Survive The Fall (Dark Eagle Book 1)

by Julia Bright

  “No clue. Could have just been the random number.”

  Boarding information about their flight came over the loudspeaker, and they hurried to the gate. She stopped at a shop and picked up bottled water and chocolate. She needed the treat after what they'd just done.

  Adam seemed too calm about everything. Fear and doubt had set in, but she tried to fight the spinning in her mind. They were in their seats, the plane rolling down the runway as she stared out the window thinking of her brother and dad. They'd not been too far away from here, just over the border in Italy, when they'd spent their last moments alive. She sighed. Adam reached over and patted her knee before squeezing. Their gazes met, and the reality of what he’d done shot through her. He'd defeated the monster for her. Gratitude welled, and her throat grew thick with emotions. She had to turn and stare out the window to keep from breaking down.

  Numbness set in as the plane flew to New York. Adam talked her into watching a movie on the in-flight entertainment system before lunch. She paid little attention to the small screen, but it kept her from going crazy.

  The bastard was dead. Gone. Kelsey had peace, finally. She could go home and hide from the world now that the man responsible for her father and brother's death was no more.

  After they ate, she fell asleep and didn’t wake until they touched down in New York. They had an hour and forty minutes before the next flight, hardly enough time to get through customs, but they made it.

  Her head ached, and the knot in her stomach grew. She was dreading being alone. After the funeral, she'd been so empty, then she'd started the fight. It was almost like the search for Zaeim had been her companion. Now she had no one.

  It took forever hopping from one airport to another, but finally, they were home. Adam followed her inside, and she thought nothing of him being there. Having him close was oddly comforting. The walls she'd erected after that one night with him had started to crack as soon as Zaeim died. It had taken her a long time to find the bastard and seek revenge for killing her family, months really, but she'd done it.

  A wave of exhaustion and pain filled her. Her knees buckled, and Adam was there to catch her. The sobs came hard, and she cried against Adam’s chest, her fingers twisting in his shirt material, holding him close. She wailed and screamed, her voice going raw as she let out all the rage she'd held in check since finding out her father and brother had died. She screamed for so long her head pounded like someone was knocking from the inside of her skull trying to escape.

  At some point, Adam carried her to her bedroom and sat with her as she cried herself to sleep. Eventually, she would calm, but for now, she was still so twisted up with pain functioning seemed nearly impossible.

  12

  Adam had been waiting for her to crack. When she stumbled, he'd been ready. Now she was sleeping which was good. He needed to find out what was being said about Zaeim and who they thought had killed him.

  Her password on her laptop took him four tries to break. Her dad and brother's birthdays combined seemed to do the trick. She was sentimental about them, so her password made sense. The loss had been hard on her, and it was no wonder she'd traveled halfway around the world to kill the man responsible for their deaths.

  He found a Tor browser, which made him think she had a good idea what she was doing. He searched for the information he needed, looking up data for the region and Zaeim. There was an article about the murder. He pulled it up, seeing that the cops were looking for a local man who'd come in for work. They weren't sure who he was, but the man knew one of the workers.

  Adam clicked on the drawing and had to laugh. They drew him all wrong. Eyewitnesses were notoriously bad, but they hadn't captured his likeness at all. The nose in the drawing was too long, his forehead too big. The lips were all wrong too. Then there was the eye color. They had him with light-colored eyes, and he had dark, almost black eyes. It took a lot of the right type of light to see the brown in his eyes.

  He was mid-chuckle when Angel stepped into the room. He glanced over his shoulder, glad she looked more rested.

  “What's so funny?” She grabbed a sweatshirt and tugged it on over her head.

  “I found an article about me.”

  “What?” She moved fast, rushing over and staring at the page. “How did you get into my computer?”

  “Wasn't hard. I knew what dates were important to you.”

  She pushed him to the side as she rolled her eyes. He scooted over, giving her room. Her eyes scanned the article and her brows bunched when she got to the description part.

  “They got you all wrong.”

  “Totally.” He was still chuckling over their terrible description of him.

  “This is ridiculous and so wrong.” She shook her head and glanced at him before turning back to the computer.

  “They have no clue what I look like. I'm not upset about that.”

  “What about your beard?”

  He shrugged then wiped his hand over his face. His sensitive skin was peppered with a dusting of stubble. It had been almost two days since he'd shaved, and he wasn’t used to it. “It'll grow.”

  “So my computer, were you able to break into it that easy?”

  “So easy. Fourth attempt.”

  “Dammit, I need to change that.”

  “So, Angel—”

  “Don't call me that.”

  He lifted a brow and sat back. “But you are an angel.”

  “Hardly. I'm not a nice person.”

  “Sure you are.” He stared at her, wondering if she really thought she wasn't nice. She bit her lower lip, and her brows bunched. He felt for her. She’d lost everything to that bastard.

  “He's dead, right?”

  “Sure is. I broke his neck.”

  She gasped, her hand went to her mouth, and her eyes were wide. “How did you do that?”

  “Something I learned in the military.”

  “Wow.” She got up and walked into the kitchen, making noise, but he couldn't tell what she was doing.

  He wanted to go see, but he didn't want to crowd her. She'd been through a lot and needed time.

  She came back in and took a seat next to him. “I'm making coffee.”

  “I could use some. Do you have any food?”

  “I can thaw two steaks.”

  “You're okay with me staying for a while?”

  She nodded as she stared at her computer. “I wouldn't even know what to do if you left. My focus has been on getting this guy. I guess I should shut this all down because I don't need to keep looking.”

  “Um, before you shut everything down, I was wondering what you had going on? Like how did you find Zaeim?”

  She shrugged as she stared at the computer screen. “I searched.”

  The coffee maker beeped, and she jumped up before she could explain further. He followed her into the kitchen and leaned against the counter, watching as she grabbed two mugs and poured them coffee.

  “I spent years in the army. I wasn't just a regular guy, I was a Ranger. We hunted down guys like Zaeim. The dude killed my friends, or he ordered the bomb that killed my friends. I was standing a few feet away from the best man I'd ever met. His name was Drake Jenkins, and he was a true friend, the best I'd ever had. Drake was an amazing guy. Anyway, Zaeim ordered this bomb in a marketplace. Our group was searching for a guy who had information. Jenkins had moved around a building and was about twenty feet away when the bomb went off. After we recovered, we searched for Zaeim. The events, hell, seeing Jenkins like that fucked me over. I couldn't do everything I needed to in the army, so I got out, but my team was still looking for the guy. We'd find him then be placed into a holding pattern, and he'd move out. He was always just out of our grasp. You found him and took him down. Do you know how special that is? Do you have any idea how amazing it is that you found this guy who killed my friends, and you killed him, well, you got him in range for me to kill him?”

  She stared at the coffee mugs, her brows bunched. “I was so a
ngry after my dad died. You—” her voice broke and her gaze flicked to him. “I used you that night to block the pain of my loss. You were the crutch I needed to prop myself up. The pain took everything, and I needed a moment to clear my head. I needed something so overwhelming that I wouldn't be able to see the hole in my heart so I could forget. You did that for me.”

  She rubbed her hand over her face. She wasn't done speaking, and Adam didn't want to interrupt her flow. He understood her pain, how having sex stopped the hurt if only for a little while. There'd been many times he'd done just that over the years. Clearing the pain for a moment in the in the arms of a stranger. With Angel, it hadn't felt like the others. He'd found more than just a moment of hope in her arms, he’d found peace and an emotion he couldn’t peg.

  She sucked in a deep breath before she continued. “Then Gramps died after their funeral. He left me everything. This place, some other stuff. I quit my job and moved out here. I've been searching for that sick bastard for months. I lied, cheated, and portrayed myself as a man just to find out where he was. I worked hard to find him. No one told me I couldn't go after him. I hunted until I had him. I didn't know what I was doing, and I would have failed if you hadn't been there. You are the reason he's dead.”

  Their gazes met and held. The intensity nearly overwhelming. Gratitude welled, and he wanted to pull her into a hug, but she picked up a mug and took a sip before staring at him over the rim.

  “What do we do now?”

  He took a step closer to her. “Let me at least take over your accounts and keep looking.”

  “Do you think that would work?”

  “Maybe. I'm not great with computers. I know a little from what the team did, but I never would have been able to do what you did.”

  She shook her head. “You could do it. I just made shit up as I studied them. Part of me wants to just forget it all and crawl into a hole.”

  When he'd first got out, that's how he’d felt. He didn't want to push her. She'd been through so much. Losing a brother and a father, then a grandfather. It had to have screwed her over.

  “How did you come up with the idea to take him out?”

  She grabbed her mug and nodded towards the other room. “Let's sit and talk.”

  “Sure.” He could talk. They needed to break down the mission. He wasn't sure why he had the urge, but it was something he did as a Ranger. If they understood their mistakes, they could grow. Kelsey wasn't a military operative, and this wasn't a team, but he wanted something like a team, had been craving it since leaving the army. Maybe he shouldn't have left, but the pressure of missing the guys and the pain of going through similar circumstances, expecting to turn and find Jenkins right there with him, it was overwhelming.

  Kel set her coffee down then moved to the window to stare out at the landscape. It was beautiful out here, desolate and stark, but it had charm. He thought about that place not too far from here and how the ten thousand she'd paid him would make him that much closer.

  “I didn't think I'd make it back here.” Her words were quiet, almost whispered.

  “The first mission, like a real mission I went out on, I felt the same way. I didn't think I'd ever make it home. I've been captured, held prisoner, almost blown up, shot at and shot back, and otherwise been a pawn in the war against terrorism. Sure, we had training, guns, bombs, but when push came to shove, we were pawns of a large government desperately trying not to be manipulated by some dick with a gun.”

  She turned away from the window, pity making her eyes dark. “That's a sad statement about the military and our government.”

  “It is. But why else did we put the brakes on when we had Zaeim in our sights?”

  She shook her head and moved to the chair next to the computer. “Want to see who's complaining about losing Zaeim?”

  He shrugged then chuckled, “Sure, why not.”

  She looked over her shoulder at him then shook her head. “This won't do. We need more.”

  “More?”

  Kel stood and grabbed her laptop and her coffee. “Follow me.”

  She led him down a hall to what had to have been a bedroom at one point. He stopped in the doorway and took in the maps and charts, the photos and papers pinned to boards and some to the walls. Four computers sat on the tables and then he spied another one.

  “What is all this stuff?”

  The smile on her face when she turned was the biggest one he'd seen from her. “This is my bat cave, or ready room, or whatever you want to call it. This is where I tracked down that bastard.”

  “Impressive.”

  She chuckled nervously. “Okay, first off, never use a regular browser here. Second, don't send email from an email program. Instead, log onto the web through the Tor browser and email from there.”

  He stepped into the room and shook his head as he stared at her setup. She had photos of Zaeim on the wall, a map with an area circled in Iran, lists of cities, everything they'd need in mission planning. “How did you learn all this stuff?”

  “What, hiding my identity on the web or finding this information?”

  “All of it. Like I didn't know anything beyond looking through a Tor browser.”

  “My job was in computer security. Also, I did a little hacking, mostly white hat stuff, in the past. Now that's all I do, I guess. The information came over time.”

  “Have you hacked your way into anything important?”

  Her brows lifted and her lips thinned. “Important?”

  “You know, US government sites. Something that could land you in real trouble?”

  She shook her head. “No, not anything in the US.”

  “You're smart.”

  She laughed. “I'm passable, and I don't overestimate my abilities.”

  There was an idea forming in the back of his mind, but it wasn't mature enough for him to talk about. He watched as Kel turned on her computers then opened browsers and logged into accounts.

  After a few minutes, she started typing. Words flashed on a screen to her left. Adam waited, wondering what she was doing.

  She leaned in and read the screen. Adam read over her shoulder. Zaeim's death was being celebrated by some, and it angered others. She was using some sort of translation device, and a few of the words weren't translated correctly.

  He leaned in and pointed at the screen. “That's not the correct translation, not in that instance.”

  “You read Arabic?”

  “Speak it and read it.”

  “Well, then you can help me understand what they're saying.”

  He sat down and leaned in closer. “Let's take a look and figure out what the papers are reporting.”

  “Sure. And I can find out what the cops know.”

  “You can do that?” Maybe he shouldn't have been surprised, but if she broke into the police computers, they might have an edge.

  They read over articles then moved on to reading files after she hacked into the local police site. Adam was looking at information on an arrest they'd made, wondering if they'd screw over a local man to bag an arrest.

  “I don't think they've tied together the fact we were there. I mean, there were a lot of people on that ferry going in, and lots of people left Algiers the day we did. As far as they know, we were there for a fling.”

  She snorted, and pain knifed this heart. He shouldn't be hurt. They weren't anything to each other, barely even business partners. When she'd admitted to using him, it had stung. He guessed that's how women felt when he did it. Some of those women he'd used had been at bars to use him, but it was still using.

  Kel grunted and sat back. “The upside is that they aren't even looking at us.”

  He nodded. “That is an upside.” Relief filled him. Being implicated in a murder would screw things up for him. Sure, as a ranger operative, he'd ended people's lives, but those had been sanctioned. It was all screwed up. People killing others just to gain a little money or power. He'd gone into the army to make a difference, but he wasn't
sure the difference he made was really all that big.

  “What about the other terrorist cells? What are they saying?”

  She clicked a few links and typed more. He read the words before the software translated them.

  “We made a dent,” Kel said.

  “For now. But others are looking to take the bastard's place. It's a never-ending swirl of trash with them.”

  She sighed, sounding defeated. Adam liked having her close. He reached over to rub her shoulders. She stiffened for a moment before leaning in, allowing his touch. Warmth spread and his thoughts turned to kissing her. That moment before he'd gone into that restaurant he'd kissed her, and it had felt as good as he remembered.

  He glanced over her shoulder. The rise and fall of her breasts turned him on even more. Jesus, he was crazy about this woman. She was perfect in almost every way.

  She sat up, ending their contact. “I hate that someone else is stepping in to take over Zaeim's empire.”

  “Yeah, it sucks, but I thought it might happen.”

  The moment was lost, and he wanted it back. Just the slide of her skin against his set him on fire. She would burn away the pain of his past, quiet his demons like last time.

  Her fingers flew over the keyboard, her back stiff. He guessed she was ignoring him. He should go home. She'd made it clear there wasn't anything between them. Maybe he would find a woman to slake his need, but he knew any woman who wasn't Kel wouldn't help.

  After a minute, maybe more, she relaxed. Her hand brushed against his, and she didn't jerk away. That was progress.

  A minute passed then she turned and hit him with an empty, lost look in her eyes. Desperation and turmoil showed there. He leaned in, cupping her cheek before he brushed his mouth over hers.

  Her lips trembled then her body shook. Drawn together, they searched for solace. Maybe it wasn't the best way to be before making love, but this was life.

  He stood and pulled her up, moving to press her against the wall. She lifted one leg, hooking it behind his knee. Passion swirled between them, and the heady sensation of lust took over. He needed to be inside her.