Read Online White Dawn: A Military Romantic Suspense Novel by Tracy Cooper-Posey - Free Book Online

swallowed. “But…”
    “No, I know you think you know
her inside and out, but you really don’t. You can’t afford the
risk, Cristián. Stop talking to her.”
    “Okay. I’ll send her an email. Tell her
we have to stop for a while.”
    “No,” Daniel said flatly. “No final
farewell. No notice. No more contact at all. The Internet is a wide
open platform that anyone can access and that includes the
Insurrectos. Promise me, Cristián, or I’ll dig up the cable line to
the house and cut it myself. No Internet. No email.”
    Cristián hung his head.
    “If she’s the real thing,” Daniel added
gently, “then you can catch up with her once the war is done and
I’ll be the first to throw rice for you. But you have to make the
cut now.” He added the kicker. “You’re putting her at risk by
talking to her, you know.”
    Cristián lifted his chin and stared at
him. “I’m nobody,” he said. “The Insurrectos don’t care who I’m
chatting with.”
    “You’re the primary communications hub
for the Loyalist war effort. If you think the Insurrectos don’t
care who you are, you’re very wrong. If they thought grabbing your
girl and threatening to shoot her through the temple, or rape her
into unconsciousness would bring you out into the open where they
can identify you, they’d do it without a quiver.”
    Cristián swallowed. “No more Internet,
then,” he said, his voice weak.
    “Sorry, kid,” Daniel said softly.
    Cristián shook his head. “I don’t think
I’ve really thought it through until now, with you here and code
books and…and…”
    “You’re a spy,” Daniel said flatly. “You
get all the high risks, the sleepless nights, the sick feeling that
never goes away. You get none of the girls, the fast cars, or the
glamour. That’s just in the movies.”
    Cristián grimaced. “But you did. You got
the girl.”
    Daniel sighed. “For about five minutes,
yes.” He picked up the bottle and poured himself one last shot. “I
have no idea when I’ll see Olivia again.” If I do at all , he
added mentally. But he didn’t say it aloud. Cristián was already
completely unnerved.
* * * * *
    The Secret Service agents took Nick and
Olivia to the Willard Hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue, which wasn’t
the hotel Minnie had booked for them. The suite they were escorted
into had at least two bedrooms and a very elegant sitting room
between them. Their luggage, as promised, was arranged neatly next
to each of the bedroom doors.
    A man with iron-gray hair and an
upright, square bearing was sitting on the sofa. He wore a handmade
suit and his Italian loafers were planted firmly on the carpet. He
didn’t get up when they walked in, but the two guards on either
side of him stirred, walked to the door and shut it behind
them.
    “Hello, Dad,” Olivia said shortly. “I
might have known you’d arrange everything to suit yourself. You’ve
been doing it all your life.”
    Nick walked over to the man. “Colonel
Davenport. Was the hotel switch for your convenience?”
    “I’m afraid so,” Davenport said, getting
to his feet. He thrust out his hand. “It’s a pleasure to meet you,
Señor Escobedo.”
    Nick shook his hand while Olivia settled
herself on the club chair in front of the sofa, kicked off her
shoes and tucked her feet up under her. “The Willard is used to
hustling high-profile politicians through the service corridors,”
she said dryly.
    “Olivia, honey,” her father chided her.
He leaned over and kissed her temple. “I’m so pleased to see you.”
He picked up her arm and examined the bandaged fingers. “How bad is
it?”
    “They tell me I’ll lose the nails on two
fingers. They don’t know if they’ll grow back.”
    He winced and straightened up, letting
her wrist go. “I’d say something about barbarians, but this is the
world we live in now.” He turned back to Nick. “Please sit
down.”
    Olivia could feel the old, familiar ache
in her chest that she got whenever she had to