“We’re a small operation,” the man said defensively. “Fulltime, there’s only me and Jay, guy who runs the fuel truck, and washes planes for extra cash. But he ran into town for supplies, since we weren’t expecting anyone to need him.”
The man was beginning to look a little bit suspicious, and Draven decided there was no real help here. He told the man that they were here to meet with Mr. Redstone when he returned to his plane, and that they wished to keep that quiet. The Redstone name had its usual effect, the man’s expression cleared.
“Oh,” he said.
Draven’s glance flicked to Samantha Gamble; he’d noticed the man’s gaze straying repeatedly to the leggy blonde. She never hesitated, just stepped over to the man and smiled that megawatt smile.
“It’s sort of a test exercise, you know?” she said genially. “Like you probably have to do here, you have to make sure everything runs smoothly when things are fine, to be sure they will when they’re not.”
“Oh. Yeah. Sure.”
The man was gaping openly at Sam, who pretended he was utterly charming.
Whether it was the Redstone name or Sam, Draven didn’t know. What mattered was that it worked; moments later they were alone to assess which of the possible plans they’d put together on the flight might work.
St. John came down the steps of the Hawk III and joined them. The scar along the right side of his jaw jumped, betraying his inner tension in a way Draven had never seen before.
But then, he guessed most of them were tense in a way they had never been before.
“Radio,” St. John said. “Mac’s a half hour out.”
Draven nodded, unsurprised; he’d known McClaren wouldn’t waste any time, and he was probably flying his own Hawk V, the second one ever built.
“Rider’s with him,” St. John added.
Again Draven nodded, the presence of Redstone’s premier point man no surprise, either. He’d known that once word got out he was going to have trouble keeping all of Redstone from showing up. Down to the lowest person in the hierarchy the sense of family held, and that family was unfailingly loyal to the man who made it all possible.
“Recon,” Draven said. The team went still, waiting. “Low profile, until we get the lay of things.” He considered for an instant. The women—less of a threat and more likely to be overlooked?
As if any man would overlook those two, he thought, looking at the two blondes, one tall, leggy, athletic and one tinier, almost fragile-looking, but both beautiful.
“A couple,” he murmured, processing quickly. “Hikers, I think. Covers backpacks.”
He needed to be here to assess and work out the plan. Not Alvera, too dangerous looking. And Beck had never quite lost the cop demeanor. The best choice would probably be boy-next-door Barton, but he had no security training, and they needed him on the tech gear. Right now he was downloading the aerial shot of the area that Draven had requested.
If Rand were here, he’d be perfect, but he was still on his way. That left him only one choice. And while he was not a trained agent any more than Barton was, he’d grown up harder, tougher and had the best logistical mind Draven had ever encountered.
“Reeve,” he said, and the petite agent nodded. She grabbed up the pack sitting at her feet. In it, Draven knew, were weapons of various sorts, and other tactical gear that might be useful.
Then he looked at St. John and raised a brow. If St. John was surprised it didn’t show, and he merely nodded. Jessa may have changed his life, even gotten him to occasionally shed his considerable armor, but he was more than capable of putting it back on when necessary.
No one questioned Draven’s decision. They were too well trained, and had, he knew, utter and complete faith in him. On this mission more than any other, he would see that it was deserved.
“Between them,” Sam said with a crooked smile as she looked from her boss to St. John, “they talk enough for any eighth of a person.”
Echoing smiles flashed as St. John shrugged on the pack Draven handed him with a quick description of the contents. The quip would have seemed awkward if they were anything less than Redstone. Draven knew they all were certain they would get this done, and bring Josh and Tess home safely. The joking was just their way of confirming that. He knew his team well.
Reeve held out her hand, continuing the joking. “Come along, my love, and we shall stroll the tarmac like Rick and Ilsa.”
“And have Zach on my ass? No thanks,” St. John quipped back, startling them all. But he took Reeve’s hand and they headed toward the Hawk V, indeed strolling as if they had nothing more on their minds than togetherness as they set out on a ramble through the wilderness.
It had begun.
Chapter 10
“What’s taking so long?”
“Why in such a hurry?” Josh asked Brown Shirt mildly.
He’d settled down to work behind the panel in the main cabin; the mass of wiring that fed out from it looked incredibly complex, and he figured it would justify several minutes of fiddling. He’d already isolated the cable he wanted, but couldn’t do what else he needed with the man hovering, watching every move.
“Just finish, will you?” Brown Shirt snapped.
Josh lifted one shoulder in a half shrug. “No reason to rush when he’s not even back yet.” He glanced at Tess, held her gaze as he added, “It’s not like there’s a whole entourage here waiting to make a move.”
He saw the briefest flicker in her dark eyes as she registered his meaning, and he knew she knew the troops had arrived. He guessed she had suspected; she’d heard the plane, and he was willing to bet she’d recognized it as the Hawk III just from the sound, so finely tuned were her ears to the differences in various engines.
“He’ll want to leave, get back to his fancy office, as soon as he gets here,” Brown Shirt said.
“Hmm,” Josh said, knowing his office was far from fancy.
“The angel flight,” Tess said softly.
Josh hadn’t forgotten. The latest possible wheels-up time that would allow them to make it in time was rapidly approaching.
“Angel flight? What the hell is that?”
Tess looked at Brown Shirt. Josh could almost feel her quick mind racing. If she explained, it might throw a wrench in their perceptions of their target, and he guessed she couldn’t decide if that would be good or bad. Knowing Tess, she wanted to hurl the facts at them, that a child might die because of their actions, but her innate common sense was telling her that if they were the kind of men who would care about that, they wouldn’t be doing this in the first place.
Josh took the decision out of her hands. “P.R. stunt,” he said, using the accusation his detractors—the people who couldn’t seem to resist attacking success—sometimes used.
Brown Shirt considered, then nodded. “Figures.”
But a scheduled angel flight was sacrosanct. Everyone at Redstone knew that, but Josh figured under current cirumstances a nudge wouldn’t hurt. He shifted slightly so he was directly facing the webcam. “But there are a lot of Redstone planes and several pilots. Somebody will step in.”
It was as good as an order, and Josh knew his people on the other end would know it. In fact, if St. John hadn’t already handled it, he would be surprised.
He turned back to the wiring, wondering just how long he could stretch this out.
“Hey,” Pinky said suddenly, “there’s some people walking around outside.”
Brown Shirt wheeled around and strode across the cabin to peer out the window where his collaborator was standing beside Tess. Josh quickly grabbed up the wire cutters from the small selection of tools Brown Shirt had allowed him to retrieve from the locker down the corridor.
“Just some sappy couple,” Brown Shirt snorted. “Holding hands, come to moon over the rich man’s toy.”
“He’s probably telling her he’ll buy her one someday,” Pinky said with a laugh. “That’s what women want to hear.”
Josh saw Tess take the chance to look, as
well.
“She’s a tiny little thing,” Tess said. “And you don’t see caps like he’s wearing very often anymore.”
“Just shut up, and stay in the kitchen where you belong,” Brown Shirt said to her, sharply.
St. John? Josh thought, masking his surprise as he tugged at the target cable. Reeve, obviously, she was still part of the security team, but what was St. John doing here? Didn’t he realize he needed to stay out of this, stay safe? He was the only one who could step in at Redstone if this turned ugly and something happened to him.
Tess glanced at him then, and he gave her a barely perceptible nod to indicate he’d understood. What he wanted to do was salute her; she’d gotten her message across without saying a single thing that roused suspicion. In the role she’d set for herself, a chatty, not too bright, low woman on the totem pole, she’d put herself so far out of the threat category that neither man was worrying about her anymore.
Not that Pinky had forgotten her, Josh thought with an inward grimace. He knew exactly what that guy was thinking every time he looked at her. And he didn’t much like it.
The two men were still looking out the window, and he took advantage of their focus to quickly cut the cable he was after, then shred the protective coating as best he could, to make it look as if it had worn naturally.
“Should I go chase them off?” Pinky asked.
“And be seen? No,” Brown Shirt snapped.
Pinky shrugged. “Just figured that’d be what the big shot would do. Never let the peons get too close.”
Josh set the cutters down and had both hands back amid the wiring before Brown Shirt came back to resume his super vision.
“You find the problem yet?” the man asked.
“I think so,” Josh said, tugging at the cable he’d just stuffed back down behind the wall. The newly cut end, looking suitably ragged, pulled free.
Brown Shirt frowned. “What’s that?”
“Let’s just say this plane isn’t going anywhere anytime soon, no matter what Redstone wants.”
Pinky laughed, almost gleefully. Obviously, the idea of the plane not being able to take off didn’t bother him. Josh filed that away in his mind as he let the cable—which, in fact, only controlled the floor lighting—dangle in plain view, not sure what the knowledge meant or how to use it. Yet. He was sure Draven was doing the same on the outside.
“How did that happen?” Brown Shirt asked.
“Cheap materials,” Josh said with a shrug, guessing this man knew nothing about the standards of Redstone. “The whole cable will have to be replaced. That’s going to take a while.”
“Forget it,” Brown Shirt said impatiently.
Josh schooled his expression to one of mild curiosity. “This plane can’t fly.”
“I said forget it.”
“It got here, didn’t it?” Pinky said. Maybe the man wasn’t quite as stupid as he seemed, Josh thought. Or he just had that kind of instinctive shrewdness that some animals had. Like rats, he added silently.
“Our landing here was very rough,” Tess said. “That pilot really bounced us around. Could that have done it?”
Josh looked at the woman who regularly set down bigger and heavier planes than this so softly passengers sometimes weren’t sure they were down until they began to slow.
“Could have,” he said with a nod. “You can’t throw machinery like this around.”
In fact, the Hawks were tough, durable and had enough redundancy built in to keep them airworthy beyond the capacity of most planes, private or commercial. But he wasn’t thinking of that. He was thinking of what Brown Shirt had just confirmed with his reaction.
Their intent had never been to get airborne.
“This is ridiculous,” Brown Shirt announced.
Tess went very still. Josh was sitting at the desk, on the pretext of writing up an estimate for the repair Brown Shirt didn’t seem concerned about. It hadn’t taken her long to arrive at the same conclusion she was certain Josh already had; these men had never intended for the plane to take off. She only hoped Draven had been able to see clearly enough to realize the same thing.
“I’m sick of waiting for this jerk. Who the hell does he think he is, anyway?”
He’s the man who designed and built this plane, and an empire that helps keep the world working, a man who never took the easy way out, and he’s worth a million of you, Tess thought.
She glanced at Josh, who had also paused in his work. “With my luck,” he said, with an air of disgust, “after I’ve done all this work, he’ll bring in somebody else to do the repair.”
“That would figure,” Brown Shirt said, distracted just enough after his burst of anger.
Tess seized the chance to further diffuse the sudden volatility. “I’m tired of waiting, too,” she said quickly. “I need the head, even if I’m not supposed to use it.”
“You can’t even use his big, executive bathroom?” Pinky exclaimed. “What a prick!”
She started walking toward the back of the plane, where the head and stateroom were.
“Go with her,” Brown Shirt said to Pinky.
“My pleasure,” Pinky said, his eyes lighting up with a glow Tess had caught before, one that made her decidedly edgy. Brown Shirt worried her, but this man simply made her skin crawl. He kept brushing up against her, touching her, and she wanted to break every one of his fingers.
“Some privacy, please,” she said when he held back the door she tried to close.
“Aw, now, honey, don’t be a prude,” Pinky said with a leer.
“Do you really want to watch me change tampons?” she asked sweetly, nearly laughing as the man recoiled. She pulled the door shut, snapped the lock and leaned against the inside of it, letting out a deep breath.
No time to relax, she ordered herself and quickly walked across the small but efficient room. She thought it might be wise to actually make use of the facility, and did so as she loosened the panel next to the head where Draven had ordered it placed for just that reason.
“Clever, clever man, our Draven,” Tess murmured as she quickly had the third pistol in her hands.
She washed her hands, leaving the water running longer than necessary as she thought. They had three weapons between them now. Part of her training with the security team had been to shoot left-handed nearly as well as right. She’d understood the theory at the time, but never in her life had she ever expected she might have to actually rely on that training. And she certainly had never wanted to.
Not, she thought with a wry twist of her mouth, that the thought of shutting Pinky up—and keeping his nasty hands off her—didn’t hold a very definite appeal.
Josh would know she’d gone for the weapon in here. The question was, what did they do now? Every scenario they’d run during that training had had keeping Josh safe as the goal, but every scenario had been different in one basic way from the situation they were in now.
No one, not even Draven, had ever imagined a scenario where the threat didn’t even recognize the target.
Chapter 11
Sometime in the past five minutes, Brown Shirt had changed. He was still spouting off as he had been, but there was a new, angry determination in his voice.
“This is ridiculous,” the man exclaimed.
The entire group that was gathered back in the cabin of the big Hawk III went still, including Draven. Until now Brown Shirt had been the calm one; if he was losing it…
Their number had grown now. Harlan McClaren’s Hawk V, a twin to Josh’s except for not having the trademark Redstone fleet paint job, had set down about five minutes ago, later than the ETA he’d originally given St. John on the radio.
But that was explained when the passengers had deplaned; the famous treasure hunter and Redstone point man Noah Rider they’d expected, after St. John’s report. Gabe Taggert and Ian Gamble were a surprise, although Draven knew the one time navy captain could be a valuable asset. And Ian…well, you never knew with Ian. His kind of
quirky mind could be invaluable. Rand Singleton, the tall blond head of Redstone Security Northwest, and who could be Samantha Gamble’s masculine twin, had been a bigger surprise, but a very welcome one.
“I made a stop and picked up Gabe and Ian at the home field, then got a call from Rand and picked him up in Merced,” Mac explained.
Sam had taken the unexpected arrival of her husband well. She’d merely lifted a brow, prompting Ian to say, “He’s with Ryan’s mom.” Sam had nodded and left it at that.
Draven marveled at her cool. Baby Josh was her first and only child, and her question wasn’t how could you leave him, but simply where was he. She trusted Ian to have made the best decision possible. There had been a time not so long ago when Draven would have found that kind of trust unbelievable.
Not anymore, he thought, allowing himself a glance at the final and most unexpected passenger who had gotten off Mac’s plane. His own wife, who had managed the steep plane steps with the grace she’d been named for despite the prosthetic foot that was one of Ian’s most famous accomplishments.
His heart had nearly stopped in his throat at the sight of her. The goal was always to avoid any violence or weapons, but that was a goal it wasn’t always possible to meet in situations like this. Before he could open his mouth she’d looked up at him, brushed tousled dark bangs away from those huge blue eyes and forestalled his objections. “I know airports. Otherwise, I’m out of the way.”
He couldn’t argue with that. Because his brilliant wife did indeed know airports; she built them. And the knowledge might come in handy.
Trust, he thought again. He trusted everyone here, either to do their job, or let the others do theirs, even if it might include risk. He trusted them as he hadn’t trusted a team since he’d been in uniform, all those years ago.
A sudden image flashed through his mind of his best friend, body shattered by a land mine, looking up at him with eyes that were already losing the vivid light of life, and extracting that promise.
“I’ll look out for him, Jimmy. I’ll look out for your little brother.”
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