“I’m sorry,” Bob said as if he really meant it.
“His shouting at me isn’t going to help,” Gina said. “I have no clue what he’s saying. I mean, I don’t even speak his language.”
“Of course you don’t,” Bob said. “You’re American.”
He was smiling despite the accusation in his words. But his voice wasn’t even slightly hostile. Or maybe it was. Maybe everything he said was hostile, and she just couldn’t see it that way.
She’d been so convinced he was kind. Gentle. Her friend, even.
The way they’d talked . . .
But the look in his eyes when he threatened to kill Max and then kill her . . .
Maybe he was only bluffing. Maybe not.
Gina didn’t know anything anymore. She was losing it, big time.
“Do you want me to get on the radio and see if there’s any news?” she asked, praying that he’d say yes. Al had taken his gun and stuck the barrel right up to her head during his latest rant. She’d been certain this was it, that even if he didn’t mean to kill her that his finger would slip in his rage, and her brains would be sprayed across the cabin.
In the aftermath of her fear, she desperately wanted to hear Max’s soothing voice.
She knew he was listening in all the time. He’d dropped hints to let her know they’d managed to plant cameras and microphones on the plane. He could see and hear what was going on. Even right now when the microphone switch wasn’t pressed down.
She could feel Max watching her. She knew with a certainty that he never left that room over in the terminal. He was with her 24/7, and would be until this ended. Or until Al pulled that trigger, whichever came first.
Bob shrugged, so she keyed the microphone. “This is flight 232. Is there any news? Over.”
Max’s voice came back, warm and thick and easygoing, like a security blanket. “This is Max, 232. We’re checking the status of that.” It was his usual I’m-stalling response, designed to keep the channel open and the conversation going. “I don’t suppose our friend Bob is willing to talk to me directly yet. How ’bout it, Bob? Over.”
Bob shook his head. He stood up and went out of the cockpit and into the cabin, no doubt to try to rein Al in.
“Please, God, don’t bring him back in here with you,” Gina said, under her breath. “Al’s strung pretty tightly,” she said into the microphone. “You might want to give them that guy they want released from jail—Razeen. Or something. Soon. Over.”
“Or something,” Max repeated. “Roger that, 232. We’re working as quickly as we can, but it still might take some time.” There was an edge to his voice. Yes, he definitely knew Bob had left the cockpit. Still, he was being careful, in case they were being overheard. “I bet you’re tired, huh, Karen? I bet you’re glad you’re sitting down on the floor. Over.”
“Yeah,” Gina said, her heart pounding for an entirely different reason now. “I’ll just stay right down here, as long as they let me. Go ahead.”
Please, please go ahead.
“It was two weeks to the day after we went into hiding at the Gunvalds,” Helga said as she stirred sugar into her coffee. “I remember it as if it were yesterday. We were just sitting down to breakfast and Annebet burst in.”
Helga’s whole amazing story had been leading to this. But Stan wasn’t sure he wanted to hear any more. He took a sip of his own coffee. Bracing himself.
“Hershel had been shot,” she told him, just as he’d expected. “In his and Annebet’s search to find passage for us on a boat to Sweden, he’d found a fisherman willing to take the risk. But he’d needed a crew, and they made a trade—they’d be his crew for a fortnight in return for passage for the five of us to Sweden.”
She fell silent for a moment, just gazing into her coffee, momentarily transported back to that day all those years ago.
Stan had been surprised when Desmond Nyland had called him, even more surprised when the man had taken him into his confidence, telling him that he believed Helga Shuler was suffering from some kind of age-related mental deterioration, perhaps even Alzheimer’s.
She had no problem at all keeping track of this story she was telling him. She seemed clear about the details and didn’t repeat anything. She was actually a very good storyteller. Stan was intrigued by her description of his mother and aunt as young girls, by this glimpse into the lives of the grandparents he’d never known.
It was almost enough to keep him from thinking about Teri.
About the way it had felt to be inside of her.
About the scratches from her fingernails that she’d left on his back. She’d wanted him, needed him so badly that she’d marked him.
But possibly not as permanently as he’d marked her.
Christ, how could he have let himself get so out of control that he’d forgotten to put on a condom?
And what the hell was wrong with him that despite the fact that he should be worried about whether or not he’d gotten Teri pregnant, what he really couldn’t stop thinking about was when he’d get to see her again. When he’d get another chance to drive himself inside of her, to feel her clinging to him so desperately and gasping his name and—holy fuck, it made him so hot just to think about it—making more of those welts on his back.
The sweet little old lady sitting across the table smiled at him.
“Where was I?” she asked.
Um . . . “Annebet,” he said, struggling to remember. “She and Hershel had been working as crew in trade for passage for your family.”
“Ah, yes. Hershel and Annebet both had been spending their nights making the crossing with this fisherman and another student, Johan, that they knew from the resistance. It was very dangerous.
“That night they’d arrived safely back in port and were making their way to shelter when they were stopped by the Germans. Hershel heard them coming, and he pushed Annebet into the brush by the side of the path. He knew the Germans had seen them, but it was dark—they couldn’t know how many of them there were.
“It was probably just a regular patrol, stopping them for breaking curfew, but Johan panicked. He had a gun and he opened fire.” Helga smiled sadly. “Of course, the Germans fired back. Johan was killed, Hershel badly wounded.
“The Germans took him to the hospital in Copenhagen. They didn’t know it, but by doing that, they handed him right back to the resistance. The hospital was being used to hide hundreds of Jews. Everyone who worked there either did their part or looked the other way. Hershel was instantly declared dead on arrival—oh, he was still alive. But he was put into a bed under the name Olaf Svensen. A nice, non-Jewish name.
“Annebet told us she had seen him, spoken to him at the hospital,” Helga told him. “His biggest concern was to get us—my parents and myself—to safety in Sweden. One of the nurses at the hospital knew of a ship that was leaving that night. But Poppi wouldn’t leave Denmark without Hershel.
“Annebet begged and argued and cajoled and even cried. She finally ordered me and Marte to the barn to play, and I knew then that Hershel was dying. I wouldn’t stay and eavesdrop even though Marte wanted me to—I didn’t want to hear it. I remember sitting in the barn and Marte telling me that it was going to be all right, but knowing that it wasn’t. Not for me, not for Mother and Poppi, and especially not for Annebet. It was never going to be all right again.”
Helga sighed heavily. “Poor Annebet. She felt to blame. It was her gun—she’d sold it to Johan just that evening. Hershel had been bugging her to get rid of it, for fear something just like that would happen. If she’d never had the gun in the first place . . .”
“Johan probably would’ve gotten one from someone else,” Stan pointed out.
“Yes, that’s what Hershel told her. Still, she felt to blame.”
“Excuse me, Senior Chief.”
Stan glanced up to see Jenk making a beeline for him. “Excuse me,” he said to Helga as he got to his feet. “Trouble?”
“Lieutenant Paoletti wants
us to do a few more rounds of practice runs a little earlier than scheduled,” Jenk reported. He lowered his voice, leaned closer. “Apparently things are getting tense aboard the aircraft. They want us together and ready to go.”
“Mrs. Shuler, I’m afraid you’re going to have to tell me the rest of this story at another time,” Stan said.
“Of course,” she said. She glanced at her hand—she had his name written there. “Stanley.”
Damn. He couldn’t just leave her here. He looked around the room. “Yo, Gilligan!” The petty officer had just finished lunch.
“Yes, Senior Chief?”
“I need you to escort Mrs. Shuler to her room. 808. Don’t let her take the elevator. Take her all the way to her door, see that she gets inside. Do I make myself clear?”
“Aye aye, Senior Chief.”
“Mrs. Shuler, this is Petty Officer Third Class Daniel Gillman. He’ll take you back to your room, ma’am.”
“That’s really not necessary,” she said.
“Ma’am,” Stan said as politely and as respectfully as he could manage, considering he had to stop at his room and change his clothes before heading up to the helo on the double, “I think you know that it is.”
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Twenty
Stan hit the roof at a run.
Most of the team was already there, along with the two FBI observers, Locke and Cassidy.
Sam Starrett was on a landline, a hotel phone. “Tell O’Leary to catch another helo over because we’re ready to— Fuck. These fucking phones.” He redialed on his cell phone.
“Power’s gone out in the hotel again,” Jenk reported. “Possibly this entire sector of the city.”
“We got a pilot?” Stan asked Jenk, who was carrying a clipboard.
He flipped through the papers there. “Yeah. Howe. No, wait. Edwards. Yeah, they switched assignments at the last minute. L.T. okayed it.”
Shit. Stan was unaware that he’d spoken aloud until Mike Muldoon spoke.
“That’s probably my fault, Senior.” Muldoon pulled on his vest and lowered his voice. “I think she’s avoiding me. She canceled lunch on me, too. She left a message saying she thought we should talk when we get back to San Diego. I think I’m getting dumped before I even got attached.”
“Yeah, I’d like to talk to you, too,” Stan said. “I’m pretty sure I steered you in the wrong direction, and I owe you an apology. After this is over. Maybe on the flight home?”
Muldoon shook his head. “Senior, you don’t owe me anything.”
“Yes, I do.” He owed Teri an apology, too. She’d come to him for help, and he was such a pompous prick, so goddamn full of himself, he’d assumed he could fix all her problems. Of course he could. He was Mr. Fix-It, the Miracle Man. He could make things right for her. And the fact that he’d been hot for her from day one? Well, he could just ignore that. He was stronger than that, tougher than a mere mortal man. Things like lust and desire—the mighty senior chief was above all that.
Except when she came into his room and took off her clothes. That was something he hadn’t planned on happening. Yeah, that was well outside of his projected possible scenarios.
Then, after completely losing his mind over her, he didn’t even have the balls to come clean and tell her. He didn’t say a single word about how crazy he was for her, how much he liked her and respected her, how beautiful he thought she was. He hadn’t told her that making love to her had been completely beyond his wildest imaginings—and he had one hell of an imagination.
He hadn’t admitted that he was scared to death because he was falling in love with her. Yeah, he couldn’t come clean even with himself about that one. Falling. Right. As if he hadn’t already fallen. As if there was still a chance that he wasn’t going down and going down hard.
And while “Teri, I love you,” may not have been the words she particularly wanted to hear either, he could have gone for something more along the lines of “God, you’re incredible.”
Instead he’d asked where she was in her menstrual cycle.
Yeah, he’d messed this up but good. Teri had gone into run and hide mode again—because of him. He was the asshole she was hiding from now.
“Let’s go!” Starrett shouted. “Let’s do this right!”
It sure would be nice to do something right today.
Helga sat in her hotel room, surrounded by Post-it notes.
Never forget. It was the cry of all Holocaust survivors. Never forget.
She’d told her story so many times. To classrooms full of children. To women’s clubs. To religious groups. At cocktail parties and diplomatic functions.
“I lived in Denmark as a child—during World War II. I was but one of seventy-eight hundred Danish Jews living near Copenhagen when Hitler invaded. Did you know Denmark was the only country that said, No, you will not take our Jewish citizens. Denmark was the only country in Europe where Jews weren’t required to wear a yellow star on the front and on the back of all their clothing.
“Did you know that in February 1942, in Nazi-occupied Denmark, a man who tried to burn down the Copenhagen Synagogue was tried and convicted—and sentenced to three years in prison? For a crime against Jews.
“Did you know that of the seventy-eight hundred Danish Jews, all but four hundred seventy-four escaped to Sweden? And of those unlucky four-hundred seventy-four who were rounded up by the Nazis and sent to Theresienstadt, all but fifty-four survived because the Danish king sent word to the Germans saying, We are watching you. Those fifty-four died from sickness and old age.
“Denmark said no. You cannot do this to our citizens. Denmark said no, and her people rose up, at great risk to themselves, and thousands of lives were saved. In other countries, they shrugged. What could we do? If we tried to help, they’d have killed us, too.
“Maybe so. But maybe all they really had to do was just . . . say no.”
She would write a book. About Annebet and Hershel. About Marte and her parents. She would do it soon. While she still could. Surrounded by Post-it notes, if necessary. She’d finally put her story onto paper. Then, when her voice was finally silent, when she could no longer remember her own name, her words would still ring out. Her story would not be forgotten.
Helga had faced challenges before. With the grace of God, she could face this one, too.
The hotel’s fire alarm went off.
Teri quit pretending she was sleeping and just lay on her bed, staring at the ceiling, listening to the braying of the horns.
When she’d switched assignments with Jeff Edwards, she’d told herself it was because she was tired. She needed to sleep.
She’d come back here and climbed into bed and pretended she hadn’t switched assignments because she was hiding from Stan.
But the truth was, she was hiding from Stan.
And Stan, being a highly intelligent man, had probably figured that out.
What she didn’t know was, once he knew she was hiding from him, would he steer clear of her or would he make an effort to seek her out?
If he came knocking on her door, looking to talk seriously about the possibilities of her being pregnant, she would scream.
But really, what were the odds he’d come knocking on her door only to step inside, lock it behind him, and give her one of his knockout smiles? What were the odds he’d admit that the sex they’d shared was the best sex he’d ever had in his entire life, and that he wanted to do it again—right now?
And what were the odds that, afterward, still tangled together on her bed, he’d kiss her. Softly. Tenderly. And he’d tell her . . .
What?
Teri sat up and put on her boots. She shrugged into her hated flack jacket and grabbed her key from the top of the TV that didn’t work and went out into the hallway. The sirens were louder out here, and she covered her ears as she jogged toward the stairwell, heading down to the lobby.
The power was out in the
hotel and emergency lights were on in the stairwell, giving it a creepy, otherworldly feel.
There weren’t as many people heading down the stairs as she’d imagined there’d be. And she even passed a maid carrying an armload of towels and going up. That was probably a large clue that this was just a false alarm, but she was more than halfway to the lobby, so she kept going.
Besides, maybe she’d run into Stan.
And then what? He’d drop to his knees and tell her that he loved her? That he wanted to marry her?
Troubleshooters 03 Over The Edge Page 38