Wingman

by Emmy Curtis

  WINGMAN

  Elite Ops #2

  Emmy Curtis

  New York Boston

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  EPILOGUE

  A Preview of “Free Fall”

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Also by Emmy Curtis

  You Might Also Like…

  Newsletter

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Copyright © 2017 by Emmy Curtis

  Excerpt from Free Fall copyright © 2017 by Emmy Curtis

  Cover design by Brian Lemus

  Cover copyright © 2017 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  Hachette Book Group supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture.

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact permissions@hbgusa.com. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

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  First published as an ebook and as a print on demand: November 2017

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  ISBNs: 978-1-4789-4795-0 (ebook); 978-1-4789-4793-6 (print on demand)

  With love to the Chief…No, you’re a book.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Major Missy “Warbird” Malden shifted uncomfortably in her chair and looked around her holding cell. It was pretty clean, all things considered. Not that she’d had much experience with cells, other than those she’d seen on TV. It had been touch and go for a while when she was a kid, but she’d always managed to avoid the cops for the most part, unlike the vast majority of her friends. At least until that one time…She shrugged to herself. At least there wasn’t a toilet in the corner.

  But clean or not, this was not where she’d thought she would be two days into the Red Flag exercise. She should be up in the skies, directing test missions and worrying about how to explain to her front-seat pilot, Lieutenant Colonel Francis Conrad, why she was requesting a transfer to another squadron—at least in a way that he’d believe. Her heart clenched in her chest as she realized how badly she’d screwed everything up.

  At least she didn’t have to worry about that conversation anymore. She was pretty sure that being arrested under suspicion of espionage was going to put the brakes on her career. Especially since she couldn’t defend herself from the accusation. Or suspicion, or whatever it was that had landed her in jail.

  She couldn’t understand how a horrible, horrible accident had somehow turned into a criminal inquiry within a few hours. And worse, people seemed to think that she was somehow involved. A Royal Air Force pilot, along with Eleanor Daniels—Missy’s best friend and roommate at the Red Flag training exercises—were missing in the Nevada desert after both their planes went down. How anyone could even contemplate that Missy had anything to do with such a horrible accident was completely bat-shit crazy. But was it an accident?

  Please be alive. Please be alive. The two pilots hadn’t been found yet, which she hoped was a good sign. But why couldn’t their surveillance locate them? Missy clenched her fists. There was something very off about all this.

  Red Flag was supposed to be a safe place to train, a yearly opportunity to finesse skills and beat the shit out of the friendly foreign military pilots who came to train and compete with them. It was basically one big bragging-rights fest with a side order of making or breaking airborne careers.

  It was an exercise that was always run with precision. Until this time. When she’d heard that TechGen-One, a military contractor, was sponsoring this year’s training, she’d been thrilled. Hell, everyone had, because the whole event had been slated to be canceled due to budget issues.

  But since they’d arrived to compete, nothing had gone as expected. And what was more worrying, TGO seemed to have taken operational control of the base in exchange for providing the Red Flag funds, all with the approval of General Daniels, Eleanor’s father.

  Now it was hard to tell which way was up and whose orders to obey.

  The door banged open, and Missy instinctively jumped up. A man in dress blues entered, a thick file beneath one arm. “As you were.” He nodded back to her chair.

  She sat as was ingrained habit. The silver oak-leaf emblem on his collar told her he was a lieutenant colonel; the name on his badge said “Janke.” He outranked her. He loomed large in the doorway, tall and blond, with a buzz cut that made him look more like a marine recruit than an air force officer.

  “I’ve been assigned as your JAG in this matter,” he said, flipping open the folder with a pen. Crap. If she’d already been assigned a judge advocate general, the general must really believe she had something to do with the crashes.

  Shit just got real. She was legitimately a suspect. Somehow she’d expected that someone would open the door and let her go. Apologize for the mistake. She’d half thought it would be Conrad, the one person on earth who’d go to bat for her. Who’d believe her. Who’d cut through the bullshit and get to the right person with the right information.

  He sat at the table, and she followed suit.

  “What exactly is it that I’m being accused of? If someone would just tell me, I’m sure I could clear this up pretty quickly.” She just wanted to get back to her aircraft, get airborne, and help search for Eleanor and the British pilot.

  “Sir,” he said.

  What? “I’m sorry—”

  “You forgot to say sir.” He leaned back in his chair. “Do you make it a habit of disrespecting your superior officers?”

  She frowned. She hadn’t come across an officer with that kind of attitude in ten years. She forced her face into a blank expression. “No, sir. I apologize.”

  He stared at her, his light blue eyes cold, empty almost, and his thin lips pursed together.

  A feeling of dread seeped through her, rendering her hands and feet cold. She flexed her fingers.

  “All you have to tell us is where you were the night before last.” He pulled a tight smile and reopened the file on the table between them. “And tell us anything you know about TechGen-One and General Daniels. Particularly anything Eleanor said.”

  She fought not to do a double take. What? Why was he asking abo
ut TechGen-One and Eleanor’s father? Suddenly, a whole battery of thoughts whirled in her head. She’d been right. Damn.

  “I don’t know anything about TGO except what everyone knows, sir. They saved Red Flag from being canceled. As for General Daniels…I’ve…” She paused. Why was her lawyer interrogating her?

  She put her palms flat on the table. “Colonel Janke. Why don’t you tell me what the charges against me are? I mean, you did say you were my assigned JAG, didn’t you?” She paused. “Sir.” This was total bullshit.

  He rose slowly and gave her a smile. A pitying, condescending smile. But even that couldn’t disguise the jumping vein in his neck. “This is the moment, Major.” He nodded. “This is the moment you will look back on for the rest of your life—no matter how long or short that may be—and you’ll wonder if answering my two simple questions would have saved you.”

  She didn’t like the long pause he inserted after the word short. She didn’t like anything about this. “Are you threatening me, sir?”

  He moved fast, banging his fist on the table. She jerked back from him and then cursed herself for showing her fear.

  “I don’t have to threaten, Major. Your entire future is in my hands.” There was a pause—a silence that hung in the air.

  Missy forced herself to hold his gaze. “I want a different JAG.”

  A line wrinkled his forehead, and she was sure she saw a flash of panic in his eyes. He straightened. “Just those two questions, and I’ll make sure you’ll be back in barracks by sunset.”

  Her gut told her not to trust him. If being on the streets as a kid had taught her one thing, it was to listen to her gut. “I want a different JAG,” she repeated.

  He took a step toward her, and she scraped her chair loudly away from the table and stood.

  Colonel Janke looked her up and down, not lasciviously, but maybe wondering how much she’d fight back.

  She took a step toward him, invading his personal space and forcing him to take one backward. She wanted him to know exactly how she would respond to a threat against her.

  Whatever the hell this was turning into, she wasn’t going down without a fight.

  CHAPTER TWO

  48 hours before

  Lieutenant Colonel Francis Conrad stretched in front of the hangar, inhaling the clean, warm morning air and listening to the Royal Australian Air Force’s music wafting across the runway. No matter how many noise citations they received from Colonel Cameron, the base commander, they never wavered in their mission to give everyone a headache first thing in the morning. What the fuck was a “Waltzing Matilda” anyway?

  He rolled his neck, wincing as it cracked in protest. The beds at the Nellis Air Force Base lodging were not known for their comfort.

  “At least you had lodging beds, not barrack beds,” a voice as familiar as his own said from behind him.

  Missy. And then everything was right in his world. He turned and grinned at her. “How do you read my mind like that?” He’d asked her that a thousand times. She anticipated his every move both in and out of the aircraft. It was like she lived in his head. Not just in my head.

  “I really am just that good,” she said, raising her hand for their customary high five. “What’s the program today?”

  This was their daily routine. He knew very well that she was probably already on top of what they would be doing, but she always allowed him the opportunity to give her instructions. It was a courtesy not many other majors would afford a lieutenant colonel. “Flight briefing, then up into the wild blue yonder…,” he said, quoting the U.S. Air Force song with a degree of cheese he found quite dismaying.

  “The wild blue yonder, huh?” she said with her hands on her hips “Well, I guess sometimes you do surprise me, Cheese-Meister.”

  “That’s Cheese-Meister, sir, to you, Major,” he replied, matching her grin.

  Missy just rolled her eyes, another thing she did pretty often. “How was the gymnast? Cirque du Soleil?”

  “What?” He frowned, not understanding how they jumped from cheese to gymnastics.

  “The gymnast,” she said, as if he should know what she was talking about. “Oh my God. How have you already forgotten? Women really are just disposable to you, aren’t they?”

  Shit. He remembered now. He’d told her he’d been with a gymnast when she’d last called him. “No, they are not. I didn’t only consider her a gymnast. I considered her”—he eyed Missy’s short brunette hair—“a beautiful blonde called…” Oh shit. He looked over Missy’s shoulder and saw the flight chief, Sally Weiss. “Sally.”

  Missy bit her lip and followed his line of sight and saw the chief. “You can’t even remember her name, can you?”

  It was hard to remember the name of someone who didn’t actually exist. He blew out his cheeks and hung his head. To his relief, she laughed.

  “Come on, let’s get the road on the show.” She nodded toward the main administrative building, where they were due to receive their flight brief.

  They started walking. “So, where does she work? I mean, is ‘gymnast’ an actual profession or just a hobby? Is she an Olympian? Does she work in Cirque du Soleil? I’ve been wanting to see their Vegas show for ages. Was she nice?”

  “She was…” He searched for something to say. “Bendy?” Goddamn it. Why was he having such trouble lying to her today? He lied to her nearly every day. What made today different?

  Missy snorted and shook her head sadly. “One day you’ll appreciate a woman’s mind, maybe even remember her name, but probably by then you’ll be way too old to do anything about it.”

  “Don’t hold your breath. Anyway, I appreciate your mind, Mindy. I mean Missy.”

  She punched him on the arm, like he knew she would. Then she changed the subject. “Have you inspected the aircraft?” she asked.

  “Not yet. I’ll do that preflight. Why?”

  “Eleanor and I couldn’t get into the hangar last night. And then while we waited for someone to remove the lock, the doors opened and some guys came out on a freaking golf cart.”

  “Jesus. That’s not right. Who were they?”

  “They wouldn’t tell us. Didn’t say what they’d been doing either. Eleanor said she was going to talk to her father about it, but I didn’t get a good feeling about it at all.”

  “Okay, no problem. We can do the preflight inspection together. Don’t worry.” He reached out and gave her head a noogie without actually touching her head.

  She batted his hand away as she always did. “I need to talk to you later. Can you save some time for me after the mission debrief?” she asked, head still down as they walked.

  “Is everything okay?” His mind spun.

  She smiled, but the smile didn’t reach her—he wanted to say eyes, but in reality it hadn’t really reached her mouth either.

  “Sure. After our last flight of the day?” In years of them flying together, she’d never asked for a meeting like that.

  She nodded. “Don’t worry, though. I won’t keep you away from your extracurricular ladies for too long.”

  “So funny. So, so funny. Listen. Can you hear? My ribs are actually cracking because I’m laughing so hard,” he deadpanned. He sneaked a quick look at her to see if he could glean anything from her expression. All he could see were the morning rays reflected in her sunglasses.

  She’d done it. She’d actually made a firm appointment to speak to him. Now she had to figure out what to say that wouldn’t leave him thinking she was hopelessly in love with him. Not that she was, but if she wasn’t careful, she was pretty sure that was all he’d take away from the conversation.

  Well, maybe she was. God, life was so difficult. Why couldn’t she have been the weapons officer for Lieutenant Colonel Walsh? He was smart, married to a wonderful woman, and had kids he doted on. He was funny too. In a kind of 1990s sit-com way. Maybe more of a groan-at-his-jokes way.

  Sitting behind Conrad day in, day out, anticipating his every move, working so closely
that she could read his body language from behind him, not to mention being able to smell his shower gel mingling with his own unique scent, had become pure torture.

  She had to get away. She couldn’t—didn’t want to—change their relationship. There was no legit way to do anything about the feelings she had for him. If she made the first move and he rejected her, he could report her for behavior unbecoming. If he didn’t reject her, they could both be fired for fraternization. It was a lose-lose proposition that was making her crazy. And that had to stop.

  Besides which, Conrad was with a different woman every night. She’d spent nights wondering what he looked like under his uniform and her days wondering why he needed to bed so many women. So. Many.

  Her heart wanted to be closer to him in every way, but her brain had finally come to the realization that he wasn’t going to change. He wasn’t going to suddenly wake up and see what was under his nose. And her dating life had suffered for it.

  When she’d first met him, she compared every date to him. Now she just didn’t date, and that was bad. Everyone told her that she needed something other than work and her horses. She didn’t necessarily agree, but the one thing she could figure out for herself was that staying around Conrad wasn’t going to further her career or help her find someone to share her life with.

  Transferring to a different squadron was the only option. Out of sight, out of mind. And hopefully it would put half the country between them. She needed to get on with her life, find someone who liked her, and give dating a chance. Anything but be stuck in this painful limbo. She needed a life. A fucking fun life.

  The flight briefing was fast, because all the F-15 weapons officers were in charge of planning the strategic mission, while the pilots just got them to their destination. In real terms, up in the air, she was the mission commander and he was the aircraft commander.

  Their mission this morning was to deploy with the French Air Force and to bomb an unknown moving target. The U.S. Aggressor Squadron would be tasked with trying to stop them. Which meant they’d be flying against her barracks roommate, Eleanor Daniels. Missy grinned, her head firmly in the game. Eleanor was totally buying the drinks tonight if she and Conrad hit the target. And they would. Failure was not an option for either of them. That was at least one thing they agreed on. Conrad and Missy had never been “shot down” at Red Flag before, and today wouldn’t be any different.