Perfect Stranger (18 page)

Her hair wisped and lifted around her as
they came into the bright sunlight on the breezy roof. Armed men
sat on the sides of one chopper, filled with their prisoners, as
the helicopter lifted off, gusting the rooftop. Chloe's hair calmed
as they flew away, the heavy whoosh of the blades fading. Two other
choppers remained.

Jericho tensed at her back and suddenly
limped from her side to a man rushing towards them in the hazy
heat. Chloe shielded her eyes and held her hair in place on the
rooftop, trying to see whom Jericho went to.

He clasped hands with the man, hugging him
with his other arm. They seemed like they were having a happy
reunion, and Chloe wondered if this man could be one of Jericho's
missing team members.

Jericho slowly led him over to Chloe. "This
is Gunner," he said. "My medic from my team. He was one of the guys
I was separated from the night before we met."

Chloe beamed up at the man and stuck out her
hand.

He smiled gently and gave it a delicate
shake. "Pleased to meet you, ma'am," Gunner said, looking sidelong
at Jericho in a questioning way.

"I'm so glad you are okay. Jericho told me
what happened," Chloe said. She chose to ignore his confusion over
her closeness with Jericho. She would let him explain to Gunner
later.

Gunner straightened. "He did, did he?" He
eyed Jericho sternly.

"It's okay, Gunner." Jericho laid a hand on
the man's shoulder and squeezed.

Gunner rolled his eyes. "Yeah, you tell that
to Central during your debriefing, okay? I want to listen." He
snickered, then sobered. "Butler is back at Bragg already. He
needed medical attention from that shot he took. Boy, was he pissed
when he couldn’t come along for your extraction."

"I bet," Jericho said, amused. His face fell
then. "What about Malony? And where is Conyers?"

"They sent another team to pick up Malony,"
Gunner said, frowning, and then despite his sorrow, he scoffed.
"Conyers, he's gone. Disappeared." His brow pinched. "How'd you
know 'bout him?"

"There was a transmitter inside a magazine
to my weapon. The damn mag he tossed me, remember?"

Gunner looked off, as though trying to
remember, then shook his head. "Yeah. We didn’t know until we
reached Langley. Seems when our team went off the grid six days
ago, Weston uncovered exculpatory evidence on Conyers's
disloyalty.

"He sent a team, and they picked up a group
of mercenaries scouring Rio for you and the woman. They were
working with Conyers. According to them, we were never supposed to
have left that jungle. Us showing back up at that safe house was a
surprise to Conyers. He sent us back out to die." Gunner shook his
head. "When Butler and I showed up at Central, Weston put together
this team, and we were on the ground in twelve hours."

Jericho's brow furrowed,
and he reached out to tap Gunner on the shoulder. "Hey, when we
were in there—" he thrust his thumb over his shoulder at the
entrance to the building behind them, "—their leader said something
to me. He said, ‘
this is only the
beginning.’
You know anything I
don't?"

Gunner shook his head. "No, man. You know
I'd tell you if I did. Weston is the one to ask that question.
However, at this point I'm not sure he'd tell us."

Jericho chuckled and shook his head, then
turned to Chloe. "For the record, this isn’t normal for us."

She couldn’t help smiling.

"Hey," a voice shouted from a near-by
chopper. When the group turned to him, the pilot waved to Gunner to
come to him. "SFC Gunner," he called over the whir of the
helicopter firing up.

"Excuse me," Gunner said to Chloe. "We'll
talk more on this later, man," he said to Jericho, slapping him on
the shoulder.

When they were semi-alone again, Jericho
turned to Chloe, running his fingers through her hair. "I'm so glad
you're safe. You don't know what it did to me seeing that bastard
hurt you." A flash of lingering anger sparked in his eyes, and he
pulled Chloe close as she teared up. Jericho ran his thumb gently
over the red splotch on her cheek remaining from the slap she had
received.

"I'm so glad you are okay, too," she
said.

The heavy blades of one of the two remaining
choppers began to rotate in the background then, and they both
turned to watch, the blades sending a wave of hot air to brush
them.

A man approached them, holding his hat on.
"Eden, we've located your boy MacKall. You in? I saved you a seat,"
the Chief Warrant Officer called, poking his thumb over his
shoulder at the waiting chopper.

Jericho stiffened, looking over the man's
shoulder to the helicopter.

A sudden fear of Jericho leaving her struck
through Chloe like a lash and scored a definite mark on her
soul.

He turned back to her, slowly cupping her
face and running his thumb over her lower lip. His jaw ticked as he
considered the offer. "This is something I have to do, okay?"

Chloe smiled sadly up at him, but she
nodded, trying her very best to show no sign of her inward
turmoil.

She had known this would happen, that he
would go and these last few days would end.

They had been through little less than hell,
and a sane person would be happy their ordeal was over.

Why wasn't she?

Jericho brushed his thumb over her cheek
once more and then dropped his hand. He nodded to Gunner as his
friend approached. Chloe could sense Jericho pulling away from her
already, the gap increasing.

Her hair tossed wildly from the spinning
blades as Jericho handed her off to his medic. Chloe locked her
stare with his, desperately fighting to not show any emotion.

"Tell my friend who you are and where home
is. He'll patch you up—" Jericho's fingers grazed her temple, and a
flash of anger crossed, but was just as quickly gone. He tucked the
emotion neatly away somewhere behind those dark-green eyes. "—and
get you there safely. I trust him with my life, and you can, too,"
he told her. The chopper's whir nearly drowned out his words. At
her pained expression, as she looked over his shoulder to the
waiting chopper, Jericho stepped closer and took her face in his
hands. "It's okay. It's all over now."

Somehow, that wasn’t what she wanted to
hear.

It is over.

His eyes drifted to her mouth, but he made
no move to kiss her. Something so unreadable and deep in his gaze
caught Chloe so unawares that all she could do was stare back. Her
soul sank as Jericho backed away.

The fact that she knew him so very little
slowly crept back into her mind, sinking her heart.

The fear of making another “man-mistake”
flooded her then, and all she wanted to do was run.

She watched Jericho's footfalls as he
crossed the rooftop to the chopper.

Was she crazy to
feel
in love
?
She'd only spent five nights in the jungle with the man. After all,
he was a perfect stranger four days ago.

Perfect
.

She watched her perfect stranger as he
climbed into the chopper. Everything flowed around her in slow
motion in those last few moments before he melted from her life.
Her eyes skimmed his profile, trying to capture him in her memory
best as possible.

Jericho
was
perfect.

And reality told her she would never see him
again. These last four days in the jungle were but a memory now.
Her time with him seemed like a dream.

Her heart constricted.

Jericho turned and lifted his hand in a
little wave from the edge of the chopper.

Her soul crashed as he lifted off.

"Ma'am?" Gunner said. He put a hand on her
back, ushering her toward the other helicopter as its engine
whirred to life. "Are you ready to go home?" he asked lightly, as
though he expected her to shake her head vigorously and beam with
happiness and relief—as any sane person should.

Somehow, the thought of home didn’t seem so
welcoming as it had days ago.

Sadly, Chloe nodded once, offered a wan
smile, and started for the chopper with Gunner at her side.

Chapter Seventeen

Thursday, two weeks later

Charlotte, North Carolina, U.S.

Her machine beeped again, and for a third
time Chloe hit the erase button as soon as her ex's voice filled
the little speaker. She hated him a little more with every message.
She really couldn’t stand hearing his blather, particularly not
right now when her soul felt so empty.

She was having a hard time reconciling
herself with the reality of her mundane world.

Chloe punched the erase button for three
more similar messages requesting she bring back this or that and
listened halfheartedly to one from her landlord inquiring if she
was all right since he hadn't noticed her leave her house in
several days, and as the bookstore was still closed, he wondered if
maybe she were ill. The message finished with him offering to bring
soup.

Chloe snorted. Soup wouldn’t fix her
problems.

She pushed the button again, though with a
little less enthusiasm.

She'd come back from Brazil more broken than
when she had left, except for over a new man and in a completely
new way.

Jericho hadn't broken her heart, and he
certainly hadn’t done anything cruel to her. Yet, somehow his
absence hurt worse.

The machine gave a long beep and its usually
annoying auto message telling her there were no more messages, as
if she couldn’t tell by the blinking double dash.

Chloe grumbled at the machine and dragged
her feet to the wall by the fridge to pick up a pen and marked off
the day on the calendar, even though the hands of the clock hanging
above the sink were only raised straight to noon. That she had
managed a shower today spoke volumes, and when she finished the X
she tried not to dig the pen into the next month.

For a moment, she stared at the Xs filling
the two weeks since she had been back home. A few of them were
darker than others, where she'd dug the pen down in frustration,
and a few were neatly filled in solid where she'd leaned against
the wall in a daze and thought of Jericho meanwhile scribbling in
the squares. She regarded the calendar in a mix of disgust and
despondency. The ratio between dark Xs and bleak scribbles was
eight and six.

Chloe tapped the end of her pen against her
chin.

Somehow, those should-be insignificant
little black Xs meant more than they should have.

Her spirits sank a little lower.

She sighed hard as she kept staring at them,
wishing they would disappear, that they would retreat and she would
be back standing on that rooftop in Brazil, or better yet, lying on
the jungle floor or in the bed in that small room—before the
gunfire—with the man of her dreams.

She stiffened at the sound of her doorbell,
then quickly whirled around in her robe and ducked below the
counter as the bell dinged again. The towel from her hair whipped
in a large circle and fell to the floor. She grasped to pull it
behind the counter out of sight, gripping the towel and pen
together as she huddled with her knees to her chin.

Chloe sighed hard,
annoyed, rolling her eyes heavenward. She hoped she hadn’t been
seen. If she had to face her ex again, she hoped to be better
prepared first. She really didn’t care to go out of her way to see
that his belongings were returned. Perhaps he should have thought
about those precious things before he cheated. There was only one
thing she cared about, and
he
had nothing to do with
him
.

She cringed, looking to the trashcan where
she had been forced to remove the lid to contain a heap of dying
flowers. The assortment blended in many colors from various
arrangements that she had taken great delight in shredding before
she trashed them.

She groaned as the doorbell rang again,
three times now.

When would he take the hint? Wasn’t it
obvious she wasn’t coming out?

Chloe slid down a little lower.

Over the last week, ever since he had
discovered her return from Brazil—via her loud-mouthed sister no
doubt—her ex had left countless letters and cards, not to forget
the annoying messages on her phone. Anything to get what he wanted.
His notes ranged from apologetic to threatening. If she damaged any
of his belongings he'd threatened to sue. He was enraged she'd
taken their honeymoon trip, and he also wanted the ring back.

Chloe grimaced.

There would be no giving the ring back, as
it gone quickly on eBay.

She wished she could just dump all this
things on the lawn and tell him to screw off. But she couldn’t
bring herself to end their misery. She didn’t have it in her at the
moment. Maybe in a few days, but not right now.

She snorted. He deserved what he got.

Every time he had come to her door, she
hunkered down as she did now and pretended not to be home.

A fist pounded on the door in earnest just
then.

This intensity was something new.

Irritably, Chloe growled and peeked over the
counter. She couldn’t see anyone and ducked back down quickly.

She really didn’t want to see her ex, not
today or ever. Right now in particular, she was too heartsick over
Jericho to deal with anything or anyone else.

A waft of the dead flowers from the nearby
trash caused a sudden churn of her stomach and sent Chloe grasping
for the trash lid, but she closed a hand over her mouth and forced
herself to not empty her stomach.

She was late on her cycle.

She had tried her best to calculate the days
she might have ovulated, and found they lined up to include the
last night she and Jericho were together.