She didn’t know much about Inner Iron, except that it involved genetic engineering that made soldiers stronger and more durable, and Mark’s was certainly the most extraordinary record of endurance she’d ever read. And he was the strongest man she’d ever known. When he’d lifted her in his arms, so effortlessly, it had made her feel like a cloud. In the hours they were together, his appreciation of her had been so concentrated that, as never before or since, she had felt her femininity as something glorious and successful and cherished.

But only that once had he shown her charm and warmth. Only on that night.

When she’d met him, he’d been dressed in a tight-fitting blue suit and a too small dress shirt that made his body appear trapped. The moment he’d entered the restaurant, she had known it was him. The way he moved was unforgettable. Despite his size, he possessed a startlingly balletic grace. As this big man glided across the crowded room, she had suppressed an impulse to stand up and salute. His bearing telegraphed command, but when he sat down, his eyes spoke of something she could not completely name. There was loneliness, certainly, but also other, less definable qualities. Clearly, you wouldn’t want any sort of confrontation with him.

You saw operational types who had died inside, men with blank eyes. Not Mark. He might walk the graceful walk of a skilled assassin, but when you looked into those eyes, you saw the sorrows of a lover, one who was deeply lost.

She’d seen in his file that he had an IQ of 220, but not until they’d talked had she realized what such mental power actually meant. His conversation had ranged across dozens of topics. At one point, to illustrate the physics of the new scattergun, he had scribbled equations on a napkin. The next moment, he was comparing the Roman emperor Trajan’s invasion of Iraq to George W. Bush’s, pointing out that both had made the same mistakes two thousand years apart. Arabs fade from invasions, then harry garrisons, as they have done from time immemorial.

He was also full of humor, his wit tart and subtle. When that tight, improbably gentle laugh of his revealed itself, she became unable to stop devouring him with her eyes. Trajan … Bush … both had made the same mistakes. Oh … how interesting, tell me more …

You looked into those complicated, penetrating eyes—skillful eyes—and you saw something that you had not realized would be there. Something was staring back at you from behind the soldier. But what, you could not tell. Wasn’t a lover, that was for darned sure. Something, she thought, of the true predator’s ever-careful awareness, measuring, calculating, evaluating. You got the feeling that he was looking at more of you than you, yourself, could see.