"Okay." He nailed Crusty with a forceful glare to match his bracing arm. "I'm listening. Talk."
"Could you ease upon the arm a little so I can breathe?" Tanner relaxed his hold but not his guard and kept his arm loosely pinned across Crusty's chest. "I'm listening."
"Black ops."
"Black ops?" The guy actually expected him to believe he participated in covert military missions supporting CIA operations? Daniel Baker a spook? Spiky-haired, rumpled-clothes Crusty a spy?
A gasp sounded from behind them. In the second Tanner twitched to look at Kathleen, Crusty muscled free with a grace and strength Tanner hadn't expected from the slighter, wiry man.
No more lapses, he zoned his attention on Daniel Baker. Tanner didn't need the distraction of Kathleen standing beside him with stitches in her head because of an accident that somehow related to this man. "You're telling me you're an agent?"
"Great disguise, isn't it?" Crusty chuckled, his wrinkled flight suit rippling with each laugh until his face cleared. "I do a little work for the Air Force OSI running Black Programs. I test new flight equipment to be used for Black Ops. Top-secret gizmos. You already knew we were on a test mission, you just weren't told how sensitive that mission was."
Not ready to relax his guard just yet, Tanner stepped left, putting his body between Crusty and Kathleen. "Why weren't we told? Did anyone else on the team get a heads-up on this?"
"Nope. Need-to-know basis only, bud. This one is pretty intense. Let's just say we get very frequent polygraph tests. I couldn't risk even hinting anything. Sony about the erased tape, but I had to slap a magnet on that sucker before anyone else listened in."
The explanations rang true—except for one dangling thread. "And the car? How did you know about that?"
"I've had a security police bud keeping an eye out since this mess started. He gave me a heads-up on your accident." Crusty's gaze settled on Kathleen's bandage. Brown eyes shifted back to cold black in a heartbeat. "We need to find the son of a bitch responsible for this. I've been tearing up the base looking for you. Left messages everywhere. Finally hit pay dirt when I checked back at the Edwards Inn and the desk clerk told me you were headed over here."
It made sense, and Tanner wanted to believe Crusty's anger over the accident was genuine. After all, the guy had once had a few feelings for Kathleen, too. But Tanner wasn't willing to risk her safety on a hunch. "Do you really expect me to believe this on your say-so?"
"Glad to hear you're not so trusting." A sharp gleam sparked, reminiscent of old days when Tanner and Crusty had debated football strategies. "The 'powers that be' wanted to give the investigation a chance to play through without breaking security. I told them it wasn't working. General Crockett has scheduled a briefing for your team after the holidays because of all those too coincidental snafus lately. Of course, that was planned before this latest incident. My mission and my flying were clean that day. I've got a list of numbers you can call now if it will set your mind at ease and keep you from tackling me again."
Already Tanner regretted that, not because he was convinced Crusty wasn't responsible, but because the action had been prompted by frustration. Frustration with Kathleen, with himself, with his growing sense that talking wouldn't solve a damned thing. No chat over a couple of Quick-Mart sodas and cheese puffs would even begin to fix their problems. "Supposing I buy in to your story, then that brings us back to the new pin-pull actuator."
Crusty nodded. "Yeah, but didn't the inspector sign off on all the tests? The paperwork is pristine. O'Connell would have spotted a blot on those records in a heartbeat."
The woman in question cleared her throat, dragging attention back to her. "Randall told me he had plenty of time to take me on a tour."
Tanner didn't even bother ignoring the sting of jealousy. "What has the Randy inspector hitting on you have to do with this?"
Kathleen's mouth pulled tight for a flash before she explained. "Those reports were almost too clean, the tests too perfect. Randall said his boss was thousands of miles away. He could write his own schedule. Or…" She gestured for Tanner to finish the obvious.
"Or not clock in at all and just sign off on whatever Quinn wrote up."
"Exactly."
Tanner wondered what else Kathleen might have uncovered that night if he hadn't let his libido send him crashing across the bar. Wasted thoughts now, anyway. "If he didn't check the testing results, were the parts faulty because of overlooked flaws? Or did Quinn take advantage of Randall Fitzgerald's slackness to cut corners?"
Crusty forked his fingers through his haphazard hair. "Whoever it is, they're getting antsy. Otherwise why risk tampering with a car? And the Mexican border is too close for comfort if he's running scared."
Time to test his friend's story. "Okay, Crusty. Which one of your generals would gripe the least about being pulled away from his turkey sandwich leftovers so we can get a search warrant?"
Kathleen's face lit with a smile that left Tanner longing to lock them both in the cockpit for the rest of the night. He wrenched his focus back to the problem at hand rather than the ones that awaited him later with Kathleen. "Any thoughts on this, Athena?"
Her smile hitched even higher, brighter. "Regulations say we don't need a search warrant if the building's on government property—like the testing warehouse."
Damned if he wasn't starting to like that reg book of hers. Too bad it didn't come with instructions on how to understand the woman who carried it.
Kathleen peered through the rental car windshield at the dimly lit warehouse. Tanner sat silently beside her, Crusty lounging in back.
They'd checked out Daniel Baker's story before bringing him along, and apparently their old pal was an intelligence expert on testing the latest aerial surveillance equipment. They all three had their marching orders for a meeting in General Crockett's office first thing in the morning.
Not that they intended to waste the evening when they could be gathering evidence to strengthen their case in front of the general. For now they needed to scour the warehouse for any clues that might point to faulty equipment or a lack of proper testing procedures—and pray no one was slipping over the border.
All perfectly logical, or so she told herself in an attempt to avoid the obvious. She was scared to be alone with Tanner, so she'd fallen into an old habit of losing herself in work to avoid dealing with relationships. Working through the night provided a tempting diversion. "What do we do now, fellas?"