Wings of Gold Series

by Tappan, Tracy

  Kyle’s heart stopped, dropped, and rolled. She was actually going to do this?

  “Take off your shirt,” she said quietly. “I want to see your body.”

  His nipples snapped taut. Not from lust. He was scared of something here, scared shitless. He hooded his lids, hiding his eyes. “My dick isn’t underneath my shirt, Max. For a woman who went to Stanford, I’d think you’d know that.”

  Her lips curved with the knowing tenderness which always ripped a layer of his skin off. “It’s so easy for you to drop your pants, isn’t it? How many times have you done that already in front of me? You can expose your dick, no problem. But you never take off your shirt. Because”—she leaned forward and gently placed a palm over his left pec—“it covers your heart.”

  Said organ started thudding maniacally.

  Her voice dropped to a whispered murmur. “It’s either all of you or none of you, Kyle.”

  That fucking explained his terror. There was no all of Kyle to give. His whole persona was smoke and mirrors, just a lot of strutting naval aviator over a black, bombed-out interior.

  The tenderness in her expression deepened, and he bared his teeth at her.

  With panic dancing up and out of his throat, he grabbed Max by the upper arms and hauled her off the floor. Propelling her backward, he planted her on her cot, but stayed in close, leaning over her. “You know I can’t figure out what’s sadder about you,” he growled nastily. “That you enjoy tearing people open and staring at their guts. Or that you analyze the hell out of a poor chump just to avoid directing your demoralizing powers of observation on yourself. What do you think you’d find, if you did, Max? Something you’d actually have to face and feel?”

  Her eyes widened, not so much the lids but the centers, her pupils nearly engulfing the shiny blue part of her irises.

  “Good ol’ unflappable Max, you’re so fucking removed from it all. It’s why you became a journalist, right? Always on the outside looking in, reporting about life, but never having to be a part of the grit of it. And…hell! It’s probably the same reason you’re a swimmer. All around you there might be kicking and splashing, but you just keep to your own lane, not letting anything rattle you. What happened to turn you into such a loner, Max? Huh? Did go-getting Mommy and Daddy spend more time at their lawyer jobs than with their precious daughter?”

  Pay dirt.

  Max’s eyelashes quivered like they did when she was losing her composure, just as they’d done in the back of the busted ambulance. Jesus, he should’ve known he was dealing with a fellow stray. Rich, poor, black, white, lawyers, waitresses: shitty parents lived in every socio-economic strata.

  “Here’s an idea. Maybe instead of spinning your wheels figuring out everything yourself—taking care of everyone else—for a change you could let someone else carry the load.”

  “You don’t think I want to?” she asked, her voice hollow and hoarse. “No one ever follows through.”

  Her words, so full of heartbreak, struck him with the force of a sledgehammer smashing through his chest. He made fists of his hands, the old need howling to the surface of him; the persistent, soul-level need to be the kind of man who could shout I can be the one who’s there for you! loud enough to shatter the front of her cell phone and the lens on her camera. Loud enough for someone, finally, to hear him. But like the day she’d told him she honestly feared for her life on this mission, the words he wanted to say bunched up on his tongue, crumpled and died. You’re so undependable. Just like your father. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

  “Full heads up.” His voice sounded detached, unfamiliar. “I’m not your follow-through person, either.” He strode out, regret laying a bitter hand on his soul.

  “Kyle!” Max shouted, following him out of the tent.

  He felt her palm on his forearm and stopped.

  “I never got a chance to tell you…” she started breathlessly.

  Stiffly, he turned and faced her.

  “Thank you for saving my life…the day in the ambulance…with ISI. Thank you.”

  He stared at her, at first blankly, then stunned.

  She held his gaze, the uneven rise and fall of her chest emphasizing the fragility of the bones at the base of her throat, the delicate dip where her collarbones met.

  Seconds passed. Slow, profound seconds.

  He seamed his lips together and expelled air through his nose. “You don’t want all of me, Max. No. I’m only another poor, scruffy urchin you want to save, like Kevin, so you can feel better about yourself. So stop being nice to me.” He gave the order tersely, then executed a military turn on his heel and gunned down the main road, his quick, choppy strides stirring up a cloud of dust that choked off his lungs and stung his eyes.

  Chapter Thirteen

  The next morning JEM called. This time, the terrorists wanted to come to them.

  The deal was that at thirteen-hundred Max and her crew would travel on foot to a spot outside the aid station, far enough away to be out of firing range from the Pakistani guard, and wait for transportation to arrive.

  Max’s “crew” this time would consist of Kyle only. Jobs’ arm hadn’t healed enough to put him back in commission—although the young pilot had tried to argue it was—and Tarzan had sprained his ankle going for a wild ball in ping pong. Just as well. One man was all the crew Max had ever wanted in the first place, and she still trusted Kyle to stay focused on the job, despite the giant warty toad of awkwardness sitting between them.

  Triumph should’ve been her primary feeling today, not this clumsy, tongue-tied act she was doing. Because yesterday she’d offered Kyle the chance for an easy blow job, and he hadn’t taken her up on it, just as, deep down, she’d suspected he wouldn’t. Because deeper down she believed he really wanted something more with her—whether he’d come to realize it consciously or not—same as she wanted with him.

  Yes, lo and behold, here was another surprising revelation. She was no longer using the excuse of needing connection with him as a means to avoid a casual liaison. She actually did want to know more about him. He was the most compelling man she’d ever encountered—and she’d met men from all over the world. For every shithead maneuver he pulled, he had total opposite sweet and gentlemanly counter-maneuvers.

  So his refusal of the blow job was her victory; it proved her hypothesis. But in the process of refusing, he’d also leveled her emotionally…which equaled the awkward. Because he’d pegged her spot-on. He’d said things that on some level she already knew about herself; she did tend to keep herself on the outside of unpleasantness. Something she hated about herself; because failing to respond emotionally to certain situations made her sound subhuman…so she ignored it. Nice solution, right? Did wonders for her personal growth.

  No one ever follows through…

  Well, there ya go. When had anyone ever been there for her when she needed to cry? Come the day someone actually stepped up, then maybe she’d try to stop doing everything herself. Until that day, she didn’t see any reason to open herself up to more hurt and letdown.

  At any rate, she hadn’t wanted Kyle to know all this stuff about her, but clearly he did, and so…awkward, awkward. Sighing, she opened her backpack. It was emptied of everything except a notepad, a couple of pens, two granola bars, and a coffee thermos borrowed from Dr. Barr. She and Kyle had both left their cell phones behind. Too much personal information resided on phones, as they’d both discovered yesterday, should their cells be confiscated. Pulling out her thermos, she downed a few deep gulps of coffee.

  “Have you ever considered taking your caffeine intravenously?” Kyle asked dryly.

  She screwed the top back on and shoved the thermos away. “I would if I could.” She rooted around in her backpack for nothing, just used the activity to keep her attention elsewhere, and boy, were these lapses into silence a double dose of awkward.

  Kyle gazed at the horizon, standing unmoving with the camera bag over his shoulder and the Beretta back in its holster on h
is calf, dressed again in cargo pants, T-shirt, and boots, all in shades of blah brown.

  She was decked out in her full Pakistan-assignment clothes, but, luckily it wasn’t as hot today as yesterday. In fact, it was ominous, dark clouds glowering in the sky, the air moisture-heavy with an approaching tropical storm. Several darts of lightning danced about, scenting the air with brimstone.

  The hairs on Max’s forearms rose, and Kyle squinted upward.

  “Well,” he murmured, “we know what the Universe thinks about this mission.”

  Max didn’t respond.

  “You’re awfully quiet today,” he commented.

  She detected a hint of regret in his tone, but couldn’t tell if he was regretting passing up the blow job—which would cast all kinds of doubt on her earlier hypothesis—or his emotional levelling. And why couldn’t she peg him, the way he did her?

  I hope u crash out there you prick!!!! Now, see…she’d really like to know what led a man to keep such a woman around. But she didn’t have the first inkling, as if Kyle Hammond was kryptonite to her secret-unearthing superpowers. She sighed. “Just focused,” she said, aiming her attention at the road. It was a half-truth.

  Kyle exhaled expansively.

  Meaning…? Damned if she knew. There was a surprise. Then her heart jumped over the next beat.

  “Dust cloud,” Kyle said.

  “Yes, I just spotted it.”

  JEM was coming.

  She and Kyle didn’t say anything more while they waited for their contact to arrive.

  The silence between them felt so…wrong now. She wasn’t sure what she wanted from him. Maybe, We’ve got this, or something equally team-building and…well, okay, connecting, to help get them off on the right foot.

  A battered blue flatbed truck, dented in more places than not, paint curling off the fenders, appeared out of the dust. There were two bearded men inside, carrying rifles. The truck pulled to a stop, and the men stepped out, both wearing traditional white kameez tunics over billowing salwar pajamas, and sandals on their feet. The driver was bare-headed. The one on the passenger side was wearing a white taqiyah, or skullcap, like a straight-sided bowl had been upended on his head.

  This skullcap-wearing man leaned his rifle against the truck, then approached Max, and without a word, began to search her.

  A scowl darkened Kyle’s brow as he watched the man’s hands move over her body.

  She blushed, and her throat muscles started to tighten, narrowing off her esophagus. As a woman, she was a second-class citizen to this terrorist, no more human than his camel would be, to be treated how he willed it, not her. His disregard was obvious in the impertinent way his hands moved over her. She tried to swallow against the anxiety pushing through her. The same anxiety she’d felt—okay, fear—the day of the ambulance crash when bodily violation seemed imminent.

  The man with the skullcap finished with her and moved over to Kyle. He went through the camera bag, finding only film equipment—Max had left the GPS in her tent—then searched Kyle. In a moment, Skullcap was yanking the Beretta from its hiding place and calling out to his companion in a language Max didn’t recognize as Urdu. Maybe Punjabi…?

  The driver glared at Kyle and demanded in English, “What do you mean, bringing a weapon?”

  Kyle regarded the driver calmly. “We were ambushed the last time we were supposed to meet you. Carrying protection seemed like a wise precaution.”

  The driver went silent, looking as if he was debating his position on Kyle’s answer.

  Max discreetly managed a swallow. This was starting out nicely.

  The driver finally spoke to his companion in Punjabi.

  Skullcap tossed Kyle’s Beretta to the driver, then pulled out something from the back waistband of his salwar.

  Max’s throat slammed completely closed when she saw what it was.

  Two black hoods.

  Kyle stated firmly, succinctly, “No.”

  The driver sneered. “You do not direct me, American.”

  “Are you taking us to where you’re keeping the hostages?” Kyle countered. “No. So there’s no reason to blindfold us.”

  “We go to the safety of one of our compounds,” the driver retorted, “not for your eyes. And we don’t go anywhere unless you comply.” He made a hard gesture at his companion.

  Skullcap returned to her.

  She stood in place, pulse rapid in her throat, and let him whoosh the hood over her head. The moment her vision was stolen from her, her blood ripped through her veins at an even higher velocity. The hood smelled like the extra-pungent odor sweat takes on when it’s born of fear. Not the best smell in the world.

  She heard Kyle growl, “Fuck.” Then her arm was grabbed and she was made to walk in the direction of the truck.

  Her waist hit a solid edge. She reached out and her fingers encountered the small metal knolls commonly found on the floor of a flatbed.

  “Up,” she was commanded.

  She climbed up—next to her, she heard Kyle do the same—scooted in, and leaned back against the side of the cab. Her flesh icy, she waited to hear a gun being cocked or the sound of a beheading knife being removed from its sheath. But she only heard the tailgate slam shut, then truck doors. Finally, the engine sputtered to life. The truck lurched into motion beneath her butt. She released part of the breath she was holding, the rest sticking in her constricted throat. As the truck gathered speed and the wind picked up, she caught a scent that was vaguely fecal. Chicken poop? Either this truck was generally used to transport fowl, or her hyped-up emotions were causing her to hallucinate smells.

  “You okay?” Kyle asked her softly.

  She held onto the sides of the cab, her shallow breathing an amplified shish-shush, shish-shush within the confines of the hood. “It’s not optimal,” she answered.

  “No, it’s not.”

  And there it was. Connection. Both she and Kyle were nervous, but trying not to be, both of them put into a situation that colored so far outside the lines of her considerable vocabulary of adjectives for undesirable, she couldn’t even describe it. “I’m sorry,” she said to Kyle.

  “For what?”

  “For getting you into this.”

  He snorted. “My job got me into this.” He paused, then quieter, “Spinning your wheels worrying about someone else again, Max?”

  She lurched against the cab as they went over an uneven patch of road, pain darting through her spine. Her heart, too, maybe.

  Thunder grumbled sullenly, like a giant’s hungry belly.

  “Look,” Kyle went on, “nothing bad has happened to us—nothing bad will happen, okay? We’ve got this.”

  We’ve got this. She actually smiled, her dry lips snagging along the rough fabric of her hood.

  They drove for more than an hour, each passing minute winding vines of dread around Max’s chest, like a tight mesh of rotten ivy. She and Kyle were now far from home base, without means of communication, weaponless, and in the hands of a terrorist organization that had no compunction whatsoever about lopping off American heads. Not good, any of it. What if JEM believed that taking her and Kyle prisoner, too, would help get their men released from Guantanamo faster? She had to hold onto the hope JEM wanted media coverage to promote their cause more than they wanted two more hostages.

  By the time the truck slowed, her butt was as sore as it’d ever been. Pakistan’s corrupt government didn’t consider its infrastructure, like roadworks, a high priority.

  The truck came to a stop. Conversation was exchanged between several male Pakistanis, then the tailgate slapped down and she was being tugged out of the flatbed. Her feet hit the ground and the hood was jerked off. She blinked in the gloomy light, scanning the area, and straightened her hijab.

  They were surrounded on all sides by high, unblemished, whitewashed stone walls enclosing a wide open area of dirt, and directly in front was a two-story structure. Also made of white stone, not a chip of paint to mar the façade, the building
was liberally decorated with stripes of blue tile, and each corner of the structure was rounded to resemble an attached tower. The roof was massively domed.

  This had to be a Sufi shrine.

  She’d been to many. Sufi shrines, each dedicated to a particular Sufi saint, tended to be more tolerant and welcoming, especially of women, than mosques. Islamist extremists, however, considered Sufism to be in direct competition with their beliefs, and as a result, many Sufi leaders and shrines had come under threat or attacks from Sunni militant groups…like Jaish-e-Mohammed. Clearly, this shrine had been overtaken by JEM.

  “Looks like we traveled south into northern Punjab,” she said softly to Kyle, who was standing next to her, now hood-less, too. This is weird. She thought JEM was primarily located in India’s southern Kashmir and Doda regions, not—

  Kyle hadn’t responded.

  She glanced at him. His hair was mussed from the hood, but more importantly, his stare was fixed across the open area of dirt, an expression of black rage on his face.

  She followed the direction of his gaze to where a group of Pakistani men were training, shooting at makeshift human replicas constructed of gunny sacks stuffed with hay and hung upright from poles. Their rifles regularly cracked off shots.

  She moved to stand directly in front of Kyle. Their two hosts were still talking to a couple of other men near the nose of the truck. “Kyle.” She tugged on his arm. “Look at me.”

  His ferocious eyes lowered to hers.

  “You need to wipe that expression off your face,” she told him.

  His upper lip quivered toward a sneer. “Those men are training to kill Americans… military men…my friends.”

  “I know. But you’re not in the military today,” she reminded him. “You’re just a cameraman, chasing a hot story. I need you to get in that disguise. Now.”

  His chest moved with a deep breath, but his dark fury remained.

  Thunderheads roiled in the sky above him.

  She gestured across the compound. “Do you think those young men could’ve been recruited to this training camp if their country hadn’t betrayed them?” she asked. “They have no jobs, no hope for a future, probably little to no education or money, and have been let down time and again by a corrupt government and culture that gives everything to the rich and well-connected and nothing at all to the poor.”