain link and drop easily to his feet on the other