“We’ll drive out and—”
“We’ll be there in twenty minutes,” Emily cut him off. It didn’t make any sense, but it had to be Emily Beale.
“I have a truck—”
“Your parents have already provided the spare keys to someone or other, and they’re headed down to fetch it. They say they know where it would be parked.”
Claudia watched Michael’s face as he made some quick calculations.
“Better make it thirty minutes.” Then he hung up the phone and looked down at her from inches away. “We have to go.”
“Why?” She wanted to explore Nell some more, as well as this man who impossibly owned her heart.
“Peter.”
“And I care about that because?”
“Because”—Michael offered her a brief smile and brushed his fingertips down the curve of her neck—“he’s our Commander-in-Chief.”
President Peter Matthews.
“Peter?”
“It’s a safe way to refer to the President when we’re on unencrypted comms. Emily Beale is one of his best friends. I think they grew up next door to each other.”
“Oh,” was all she managed, and she began squirming around in the sleeping bag to find what had happened to her clothes.
* * *
Michael’s estimated thirty minutes took closer to forty. Getting dressed with Claudia Jean Casperson in a Treeboat was too much fun, and she hadn’t complained when he’d interrupted her attempts to unsnarl her clothes from his in the tiny space. He just hoped the drone had indeed departed the area at the end of the call.
He helped her pack their aerial camp, then left her securely anchored to a stout limb before he abseiled all of the way down to the forest floor. There is no way he was leaving any indication on the ground that Nell was a Titan worthy of note. Unlashing the ground end from the anchor tree, he did a double-rope ascent, clearing each successive line upward behind him as he went. He had never departed upward out of a tree before.
Emily had to circle her garishly painted Firehawk for several minutes. The Firehawk was a Black Hawk rigged for dumping water or retardant on forest fires in thousand-gallon loads. A garishly bright Mount Hood Aviation flaming logo was splashed down the glossy black helicopter’s length, a stark contrast to the unmarked, matte black birds Emily had flown for SOAR.
Once Michael returned to the branch beside Claudia, Emily began lowering several very long lines out of the Firehawk’s cargo bay doors. She’d tried to come in low, but Michael had waved her back aloft to protect Nell from the downdraft of the helicopter’s rotor. While Emily repositioned well above them, he took Claudia’s hand and looked at her. Really looked at her.
“You belong here in so many ways.”
Her laugh charmed him as it always did. “Yep! Feel just like I’m sitting on the bench waiting for the Amtrak Southwest Chief out of Phoenix.” She looked down at her feet and wiggled them around as if they were on a floor and not three hundred and fifty feet above ground.
“There’s a storm coming.” He pointed west over the Pacific. “A big one by the looks of those clouds. We’d have had to descend this morning anyway. I’ve ridden one out in a tree. It’s not something I’d ever do on purpose.”
“So, let’s hitch a ride outta here.” She looked upward and stuck out a thumb as if hitchhiking.
Then she slowly turned to him and her face went serious.
“Kiss me, Michael. Before she hauls us away from Nell. Really kiss me.”
As lines hissed down from the sky to slap against them, as the downdraft whipped near storm-level winds into the tree and their branch weaved and bobbed in the induced wind, Michael found a sense of peace and belonging in how Claudia clung to him, gave herself to him, and how he gave himself right back to her.
They sent the packs up first.
Then, once the lines were back down and attached to their climbing harnesses, they carefully unlashed their safety lines. It was the first time he’d ever been at the top of a tree and not firmly tied to it. Even the lifting line from the helicopter didn’t offset the strangeness of the sensation.
There had been a world to discover here, but he and Claudia had been snatched back to reality. He hoped it wasn’t forever lost, whatever they had begun to explore here among the treetops.
As Emily began to winch them aboard, he felt the initial tug on his harness. With a well-placed departing push-off, he was able to swing over and brush his fingers along the very highest and thinnest spire of Nell. It was the newest bright-green spring growth, soft conifer against his palm.
He’d finally, after all these years of trying, reached the very pinnacle of a tree. Three hundred and eighty-two feet, Nell was the unreported holder of the title of tallest living thing. The most glorious being on the planet.
Save one.
Chapter 15
Their arrival in the helicopter was a harsh surprise. Claudia winced when she first touched the metal outer hull, and after climbing inside, settling on the lifeless steel decking was a body shock. In a single moment she’d gone from a world where the loudest thing was a breeze or Michael’s call from fifty feet away, checking in on her through heavy branches, to thudding helicopters, headsets, and three-meter monkey-lines to secure their climbing harnesses to the inside frame of the bird.
The transition was too fast, and now this was the world that felt foreign. Who had she turned into over these last forty-eight hours?
For the first time ever, she’d gone more than a day without once thinking about her career and her position. And now she was screwing a Delta Force colonel at every chance? In the tops of trees? Where was the Captain Casperson she’d built so carefully?
She considered checking her pockets but didn’t, just in case she couldn’t find herself when she went looking.
“My crew chief today is Steve Mercer.” Emily’s voice was smooth over the intercom. “He’s my drone pilot. Steve, these folks are both third contract. Not a word goes out about this.”
“Roger, boss.” A guy with dark hair and an easy smile shook their hands as he helped them get squared away. He carefully didn’t ask their names.
“Why you, Emily?” was Michael’s greeting. Claudia really needed to talk to him about some basic manners.
“I guess Peter is into something nasty. He wasn’t explaining, but I’m guessing that he’s trying to keep the circle of knowledge really small. I’m delivering you to a tiny airport up on the coast where a Gulfstream will be waiting for you. Now that I’m on the outside, that’s all I know.” After glancing back to make sure everyone was secure and the lines were all in, she slammed the cyclic forward and left, and wrenched up on the collective. The Firehawk responded with a throaty burst of power that jerked them aloft.
Apparently Emily cared as little about manners as Michael did. She was also clearly frustrated at not being on the inside of whatever was happening. Claudia wondered if she herself would be sorry to be on the inside by the time this was over, assuming she was. She decided to just keep her mouth shut.
“Our gear—” Michael started.
“Your parents will have to ship you anything at the house or in that truck. I can drop your climbing packs at Corvallis airport for your parents to fetch.”
Michael dropped the headset and waved Claudia to the back of the helicopter’s cargo bay. He pulled an empty Mount Hood Aviation gear bag with a flaming logo from a hook. Together, she and Michael began sorting through the packs, pulling out their little bits of personal gear and stuffing them into the sack. Neither of their duffels sitting in the truck had carried much more than an extra change of clothes.
Claudia tried not to read any significance into her and Michael’s clothes now being combined in a single bag. She was still breathless from the transition and couldn’t seem to get her head working again. Not until her fingers closed around a pair of two-foot-long nylo
n cases.
The folding bow and the blunt arrows. She held them and tried to remember the woman who just yesterday morning had fired them into the redwood. She hadn’t been so focused on the shot that she’d missed the look on Michael’s face. No one had ever, not in her whole life, looked on her with awe before. Lust, anger, totally despising her trespass in this man’s army, sure. But not awe. She’d felt like Diana, the Roman goddess of the hunt.
Twenty-four hours later she was a woman who had climbed to the top of a redwood and fallen in love with the best man she’d ever met. Whatever Michael was doing to her, it was thorough. She’d had lovers, but definitely never one she loved. Well, she wasn’t actually willing to declare it, but a part of her acknowledged that it was true nonetheless.
She held the two slim cases out to Michael and mouthed Dilya’s name.
He didn’t hesitate or even bother to nod in acknowledgment. He simply took them from her hand and slipped them into the gear bag.
Military service was such that she didn’t know if she’d ever see the girl again, but Claudia’s guess was that the 5D was too good a team to break up from one assignment to the next. It wouldn’t be all that long before she and Dilya ran into each other again.
Once she and Michael were packed, they moved back to the front of the cargo bay and pulled the headsets back on.
“One other thing, Emily,” Michael continued as if they hadn’t just been off the intercom for five minutes.
Claudia wondered how to introduce herself to the retired major and thank her for trailblazing the way into SOAR. And do it without sounding like a total fan girl.
Then Michael got that implacable tone in his voice. “You and Steve will erase any and all GPS and flight-path information to do with the location of that tree.”
“Michael, why does it—”
“And you’ll do it now!” No drill sergeant had ever mustered such a tone of absolute authority.
Claudia watched between the seats as Emily Beale, without further comment, began punching buttons on her console. Steve Mercer did the same to his drone guidance console. Nobody messed with Colonel Michael Gibson, not when he was in that mode.
Maybe she’d just keep her mouth shut.
She didn’t get a chance to talk with Emily Beale until they landed at a tiny airstrip just outside a coastal Oregon town.
“Wow!” Emily sounded impressed. “They sent the 650 for you. They want you two in Washington fast. You’re in for a very cozy ride.”
Claudia peered out the cargo bay door at the sleek Gulfstream jet. The G650 was the fastest small passenger jet built, soaring through the sky at just under Mach 1. It looked as if it was at full-tilt boogie just sitting there.
Emily left the Firehawk’s rotor ticking over on fast idle and climbed down. She snapped a sharp salute to Michael. Claudia noted that the one he returned was equally sharp. Then she hugged him. By his delayed response it was easy to read his surprise. So, Major Emily Beale (retired) unwound for very few people, but Michael was one of them.
He moved over to the Gulfstream parked on the age-cracked tarmac of the taxiway. At a small hand signal from Emily, Claudia waited. The immaculate blond with steel blue eyes suddenly turned her full attention on Claudia. In that instant, Claudia saw the truth of every story Lola and the others had told about their former commander. Emily was tall, slender, stunning, and in such absolute command of everyone around her that it was hard to believe she wasn’t still in the Army.
Beale was studying her just as closely, which didn’t bother Claudia in the least. She didn’t know Emily Beale from Adam. Except she did. The woman had been the most respected helicopter pilot on the planet, for those who knew of her existence. That set Claudia back on her heels a bit, though she did her best not to show it. Beale had not only the respect of her colleagues but, more tellingly, of Colonel Michael Gibson as well.
“So you’re the one, Captain Casperson.”
Claudia was getting tired of people assuming something that she was barely beginning to figure out for herself.
“Claudia. And that means what to you?”
Emily smiled to herself before answering. The smile looked a little sad. “It means that I wish I was still in the service so that I could get to know you, for you must be someone very special, Claudia. I think that Mark and I are the only other people who know about Michael’s trees. He’s never invited us there.”
Claudia tried not to feel foolish for her initial acerbic manner.
“He’s…” She didn’t have the words to describe him to herself, so how could she to this woman she didn’t know? “Amazing.”
Emily turned and they both looked over to where Michael was waiting patiently by the lowered steps of the sleek jet.
“Also remember, Captain,” Beale said without turning, “that he is a man. Just as unsure of himself as any other when it comes to women. The good ones know how to be a soldier, but they have only the slightest notion of what to do with the woman they love.”
“He…” Claudia attempted to protest, but couldn’t. She had only just figured out that she loved him. She’d thought that was a nice addition to a relationship that would be best kept to herself. But the concept that Michael might love her back struck her with a quick succession of emotions as rapid as gunfire on full auto: absurd but not, possible, possibly encouraging, even desired…
She settled on “totally unnerved” and would leave it at that.
“Of course, I doubt if he realizes it yet.” Emily was clearly not aware of the madness that had just been unleashed inside Claudia’s brain. Abruptly Claudia no more wanted to climb aboard a jet with Michael for several hours than she wanted to fly with a caged tiger.
She’d been overdosing on Michael and that, she was beginning to understand, was a dangerous drug.
That would explain it.
The Yemeni exfiltration; planning, then executing the mission in Somalia; making love at every chance… She could recall his smell of darkness and safety better than she remembered the smell of gunpowder or Jet A fuel.
Claudia needed to detox.
To get away from him for even a little while to find out what she was really feeling.
“Did they, uh, call us both back to DC?”
Emily looked at her with as absolute an understanding as if Claudia had spoken all of her thoughts aloud. “Both of you.”
Well, so much for that escape.
Emily took her by the shoulders and looked her in the eye for a long moment before nodding to herself.
Then, much to Claudia’s surprise, the woman hugged her and whispered in her ear. “I suspect that Michael has indeed chosen well. Tell him to call us next time you’re both on leave. We’ll all go fishing together.”
“But I don’t fish…” Claudia pulled back, unable to make sense of what Emily was talking about or the sudden kindness she offered.
The jet’s engines grumbled and then whined to life, starting low but climbing the scale rapidly in a long glissando.
“Neither do I, but he and Mark love to fish together. If you stay with him, you’ll discover what it means to lie along a stream for a long, lazy afternoon. Day after day.” Her wry smile indicated the woman’s humor behind the observation.
“They’ll fish and we’ll become friends, Claudia. Now go.” With no further acknowledgment, not a handshake or even a look, Emily climbed back aboard her helicopter. Mere seconds later, the rotor’s downwash was driving Claudia toward the waiting jet and the waiting man.
By the time she reached the jet, Emily was aloft. A waggle of rotor blades and she was gone over the trees.
Michael let Claudia head first up the stairs.
Chapter 16
A huge man in a black suit with the trademark coil of wire to his ear greeted Claudia as she stepped into the Gulfstream jet’s cabin.
United States
Secret Service. Had to be.
“Captain Casperson. Colonel Gibson. Welcome aboard. You may leave your bag with me.”
There was no question of not obeying. Michael handed over the bag.
“Are either of you armed?”
Michael bent down to untie the hunting knife from around his calf and dropped it into the bag. Then he added a folding knife and a Colt Defender 9 mm that she somehow hadn’t noticed.
She didn’t even have a Swiss Army knife with her.
“The rest is in the gear bag.”
The rest? A romantic idyll in the tops of the redwoods and Michael came loaded to personally fend off the Taliban. Always ready for anything. A good lesson that she’d have to remember. Always be ready for anything.
How was it that Michael just kept getting better?
“Thank you, sir. You may both take a seat.”
He closed the door behind them and then retreated forward as the engines began to wind up in earnest.
The cabin was beautiful. It was the same size as a Chinook’s, six-and-a-half feet high and over eight wide. It looked even longer than the helicopter’s thirty-foot bay…and that’s where any similarity stopped. Instead of the utilitarian dark gray that could seat fifty troops on hard fold-down seats or carry a Humvee strapped to load points along the steel cargo-bay floor, there were a dozen seats of plush white leather sitting on white, deep-pile carpet.
There was also a forward group of four seats, two to either side, with highly polished fold-out tables of dark burl wood. Then six more grouped around a large table. Beyond that were couches long enough to stretch out and sleep on. That sounded pretty good at the moment.
There were two other passengers, seated with their backs to her approach, three if you counted the baby she could see over of the man’s shoulder, asleep in his lap.
In profile, as she came down the aisle and passed alongside the seated couple, she could see that they were elegantly dressed. She wanted to brush at her jeans and T-shirt but was afraid of shedding dirt or stray bits of Nell onto the white carpet. She’d had a bra somewhere in her pack but hadn’t thought to put it on. It was probably even now being inspected for hidden weapons by the Secret Service agent.
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