by Emmy Curtis
The chief nodded and sat on the stairs. He sighed. “Not going to lie: I wish we weren’t here right now. As far as I can tell, the ranking officer on base is missing, his vice is away at Fort Drum, and no one seems to be in charge since the general left. I hear they’re sending us the base commander from Creech, but he’d only just taken over from the previous commander on Tuesday. So…”
There was a knock at the door. “Chief? Is everything okay in there?”
“This is Chief Whitney. Everything is okay. I’m opening the door.” He slowly pulled open the door to three MPs with their weapons drawn and aiming into the house.
Missy and Conrad stuck their hands right up. The chief didn’t, and obviously the MPs knew him, as they immediately holstered their handguns.
Missy was just happy they weren’t the ones who’d taken her and Conrad into custody two days ago.
“We found the guy out back. He’s groggy but won’t speak to us. Anyone tell us what was going on?” a female MP said.
Missy raised her hand.
“No need to put your hand up, ma’am. Just tell us what you saw.”
“I was returning to my barracks, coming from the gym, when I heard a snap in the woods by the track. I assumed it was an animal or something, but somehow I got a little freaked out by it. So I started running down here, toward the houses, when he”—she pointed at Conrad—“shouted at me to get down. I turned around, and a round flew past my face. I got on the ground, Conrad joined me, and then I tried to knock on this front door to find shelter. The guy at the back is called Chris Grove and is a TGO employee. Major Bowman from the OSI has been looking for him, and he tried to shoot us. But Conrad thinks there was a second shooter.”
Conrad nodded. “She’s right. I saw a man with a rifle in the trees. It was too dark to see a face, but he was about five-ten and average build. That’s all I can tell you. I was more concerned that he was going to pop my…weapons officer here.” He pointed at Missy.
“Were you running together?”
“No,” Missy answered, folding her arms, waiting to hear exactly why he was following her.
“I was looking for her,” Conrad said easily, with a shrug.
Missy rolled her eyes, and the MP didn’t seem to know what to make of it. “So you’re the only one who saw a man in the shadows with a gun?”
“Yeah. But Grove—the guy outside—is only like five-seven. I’m pretty sure he wasn’t the one with the rifle.”
And that was that. The MPs made a cordon around the chief’s front yard, hauled Grove off to the MPs station, and told everyone to go back to their homes and to make themselves available tomorrow for questioning.
They apologized again to the chief and took their leave. They were stopped in three places in the short mile it took them to go back to Conrad’s lodging. The MPs had set up blocks on every pathway, road, and alleyway to check IDs and search bags.
She would have felt safer if not for Conrad’s conviction that there was a second gunman. She was so ready to leave Nellis for good.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Conrad didn’t want to let Missy out of his sight. Not ever. They stopped to pick up her backpack from the barracks, and he carried it for her to his room. He wasn’t leaving her in dorm rooms when someone had tried to shoot her.
When they got to his room, he shut the door behind them and engaged the lock. “You nearly died out there today,” he said, dumping her backpack on the floor.
She took a breath. “So did you. Let’s hope it’s over now. The MPs would have found someone else if he was there. It’s what they’re trained for. ”
He put his hands on her shoulders. “I know what I saw. It wasn’t waving fucking tree branches. It was a man, dressed in black, with combat makeup on, aiming a long weapon at you. And the muzzle flash I saw wasn’t fireflies. You trust me to pilot your aircraft—you should trust my eyesight too.”
She nodded. “Sure. But what you’re saying is someone wants me dead. And that’s not comforting at all. I think I’d rather have thought that Grove was the shooter and he’s safely in custody. But thank you anyway.”
He gave a short laugh. “I’ll never lie to you again, even if you act like a crazy person and refuse to believe me. Deal?”
“When you put it like that…,” she said, rolling her eyes.
There was a pause, as she noticed that he was standing in front of her. He wanted her so badly. The adrenaline was only just starting to dissipate, and he was under the full realization that he had nearly lost her entirely. In his heart, he hoped that he had saved her from being shot by running down the road. He hoped he had spooked the gunman badly enough to throw off his aim. But it was still a close call.
Too close.
He was about to ask if he could touch her. Make love to her. But before he could, she reached for him. She held her arms out to him, a frown wrinkling her brow. Her chin wobbled, and he grasped her to him, holding her tight against his chest, feeling her choke out a sob.
He sat on the bed and pulled her into his lap. As he cradled her, he realized that he would have given anything to protect her. Even his life. On the battlefield, that was a given. But on home ground, he’d never expected to feel that way.
These last few days had blown his mind. He understood a lot more and a whole lot less since Missy had been in his bed.
He pulled her face from his chest. She fought him, as if she didn’t want him to see her crying. But he made her. “Don’t hide from me. Don’t hide what you’re feeling. It’s totally understandable, and if I wasn’t such an incredibly manly man, I’d be bawling my eyes out too. It’s one thing to be shot at in a plane, and a whole other thing when someone is aiming at you personally. And it was personal. Someone tried to hurt you and that makes it personal for me too. So, go ahead. Cry, yell, scream, do whatever you need to do, and I’ll be here—okay, maybe taking a video of you for YouTube—but I’ll be here.”
She choked out a laugh, as he had hoped she would. “You can never focus your phone right. I’m not scared.” But nevertheless, she allowed him to see her face, streaked with tears and dirt from the chief’s yard.
She was beautiful.
He leaned down and kissed her. At first he was gentle—offering affection and loyalty. But her hand stretched up and wrapped around his neck, pulling herself up so she could kiss him properly. Her tongue touched his and ignited a flame deep inside him. Before he could react, she was pulling at his T-shirt, trying to get it over his head while they were still kissing.
He pulled away from her mouth for a second and yanked his shirt off. As he did, he caught sight of them in the mirror set into the wardrobe doors on the other side of the room. She bent her head to kiss his chest, and for a moment it felt as if he were watching other people. Under normal circumstances, it might have aroused him further, but no. It amplified the barriers that had always been between them. Him never being honest about his feelings, her never talking about her past, and now the sex they had shared seemed to have placed another kind of barrier between them.
It was as if they were people acting in a play. Or maybe it was just a dream. A dream in which he was trying so hard to reach her but couldn’t.
He closed his eyes and shook his head. The last few days had fucked him over. His life had been squared away—compartmentalized like a stack of Jenga blocks. When Missy announced she was transferring, it was like she’d pulled out a foundational piece. Then she’d been accused of sabotage and shot at. His whole world felt as if it were teetering on the edge of chaos.
He was falling, and Missy was the only thing that made sense to him.
“What are you thinking?” Missy whispered.
He looked at her to find her staring with a puzzled expression on her face.
“I was thinking about you. I was thinking that my life has changed in every way possible since the day we arrived here. We live our lives knowing that everything can change in a split second, especially doing what we do, but when we’re her
e on the ground, in the U.S., you don’t think it will happen. Until it does.”
Missy knelt on the bed and ran her fingers slowly through his short hair. “I changed everything, didn’t I? If you’d competed here with Captain Michaels, nothing would have changed for you. Nothing at all.”
“I certainly wouldn’t have slept with him, that’s for sure. But the funny thing is, the thought of going back to the way everything was is not appealing at all.”
“It sounds like you need a drink,” she said with a pained smile.
“Right now, I just need you.”
“I’m here,” she whispered again, running her hands slowly across his chest.
He closed his eyes, wanting to remember everything, fearful that this would be the last time he would see her. He put his hands over hers and opened his eyes. They met hers in the mirror, but this time, the desire in her expression told a different story.
He stood and turned to the bed, wrapping one hand around her neck and dragging her toward him. She knelt up as he kissed her, as deep as he could drive into her mouth. He wanted to absorb her or fill her. He dragged off her T-shirt and bra, lowering his lips to her breasts as soon as they were free. She moaned and held his head there. While biting her nipples into hardness, he imagined her watching him in the mirror.
His fingers splayed across her collarbone, reveling in how small she was under his hands. They could span her chest, and her waist, and nearly her hips too. She felt both fragile and strong under his touch.
Heat rose through him, robbing him of rational thought. His instinct kicked in, and his instinct told him to consume her. He pulled down her shorts and panties in one tug. His fingers ran straight through her wetness, to her clit. No teasing, no waiting, he just wanted to hear the pleasure in her throat. It was like a shot of heroin every time he heard her moan.
He slipped two fingers inside her, closing his eyes as he felt her heat surround him.
“I need you,” she said on a shaky breath.
“I’m never going to stop needing you,” he replied.
She withdrew from him, far enough that she could stop kneeling and actually pull off her shorts and panties. And then she was naked in front of him. “I want you here,” she said. “Like on the picnic table, but this time I want to see you.”
He swallowed as she walked over to the mirror and looked back at him. He kicked off his shorts and stood behind her, with his hands on her shoulders. He ran his hands down her arms and then stroked down her back. Her tan skin was soft and smooth beneath his fingertips.
Her face transformed in the mirror as he reached around and stroked her breasts. Her eyes fluttered closed for a second, and when she opened them, they were filled with need.
Her nipples hardened under his touch and a flush appeared on her chest and face, making her eyes seem made of glass.
She arched her back, so her ass pushed back into his hard-on. He pushed back, holding her hips to his. With her body now against his, he slid his hands down her stomach and straight to her pussy. He put one finger on her clit and stroked, using her own wetness as a slick lubricant. She leaned back on him and gasped.
Watching her body in the mirror as it responded to him, with her gaze on his, did away with the barriers he imagined earlier. When she was looking at him, there was nothing between them, nothing at all.
Slowly she bent from her waist and put her hands on either side of the mirror, offering herself to him. From behind, he could see everything. Her ass, her pussy, and her clit.
He dropped to his knees and licked from her clit to her ass and back again. Missy moaned and bent even farther forward to allow him more access. He licked again, and again, until his tongue just flicked at her clitoris.
“I want you inside me when I come,” she whispered.
Her words burned through him, setting his soul on fire. He stood and slid inside her, holding her ass to him and reveling in the tight heat around his dick. He held still and put one hand on her hips, holding her firmly to him, and with the other hand between her legs, stroked her. She took one hand off the wall and started stroking her own nipple.
He fought every cell in his body that wanted to ram inside her and watched as they both stroked her to orgasm. He felt it first, her muscles spasming around him as she came, squeezing him tight within her.
As her climax abated, he slipped on a condom and moved her closer into the mirror, so she barely had to bend at all. He held her around the waist and held her gaze as he thrust inside her. His torso was against her back, her head just about leaning on his shoulder.
He held her tight with both arms, barely moving away from her with each thrust. Just as he thought he was managing his orgasm, she placed both her hands on her breasts and squeezed her nipples between her fingers. She moaned and pushed harder against him.
At the perfect vision in front of him, he lost any semblance of control. His balls tightened, and he came in three long, hard pulls.
She will always be a part of him now. He couldn’t imagine doing anything in his life without her by his side.
They stared at each other in the mirror for what felt like a whole minute. He wanted to tell her that he’d give up everything to be with her, but he knew she wouldn’t let him. He wanted to tell her that he’d been in love with her for two years, but even to his ears it felt like he was pressuring her.
He had no words that could make her stay.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
She woke at 4:00 a.m. Although they’d said everything and nothing already, she wasn’t going to make the mistake of leaving when no one would see her again.
Missy took her phone from her backpack and remembered that she’d turned the sound off when she was being held at the old barracks.
A base-wide text message popped up saying that the lockdown had ended at zero two hundred that morning.
She took a breath and opened her Expedia app. Within six minutes she had a flight booked for Florida. She’d already decided to go there directly. She was sure that if she returned home with Conrad, he would persuade her to stay with him. Either for the sex or her weapons skills. And she didn’t want to stay for either of those reasons. But the sex, she was afraid, would persuade her every time.
She would ask one of her girlfriends to supervise the military removal people who would descend soon enough to pack up her belongings.
A clean break was the best option. She got up and went to the bathroom to shower and by the time she came out, Conrad was already awake, understanding in his eyes.
“You’re leaving. You got a text while you were in the shower reminding you to check in for your flight.” He briefly held up her phone that she’d left on the bed.
“Yep. I’m heading directly to MacDill.” She wasn’t going to apologize for her decision, nor explain it. He would move on, as he always did.
“At least we can share a cab to the airport.”
“You’re leaving too?” she asked.
“There’s nothing keeping me here. The exercise has all but been abandoned, and I just want to go home. Back to some kind of normality.” He laughed. “They always say exercises can be more dangerous than the reality of war. I’m beginning to think they’re right.”
Missy laughed. They had been through some interesting times. Good war stories that would keep people amused, and shocked, at dinners for the rest of their lives. It felt strange to be saying goodbye to all of that, and even stranger to be saying goodbye to Conrad.
She’d loved him for so long. She could actually put that into words now. Because leaving him was horrible, but staying and being replaced by another woman would be worse. And whatever you could say about Missy’s life, she was great at self-preservation.
And that made her ask, “Do you think that guy last night was really after me?”
Conrad sat up. “I don’t know. I think this year’s Red Flag was so fucked up, it’s impossible to say.”
“Eleanor texted me yesterday. I sent some stuff to the hospital fo
r her.” She smiled. As she was about to tell him what she said, her phone beeped with an email. She grabbed it and read it, scrolling down at the information. “It’s from Bowman. They’ve made an arrest.”
“What do you mean?”
“The guy I identified as being the person in the hangar was arrested, with the approval and help of TGO. The CEO—Danvers—said he was unhinged. That he tried to kill Eleanor and the British pilot. The CEO apparently thought he was doing a favor to a troubled ex-military guy by hiring him, but that he had been in the process of firing him for a series of bad judgment calls. He confessed to trying to get rid of Eleanor and the Brit, because they had fought with him in a casino a few nights previously. He said he’d been drunk and they’d attacked him. So, he dicked with their aircraft.” She looked over at him. “Obviously I’m paraphrasing there. Wow. That’s a whole other level of unhinged. Talk about bad judgment calls.”
A load lifted from her shoulders. A weight of tension she hadn’t really realized she’d been carrying. She giggled. “I was nearly put away for espionage.”
“What do you mean nearly? You were. I had to break you out. I will always be the one who broke you out of jail.”
He was already thinking in terms of memories. She had made the right decision. She smiled, trying not to let a hint of sadness through. “Yes. You will always be that guy.”
Conrad watched as she put her stuff together. It felt as if she were packing pieces of his heart in various zip pouches and pockets to her backpack. All this time he thought he’d locked away his emotions. He was the nerves-of-steel pilot. But maybe she’d had his heart all along anyway. He was kind of okay with that.
He couldn’t ask her to stay and put her career on hold for him, and he knew that offering to move, or even quit the air force, would put way too much pressure on her.
If only they’d started this months ago. If only they’d gotten together gradually, so they would have been able to figure everything out as they went along. But instead they had come together like a lightning strike, wrecking everything it its path.