Free Fall (8 page)

He stayed silent. Was the kid digging? More than once he’d hinted that he knew she had a deeper reason for being here. Had her cover been blown?

“She’s smart. Pretty.”

His jaw clamped tight, possessive instincts roaring. Whoa. Wait. Was this kid going somewhere else with his questions? “Do you have a point?”

Sutton shook his head. “Not really. Just wondering what kind of guy lets a woman like her get away.”

Great. Now even the kid was calling him out on his idiocy. As if he didn’t already know. “Prop your ankle on the log. It’ll keep the swelling down.”

Sutton set aside the shield. “Are you dudes SEALs or what?”

“Special Operations involves a number of different branches—SEALs, Rangers, Green Berets, pararescuemen.”

“Which are you?”

“Pararescuemen—sometimes known as pararescue jumpers, PJs.”

“Were you all PJs?”

Nosy little dude. “Does it matter?”

“You’re not going to tell me, are you?”

“Do you really need to know?” Was the kid more than a student too? Government agencies kept secrets from each other all the time.

“Point made. Thanks to all those movies and documentaries and books, I’ve heard all about SEALs. Tell me more about these PJs.”

Jose scanned the perimeter, monitoring every shifting branch and shadow, assessing every scratch or crackle. For now, all could be chalked up to nature. “We rescue. Let’s just say we PJs thank God the SEALs are on our side and the SEALs thank God for us when they need someone to haul their asses out.”

“Kinda like ‘you fuck up, we pick up’?”

Sounded like the kid knew a little about the PJs after all. Kid? Sutton was around twenty-two. Jose had had four years of active duty military service under his belt by then.

Jose just stared back, silently, until a rustling from the lean-to pulled his attention off the kid. Rolling to his feet, he landed in a crouch by instinct. Weapon drawn, he scanned the dark.

Stella raised a hand. “Hold on. Just me.”

Jose lowered his gun. “Sorry to have woken you.”

“You didn’t. I’m too wired to sleep long. Once we get out of here, though, I’ll be comatose for days.” Sitting up, she pulled the wrap around her shoulders like a shawl. “PJs don’t like to talk about themselves.”

“Then let’s not,” Jose said, night sounds humming in agreement.

She shoved her thick red braid over her shoulder, sweeping the escaping wisps away. “Most folks have never heard of the pararescuemen. There are only about three hundred and fifty in the world.”

Sutton hooked his arm on his knees, leaning in. “That’s crazy cool. Dude, you should be bragging in bars left and right. Think of the babes you could score.”

Stella scrunched her nose in disdain. “So you’re the kind who pretends to be an astronaut to pick up women?”

Sutton clapped a hand to his chest. “That would be very dishonorable.”

Damn straight.

Stella scooted closer. “Their training takes nearly two years. They do the SEAL survival stuff, assault, protection courses, as well as becoming medics—except for the officer on the team. Anyhow, their focus is on rescue, but they need the insertion and force protection skills to make that happen.”

Jose couldn’t figure out why the hell she was telling all this stuff about PJs, and then it hit him. If she put the focus on his job—more of a known entity—then it took the focus off her real job. She was good. Really good.

So he let her keep talking; no hardship. He could just sit and take in the sight of her, so sexy with her hair mussed from sleep. After a month away from her, he soaked up the sound of her.

He was a sap.

Sutton held up the shield, grinning. “So I shouldn’t piss off these two badasses. What else should I know about your boyfriend?”

“
Former
boyfriend,” she said quickly, too quickly. “He and his buds rescue downed pilots in war zones—even jump into the ocean to assist during astronauts’ landings. But their work isn’t restricted to military settings; they help SWAT teams, the FBI.”

Sutton whistled. “Hairy stuff.”

As much as he preferred not to talk about his work, Jose reminded himself this kept the focus off Stella’s job.

He clapped the kid on the shoulder. “If you call jumping into a minefield hairy, then sure, it’s hairy stuff. Another of my buddies, Franco, was dropped onto a mountain in Afghanistan to rescue a Green Beret with his legs blown off in a minefield. We couldn’t risk the rotor wash of a landing helicopter setting off another mine that would take out the whole aircraft and everyone in it. So Franco parachuted in alone. He used his medic training to secure the patient, then the helicopter hoisted them both up.”

“Hey,” Stella said, “that’s the same buddy of yours who rescued the lawyer and her nephew from earthquake rubble last year. Right, Jose? You do civilian rescue work too.”

“They were buried underneath layers of concrete slabs.” Jose kept on talking, since sure enough, the kid wasn’t focusing on Stella anymore and that was good for a lot of reasons. “Franco not only crawled through with stabilizing medical help, but also stayed with them through aftershocks until rescue teams could free them.”

Sutton leaned back against the tree trunk. “That’s one helluva bedtime story.”

Although, the sun was rising, which meant they would either be leaving or evading. “You only have about a half hour left to catch some shut-eye.”

“Then I’d better make the most of it.” Sutton’s eyes slid closed.

And as the student began snoring lightly, Jose realized he had no buffer between him and Stella. Nothing left but the two of them and a boatload of messy history.

***

In spite of all her intention to button up her heart tight, Stella couldn’t bring herself to sleep away these last minutes with Jose, not with the dream of their first date still curling through her mind and into her heart. The sun was rising and the chopper would certainly be arriving soon. They would go their separate ways again.

So even as exhaustion tugged on her every cell, she forced her eyes to stay open. She tugged the ponytail holder free and began braiding her hair loosely.

Jose’s eyes glowed coal hot in the night. “Are you seeing him?”

Surprise jolted her. “Sutton? Really? God, no. He’s just a kid.”

“Twenty-two, according to the briefing info we got on the hostages before rolling out. He’s not that much younger than either of us. Hell, I’m a couple of years younger than you and that never seemed to matter to either of us.”

She saw jealousy—and hurt. The first would have made her defensive, but the latter made her lean forward and stroke his jaw lightly.

“Well, I am not seeing him. Why would you think that?”

She was still so raw from their relationship, she didn’t know when—if—she could think about commitment again. And how scary was that? She was nowhere closer to finding out anything about her mother and she’d screwed up any possibility of a relationship with Jose. She wanted a family of her own, but she couldn’t think of being with anyone else.

But what about Jose? Had he already moved on? Was that why he thought she could?

She couldn’t stop herself from asking, “Are
you
seeing someone new?”

“I make it a point not to be dumped more than once every six months. Since you broke it off with me four weeks ago, I have five months left to be careful and stay completely single. No risks to the heart.”

Her fingers still carried the feel of his unshaven jaw. “Risks to the heart?” How the hell could he place this all at her doorstep? Anger welled inside her. “If we’re laying it out there, don’t forget I wanted more with you.”

“Just so we’re clear here.” He tugged the end of her braid. “I asked you to move in with me.”

The connection of his hand on her hair shimmered clear to her roots and pissed her off. “Yeah, well, call me old-fashioned but I was hoping we could have it all—house, family, rocking chair retirement with grandchildren—and you also made it clear that was never going to happen.”

So much for keeping her distance.

He gave her braid a final tug. “Keep right on fighting. You can let down soon.”

The way he knew just how to bolster her, how to read her, brought a lump to her throat. Spending time with him now was bittersweet, knowing how it would end.

“Stella…” He pulled his 9 mm from the holster. “For you.”

He had his machine gun, so it made sense. Still, she appreciated having control of her safety again after the helplessness of the past three days.

“Damn you,” she whispered, cradling the handgun in her hands.

“What did I do now?”

“You understand me,” she admitted, her anger peeling away, leaving nothing but the hurt behind. “I almost hate you for that. Be horrible, okay? Be a total jerk. Make this easier for both of us.”

He cupped the back of her head, his fingers massaging into her scalp. Tempting her all over again. If she could just give up her dreams, she could have him…

Then she would resent him, truly hate him in the end.

A low hum started in her brain, a buzz of frustration or doubt? Either way, it grew louder and louder until…

Jose went tense. His hand fell away and he launched to his feet. “The helicopter’s here.”

***

The CIA agent pulled out his buzzing cell phone, but he didn’t recognize the number scrolling across the screen. Not unusual, since they used disposable names and identities on a regular basis.

He held up a hand to his two fellow operatives for them to carry on with their brief about the aircraft picking up the rest of the team. He would be right back. Sidling out of the small conference room, he ducked into a deserted computer cubicle in the hangar-based mobile command center and thumbed the on button.

“Yes?”

“Hello, Henry Pope.” The tinny sounding words carried over the phone, unrecognizable with a voice changer distorting the sound.

That didn’t scare him. But the fact that the person had used his real name? That scared the shit out of him. Only one person would use his name on this line while he was in the middle of a top secret op in Africa.

“How did you get this number?” Damn it, their business was concluded. He’d done what they asked. The debt had been settled.

“My people can always find your number.”

All those video screens and the hum of activity in the next cubicle over had his skin crawling. If a Predator unscrambled his encrypted signal… “I can’t talk now.”

“Then just listen,” the mechanical voice continued. “There’s a young man who will be on the flight with the rescued hostages.”

How the hell did they know that clear across the ocean? He looked around him at the computers with workers hunched over the screens, wearing headsets and monitoring data. Who? Who was trying to sabotage his life? Was someone here talking to him or feeding information?

Maybe if he kept the person talking, he could find the bastard who’d been making him dance like a puppet for the past year. He wasn’t some errand boy.

He’d paid off his debt. “What is it you want?”

“Very simple. We just want to know what he says, who he implicates.”

“Who is this person?”

“Check your messages when they land. We’ll send you the rest of your assignment then.”

That sounded easy enough, but he didn’t need their help anymore. He wasn’t going to risk his ass for nothing.

“No can do,” he lied. “I don’t have access to what you want. Sorry, but I’m out.”

“I’m disappointed to hear that. But not surprised.”

A crackle sound on the other end of the line and then…

“Henry?” The voice changer had been removed. His wife spoke now, familiar, dear—terrified.

Panic twisted his gut in half. “Charlotte? Are you okay?”

Please Lord, let her be all right. His mind was already racing to a horrific conclusion.

“They haven’t hurt me, but they have guns, Henry. They carjacked me.” Her voice cracked on a sob. “They have Ellie too. We were in the minivan together. I’d just picked her up from preschool.”

Whimpers carried over the line, his daughter in the background.

Nausea welled, and he tried like hell to swallow it back. He was going to be sick, right here in front of everyone in the hangar. His secret would be out and his family would suffer the consequences.

Sweat beaded on his brow. He had to keep his cool, for his family, for his career, for his life.

“Stay calm, Charlotte. I’ll take care of everything. I promise.”

“Henry, I love…”

The phone line went dead.

His time with Stella was at an end.

Jose eyed the approaching aircraft with relief—and yeah, a little disappointment since he would have to say good-bye once and for all. This bizarre pocket of time together was over, reopening all the wounds that had only just started healing after Stella dumped him the first time.

There wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it. Their ride had arrived, descending about fifty yards away. Not a helicopter after all, but a CV-22, the Air Force’s newer tilt rotor aircraft. Engines on the wings moved, enabling it to do vertical takeoff and landings like a chopper, then point forward to fly like a regular plane. The CV-22 combined the maneuverability of a helicopter with the speed of an airplane.

The military wasn’t messing around here.

Jose stood along with Bubbles, both of them sliding in place along either side of Sutton Harper, propping him as he hopped on one leg.

Jose glanced left at Stella, knowing he had to help the lame student, knowing she could take care of herself. But aching with everything inside him to toss her over his shoulder and carry her straight to the aircraft himself. “Stella? Are you good?”

“I’m fine.” Her hand fell away from her ribs, the ribs he’d seen her cradling one too many times. “The sooner we get onboard, the sooner I can let you medics baby me to pieces.”

The CV-22 descended, blades
whomp, whomp, whomping
, pushing the air downward. Tall grass bowed in an outward circle.

“Go,” Bubbles shouted. “Go, go, go!”

Bubbles’s words popped like a starter pistol through Jose’s brain. He ran. His body worked on instinct from dozens of marathons, countless missions. His feet moved, legs pumping with everything inside him. Sprinting out from the cover of trees. Each step pushed the fresh scent of morning out of the ground.

As he raced closer to the helicopter, he could already almost smell the familiarity of it, a mustiness of past missions mingling with the scent of hydraulic fluid. This was his life, the military. Dreams of enlisting had been the only thing that kept him going as a teenager when his mother’s drinking got worse. When his sister started drinking too.

He’d been thirteen years old then, parked in front of the television for the summer because his sister drank away their zoo pass money. He’d seen a commercial about joining the Air Force, seeing the world.

For him, anywhere sounded better than where he’d been that day—

“Jose!” Stella’s scream just barely carried over the roar of the helicopter.

He jerked his head around fast and saw her. She’d stopped dead in her tracks, a gun in her hand and horror plastered across her face. His 9 mm that he’d given her, not really expecting that she would need to use it. He followed the line of her aimed weapon.

A teenage boy ran out of the tree line with a rifle slung over his shoulder. A couple of goats scattered as he plowed forward, his words carried away by the wind.

“Halt!” Stella shouted.

The boy froze, his eyes wide, but his hold on his rifle looked practiced, comfortable. Stella leveled the gun, pointing with the fluid ease of training. Jose’s stomach rose up to his throat. The thunder of the lowering CV-22 echoed the roar in his head. The boy didn’t seem much older than Jose had been when sitting in front of the television all those years ago, dreaming of joining the military but too young to make that dream come true yet.

Carefully, the boy tossed away the weapon and raised his arms in the air, the rising sun swelling behind him. Wind from the rotor blades whipped his too large khakis and T-shirt. His broad forehead was furrowed, his hair buzzed short. He was skinny, but it was tough to tell if that was from hunger or just teenage lankiness.

It all happened so fast, not more than five or six seconds, and in that time, any of them could have shot the boy. Or given the way the kid handled the rifle, he could have killed them in their hesitation. What the hell were they supposed to do with him now?

Stella approached him with the weapon still drawn, both equal in height. “Go back into the trees, away from the aircraft.”

Jose shoved the student onto Bubbles and followed her, scanning the trees. “Stella, we need to leave.”

The boy took a step toward her, hands still in the air. “Let me come with you,” he said in heavily accented English. “Please, ma’am, take me with you. Do not leave me here. They will kill me.”

Bubbles barked, “We gotta go.”

“No!” The kid lurched forward. “I know things, important things. I will tell you.”

Anyone could say that, but if what he said was true… Shit. They couldn’t stand around here chitchatting. “The boy comes with us. We don’t have time to sort it out now. We’ll search him for explosives and weapons and if he’s clean, cuff him and load him up.”

The boy didn’t even hesitate. He thrust out his wrists. Jose took the battered rifle, then patted him down, finding no explosives.

Bubbles stepped into the void and pulled out a set of plastic cuffs. He zipped the kid’s wrists tight. “Let’s bounce.”

Jose escorted the kid, leaving Bubbles and Stella to haul the student the rest of the way to the waiting aircraft. The crew chief inside the CV-22 reached out to steady each passenger up the back ramp and into the belly of the craft. Webbed seating stretched along either side, metal beams and cables lining the cargo hold. Jose strapped in the kid straight off, not trusting the teen, not trusting anyone. Especially when Stella was involved.

He didn’t give ten damns right now how much professional training she had. This was his rescue. His gig. And he wasn’t lowering his guard for an instant until he had her safely back at base.

The back load ramp groaned as it closed, sealing them inside with the crew chief and flight engineer. Jose dropped into a seat and strapped in beside Stella just as the CV-22 lifted off. Still, she had his gun trained on the kid.

Could she do it? Shoot a teenager?

Their time together hadn’t involved work, not after the initial meet-up in the Gulf of Aden. They’d just been two people dating, getting to know each other. He hadn’t seen her on the job, and he sure as hell hadn’t seen a woman who could draw down on a teen.

Had her nerve-wracking time as a hostage messed with her head? Maybe he shouldn’t have given her the gun after all. He closed his hand over hers, slipping the weapon from her grip, and she didn’t even protest. But then perhaps she was thinking like an undercover agent after all, trying not to draw attention to her training.

Although her standoff with the kid a few minutes ago had been mighty damn official.

The engines groaned as they shifted, pointing the rotors forward. The CV-22 accelerated, speeding forward at double the pace of a helicopter. They were that much closer to freedom.

Completely free for her to walk away from him.

He blinked the fog of denial clear from his eyes and scoured the hollow inside of the aircraft. Almost as hollow as he felt.

Sutton pointed at the kid, shouting over the roar of the engines. “You were with them, the ones who held us at the compound.”

Jose looked fast at Stella. Had she known that too from the second she saw the kid? If so, no wonder she’d drawn a weapon. And no wonder she hadn’t wanted to let the boy go.

The teen held up his cuffed hands, fingers splaying in some kind of universal pleading gesture. “They made me. I didn’t have any choice. Until now. I came to you.”

Sutton turned wild, scared eyes to Jose. “Are you just going to believe what he says?”

“Doesn’t matter,” Jose answered. “He’s in custody. We’ll sort it out later.”

So far they’d managed to keep her real identity from Sutton, although the student had been eyeing them suspiciously since realizing they had once dated.

The way they’d worked together to get to this point had been so damn smooth, even when they’d been derailed by the land mine. Why the hell couldn’t she see how good they’d been together? He’d wanted her to just accept him as he was, a great big flawed human being who was doing the best he could, one day at a time. He could already hear her answer of how he should be, what he could be—a father. God, she’d even suggested he go to medical school.

With her sitting so close, he found himself thinking about her tearful, angry request during their last fight. Really thinking, even though it made his gut knot. The engine slowed again, jerking as the engines shifted upward like a helicopter again. Landing. Time to think was over.

Before he could gather his scrambled thoughts, the back hatch opened again. The bright sun swelled inside, stinging his eyes. He blinked, seeing the hangar that held their command center, the CIA dudes and SEALs waiting. He was back where he started.

Except now the welcoming crew included more than the CIA dudes and the SEALs. His PJ team stood with them—Brick, Data, and Fang out front.

And in that moment, Jose was the thirteen-year-old kid again, sitting in front of the TV watching an Air Force recruiting commercial. He saw what had gotten him out of his screwed-up home, away from his family. He saw what had pulled him up again after he’d surrendered to the family legacy and become an alcoholic.

And he knew without question there wasn’t a middle ground for him with Stella. All he had was this rapidly closing window of time with her.

***

Stella watched the clock as the somewhat nerdy-looking Mr. Brown questioned the teenage boy, while hard-ass Mr. Smith observed from a corner. Of course, the geek thing was Brown’s act. His specialty? Martial arts, anything from Krav Maga to a black belt in karate. His unassuming appearance—five foot seven, wiry, and wearing glasses he didn’t need—had caught more than one person off guard in the field.

Would it work with the teenager?

They’d been placed in the small office in the hangar, a ten-by-ten coffee break area now being used as an interrogation room. She would be debriefed later. But for now—so far as the kid knew—she was just a freed prisoner who’d identified him as one of her captors and was listening in to verify what he said.

The second she’d seen him charging toward the CV-22, she’d recognized him. She’d noticed the kid a couple of times. Every person and every second of her captivity was catalogued in her photographic memory. The teenager had looked a helluva lot more fearsome at the compound, holding a gun and guarding his corner of the camp.

When she’d seen him running toward her, her gut had cramped with the fear she’d barely let herself feel while she was held captive. And before she could think, her instincts as a field agent went into high gear and she had Jose’s gun in her hands.

The whole ride back to base, she’d felt Jose’s eyes on her, felt his questions.

Felt the draw to be with him.

But until she had a few answers of her own, she couldn’t risk even talking to Jose. Sorting out the tangled mess of emotions inside of her would be tough enough on a calm day.

Sorting through them right now with an interrogation to get through was impossible. So the best thing she could do? Finish this interview with the teenager as quickly as possible so she could use what little time she had left with Jose to find some closure. She couldn’t spend the rest of her life feeling like her heart was cut out of her chest every time something reminded her of him.

The teen—he called himself Ajaya—cupped a canned cola with shaking hands and looked everywhere but into anyone’s eyes. “I lost my parents in an uprising when I was ten. I was sent to a school for orphans. The people who took me, they target boys like me, ones with no family.”

Mr. Brown didn’t even glance up from his iPad tablet as the kid poured out the heart-tugging story. “You speak English well. You must know the odds tell me that’s unusual for a child in your circumstances.”

“I had very good teachers at the orphan school.” He took a slurp of his drink. “I had hopes of working at the embassy. Of traveling. I did not expect to travel this way. I did not go with those men by choice.”

“How did they take you?” Still, the CIA agent didn’t show even a hint of sympathy, just total absorption in recording the information.

Mr. Brown played the distracted academic well. Meanwhile, Mr. Smith crossed his arms and tucked himself more tightly in the corner, watching, listening for the least hint of a lie. And that was also why she’d been allowed to listen in. She’d been in there. She had access to more of what went on. The teen’s eyes kept flicking to her, as if questioning why she was here, but he was wise enough not to ask.

Ajaya’s throat moved with another long swallow, his coffee-dark eyes deep wells of fear. “They pretended to be maintenance people there to fix the electricity. They made me unconscious and took me away. Next I woke up in the back of their van. But they did not work alone. They had help.”

Finally, Mr. Smith straightened, weathered creases in his face digging deeper as he frowned and looked directly into the young man’s eyes. “Help? From who?”

“From one of my teachers at the orphan school where I lived.”

***

Annie Johnson closed and locked the door to her classroom.

Most people lived for the end of the workday. Not her. She only came alive during those eight hours she spent at her desk and in front of the board—with her students. But today had been especially rough, with her eyes drawn back to those two empty desks, knowing more of her students had been snatched away by pirates and there wasn’t a damn thing anyone could do about it.

She swept the cloth up over her head and started for the door, fighting back the frustration. The hallway here at the orphan school didn’t change year after year. Not really. The same bulletin boards, just different artwork and poems, same teenage themes.

Same threats.

Dropping her keys into her pocket, Annie hitched her book satchel over her shoulder and started down the dimly lit hallway. She’d come here to teach believing that she was smarter than the rest of the people on staff. Beyond her two advanced degrees, she’d traveled the world.

How arrogant she’d been.

In over a decade at the school she’d learned so much more from these kids, children who’d seen a lifetime of loss and pain before they reached eighteen. She wanted to save them all but had come to accept no one person could carry that off.