The Curse of Medusa

He glanced at her, forking the food into his mouth. “What now?”

“You never actually thanked me for saving your life in Serbia.”

Hawke set his knife and fork down. “Sure I did.”

“No, not since we met face to face.”

Hawke considered the matter and smiled. She was right. “But I thanked you over the phone the day you got me out of that hellhole.”

“Yeah, I remember. I’m just saying…”

Hawke decided to play dumb. “Saying what?”

“Nothing.”

He ate some of the eggs and swigged from his mug of coffee. “No, go on. What are you trying to say?”

Alex sighed and shook her head. “You can be a real pig sometimes.”

“What?!”

“You know what.”

“All right, then since we’re saying thanks for saving each other’s lives…” he looked her in the eye and his face grew serious. No more jokes. “Thank you, Alex.”

She was silent for a moment. “Is that it?”

Hawke looked at her again, unsure if she was playing games or not. He’d known Agent Nightingale for many years, but Alex Reeve was a newcomer in his life. “What do you want me to do — tap dance it out for you in Morse Code?”

She laughed. “Sure. You should do that. I’d like to see it.”

“Never going to happen.” He ate another mouthful of eggs and some more bacon.

She made a show of putting down her fork and leaning back from the table to get a better look at him. “Seriously — I think you could pull off a tap dance.”

“Too bad — I left my dancing shoes in London.”

“They’re called tap shoes.”

He winked. “But aren’t you glad I didn’t know that?”

“So you say…”

“All right, game over. I said thanks. I’m sorry, okay?”

“You know, since you’re in the mood to grovel, I know someone else you owe an apology to.”

Hawke stopped eating and pushed back from the table. “Not this again. Leave it.”

“Just saying…”

He looked at her as the sun shone through the kitchen window and danced in her hair. She was beautiful, and it got to him that she’d turned herself into a recluse after the incident in Colombia.

“She should have told me the truth,” he said flatly.

“She was under orders not to tell you, Joe. You’re being unreasonable.”

He shook his head to signal his disagreement, but in his heart he knew she was right. Lea Donovan was under orders not to tell him about the mysterious ECHO team and their secret island headquarters in the Caribbean. Those orders were issued by Sir Richard Eden himself, a serious character who, in Hawke’s opinion, shouldn’t be crossed. Hawke respected Eden, and he loved Lea… only his pride had stopped him from accepting their invitation and joining them on Elysium.

Now, thanks to his hot temper on an even hotter day, he’d stormed out on them all back in Egypt. Now he didn’t even know where Elysium, or Lea, was.

“You can shake your head, cowboy, but you know in here,” she leaned forward and touched his chest with her finger, “that you’re in sad and pathetic denial, not to mention totally in the wrong.”

He offered a shallow nod but said nothing as he looked at the food on the third plate, untouched and slowly growing colder.

For a while they ate in silence until Alex decided finally to offer an olive branch.

“Look… I shouldn’t have stuck my nose in where it doesn’t belong.”

“No, you were right to bring it up. I keep myself to myself most of the time, but I guess this time I need to open up and maybe I should call her or something. Thing is, I’m just no good at keeping in touch. In my life people just come and go… I haven’t spoken to my family for a long time.”

Alex looked up at him, and sipped her coffee. “You still haven’t told me about your family in England.”

“Nope.”

“You definitely have family in England, right?”

“Yeap.”

Alex rolled her eyes. “Fine, don’t tell me.”

Hawke ate some eggs and sipped his coffee. “Look…” he set down his knife and fork and sighed.

Alex tried again. “Just the basics would be nice — names, jobs, how you feel about them…”

“All right, well, it’s complicated, but it goes like this…”

Jack Brooke appeared in the doorway with a phone to his ear. He looked worried and Alex rarely saw her father like this. Something wasn’t right.

The Pentagon chief disconnected the call and stared into the middle distance.

“What is it, Dad?” said Alex.

“What’s wrong, Jack?” Hawke asked.

For a few seconds Brooke didn’t know how to answer. When he spoke, both Hawke and Alex wished he hadn’t.

“That was Deakin at the NSA. He says they’re getting chatter about an imminent attack on the United States. Serious chatter about a serious attack.”

Hawke looked from Brooke to Alex and put down his knife and fork. Something told him breakfast time was over.

CHAPTER TWO

The former Special Boat Service man watched a brief flash of fear and confusion on the American Secretary of Defense’s face before he banished them from his mind and brought the situation back under control. Now, a look of steely determination fixed in his eyes.

Hawke rose from the table. “What makes the chatter so convincing, Jack?”