by Emmy Curtis
Not that he couldn’t take him, as long as he wasn’t ambushed, but things were complicated enough without having to deal with the help as well.
Three of them walked back toward Danvers’s office, a night’s work well done.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Conrad awoke to an empty bed. Confused for a moment, he sat up, alert. What the hell? Please, God, don’t tell him that had all been a dream. He got up and drew the curtains, wincing at the bright Vegas sun glaring into his room.
No way. She had been here. He could still smell her soap, or shower gel, or something on him. But where was she now? When did she leave? And how the fuck had she done that without him noticing?
He turned around and looked at the room. It was hard to believe every single one of his dreams had come true in this room. This crappy, dull, base lodging room.
She’d left without them being able to talk. Without having figured anything out. And now they wouldn’t have an opportunity to do so until that evening. How could he fly with her now, when all he would be able to see was her beautiful naked body that had taken his to such unbelievable heights?
His heart started pumping with excitement. She knew how he felt now. She would stay to complete their tour together, and whatever happened next, they’d be together. She’d given him a huge fucking shock when she’d said that she was going to transfer. He couldn’t imagine flying without her, let alone being as successful as they were. Thank God he would now have her close every day.
That had been a close call. After leaving the gym, he’d tried to picture himself flying with another weapons officer. Training them, trying to get them to do everything that Missy could do in her sleep. He smiled to himself. He had a whole lifetime ahead of seeing how she acted in her sleep.
He headed down to the hangar early, hoping to see her there, maybe get a quick chance to talk. Really, he just wanted to see her smile. A smile that contained the knowledge of what they’d shared. An intimate smile he’d never seen before, and really, really wanted to.
The hangar was empty except for Sergeant Cripps. He wiped his hands on a rag and nodded at him. “So where were you last night?” he said, a tinge of humor in his voice.
“What do you mean?” Conrad asked with a frown, his brain whirring from bliss to full alert in a split second.
Cripps motioned toward the cots where Missy and he were supposed to have slept the previous night. Damn. How had he completely forgotten about that? And then he noticed that Missy’s was rumpled, as if she’d spent the whole night there, while his was so pristine a pillow chocolate wouldn’t have looked out of place.
He mustered his thoughts and presented Cripps with a cocky smile, raising his eyebrows suggestively.
“Enough said, sir.” A broad grin broke out on Cripps’s face. “Nice. Thank you. That’s awesome. Good…” He made to punch him on the upper arm, as if in victory, but Conrad’s expression must have stopped him, as his face dropped at the same time as his arm.
“Why is that so awesome?” he asked the sergeant. “I mean, I get that it’s awesome for me, but why you?” Suddenly he didn’t really want to know the answer.
“You just won me a hundred and sixty bucks.” Cripps’s smile reemerged.
Conrad was bemused. He really didn’t have time for this. He needed to find Missy.
Sergeant Cripps continued. “The rest of the team bet you’d be here to take your night shift watching the aircraft, but I said you’d bail on Major Malden and find some other entertainment. A good omen for the exercises today, right?” Cripps turned back to the aircraft.
All Conrad’s excitement and joy evaporated, like they’d never been there.
He was a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Air Force. A pilot. And the crew chief had put money on the fact that he’d bail on his duty in favor of chasing women. And worse, the rest of the team actually believed that he wouldn’t have let Missy down, and now they’d think that they’d been wrong to trust him.
Conrad was pissed, but there was a decent-sized part of him that was already planning some kind of sexy revenge on Missy for putting him in that position.
As it happened, he didn’t catch up with Missy until the morning briefing. He’d waited so long in the hangar hoping she’d turn up and they could speak, that he was the last in to the briefing.
The commander gave him a look, and he pulled an apologetic expression and took the seat behind Missy. He tapped her on the shoulder as he sat.
She half turned and nodded briefly. Same as she always did. His happiness to see her—the back of her, at least—diminished just a fraction. But they were in the classroom with at least twenty other pilots and weapons officers. Obviously they had to appear exactly the same as usual.
Sooner than he imagined possible, he was startled when the commander wrapped up the mission brief. Conrad had not heard one word of it. So much for acting the same as always.
He fell into step next to Missy as they left the building. He opened his mouth to speak, although he wasn’t sure what to say, when she interrupted his thoughts.
“I’ve got a quick meeting. It will only take ten minutes. See you back at the hangar.” She didn’t wait for a reply, just turned away, lengthened her stride, and disappeared into the admin building.
A slight chill ran through him. Must’ve been the breeze. Why was nothing feeling like he thought it would be? He wasn’t getting any intimate vibes from Missy, and he was now just realizing how much he craved them. Craved her, after last night.
He just needed her attention, and it was a totally alien feeling for him. He wanted her to look at him—really look at him. Not the skating, brief eye contact she’d given him. What had happened? He’d got as close to her as physically possible, and now she won’t even look at him, let alone talk to him?
Jesus. Had she one-and-done him?
No, that couldn’t be it. He had made it clear that he wanted her to stay with him, to fly with him. He must have. Well, he hadn’t actually said it, but surely it had been obvious?
He looked around him, taking in the normality of his surroundings. Airmen walking with purpose, civilians holding folders and heading toward meetings, people taking cigarette breaks. It was all so normal, so why did everything feel completely different?
Nothing was right in Missy’s head. Clearly she had been avoiding him. She’d run out on him, avoided him, and then red-line confirmed that she wanted a transfer to the schoolhouse in Florida, where she could teach prospective weapons officers.
She tried to stay one step ahead of Conrad all morning. Diving into groups of friends or talking to the crew who maintained her aircraft. She didn’t want to see that look in his eyes, the one that she was sure every girl who shared his bed saw. The one that said “you’re so beautiful, but I’m not a commitment kind of guy.”
She wondered how the other women had taken it. The gymnast, the nurse, the casino hotel receptionist. Maybe they were better than her. Maybe that’s what they thought about him too. But not her—Conrad was her weakness, and good weapons officers always understood, and compensated for, their weaknesses.
By the time she got back to the hangar, after confirming her transfer request in the admin block, it was a hive of activity. Aircraft engines were starting on the taxiway, and jets were taking to the air some hundred meters away from them. She breathed a sigh of relief: it was impossible to talk on the flight line—the roar of jet engines rendered it useless to even try, and as soon they had their helmets and comms on, there was no way to talk without somebody else listening in.
It was perfect for her, as it allowed her time to collect her thoughts and figure out what to say to him. Or maybe by avoiding him, or at least avoiding the conversation, he would realize he didn’t actually have to tell her that what they’d shared was essentially a one-night stand.
As it happened, their flight was completely normal. They worked together just the same as they always had, beating the enemy and evading missile flares.
Conrad hadn�
��t seemed stressed or anxious to talk to her, so she considered that a win.
They were five minutes away from beginning their descent into Nellis Air Force Base when Missy saw a plume of smoke out of the corner of her eye. She swiveled as far as she could in her seat to see what it had been, but she couldn’t. She opened her mouth to ask Conrad to go around again, but before any word managed to escape, she saw a different plume—a dust plume in a clearing below them. A dark shadow emerged through the dust.
It was an aircraft. On the floor of the valley. What the…?
“Down there!” she said, leaning forward to poke his shoulder. “It’s an aircraft. Down on the ground.”
Conrad dipped his left wing to give him a better view of the valley. “Jesus.”
“I swear I just saw someone or something move down there,” she said.
Conrad waggled his wings in case anyone down there could see them. It would alert them to the fact that they had been located.
Missy opened comms to the control room at Nellis and explained what she had seen. But it wasn’t until that they had touched down that she remembered the initial plume of smoke behind her that had made her look down.
As they taxied to the hangar, people ran from the hangar to signal them in. Before the aircraft even came to a halt, Conrad had popped the canopy back.
“Who was it? Who crashed?” Missy shouted at the crew chief as she undid her harness and yanked off her helmet.
“There were two!” Sergeant Cripps shouted back. “Major Daniels and some British dude in a Eurofighter Typhoon.”
Oh my God. It was Eleanor. Chills shot through her body, and tears sprung to her eyes. She couldn’t move. What had she just seen? Was Eleanor dead? They had to go back. She took a breath. They couldn’t go back. Pararescuers were probably already on their way. She took another breath. No this couldn’t be happening. “You sure? Are you sure it was her?” She scrambled down from her plane, followed by Conrad.
Cripps looked pale. “Yes, ma’am. I’m sorry. Apparently her father is here too. He’s a three-star general.”
“Yes, I know that,” she said. Anxiety squeezed her internal organs until she could barely breathe. “It can’t be true. She’s the best pilot here.”
Conrad actually looked as if he was about to object to Eleanor being tagged the best pilot, but instead he kept his mouth shut, sensibly, and squeezed her shoulder. “We saw the aircraft, and you said you thought you saw something move. That’s a good sign. They’ll find her in no time.”
Missy took a shaky breath and nodded. She wanted Conrad to wrap his arms around her and hold her. She needed his strength. She couldn’t bear the thought of Eleanor being in pain anywhere.
Before Missy could say anything else, two MPs strode up to them. “Colonel. Major. General Daniels wants to see you,” the taller of the two said.
Eleanor’s father. “Of course. We’ll come as soon we’ve been debriefed,” Missy said, untying the bandanna from her head.
“No, ma’am. He wants to see you both immediately.”
“Let me just run and get my hat.” There was no way she was walking across the base to visit a general without her hat on.
She ran to the changing room and opened her locker. She grabbed a towel and ran it over her head and face to get rid of any helmet grime, tucked her hair behind her ears, and grabbed her hat. She closed the locker door and jumped at the sight of the shorter, stockier MP who was waiting for her behind it. What the hell?
“I was just getting my hat! Did you think I was going to try to escape?” she snorted.
“Escape from what exactly, ma’am?” the MP asked.
“Nothing, I mean…” Suddenly the sweat on her body turned cold and a feeling of danger prickled over her body, a sensation she hadn’t felt since she’d been a teenager. She didn’t like it.
What the hell is going on?
CHAPTER EIGHT
Conrad was worried about Missy. She hadn’t said a word, neither to him nor to the MPs escorting them, since they set off across the flight line to General Daniels’s office.
It was obvious that seeing the downed aircraft had shaken her. He wanted to comfort her, to hold her hand or put his arm around her, but he couldn’t.
As the MPs knocked, then stepped aside from the general’s door, he could feel the tension radiating from her. Why was she so stressed? Was it the fact that there were two pilots missing, or was it to do with last night? Both? He hated not being able to talk to her. He was so used to understanding her perfectly.
Except that wasn’t exactly true. In fact, as he began to think more about it, he wondered if he even knew her at all. He had no idea she was considering a transfer. Now that he thought about it, he knew nothing about her. He tried to remember their conversations. Why hadn’t she ever told him anything? She was from Montana. No, that was the crew chief. Shit. He didn’t even know where she was from. Her accent gave no clue. He tried to visualize her family. But he didn’t even know if she had one. No one had ever visited her on base. That he knew of. A coldness seeped into him as he realized that everything he knew about her only related to how well she helped him do his job. Had she been right about that? He cared about her more than he could verbalize, but it suddenly seemed as if it was a totally self-absorbed caring. He was a complete dick.
“Colonel. Major,” the general snapped, making Conrad start.
Missy and he remained at attention in front of the large oak desk. The general was seated, but at his right shoulder was a civilian Conrad recognized as the guy in charge of TechGen-One—the contractor who was running Red Flag that year.
“This isn’t the time for silence,” the general said.
How could the general possibly not realize that they were not going to talk to him while they were standing at attention? Was he confused? Was he…?
“My daughter is missing.”
Conrad was about to open his mouth and ask for permission to stand ease, when Missy spoke.
“I know, sir.” Her voice trembled.
Conrad was astonished but suddenly had no idea what was going on. Why would the general think that they were being silent to keep things from him? After all, Missy had only seen the outline of the plane. They were just unfortunate witnesses. To something horrible.
“I’ve been told that you both spent the night in the hangar last night,” the general said.
Wait, what?
“I need to know what you saw. Did anyone touch her plane?”
Conrad felt dread clawing up his spine. This was not good. Why did the general automatically assume someone had done something to his daughter’s aircraft? Conrad had been involved with aircraft investigations before, and criminal action was not normally the first assumption. Unless the general, and this contractor, knew something that no one else knew. Missy had seen that aircraft on the floor of the valley less than an hour previously. Assuming they had no contact with either pilot, the automatic assumption should be some kind of pilot error, especially when two aircraft were involved. Yet the general had gone directly to sabotage, without passing go, without collecting $200.
Something wasn’t right.
“No, sir, we didn’t see anything.” At least that was the truth. The general didn’t even look at him when he spoke.
General Daniels kept Missy firmly pinned in his gaze. “If you didn’t see anything, maybe you did something yourself? Or maybe you saw the lieutenant colonel here do something.”
Conrad froze. The shit show just got real. He was accusing them of espionage, treason, murder, sabotage. He wanted to grab Missy’s hand and tell her to stop talking.
“No, absolutely not! How could you possibly…?” Her voice trailed off, which to Conrad’s untrained ear, made her sound guilty, or confused, or scared. Not a good look to a general on the warpath.
He intervened as best he could. “Missy and your daughter are friends. Neither of us would ever damage somebody else’s aircraft. How could you possibly already know it wasn’t an
accident?”
“Because there’s no other explanation,” he shouted. “They were both the best pilots in their squadrons.”
Conrad wasn’t going to take the general’s raised voice sitting down. “For the want of a lock, the country was lost. Right, sir? A simple lock on the hangar door would have prevented any suspicion of sabotage.”
“My daughter could be dead and you’re lecturing me about locks?” the general spluttered, his face turning red. Was he about to have a heart attack?
“Wait,” Missy said. “There was someone else in her hangar yesterday morning. Some civilians. I could point them out if you like. They even had a golf cart in there. But Eleanor told me she’d already spoken to you about it.”
The general’s demeanor changed instantly. He looked shocked. Scared even. Didn’t he know that TGO had contractors in and around the hangars?
“Eleanor told you about our conversation?” he asked quietly, eyes on his desk, almost wincing.
“Of course she did. We’re friends, and we were both worried about possible damage.”
The general’s eyes closed as if he were in deep pain. The contractor guy—what was his name? Danvers—placed his hand gently on General Daniels’s shoulder. It could have been a gesture of solidarity, but somehow it didn’t seem like that to Conrad. Something weird was going on here, and somehow he and Missy were caught up in it.
“You two will be held under house arrest in barracks until we get to the bottom of this.” The general swiveled in his seat and didn’t look as the two MPs—apparently with their ears to the door—came in and led them out.
What the fuck was going on? Nineteen years in the air force and nothing like this had ever happened to him before. Conrad hadn’t even ever heard of anything like this happening to anyone.