A noise sounded from deeper in the apartment.
“Oops.” Vapor held up his hands, a pilfered doughnut in one large fist. “Uh, you’ve already got company. We’ll scram.”
Chuck leaned against the kitchen bar stacked with paper plates and bottles of Gatorade. “No need. That’s my physical therapist, checking the workout gear in the spare room.”
Footsteps sounded from the hall a second before a lanky guy in a navy blue windsuit came into sight. Chuck waved him over. “This is my PT guy, Garrett Ferguson, does contract work for the base hospital. He’s been checking out all the new toys in this specially equipped apartment to make sure they work right.” He gestured behind him further. “And you already know Annette.”
A slim woman in a baggy dress entered the living area, long dark hair shielding her face. She swept back her brown mane, and Mason recognized her.
Mason tried to place a name with the face . . . and then it came to him. “Annette Santos, right? You used to work contract with us.”
“Now I have a real life working normal hours, thank you very much. I was even able to get the afternoon off to help Chuck come home.” A denim hobo bag swung from her arm, the contents spilling over the top. Heavy dark eyebrows and her light accent were attractive enough, but they didn’t hold the same firepower for him as Jill’s clipped way of speaking.
Thank God Annette had been here for Chuck. Now that Mason thought about it, Chuck had never mentioned any family back in Hawaii. For them, the squadron filled that void. Or it did for Mason anyway. Since he’d left home at eighteen, the once-a-year phone call from his folks at Christmas—while unfailingly polite—was hardly the stuff of Hallmark cards.
Jimmy’s girlfriend, a local orchestra conductor, plumped a pillow on the sofa. “Nice digs.”
Annette elbowed Chuck lightly in the side. “He needs a decorator.”
Vince dropped onto the couch, the big lug sinking in deep as he propped his feet up in front of the wide screen television. “Looks to me like he’s got all the important stuff. We’ll have to hang out here on game days.”
Mason took in the generic apartment floor plan, two bedrooms, the door to the spare now open and showing pristine new workout equipment.
Chuck leaned back against the wall, standing on one foot. “The building has an indoor pool and a gym, but this here doesn’t close up at night.”
The physical therapist—Ferguson—passed him another crutch. “Don’t overdo. Stick to the pace.”
“That’s rich, coming from you, you sadist.” Chuck took the second crutch and propped it against a chair.
Annette stopped beside him, tucking her shoulder under his arm in a way that could be intimate or could be simply supporting. “Push yourself too far, and you’ll set back all your hard work.” She arched up to kiss his cheek, still slightly hollow and sallow beneath his darker skin. “I have to go. I’ll call later.”
Chuck squeezed her against his side in a one-armed hug, his dark eyes shifting to her. “Thanks again, beautiful. You’re the best.”
“Enjoy your guests. No need to see me out.” She waved over her shoulder. “Nice to see everyone.”
The front door closed quietly behind her.
All eyes shifted toward Chuck, but no one asked the burning question about the woman who’d just left.
Mason didn’t see the need for silence. “I didn’t realize you and Annette were an item.”
Vince stretched his arms along the back of the sofa. “Rumors have been flying all around the squadron that you’re seeing the Italian singer.”
“You dog!” Werewolf slugged his arm. “You’re using this R & R to your advantage.”
“Yeah, that’s me, a freewheeling bachelor.” Chuck plowed his hand through his jet black spiked hair.
“So which is it? Friend or girlfriend?” Werewolf leaned toward the physical therapist. “You’ve seen more of him than we have lately. Any good gossip to share?”
Ferguson shook his head. “Patient-therapist confidentiality.”
Laughter rumbled through the room at his none-too-subtle dodge.
Chuck collected the second crutch, some of the fight slipping from his face. “Annette came by the hospital. She was attacked a few months back and needed someone to talk to.”
Attacked? Holy shit. Mason leaned forward. “What happened?”
Chuck’s eyes narrowed. “Someone mugged her on her way into her apartment, roughed her up badly enough she spent a night in the hospital. She wasn’t raped, thank God, but the incident, the feeling of being so out of control, screwed with her mind all the same.” His face went tight and gaunt. “She needed to speak with someone who could relate.”
Chuck would definitely fit the bill. He’d taken a helluva pounding during his captivity. He bore outward marks even now with his limp and a scar that slid up into his buzzed short hairline.
Straightening, Chuck plastered his lighthearted look in place again. “So do you want to crank up the wide-screen television and help me eat some of this food?”
No one questioned the mask. Mason understood as he knew the rest of them would, too. “Sure, I’ll fire up the grill.”
“I don’t have a grill.”
Mason clapped him on the shoulder. “You will as soon as we unload it from the back of my truck. Welcome home, brother.”
This was his family. It was enough. It had to be.
Rex Scanlon didn’t stop by the club for a drink with the crewdogs anymore. Even thinking about it made him sick to his stomach. All those lost minutes could have been spent with Heather if he’d just gone straight home. She’d told him she understood the whole crew bonding process.
Okay, she hadn’t always been totally cool with it. He smiled to himself. Sometimes she’d been downright pissed off after all week with their hellion twin boys, so he’d spent the weekend draining all that energy from his kids while Heather read in a hammock. His smile faded.
Now his house was stone quiet since the boys started college. The sons—who he used to be so close to—had spent their Christmas break at a friend’s ski cabin.
He pulled into the driveway of his stucco house, identical to all the other Southwestern architecture in the neighborhood. He hadn’t cared much where he lived when he’d moved out of base housing after Heather died.
Rex shut off his fifteen-year-old Jeep Wrangler, the headlights slicing away. He probably should have just stayed at the office, but he was hungry, and the snack bar held little appeal. He’d already burned out on everything there. So he’d come home to finish off the take-out Chinese left over in his fridge.
He slammed the door shut, the cold desert night wrapping around him. It was about time he cleared Heather’s boxed things out of the garage so he could park inside. He would get around to it—sometime.
The moon played hide-and-seek with the clouds between two mountain peaks, casting dreamlike flickers across the porch until he could have sworn he saw Heather sitting on the front stoop waiting for him. He stopped dead. Was he losing it? He’d held it together all year, tough as hell, but he was functioning. If he’d been deluding himself, he needed to get off flying status. Fast. He couldn’t risk the lives of the people he led.
He blinked again, and his vision cleared. Sure enough, there was a real person on his porch, but it wasn’t Heather.
“Ms. Cicero.”
The Italian diva rubbed her hands together for warmth, crutches propped against the step. “Colonel.”
“What are you doing here?”
“Your manners are just as lovely as I remembered.” Her Italian accent was more exotic in the dark of night, although her English had improved in the months since they’d met. “As for what I am doing here, I was waiting for you, of course.” She hugged her bright orange wool jacket closer around her, her legs swallowed by wide-legged jeans tonight. He still had no explanation of what caused her limp.
He stopped beside her, hands jammed in the pockets of his leather flight jacket. “You should
n’t be out here alone. Haven’t you heard there’s a serial killer on the loose?”
“A killer?” She shivered. “No, I had not heard. But you are here now, so I’m safe.”
Yeah? And who would protect him from this international rock star who, for some bizarre reason, had decided to track him down? “How did you get my address? I’m not listed in the phone book.”
“I asked my agent.” She flicked her silky black hair away from her face.
“Gee, and all this time we’ve been paying top-level security personnel and secret service when we should have consulted music industry agents instead.”
“Your residence isn’t a state secret, is it?”
He exhaled long and hard. He didn’t have the energy for this—for her. “Could you please do me a favor?”
“What would that be?”
“Don’t waste my time or yours with the flirting.”
“You certainly do think well of yourself if you believe I am here to flirt.” She waved a manicured hand. “Please stop towering over me and sit.”
He hesitated.
She patted the spot beside her on the otherwise empty stoop. “I need to rest my knee before I leave.”
Her knee. He’d guessed correctly at the hospital. He wanted to ask her how she’d injured it, but that would prolong their conversation. He wasn’t going to sit beside her, but he could see where looming over her was overdoing things. He leaned back against the stucco wall, crossing his booted feet at the ankles.
“Thank you,” she said softly, then her spine went straight, and she exhaled, her breath puffing a light fog in the cold dark. “I came to say I am sorry for any trouble I caused to your people while we were with the USO in Turkey.”
“Thanks.”
A small smile teased the corner of her lips. “You are not going to tell me it was not my fault.”
“It wasn’t your fault.”
“You lie.”
“I don’t lie.” Except in the line of duty working in a top secret job, but that didn’t count. He prided himself on his integrity and stuck to the truth. “Sounds like you’re suffering from some guilt. That’s your issue, ma’am. Not mine.”
“Ma’am?” She tucked her hands into the sleeves of her silly orange coat. “Isn’t that a little ridiculous given I am . . . how much younger am I than you? Or is there a problem with me asking your age?”
“It’s rude, but that’s never been a concern of yours before.” Damned if she wasn’t every bit as blunt as him. “I’m forty-two.”
“Fifteen years older than I am. Not so much.” She hugged her knees, the sides of her arms pushing her breasts closer together, just visible in the vee of her coat.
“Calling you ma’am is a product of my military training, nothing to do with age.”
“Why not call me Livia?”
Time to end this before she made a fool out of both of them. “Cut to the chase.”
“Excuse me? I am not familiar with that phrase.”
“It means get to your point. Why did you come to see me?”
She stood slowly, her hand falling on his arm to brace herself. She eased one foot up off the ground, no doubt favoring her knee, but the effect still had the look of a vintage film star, crooking a leg in the middle of a kiss.
Except they weren’t kissing, just sharing the same few inches of air. “Perhaps I find you interesting.”
“Perhaps you find me unavailable.”
“You certainly are that, even though you wear no ring.” Her brown eyes went darker with sympathy. “I am sorry about your wife.”
He didn’t like it any better when Livia went soft. “Right. Thanks. And you’re here because . . . ?”
Her gaze locked on him for two more gusty breaths before she pulled away and leaned on the wall next to him. “Actually, I am here to find out how things really are for Chuck. I don’t trust that he is being honest with me.”
“You want to know about Chuck?” Now wasn’t that a kick in the ego? He’d been worried about her hitting on an old guy like him, and she had the hots for one of his young crewdogs.
“I just said as much, did I not? I’m worried about him and what will happen to him now that he is out of the hospital.”
Chuck deserved happiness more than anyone. He did not need some diva nymphet leading him on. Rex angled closer to crowd her, and yeah, he knew it was intimidating, but he had a point to make. “Don’t fuck with Chuck Tanaka’s head. He’s been through enough.”
When she’d left the base in Turkey and endangered their whole dark ops mission with her high-profile kidnapping, authorities had determined she was simply reckless. Base security had watched her a little more closely since she wasn’t an American, but no one had seriously considered whether she could have a darker motive for ignoring orders.
Yet here she was again, connected to another sensitive military project, and this time he wouldn’t be as easily persuaded her reasons were a hundred percent innocent.
The next evening, Mason pressed the brake on his truck as he pulled into an empty parking spot outside the Atomic Testing Museum. Not what he’d expected when Jill gave him her uncle’s work address.
Hopefully tonight would be more fruitful than his frustrating day at the squadron with no answers to what caused the in-flight debacle. They had checked and rechecked data and flight tapes and any damn thing they could think of. The contractor couldn’t find a mechanical malfunction either. Without answers, they were faced with two options.
One, fly the final two test runs with an additional loadmaster on board for more observations. If those flights went flawlessly, chances increased that somehow he’d simply fucked up. They would cross their fingers and continue with their demonstration next week.
Or two, they could just scrap the drop altogether and simply show off the plane and its speed. Certainly it was impressive enough on its own, but without the proven ability to off-load goods, a big part of the oomph would be lost in their part of the presentation. Years of work wouldn’t mean dick.
Slamming his truck door closed, he spotted Jill a couple of car rows down. Leggy and curvy, she was serious pinup material in her jeans and a turquoise fitted jacket.
Her silver studded heels surprised him. He’d pegged her for a more earthy type. Not that he was arguing with a woman in heels and pouty, slicked lips.
He was so screwed. Maybe it was a good thing after all that her uncle was coming along for dinner.
Mason pulled his focus back in tight on his reason for being here. To find out more about a certain sexy camo cop.
Mason stepped ahead to hold open the door to the museum. Jill gave him a passing half smile as she walked by. “Glad you could make it, Sergeant.”
She strutted away, long legs eating up space. Maybe this was just her personality—brusque. That fit with what he’d observed of her in the mess hall. His eyes dropped to her heels again.
Unzipping his leather flight jacket, he followed her into the Today and Tomorrow Gallery toward a clump of elementary school-aged kids with happy birthday goody bags dangling from their fists. Phillip Yost stood by a piece of the Berlin Wall serving as a tour guide—or a docent, as his mother would have said.
A dozen or so kids with birthday party name tags stickered to their shirts were listening to his story about watching the wall fall. To hear the guy tell it, he’d actually been there.
Yost clapped his hands together. “Well, kiddos, that concludes our party tour. Now make sure to ask your moms and dads to come back here so you can take a longer look around.”
“Hey, Uncle Phil, over here.” Jill waved to catch his attention.
Yost pulled his volunteer ID lanyard with the museum logo from around his neck and angled through the crush of kids ripping into goody bags full of candy. “Thank goodness you’re on time. I’m starving to death.” He stopped short when he saw Mason and cocked his head to the side. “You brought company.”
“Hope it’s okay if I butt into your plans.”
“Completely okay. In fact”—Yost clapped him on the shoulder—“I’ll gladly pick up the tab for your meal. You and Gingersnap here are bonded through a near death experience.”
Mason kept his face blank. The old guy shouldn’t know about the desert incident. Between her job and his, what happened was classified.
Come to think of it, what had Jill told him about why she needed to be picked up at the hospital?
Yost kept nodding. “Yeah, you did a damn fine job at keeping Jill from being flattened by the Casper mobile.”
Ah. Mason gave himself a mental head thunk. “No need to buy my meal for that. All I did was shout. She took care of herself just fine.”
Yost hooked his thumbs in his pockets and rocked back on the heels of his rattlesnake skin boots. “I taught her everything she knows about self-defense. Glad you noticed. We can argue about the tab later over dinner.”
Mason jabbed a thumb toward the museum sign. “Cool way to spend your retirement.”
“Honest to Pete, these kids are tougher to corral than any crooks I used to chase. Did she tell you I used to be a cop, too? She takes after her uncle,” he rushed on before Mason could answer. “I taught her everything I know. She’s carrying the torch, and I’m keeping busy here and with my dogs.”
Yost had been a cop? Interesting.
The older guy jabbed a thumb at an image from the first nuclear bomb test. A mushroom cloud formed in the desert, shock waves rippling away in circles propelling sand outward. “This is what the future is about. Who controls it? Will they harness it or exploit it? This could be an answer or an end.”
“You sound like some of the people I work with.”
“Must come from living here so long.”
Jill ducked her head between them. “Hey, Uncle Phil, is your shift over or not?”
“I’m a volunteer. There’s no punch card now that I’m not a cop anymore.”
The older man snapped his fingers to snag the attention of a college-aged girl wearing her tour guide name tag. “Alexus, can you take it from here and make sure they’re all picked up by parents?” He pressed a hand to his lower back. “My sciatica’s acting up again.” He turned to the kids. “Old back injury from chasing a truck full of drug runners across the desert. Would have caught them, too, if they hadn’t shot out my front tire and sent me crashing into a Joshua tree.”
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