Deep Rising (An Outside the Lines Novel) (Entangled Select) (20 page)

Chapter Twenty-Four

October 18 - 11:15 pm

Caldwell Household

Roane County, Tennessee

Following Jared from the children’s bedrooms, Lana watched as he tucked blankets around little feet and searched beneath beds for mythical beasts. The children adored their uncle. They had been so overjoyed to see Uncle Jared it had required an extra hour to get them settled into bed.

Taking her hand, Jared led her into the hallway and toward the room they would share before boarding a flight in the early morning hours.

“I’m a package deal.”

“They’re beautiful, Jared. An added bonus.”

“Are you sure? You didn’t sign on for this.”

She smiled. “You’re right. I didn’t ask for a demented brother bent on destroying mankind, a knight in shining armor to rescue me, or the promise of a beautiful family. But…”

“You take the good with the bad?” he prompted.

“Absolutely.”

She ran her hand along his cheek. She enjoyed the texture of his beard so much she had asked him not to shave.

“Kiss me, Jared.”

He captured her lips. Strong arms circled her back, pressing her breasts against the hardened planes of his chest. He sucked on her tongue. He wanted more. She could feel it in his roving hands, the insistent demands of his mouth. She’d never been a wanton woman. In past relationships sex had been a chore. Looking back, she realized that without this intensity of emotion, that was all it could ever be.

“Can we?” she whispered against his lips. She didn’t dare think about what tomorrow would bring. She only recognized that this could be their last night together.

“Always.”

He guided her into his room and carefully closed the door.

“We’re next to my nephew’s room.”

The announcement instantly doused Lana’s ardor. She didn’t want to think about waking small children with the sounds of their lovemaking.

“Not to worry, darlin’,” he whispered.

The drawl made her smile. “I bet you were pure hell on the girls back in high school.”

He flashed a lopsided grin. “What makes you think so?”

“The Southern-boy charm. I’ll bet it really worked for you.”

“Every time.”

She chuckled softly, completely smitten with his boyish appeal. “Did you play football?”

“Is there any other sport?”

Taking the heavy quilt from the bed, he tossed it to her. Lana lifted the blue and beige bedspread so the crocheted edges wouldn’t drag on the floor.

“Quarterback?”

He shook his head. “Defensive tackle. And I’ll tell you something else you probably wouldn’t have suspected—I was captain of the chess team and the debate club.”

“I’m not surprised. You talk circles around me. And the way you strategize your every move and maneuver, I’d expect you to be lucky at chess.”

“I’m
skilled
at chess because of practice and studying strategies. Luck is an altogether different entity.”

“Noted.”

“Being lucky is really about staying two steps ahead,” Jared continued.

She stared curiously as he lifted the mattress off its frame and rested it on the floor. When he held out his hand, she extended the quilt.

“I haven’t slept at home since high school,” he told her. “When I have visited my family I’d have my mom and my sister meet me—with the kids—at Disney.”

“No wonder you’re their favorite.”

“To my nieces and nephew, yes. To the adults, no.”

“Why would you say such a thing?”

“Every Christmas I send drums and guitars. One year it was bongos.”

“You have a twisted sense of humor.”

The thoughts of needling his little, now-deceased sister brought a poignant smile to Jared’s face. He seemed saddened by the memory, and Lana refused to watch this man berate himself for failing to save his sister. No one could change the past, and to linger on such notions evoked only heartache.

“Hey, what’s up with the bed on the floor?” she asked, hoping to pull him back from his thoughts.

One brow arched over his gorgeous eyes. “I doubt the mattress has been replaced since I left for the Navy. The sheets I can vouch for. Mama never made up a bed unless someone was there to sleep in it. But she wouldn’t have bought a new mattress or box spring. She would’ve waited for me to do that. Can’t have any loose springs giving us away, now can we?”

She smiled.

He stepped out of his jeans, knelt on the floor.

“Are you coming down here or what?” he asked.

“In a moment.”

He peeled off his shirt.

“I’m admiring the view,” Lana admitted.

Having completely discarded his clothes, Jared reclined on the improvised bed. He didn’t have a self-conscious bone in his body. If anything he seemed to enjoy her gaping at him like this—and Lana couldn’t help but stare.

His flawless body captivated her senses. Yes, flawless was the first word formed in her mind; muscled, lean, powerful thighs, broad across the shoulders, and narrow at the waist. Perfect in every way.

“You’re incredibly handsome,” she said.

“Come here and let me hold you.”

She moved to the foot of the mattress and slowly unbuttoned her shirt. She unfastened her bra. Her jeans came off next, and she turned around to give him a different view.

“That’s right, honey,” he muttered, as she shimmied out of her panties.

Facing him again, she dropped down on her knees at his feet. She worked her way up his body, kissing, massaging, suckling every sensitive part.

She reveled in his muted groans.

She ran her hair over his skin, dragging her breasts over his chest, kissing him with all the pent-up fervor and hunger he awakened in her.

When she descended again, he begged her to stop.

She didn’t.

Jared absorbed her attentions for a few minutes before dragging her up his body and rolling atop. He joined their bodies in one intense thrust. On the second he sent her over the edge.

“My beautiful girl,” he murmured as he resumed moving. “I wish we’d been together from the start.”

She tenderly, languidly traced the contours of his back. “We’re together now.”

“Kiss me.”

She found his mouth, slipped her tongue inside. She kissed him, all the while thinking that when it came to time, there was never enough…

…

A private jet awaited them at the small airport outside of Tullahoma. Jared’s mother drove them. She stood on the tarmac and cried.

“I’ll be back,” he promised her.

Annabelle clasped his face and kissed Jared’s brow. In her pain-stricken eyes, Lana glimpsed the knowledge, the fear.

As a woman, she could not fathom what it must be like for Annabelle to kiss her son good-bye, knowing it might be for the last time. The thought caused Lana to fight back tears of her own. “I promise to look after him,” she whispered when Jared’s mother gave her a parting hug.

“I know you will.” Annabelle stepped away, rigidly marching off the runway. Lana didn’t know how the woman managed it, but Annabelle didn’t look back.

Jared claimed Lana’s hand and guided her onto the private jet. Once the door to the fuselage closed and locked behind them, the adoring son and attentive lover checked his feelings with their baggage.

“I requested materials,” he said to the captain. “Where are they?”

“Back of the cabin.” The pilot sported military-styled hair, a broad jaw, and kind blue eyes. He appeared lean, one might go so far as to say lanky, but formidable.

Jared brushed past her. “Sit,” he commanded.

Lana selected the nearest seat.

“Ma’am, I’m Captain Randall Wyerman.” The pilot craned his neck from the cockpit to formally introduce himself. “You get comfortable and buckle up. I’ll have us airborne in a couple of minutes. Mr. Hawthorne,” he called to Jared. “I need the location for ground clearance.”

Jared glanced at Lana. “Where are we going?”

“Straight across the Atlantic.”

“You’ll have to be more specific, ma’am,” the captain objected. “I need clearance for flight patterns. There’s a lot of sky up there, but you’d be amazed at the probability of a collision.”

“No games, Lana,” Jared warned. “We don’t have time.”

She held out.

“Please.”

Lana sighed. “Checkmate?”

He nodded.

“La Palma.”

Bending, he gently kissed her lips. Then he jogged to the cockpit and claimed the copilot’s chair.

If she angled her head into the aisle, she could distinguish Jared’s profile. He possessed smooth, even features, forest-colored eyes, and the type of lean, coiled strength every man should have. From the way he comfortably occupied the copilot’s chair with his hands moving over the various panels and gauges, she surmised it wasn’t his first time in the cockpit.

“Plot a course for the Canary Islands,” she heard him say.

Jared went back to Lana and crouched in front of her seat. He placed his hands around her neck. “I could render you unconscious right now.” He pressed on her carotid arteries as if to prove it. “It wouldn’t hurt. I’d offload you and have my mother look after you until I returned.”

“I’d never forgive you.”

Sighing, Jared rose. He kissed the top of her head. “I kind of figured you’d say that. Damn it, Lana.”

She patted the seat next to her. “Sit. Calm down. What is it you’re always telling me? Switch it off.” She twined her fingers through his. “This is more important than us.”

“It doesn’t concern you.”

“Consider this scenario: you leave me with your mother. Somehow, another set of assassins finds us. They kill me, the kids, and your mother—all while you’ve gone saving the world on your own. I come back from the grave to haunt you, chanting ‘I told you so.’ You go mad and are ultimately confined to a padded room where you waste away for the long years of your life.”

“You have a twisted sense of humor.”

She brought his hand to her lips, and kissed his knuckles. “I wasn’t trying for levity. But you get the idea.”

“Damned if I do, damned if I don’t?”

“Exactly.”

“In that case…”

Jared hadn’t lied, she realized, as darkness closed in. She felt no pain.

…

“Turn the jet around, Randall.”

“You sure, sir?”

Jared carried Lana over. “Whaddaya think?”

One glance back and Randall called the tower, making emergency arrangements to land. He blamed it on a faulty gauge.

It took a couple of minutes before the jet touched down and taxied along the runway. Jared noticed his mother’s truck parked beside the hangar. She leaned against the hood, arms crossed.

“I went along with your plan,” she said as he approached. “Because you’re my son and I’d do anything for you. But you’re making a mistake.”

“Don’t start on me.” Jared cautiously maneuvered along the lowered staircase with Lana cradled against his chest. If his leg had been up to par it wouldn’t have been a problem, but his leg had failed to heal completely, or correctly, and her additional weight aggravated it from ankle to hip. “She could be the love of my life. I’m not about to drag her into combat.”

“The only woman I would want for my son is the kind who would fight by your side.”

“She has.”

Annabelle opened the cab door to the truck. “She might not forgive you for this, you realize?”

“Better I never see her eyes again than place the coins over them.”

…

When the jet reached cruising altitude, Jared left his seat and walked to the storage area at the rear of the aircraft. He wrenched opened every stainless steel door and cabinet.

Guns. Grenades. Creamy bars of fresh Semtex. An entire closetful of body armor.

Glocks. Automatic weapons. A missile launcher.

“Here we go.” A further inspection yielded biological tracers. The chemicals, once exposed to a surface, adhered for a month and could be located by satellite. An adjacent drawer had magazine of bullets containing the same chemicals. He tucked the small case of nickel-sized disks, along with the electronic tracking device, into his pocket.

One cabinet held an assortment of papers. Retrieving them, Jared flipped through the survey maps until he held the outline of La Palma. The island was not much more than a hunk of rock off the coast of Africa. In the time of the great explorers, adventurers seeking new lands would have stopped here to replenish their water and food provisions or to take on cargo. Today, it was a tourist trap, another trendy spot along the coast for Europeans to venture on holiday. It had nothing to offer save stretches of dark sand, some forested areas, and two volcanoes. One of which lay extinct. The other was active and unstable.

He located a copy of Lana’s thesis tossed in with his briefing file. He perused it, searching for her opinion on Cumbre Vieja. He would rather have her here to explain why she deemed this point so perilous, but he would have to make do with her writings.

According to her research, Cumbre Vieja made up half the island, with an extinct volcano, Cumbre Nueva, composing the other portion. The eruption of Cumbre Vieja didn’t create a problem—it was the earthquakes that would follow that did. They could cause the entire west side of the volcano to slip toward the sea. The vents along this flank, she went on to explain, contained permeable rubble allowing runoff and rainwater to seep into the tunnels and vents perforating the entire volcano. Unlike most volcanoes, those on La Palma held thousands of years of rainwater, creating massive reservoirs.

Lana quoted a dozen scientists within her report. Each stated that a complete flank collapse was plausible—albeit an infinitesimally small probability. Lana documented additional geologists’ research and explained that a ‘natural’ collapse of the Cumbre Vieja western flank likely wouldn’t occur for tens of thousands of years because it hadn’t occurred in recorded history. He, unlike Lana, didn’t subscribe to this justification. The Earth had been a dynamic, vitriolic entity since the dawn of its creation billions of years prior. With or without man to document Earth’s behavior, mountains formed and fell, oceans rose and receded, and entire landmasses shifted positions.

But it wasn’t the ‘natural’ aspect of a ‘natural disaster’ that Lana had concentrated on, it was the man-made catastrophes. And that’s what Jared needed to prevent.