Chapter 2
CHAPTER 2
Admiral Storm North sat back in his chair and stared at the doorway Jane Hamilton had just exited. He had no idea what it was about her that had caught his attention this morning. He’d talked to her frequently over the last year…but for some reason, he hadn’t truly seen her until just now.
And he liked what he saw.
Maybe it was all his SEALs finding women of their own lately and him becoming more and more aware of his age. Maybe it was everything that had happened with Phantom and Kalee, and how hard they’d fought for their happy ending.
He didn’t know. But when he’d looked up and seen Jane smiling shyly at him from his doorway, something clicked deep inside him.
Storm was happy being a workaholic. He’d enjoyed being a SEAL and doing what he could to keep his country safe. And he was thrilled to take his current position when he’d gotten too old to be an effective SEAL. Liked solving problems at work. But…
He was lonely.
Going home to his two-story townhouse, making his solitary dinner, watching TV, and going to bed by himself day in and day out was hard. He enjoyed being around people. Having no one to talk to, to share his day with, was wearing thin.
And for just a second when Jane walked in, he thought he’d recognized the same yearning for company in her eyes that he saw in his own mirror each morning. But more than that, for the first time…he saw how Jane’s cheeks flushed slightly when she smiled at him. How her breathing increased slightly as they talked, how she bit her lip as if she was nervous.
All signs pointing to the fact that Jane wasn’t unaffected by him.
His clumsy attempt to find out if she was married was embarrassing, but her answer was more than satisfying. Storm liked that she had enough self-esteem to say her husband had been lucky when they were together. He liked that she’d called him on his own lack of taking leave. One, because she could obviously think fast on her feet, and two, because it meant she was paying attention to his comings and goings.
When he’d first been moved to the building, Storm had researched all of the contractors who worked there. He liked to know who was around him and what their backgrounds were. Pulling the details about Jane from the depths of his mind wasn’t hard. She’d been working as a contractor in the mail room for decades, just like she’d said. She’d worked her way up from an hourly clerk to manager. She was fifty-one, with an impeccable work record.
But chatting with her that morning had told him so much more than a piece of paper ever could. She’d been married and divorced, had a grown daughter who she obviously had a tumultuous relationship with, at least when she was a teenager. And, if he wasn’t mistaken, she had more than a passing interest in him. Though he couldn’t say why, for certain.
Storm knew he was good-looking. He wasn’t conceited, but when he’d been active on the teams, he’d had his share of women flirt with him because of what he did or how he looked. However, since he’d retired from active missions and transitioned into his current position, he hadn’t had time for women.
That didn’t mean they still didn’t try to reel him in. Storm couldn’t count the number of wives who’d hit on him, who’d made it clear they were okay with seeing him without letting their spouses know.
Storm didn’t want to sleep with a married woman. Didn’t want to sneak around. He wanted a woman he could be proud to be with, who would be equally thrilled to walk by his side. And for once, he wanted to do the pursuing.
For most of his life, he hadn’t had to work for a woman’s attention. They came to him, and he could pick and choose which he wanted to be with. And in all honesty, it had always made him feel somewhat sleazy. The fact that Jane Hamilton had known him for quite some time and hadn’t said much more than “good morning” and “hello,” despite her obvious interest, intrigued him.
It had been a while since he’d had a challenge, and Storm had a feeling Jane would be more than worth the effort.
He wasn’t a fall-in-love-at-first-sight guy, though, no matter that he was feeling more energized and excited about pursuing a woman than he’d felt in his entire life. So he’d take things slow. Get to know Jane over the next few weeks. Flirt with her a little and feel her out. See if he was reading things with her correctly.
Then, when the time was right and he wasn’t knee deep in any projects at work, he’d ask her out. See if they had chemistry outside of the naval base.
Happy with his plan to take things slow, Storm reached for his mail and got to work.
Jane wanted to hold on to the giddy feeling she’d gotten from talking to Storm that morning, but duty called. When she got back down to the mail room on the basement level of the building, she’d been pulled in one direction, then another. She’d been putting out fires ever since her delivery.
An admiral was upset that he hadn’t received a report from someone across the base he thought he should’ve received that morning. Two of her employees had called in sick…one of which Jane knew she’d have to deal with and probably fire for excessive absences. And they’d received an inordinately large amount of mail that had to be sorted and delivered that afternoon. They were slammed, and Jane had no time to dissect the conversation she’d had with Storm earlier. Duty called.
Jane was helping sort the mail after lunch when a package on the conveyer belt caught her attention. At first glance, nothing about it seemed out of place. It was about half the size of a shoebox with only a little bit of tape holding it together. But when Jane looked at the way it was addressed, she realized the shipping label looked odd. There was nothing indicating who it was from, an excessive amount of postage in the corner that had clearly been canceled by hand, the box was marked “confidential,” and it was addressed to Rear Admiral Creasy…except his last name was misspelled as Creasey, with an extra e.
The closer she looked, the more everything about the package screamed suspicious, and Jane had been through way too many training sessions about bombs and anthrax being sent through the mail to dismiss the package as nothing serious. If it was delivered to the rear admiral and something happened to him, Jane would never forgive herself.
Knowing she was supposed to clear the room, alert the authorities, turn off the air conditioning—just in case—and not touch or move the package until it could be examined, Jane began to set things in motion. This would delay all mail delivery for hours, possibly for an entire day, but it couldn’t be helped. If this was a bomb or a biochemical agent being sent through the mail, nothing else mattered, including her timetable.
But just as Jane turned to alert everyone they had to go into lockdown protocol, one of her employees pushed a large number of boxes and envelopes down the conveyor belt toward her. The box she’d just been examining teetered on the edge of the sorting table and, acting instinctively, Jane reached out to catch it.
Everything after seemed to happen in slow motion.
The box began to fall.
Jane caught it in midair.
The jostling of the box obviously detonated something inside, because the top flew off, and an orange caustic agent sprayed into the air, covering Jane’s face and arms.
She immediately began to cough and gag, but did her best to stay calm—the hardest thing she’d ever done in her life.
“Holy shit, Jane, what the hell?” one of her employees exclaimed.
“Don’t touch me,” she managed, her eyes squeezed tightly closed. Between coughs, she got out, “Code black. Call the naval police and initiate a code black!”
Thankfully, her employees knew exactly what to do. A code black was the highest level of emergency the mail room could declare. It meant there was some sort of chemical leak and all personnel should remove themselves from the immediate vicinity. Her office had trained for this exact scenario time and time again—but Jane had never thought she’d be contaminated.
Hearing everyone rushing out of the room, she pictured where she was in the sorting room and blindly made her way toward the wall behind her. She didn’t want to touch anything, because that could spread the contaminate that was all over her hands, but with every second that passed, it got harder and harder to breathe. She had to reach the decontamination station.
Her employees had all left, as they’d been trained, and she was on her own.
Feeling as if her lungs were going to explode, Jane coughed some more, then threw up on the floor where she stood. Everything hurt, and it felt as if her face was on fire.
Falling to her knees, she tried to get oxygen into her burning lungs. For all she knew, her skin was melting off. She couldn’t feel anything, couldn’t make it to decontamination. The only thing she could do was kneel on the floor and retch.
Storm was reading a report about an increase in hostilities in a small country in Africa when his admin assistant stuck his head inside his office.
“Sorry to bother you, Sir, but there’s a code black in the mail room.”
“Fuck. Code black? Are you sure?” he asked.
“Yes, Sir. The building’s being evacuated. We need to go.”
Storm surged up from his desk and headed for the door. All he could think about was the fact that Jane worked in the mail room.
It was only that morning that he’d decided to explore his interest in the shy contractor, but hearing there was some sort of biological threat in the mail room changed things drastically. Until he saw for himself that Jane was all right, he knew the feeling of concern and unease within him wouldn’t abate.
Jogging down the hall, Storm headed for the stairwell. He ran down two flights and instead of exiting outside, continued down to the basement level. He passed a few people coming up the stairs, but no one dared ask him where he was going or what he was doing. His rank sometimes had its benefits.
Someone had pulled the fire alarm, and the annoying sound of the bells ringing gave him an instant headache, but he ignored it as best he could and headed for the door to the mail room. He’d only been down here a handful of times, but he knew exactly where to go.
He pulled on the door—and frowned when it didn’t open. “Son of a bitch,” he muttered, remembering that protocol demanded all doors be locked in case of an incident.
Standing there for a second, Storm debated what to do. It was likely Jane was standing outside right that moment with her employees, talking to the authorities and telling them what had happened. It was also likely the code black was a false alarm; there hadn’t been an anthrax or sarin incident in years.
But a little part of him, deep down, thought differently.
“Jane?” he yelled, his voice barely registering above the blaring fire alarm. “Are you in there?”
He put his ear against the door and waited, straining to hear something. Anything.
“Sir?” a voice yelled from his right. “You need to exit the building.”
Storm turned to see a young man standing behind him, his face as white as a sheet, wearing a pair of coveralls that indicated he worked in the mail room.
“You work in there, right?” Storm asked, ignoring his demand that he leave.
“Yes, but there’s a code black. You have to go.”
“What happened?” Storm barked.
The young man looked around nervously, his gaze resting on the door to the stairwell longingly. Storm did his best to calm his tone. The man was obviously scared out of his mind. “Tell me what happened. Then I’ll stay until the authorities get here.”
“I’m supposed to direct them here,” the man said.
Impatient now, Storm said, “Talk to me.”
“We were sorting the mail like usual. Jane was at the table and when a bunch of mail was pushed forward, a box fell off. She grabbed it and it exploded. She told us to initiate code black and to get out.”
“Where is she?”
“Inside,” the man said, and Storm could hear the tremor in his voice. “I didn’t want to leave but knew she’d be pissed if I didn’t. We’ve had drill after drill, and she always said that if anything ever happened, the last thing we should do is help the person who’s infected. That the decon team will come in and do that. Do you think they’re here yet?”
Fuck .
Storm had to get inside to Jane. Fuck waiting for a decontamination team. She could be dying—which was unacceptable on his watch.
Intellectually, he understood the need for isolating an infected person, but he literally couldn’t stand there knowing she might be on the other side of the door suffering.
“Do you have the key?” he shouted.
The man nodded, and Storm held out his hand, wiggling his fingers in a “bring it here” motion.
Surprisingly, the man did as Storm ordered, quickly closing the gap between them and stepping up to the door. It was obvious he really hadn’t wanted to leave Jane inside, and was clearly relieved someone was going to help her.
When the door was unlocked, Storm gestured to the stairs. “Go wait for the decon team outside and tell them where she is.”
“Help her,” the man said, his face drawn with concern. “She’s not only a good boss, but she’s a good person too. She doesn’t deserve this…whatever was inside that package.”
Storm nodded and pushed open the door, confident the young kid was going to get help down here as soon as he could. But he knew more than most that it would take time. No one was going to enter the building without completely suiting up to protect themselves. He didn’t blame them, but as a SEAL, he wasn’t one to wait around or be overly cautious.
The second he opened the door, Storm was pretty sure he knew what the bomb had contained. It wasn’t an explosive, per se. It wasn’t anthrax. Wasn’t sarin. It smelled like CS gas. Chlorobenzylidene malononitrile. Tear gas. Pepper spray. It burned like hell when it got on you, but it wasn’t lethal. Storm had been through enough training exercises with the stuff to know it felt as if you were dying. It burned your eyes and nose, making those orifices leak. And it made a lot of people very sick.
But it didn’t kill. Thank God.
He slammed the door shut behind him, thankfully dimming the wailing of the fire alarm enough so he could hear himself think once more.
Coughing because of the residue in the air, Storm called out, “Jane? Where are you?”
He didn’t hear her answer, but he did hear her coughing and gagging. He made his way around a large table—and his insides froze. Jane was on her hands and knees on the floor. A small pile of vomit was in front of her, and her eyes were squeezed shut.
Hurrying over, he hated the way she flinched violently when he grabbed her shoulders.
“It’s me, Storm North,” he reassured her. “Let me help you.”
She shook her head and tried to wrench herself away from him. “Poison,” she gasped before coughing once again.
Storm’s heart lurched in his chest. She was trying to protect him.
Him . Someone she didn’t know. A SEAL who’d looked death in the face more than once and survived.
Pushing down his feelings for another time, he leaned close and said urgently into her ear, “I’m pretty sure it’s CS gas,” he told her. “Not poison. I know it burns like hell. Did it get into your eyes?”
She nodded, and he grimaced in commiseration. In training, he’d always worn a gas mask until being told to remove it. He’d never taken a spray right in the face, and certainly never with his eyes open.
He’d been relieved when he’d opened the door to the mail room, but now he knew this was more serious than he’d first thought.
“Come on, we need to get you to the decon station.”
Jane nodded and allowed him to help her to her feet, but she stayed hunched over and didn’t touch him in any way, shape or form. Storm realized that was because her hands were covered with the orange-red spray, as was her upper body.
Whoever had rigged that mail bomb knew what they were doing.
In compliance with federal regulations, there was a small shower-like decontamination station in the corner of the basement mail room. As far as Storm knew, it had never been utilized…until now.
He turned on the water, and at first it came out a rusty brown color, but it quickly began to run clear. Jane whimpered at hearing the water.
Without hesitation, Storm wrapped an arm around Jane’s waist and stepped under the water with her. They were both soaked in seconds, but at the moment, he didn’t worry about that. He needed to wash the caustic spray off Jane’s face and hands.
The water was cold, and he felt her shiver under his hands, but she didn’t pull away. Snot ran down her face and she’d gotten some vomit on her clothes, both washed away in the spray, but Storm had seen far worse in battle.
Tilting her face up to the water, Jane did her best to not drown herself as she tried to wash off the spray and cough at the same time.
Storm wasn’t unaffected by the toxic atmosphere, although he hadn’t gotten a direct hit in the face. He felt his eyes watering and his own mucus membranes doing their best to repel the nasty chemical. But he ignored his own suffering and concentrated on doing what he could for Jane.
Her medium length brown hair was covered in the CS gas, and he tried to help her wash it out. Everywhere he looked, he saw the telltale signs of the orange spray. “You’re going to have to take off your shirt and pants,” he told her as gently as he could. “I can see it dripping down your body.”
For just a moment she seemed to panic, but then she wiped her face of all emotion. She hadn’t opened her eyes longer than it took to try to rinse them out, but he felt her body tense under his hands.
Finally, she nodded and brought her hands up to the first button on her shirt.
“I’ve got it,” Storm told her.
It suddenly felt as if they were the only two people in the world, the situation more intimate than it should have been, given the circumstances. Storm quickly undid the buttons on her shirt one by one, helping her shrug out of it when he was done. She was left standing in front of him in a soaking white cotton bra that did nothing to hide her assets. She was full figured and rounded in all the right places. Her nipples were taut from the cold water, and he saw goose bumps on her arms.
“Hang on, almost done,” he soothed, reaching for the belt around her waist. He quickly undid it and unbuttoned her khakis. He circled her and kneeled, pulling the wet material down. She kicked off her shoes and stepped out of her pants.
Storm stood and pushed her clothes off to the side. He moved until he was standing in front of her again, but not in the way of the shower. He put his hands on either side of her face and gently tilted it up into the water. “You’re going to have to try to keep your eyes open as long as you can, Jane. I know it hurts, but you have to wash that shit out.”
She nodded, coughed, then squinted, doing her best to follow his directions. Storm could see how much it hurt, and he couldn’t help but admire her bravery. “That’s it. Good. Just like that.”
He had no idea how long they’d stood in the cramped decontamination shower, but eventually she was able to keep her eyes open for longer than half a second at a time. They were bloodshot and red rimmed when she finally opened them long enough to look at him, and when she did, he hated what he saw there.
Shame. Embarrassment.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, then coughed violently once more.
“You have nothing to be sorry about,” he told her vehemently. “ Nothing . From where I’m standing, you did everything right.”
“I couldn’t get to the decon station,” she admitted. “Everything hurt too bad. I fucked up.”
Storm was shaking his head before she’d finished speaking. “No, you did what you were trained to do. You got your employees out, did what you could to keep the particulates from escaping.”
“I threw up,” she whispered.
Storm hated the embarrassment she so obviously felt. “That’s your body’s way of getting rid of whatever is contaminating it. It’s nothing to be ashamed of, Jane. You should see the cadets in boot camp. They act like they’re dying, and they don’t get nearly as big a dose of CS gas in their faces as you did.”
“You’re sure it was CS gas?” she asked.
“Ninety-nine percent, yeah,” Storm told her. “I recognized the smell the second I walked into the room.”
She frowned. “How’d you get in here?”
“One of your employees in the hall let me in.”
“He was supposed to?—”
Whatever she was going to say got cut off midsentence when the door to the mail room opened, and three men wearing full decontamination suits were standing there. The clear shower curtain was the only thing separating her and Storm from the rest of the room.
“Oh shit,” she said, then coughed even as she hunched her shoulders inward, trying to hide herself from them.
Without thought, Storm pulled her into his body, something inside him softening when he felt her melt against him, as if she were invisible to the newcomers simply by standing in his arms.
One of the men had a device in his hand that would measure the air for contaminates. It would tell him what materials they were dealing with, and the percentages. The other two held what looked like long-handled brushes.
Storm stiffened and turned sideways, trying to shield Jane from their eyes.
“Step away from her, Sir,” one of the men said, his voice muffled from the head-to-toe protection suit he was wearing.
“Not a chance,” Storm retorted fiercely, ruining his command with a hard, hacking cough.
“Sir, you both need to be decontaminated before we can get you to medical.”
Storm knew the protocol. Hell, he’d help write the damn manual once upon a time, but back then it had seemed very clinical. Scrubbing down a contaminated person so they didn’t spread particulates to innocents in a hospital setting was the right thing to do. But holding a shivering and traumatized Jane in his arms made it very clear that being hosed down and scrubbed as if she were a dirty piece of flesh wasn’t exactly ethical or humane.
Fuck.
He tightened his arms around her just before she took a deep breath and pulled away from him. “It’s all right,” she said quietly. She was squinting, and it was obviously still painful for her to open her eyes. “It’s protocol.”
She was right, but that didn’t make it any easier to let her go.
He watched as Jane bravely stepped out of the decon shower and held her arms out from her sides. Her white underwear was completely soaked and see-through from the back. Storm could only imagine what she looked like from the front.
His teeth clenched, and he wanted to pound the seaman holding the scrubber.
But instead, he did the only thing he could to make Jane feel less awkward in that moment. He stripped off his own clothes until he stood next to her wearing nothing but his own pair of white underwear.