“Okay, I’ll stop. But only because Rachel would freak out. She worries about me.”
James said the last part carelessly, but I still felt it like a blow, as if he’d beat me without even trying. Rachel
did
worry about him. A lot. It was a point of contention between them, but also a sign of how much they cared about each other.
Had Chelsea worried about me while I was gone? Hardly.
“Hey…” I cleared my throat. “How do you and Rachel reconnect when you get back home?”
“You really want me to answer that question?”
“Besides sex.”
“What else is there?”
“Nice. I mean… hell, I don’t know. The emotional connection.”
James narrowed his eyes in suspicion. “Are we secretly on
Oprah?
Look, man. The emotional connection is the easy part. You like a girl, you spend time with her, you get closer. That’s the connection. And the sex doesn’t hurt. Well, unless you want it to.”
“Ha-ha,” I said, but unease speared through me. It sounded so simple when James spelled it out. You like a girl, spend time with her. I’d had that with Chelsea once, hadn’t I?
I couldn’t remember.
Leaning over, I looked forward and back. The aisles were clear. No sign of Della or any other flight attendant. Frustrated for reasons I couldn’t explain, I settled into my seat—as well as I could—and closed my eyes. One thing you learned in the army was how to sleep, even if you were uncomfortable, anytime, anyplace.
Not this time, apparently. But I kept my eyes shut and pretended.
Chapter Two
Clint
“Shit.”
The low word snapped me out of sleep. I went on high alert, my body recognizing the stress in James’s voice before I was fully awake. My hand went to my back, where a handgun had been stashed for most of my time undercover, a shitty substitute for a bona fide holster. But my waistband was empty. In fact, I had no gear at all.
I was on a plane.
Wiping my face, I demanded hoarsely, “What’s wrong?”
“Trouble,” James murmured with a nod to the front.
The plane. We were on the plane, and the first place my mind went after
trouble
was Della. If Della was in trouble, I was going to… what? I jolted out of my seat, pushing back the people who had stuck their heads into the aisle to see better.
There was Della, kneeling in the aisle, holding someone’s head in her lap.
“Back up,” I snapped to the man who was leaning over Della’s shoulder for a better look. He’d been sitting beside the woman who was currently on the ground, but he was of no use.
After handling many medical emergency situations in the military, two things were clear to me immediately: one, the older woman was in anaphylactic shock, and two, Della was an asset. Worry filled her eyes, but she was calm and breathing steady. No panic, though the same couldn’t be said for some of the people around us. I heard James behind me, clearing the seats nearby to give us room.
Della looked at me. “She has a medical exception for her EpiPen.”
That’s right. Needles wouldn’t be allowed except in extreme cases. As the stewardess, she would know about them. “Do you know where she keeps it?”
“It’s not in her pockets. I already checked.”
That was the most common place to store it for easy access. A quick search of the purse didn’t reveal anything. Shit. Even kneeling on the seat, digging through her bags, I could feel the tightness of the space, closing in on me. I forced myself to stop and think. If she were sitting down… She might have kept an EpiPen in her pocket, but if it poked her uncomfortably in the tight quarters…she might have stuck it into the seat pocket in front of her.
I reached my hand in and pulled it out. “Got it. Can you apply it?”
In response, Della held out her hand. As soon as I handed it over, she bit the lid off with her teeth and injected the woman in the thigh. I recapped the EpiPen while Della gently rubbed the injection site, something that would help the medicine disperse faster.
Della kept the woman on her side with her breathing passage cleared while I took the pulse. It was slowing as I counted, down to safer levels. However, the woman was clearly still out of sorts, her breathing evening out but her eyes glazed.
“Let’s get her to the front,” Della said. “There’s a seat free in first class. We’ll be able to recline her there.”
I carried the woman to the front and then left her in Della’s care, along with another stewardess who met us there. Another man stepped forward to help. The air marshal. Nothing designated him so, but I could tell he was packing from his stance and the grim set of his mouth. Seriously late to the party. I shook my head but let him pass.
Fall asleep on the job?
I figured both the stewardess and the marshal had received rudimentary first-aid training and could at least support the woman until we landed.
So I made myself scarce and returned to my seat.
“Everything okay?” James asked.
“She had an EpiPen. Seemed okay, but…”
But what the hell did I know? She’d definitely get checked out by a doctor on the ground. My time in the army had taught me that human life was both incredibly strong and infinitely fragile. I had seen a man move a Humvee to get his friend out from under it. They both lived. And I had seen a guy die in a bar fight during shore leave. A single punch to the head, landed wrong on the concrete floor—lights out. I had learned not to take anything for granted, even the relative safety of American soil.
The rest of the flight continued without incident. The departure took a little longer than usual as they first escorted the woman off the plane. She was long gone with paramedics by the time I walked through the gangway.
Della was still there, speaking with another stewardess off to the side. I hoisted my bag on my shoulder and kept walking.
“Talk to her,” James muttered from beside me.
“Not a chance. I have Chelsea waiting for me, remember?” And based on my rapid pulse and dry eyes, the time away had messed me up more than I’d thought. I was in no condition to be around a woman, neither the one I’d just met nor the one I’d left behind.
James snorted. “I didn’t say take her into the bathroom for a quickie. Just talk to her.”
I shook my head, at both the man’s way of speaking and his suggestion.
So, I’d felt a little attraction for someone. No big deal. As James had said in his own way, we were away a long time. It was normal to look. But if I went over to speak to her, it wouldn’t be as a passenger on her plane. It would be as a man interested in a woman.
I just kept walking.
* * *
James swept Rachel up in a bear hug and gave her a searing kiss. I turned my head away out of respect, though I saw plenty of people stopping to stare. They looked pretty great, I had to admit. Great enough that I felt the absence of someone in my own arms acutely, like a knife in my side. Despite some of the crude things he said, I knew James was head over heels for this girl.
Rachel had a hug for me too. “You been staying out of trouble?”
“Pretty much.” Aside from the two gunshot wounds that had been patched up in the field. James had sewed up one of them.
“This guy’s a hero.” James grinned. “He even saved someone’s life on the plane ride over.”
I rolled my eyes. “Don’t listen to a word he says.”
“Oh, don’t worry. I don’t.” But Rachel was looking at her boyfriend with pure affection.
It didn’t go unnoticed by James, who pulled her in for a longer kiss. “Let’s get out of here,” he murmured, low enough to be for her ears only. I shifted on my feet, feeling like an intruder. The terminal was bustling with people meeting loved ones. Emotion all around, battering me like little pricks, more painful than stitches in the jungle.
I felt Rachel look at me, heard her soft whisper. Not the contents, but I could guess where this was going.
“Hey, man, you need a ride?” James delivered the offer casually, but we all knew what was at stake. The last time we’d met in the airport, Rachel had been standing beside Chelsea.
Wasn’t gonna happen. That wasn’t disappointment sinking in my gut, was it? Guess I really had thought she’d show up. I’d sent her my itinerary, just in case.
What a shmuck.
“I’m sure she’s on her way,” I said, lying through my teeth. “Don’t wait up for me.”
Rachel looked worried. “You sure?”
James mostly looked impatient—no doubt to take Rachel home and get busy. And why not? The guy deserved his R & R. No point in holding them up just because I was having woman troubles.
“Don’t worry about me,” I said.
“I’m a little worried,” James said. “But not because of Chelsea.”
I knew what he meant. He meant he didn’t like Chelsea. He also meant I was a walking target if anyone found out about the memory stick in my bag. No way was I gonna check in luggage with that little piece of intel. But no one knew I had that list, and I would keep it that way.
“Well, don’t be,” I said. “Seriously, you guys are chilling in a cold-ass airport just to hang out with me? I must look better than I thought.”
“Fuck you,” James said with his usual friendly nature, but in his eyes I saw the warning. The data on that stick could make a lot of powerful men nervous. The kind of men who asked questions with their guns and made inquiries with C4 explosives.
It had been risky to even keep the damn thing. When I’d told my commander about it, he’d quietly told me to lose it. But the potential reward was too rich to pass up. This was national-security stuff. This was
domestic
security stuff, the kind of thing that kept children safe and off the streets. All of that compared to my life. I had figured out a long time ago how little it was worth.
So I had defied a direct order. And I would have to identify a high-ranking official, someone I could be sure wouldn’t turn around and sell the information, someone with enough of a fire under them to actually pursue the list through the proper channels.
“I’ll call you,” I said in concession. I definitely wanted James’s help on this. That was the reason I’d told him about it. Best friends. Blood brothers. I could count on him to have my back.
He nodded. “In that case…”
“Yeah, yeah, get out of here.”
I didn’t have to tell them twice. After another hug from Rachel, they disappeared into the crowd.
Damn. After searching baggage claim and the pickup circle outside, I had to admit Chelsea wasn’t coming. The area was sticky and hot with the exhaust of all the idling cars. Everywhere I looked there were happy, tearful reunions. Bags going into cars. Kisses across the seat before the car pulled away.
No Chelsea.
I tried calling again. Voice mail. After the beep, I said, “Hey, Chels, it’s me. I’m at the airport. I got your message, but I… I was hoping you could come pick me up. We could talk… or not. Call me?”
Shmuck.
I crossed the little intersection to where a sign indicated cabs would stop. Unfortunately there were no yellow cars lined up. Nothing at all. It seemed weird in such a busy airport, but maybe a bunch of planes had just arrived. Or maybe I was in the wrong place.
But traipsing all over the airport at this moment felt suddenly… impossible. Whatever survival mechanism that sustained me through the mission had subsided, leaving me tired and broken. My legs felt like jelly, way too wobbly to support my overlarge frame. I sat—or collapsed—on a bench and dumped my duffel bag beside me. Hopefully a cab would pull up.
My eyes fell shut. I’d definitely found sleep in the middle of worse situations. It wouldn’t be appropriate here, of course, but I didn’t care about that anymore. It was beyond me to care.
Sleep didn’t come.
I heard the soft squeal of breaks in front of me. Instead of a yellow car, it was an older model black truck. The window rolled down, revealing the flight attendant from the plane.
Della.
She raised her eyebrows. “Hop in, soldier.”
Scrubbing a hand over my face, I looked left and right. Everything was just as I’d thought. People meeting loved ones. No sign of Chelsea.
“What?” I said, mostly stalling.
“I said get in. I’ll take you home.”
I shifted on the seat, wishing my brain wasn’t filled with cotton. Was she hitting on me? I mean, clearly she was trying to pick me up, but was she also trying to
pick me up?
She was gorgeous, and I hadn’t even looked in a mirror in days. Mostly because I wouldn’t like what I saw. There was no reason to think she was interested in me that way.
As if to confirm it, she added, “Look, I can take you wherever you need to go. I don’t feel comfortable leaving you here when you look like roadkill.”
Right. So she wasn’t interested in me that way.
Even so, if she were a man and I were a woman, the situation would not be entirely safe. But in this case, I was a giant fresh out of combat, and Della was a tiny little thing. Even if she did drive a big truck, I doubted she would turn out to be a serial killer. Stranger things had happened, but considering the sadistic assholes I’d just tangled with, it was a risk I could take.
My phone screen was still blank. No returned called. No texts.
I let out a breath. “Do you know where the cabs line up? I saw the sign for here, but…”
“They moved that to Terminal C. It got too crowded around here so they split it up. You would’ve had to follow the signs from the gate.”
And I hadn’t done that. I’d gone with James to the car pickup area, expecting Chelsea to be here. Hoping she’d be here, the same way she’d been here the last time I’d come back from overseas. That was probably stupid, but this last undercover thing had been rougher than I’d expected, rougher than I
could
have expected.
The final weeks of army training were supposed to be tough. The training for spec ops was supposed to be tougher. But nothing had prepared me for the sight of kids being used. Nothing prepared me for not being able to do a damn thing to help them. Instead I had to gather evidence, to shoot the shit with the scum of the earth and
laugh
about it. So yeah, I’d played the fool here, and the pretty stewardess got to witness it.