Night Is Mine (42 page)

“You don’t want to be eating that, you know. Bad luck there.” A brief hint of Texas and cozy familiarity. Did he resent not being free to use it as much as she missed hearing it?

She looked down at the Candy II packet crushed in her fist. No Special Forces grunt would dare eat the candy from an MRE before a mission. Seriously bad luck. She pried open her fist and let it flutter down to rest by her dusty boot.

The sun had set. Her MRE, forgotten too long on the scorching concrete, had fried and died, not that she cared. The knife-edge suddenness of nightfall in an arid desert was hacking its way across the sky. The temperature had already dropped twenty degrees to merely unbearable. It felt like heaven.

“You know…” He leaned back on his elbows on the bench behind, crossed his ankles on the bench below, and stared up at the darkening sky. “You are either the luckiest person alive or the unluckiest. And I’ll be damned if I know which.”

She knew where her vote would land so she kept her mouth shut.

“That mission you flew last night, even the D-boys were shaking when they got off your flight. I didn’t know you could get that many bullet holes in a Black Hawk and still have her fly. Tough. Really tough.”

“Me or the bird?”

He didn’t reply. Clearly he’d meant both. She was back in the guy-speak world. Didn’t know why she’d even asked.

The setting sun would soon be revealing Venus on its path to set in the west. If she looked a little north, she could pick out the planet with the more sensitive corner of her eye. Old pilot trick, center of your eye sees color, sides see no color but gather more light. There. As she did every night, she tried to track it until she was facing the planet square on. Too dim still, it faded away in the center of her vision. She turned her head slightly until it danced, enticingly elusive, in her peripheral vision. Her vision. Each night it gave her at least one thing to be thankful for. She could see.

Maghrib, the prayer at sunset, slipped through the air from the town that had once used this soccer stadium, before the jihad had murdered the star players and inducted the rest. Before the U.S. military had moved in. The sunset prayer wafted from the town. In a village too poor to have electricity, no massive speakers screeched the muezzin’s chant into incomprehensibility. Instead, one man acted as town crier and the faithful echoed his call.

“How many of you share Katherine Matthews’s wish? How many of you would rather see me dead than fighting your enemies? Rather see us all die, though you speak ‘peace be onto us’ in each round of prayer?” Emily half-whispered it into the night.

“Pretty morose there, babe.” Mark slurred the last as luridly as he could, thick Texas and all.

She refused to answer his jibe. What was he playing at anyway? Why was he breaking his commitment to be her CO but no more? Couldn’t he see how it tore her in two every time she saw him?

He let the silence linger until she could finally spot Venus head on.

“You’re going stateside for a bit.”

“No!” She jerked upright and faced him. “Don’t send me down! I’m the best damn pilot you’ve got.”

“Wrong, you’re the best damn pilot I’ve ever seen. And I’m not sending you down. Ten days leave, all the Army can spare you. Get your head screwed back on. Even though the D-boys love where you can get them, they’re afraid for you. Not ‘of you,’ Michael insisted. For you. They want you in fighting trim, not showing up dead one day because you pushed a line you shouldn’t have crossed.”

“But—”

“It’s an order, Captain. I’m hereby ordering you to take a vacation. It can be on an Italian beach for all I care, but away from here.”

He pulled the order from his pocket and handed it to her. The paper was slick and hard to unfold. Ten days, and no training courses allowed. Ten days completely off. What was she supposed to do with that?

“I want you alive. I wouldn’t mind if it were for a long time. It was fun being your boyfriend, even if only for a little time.” His voice drifted off to a bare whisper. “I wouldn’t mind having you back.”

For an instant she wondered if he meant as a flier or a girlfriend. Not a hard one to answer actually. Again, clearly he meant both.

His shades still covered his eyes, though true sunset had arrived. The moment, as measured by the Bedouin she’d lived among during a mission to Yemen, when a red thread and a blue one held a finger’s width apart can no longer be distinguished by color.

She studied her hands. Mark had made a nice offer, even if they both knew it was impossible. Army Regulation 600-20 was very clear on that point. He’d made it decently. A good man, he’d proven that by his actions. A thoughtful man, he’d proven that by how he offered but didn’t push. A handsome man, every woman who’d ever seen him would agree. A man who knew who she was. That she didn’t exist without her team, without her flight.

So why did she want to pound her fists against him?

Hard.

“One other thing.”

“Ah.” There it was. “What’s the other shoe?”

He laughed. A single, short chuckle. Not long, but complete. A compliment. That no matter how messed up her feelings were, her brain remained on the job.

“When you get back, I’m going to strip you of your bars.”

“Wouldn’t be the first time.” Back a grade to first lieutenant. Not too bad for having killed the President’s wife.

“Yeah. I’ve spoken with your Sneaker Boy pal. This time you’re going to wear the damned oak leaf if he and I have to pin you down while I staple it to your naked breast.”

“Oak leaf?” It took a moment, then she sat bolt upright as if she’d been electrocuted.

“No! Uh-uh! I don’t want to be a major, Major. I fly. I don’t command and sit back. I fly.”

“Do you see me sitting it out? Bet your pretty ass you fly. As long as you’re in my outfit, you fly.”

That was something at least. Up a pay grade but still flying.

“I only command my one bird though, right?” She’d never wanted more than her four-man team. Hated the feel of remote control on people’s lives. And watching Mark juggle a dozen birds, with fifty crew and a couple hundred support personnel, just made her head pound.

“Wa’alll…”

She knew she was in trouble if the Texas accent was back.

“I think your copilot, Archie, is almost ready to become your wingman in his own bird.”

She nodded. He was. Past due if they weren’t such a good team together. She’d been flying with Archie since West Point days, and she’d miss sharing a cockpit with him.

“But first there’s these two gal crew chiefs who’ve qualified as armaments and engineer, number two and three in Night Stalker history. They’ll need someone to show them the ropes. They need someone who’s the best.”

That could be fun. Teaching a woman how to keep all these macho jocks in place. One good female copilot, and they’d be the most kick-ass crew the Night Stalkers had ever fielded.

“One of them’s pretty hot, you know.”

The elbow to his ribs didn’t even take a thought. It shot out and caught him solidly enough to hurt.

She turned to apologize. Maybe her feelings really were messed up enough to need a break.

He smiled at her. The damn man smiled at her. As if he didn’t know he’d just made her day. Her year.

“Y’all know something?”

“What?” She just knew she’d be flying. It was all she ever needed to know.

“Army Regulation 600-20, Chapter 4, Section 14, is titled: ‘Relationships between officers of different ranks.’”

She blinked. Blinked hard. “But…”

“But what?”

Emily looked at him, back at Venus, down at her folded hands, and back at Mark. Sex. They could have sex without being thrown out of the Army for her being his subordinate. Major and major. Same rank.

“But…”

This time he didn’t respond. Mark let his silence wait for her own thoughts to move less like a chopper with its rear rotor just shot off.

She wanted Mark. So badly it made her head spin worse than when the hallucinations hit during Green Platoon training. But she didn’t want sex. Well, not just sex. She wanted to curl up with him in the same bed and sleep with the perfect safety of his arms wrapped about her. She wanted… “More.”

He dug into his pocket and pulled out a second set of orders. Venus now shone brilliant in the night, other stars following close in her wake. Emily couldn’t read them even if he gave them to her.

But he held onto them. Drawing them back when she reached out.

“Nope. Not yours, honey pie. Not yours, sweetest lady I’ve ever met.” His voice slipped from fake Texas twang to the soft voice she’d only heard a few times when they were alone together.

Mark unfolded the paper and adjusted his mirrored shades as if that would help him read in the dark. He turned the sheet top for bottom, then front to back, finally holding it sideways as if that made any difference.

“After the Washington shenanigans, I could only get five days off myself.”

“Five days,” Emily whispered out into the dark night. What could they do in five days? A lot. When they’d only had three hours, they’d done plenty. But she wanted… If only she knew. The words were there, but she couldn’t find them.

“I’m a-figurin’…” He folded the order laboriously. “I’m a-figurin’ that five days ain’t really enough time for a purty little gal to plan a wedding and have a honeymoon, but if I gave you a five-day head start…” His shrug was eloquent even in the dark.

Wedding and a honeymoon.

He returned the order to his pocket and slid his glasses up into his hair. She could see the outline of his face in the starlight. Could feel him waiting in the dark.

Waiting in the place of greatest safety for any Night Stalker.

He was asking the same question Peter had.

They could fly together. Major and major.

Be together, husband and wife. Joint operations in the truest sense.

Mark’s question sent a delightful shiver up her spine as warmth spread through her, melting a cold spot inside that the desert heat had failed to touch in the two weeks since her return. A hope of love and family she’d always imagined but never really believed in. Didn’t believe in until the first time he’d kissed her aboard the carrier a lifetime ago.

Peter had proposed to her. That was the dream she’d always held, but the price had been so high. To abandon all that she’d trained to be. All she’d wanted since the first time she’d taken the controls of her first little Robinson two-seater. All she’d made herself be. Peter loved the precocious little girl. Or, more accurately, the memory of her. The warrior she’d become, though perhaps intriguing, was to be easily discarded in a way she would never survive.

And Peter’s kiss had been… That was the other problem. She had to admit it. Finally.

It wasn’t rough. Peter wasn’t the rough sort. But the kiss she’d longed for all those years had taken itself for granted. He’d curled his hand around the back of her neck and dug his fingers into her hair to hold tight. He’d pulled her in, not roughly, but like a man who already knew the answer. No soul-filling warmth. No electrifying spark. Just possession. Taking for granted that she too would come to him as easily as all his successes.

“How’s my timing, Emma?” Mark whispered her name into the night and cradled his hand against her cheek. That wonderful rough palm snuggled warm against her skin.

If her name had sounded good on his lips before, tonight it sounded perfect.

She rubbed her cheek against his palm. It took one warrior to understand another. He wanted her, the warrior and the flier. And he respected her enough to ask. Enough to stand against his desires, his needs on her behalf if that was her decision. If she said no, Mark would turn back into her commander. It might kill him inside, but he would do it.

He wanted the woman she’d made, the woman she’d become. Built layer by layer until she’d gained enough hard lift to reach the sky.

She ran her fingertips over his face, the details now hidden by the night. Brushed them across his eyelids, which fluttered shut as she felt the outline of those eyes that always saw her so clearly, despite the darkness that hid their color.

Mark would provide even more, sufficient lift to reach her dreams. They could fly to them together.

Her father had said she’d get there. Now that she had, it was easy to see despite the dark.

Mark wouldn’t want her to be different than who she was, any more than he could be unkind. The perfect, clichéd warrior. Exactly as she’d thought of him every time she’d flown with him. Except not cliché at all. He still awaited her answer, assumed nothing. A hundred percent class act.

Emily turned until her lips were against the cup of his palm, and he sighed into the night as she kissed him there. A pent-up release of breath held against fear. Fear she might say no. As if she could. As if her heart would let her.

Without a single word of her own, with the perfect timing of her husband-to-be, she turned to straddle his lap and lay her head on his shoulder as he stroked her hair.

Sometimes the answer was easy. As easy as flying.