Crossing the Line

by Candace Irvin

  He didn’t budge.

  She slammed the phone onto the counter. “Dammit, Bishop! Unless you’ve gone deaf since I saw you last, you heard me!”

  “I heard you.”

  Given the fact that the front door was still yawning open behind him, half the apartment complex had probably heard her. He opted not to mention that as he studied her—really studied her—for the first time since he’d arrived. He took his time, noting everything about her from the tangled curls she’d yet to comb, to her pale complexion, to the gray Army T-shirt and shorts that seemed to swallow up her too-petite frame.

  She looked like hell.

  Grief had exacted a relentless toll on the woman’s features these past six weeks. While Eve still wasn’t wearing makeup, frankly, she needed it. Then again, he wasn’t even sure a stick of cammo could disguise the dark circles that had taken up residence beneath her eyes. He knew it would take more than grease paint to conceal the rest of the hollows he saw. She’d lost quite a few pounds, too. Pounds she could ill afford. The woman he’d met out on that LZ had been stunning.

  This one was nothing but hollows, cheeks and eyes.

  Stark, shadowed eyes.

  She was hanging by a thread. A thread she truly believed he’d helped fray. That bothered him most of all.

  So much so, there was only one thing to do.

  Eve sucked in her breath, stunned, as Rick severed his stare and finally turned around and headed for the door. Stunned not because he was leaving, but at the disappointment that shafted through her as he reached the tiny foyer. It was as unexpected as he’d been unwelcome. Or was he?

  Dammit, what had she expected?

  After all, she’d ordered him to leave.

  And now he was doing it.

  She turned her back on him and abandoned the kitchen, crossing the apartment’s small but open floor plan before she could change her mind. She reached the living room all too soon and sank into her couch, sighing as she buried her face in her hands. She flinched as the front door clicked shut.

  The sound was so…final.

  It was all so ironic it wasn’t even funny. Rick Bishop had been on her mind more than she wanted to admit these past few weeks. From the moment she’d regained consciousness in that screaming ambulance, she’d been thinking about him. Especially when she’d learned that he’d returned to the jungle.

  She’d wondered if he was safe.

  She’d wondered if the gash on his head had healed properly.

  She’d wondered if his heart had healed at all.

  She’d known Rick for less than a day but, somehow, she didn’t think he was the sort to pour out his grief over losing his platoon sergeant to just anyone. If he shared it at all, it would be with someone special. Unfortunately, from their conversation while she’d been stitching his head, she gathered he didn’t have anyone. At least, not at the moment.

  She’d thought about contacting him after everything settled down—until she’d realized which way the investigation board was leaning. And why. From that moment on, she’d prayed that Rick would contact her and soon. She’d secretly hoped he’d show up like some long-lost white knight of old, riding onto post at the last minute to save the day or in her case, her career.

  He’d shown up all right.

  A day late and a recanted statement short.

  With flowers, no less.

  As if a bunch of daisies would ease the humiliation of having her wings stripped and, worse, being offered some half-assed, out-of-the-way job to quietly serve out the remainder of her military commitment. She’d joined the Army to fly choppers, not sit at a damned desk. Eve sighed.

  First Carrie and now this.

  You’re not alone.

  Really? Then why did it feel like she was?

  Except, it didn’t.

  Just as she had when she’d wrenched herself from that damned dream hours before, she swore she could feel someone’s presence. But this time it wasn’t Carrie’s. Certain her imagination was playing tricks on her, she forced her eyes open and faced her empty apartment. It wasn’t empty.

  And that was no angel.

  “I thought I told you to leave.”

  Either Rick Bishop really had gone deaf these past weeks, or he’d chosen to ignore her yet again—because when he’d left the rectangle of oak that served as her apartment’s foyer, it was to step into the apartment, not outside it.

  Of all the nerve.

  She stiffened, determined to vault off the sofa and knock him down and drag him out by his combat boots if that’s what it took. A split second later she froze as something hot and wet slid down her cheeks.

  Tears.

  She wasted precious seconds scrubbing them from her cheeks as discreetly as she could. By the time she lowered her hands, his boots were directly in front of her running shoes, the cuffs of his sweat-stained jungle-fatigue trousers still perfectly bloused despite a ten-hour flight in a C-130.

  “Eve?”

  She stared at the deep gouge cutting into the toe of his left boot before shifting her attention to the right. The shine on both had succumbed to San Sebastián’s damp jungle undergrowth during the past month. She studied the remaining nicks and scratches on the leather uppers before moving on to the meshed green nylon side panels. If she stared long enough, he just might take the hint.

  He finally sighed.

  She ignored that, too.

  Camouflage filled her view as he hunkered down to one knee. “Eve?” He tipped her chin and trapped her gaze. He searched silently for several long moments as she tried her damnedest to ignore the heat in his hand as well as the concern in those deep-brown eyes. “What happened?”

  She sighed. “You know what happened. Stop pretending—”

  His thumb covered her lips, pressing in softly as he shook his head. “I don’t. Tell me.”

  She stared into the truth burning steadily in his gaze.

  He really didn’t know.

  But how?

  According to the senior officer on the investigation board, it was Rick’s statement that had sealed her fate. She closed her eyes again as he withdrew his thumb from her lips, swallowing hard as she felt his hand settle on her shoulder.

  Gently, encouragingly.

  She drew her breath in slowly and forced the words past the lump of betrayal and shame clogging her throat. “The board ruled that I caused the crash. That it was pilot error. They based their decision on your statement.”

  “But I never said that.”

  She opened her eyes. “You may as well have. You told the investigator who tracked you down at the San Sebastián border that Carrie must have fought for control of the chopper and that that’s why I never pulled pitch.” It was the latter comment that had sealed her fate. “The board believes that if I’d pulled pitch in time, the subsequent auto-rotation of the chopper’s blades would have softened the landing enough to have given my crew and passengers a chance at survival.”

  In other words, pilot error. Her error.

  Her fault.

  He shook his head. “Eve, the statement I signed said I believed it was copilot error. Carrie’s error, not yours. I know what I saw. You two were arguing—”

  “Yes. We argued.” It was something she’d never forget.

  Just before the engine quit, she’d yelled at Carrie and dressed her down about her friend’s attention to detail—or rather, her attention to Sergeant Turner. Her last words before the crash had been spoken in anger. It didn’t matter that Carrie had forgiven her with her dying breath. She would never forgive herself.

  “Why did you cover up your argument?”

  Because of the baby.

  She stared at the photo taken their senior year, minutes after their commissioning. Even now, she couldn’t afford to let the truth out. Especially now. Telling Bishop or the board about Carrie’s pregnancy wouldn’t save her career. But it would destroy Carrie’s memory and her reputation. It would also prevent Eve from fulfilling her best friend’s
final wish.

  Carrie had asked to be buried beside Turner.

  Unfortunately, Eve wouldn’t be able to accomplish that any time soon. The same attempted coup that had kept the Córdoban army from searching for her Black Hawk after the crash—and had kept Rick and his platoon patrolling the San Sebastián border afterwards—had also prevented the American ambassador from retrieving the bodies. If the U.S. Army brass learned about the baby and decided to make an example of Carrie and Sergeant Turner after the fact, she’d never be able to honor the request. Not with Turner already scheduled to be buried near his father in a military cemetery outside Midland, Texas.

  “Eve?”

  She tore her gaze from the counter. Maybe Rick hadn’t noticed she’d been staring at the photo. Maybe he didn’t know there was more to that crash than she could ever share.

  Right.

  She had a feeling nothing escaped that dark, steady stare. A stare that was focused solely on her. It rattled her nerves so badly she didn’t dare risk opening her mouth. She sat there on the sofa, instead. Just as she had before the board yesterday morning, praying it would all go away.

  Praying he would go away.

  He didn’t, any more than the board’s decision had.

  In fact, the longer she remained silent, the more closely he watched—and the deeper his fingers bit into her shoulders. She didn’t care. Impatience she could handle, even anger.

  Hell, she could have even dealt with abuse.

  But not his pleading.

  “Don’t you realize I can see what’s going on inside you? How much this has you tied up in knots?” He pulled his hands from her shoulders and slipped them beneath her chin, once again trapping her. “I just wish I could see into your mind.”

  For a moment, she swore he could.

  Unable to bear that commanding mix of pain and persuasion a moment longer, she shifted her gaze, only to collide with the jagged pink scar he’d earned that fateful day six weeks before. This close, she could see the tiny holes where her thread had been. The gash had healed well. But the scar was obviously still new. Raw. As if the nerves beneath hadn’t quite managed to heal.

  She knew the feeling.

  His thumbs smoothed the skin at her jaw, eroding her resolve. “Tell me what you’re hiding, Eve. Let me help you. Please.”

  She closed her eyes and shook her head.

  “If you don’t care about your career, then do it for me. You owe me. I lost the best sergeant I had in that crash. I also lost a friend. I’ve already sent his mother a letter. Now that I’m home, I’ve got a follow-up call to make. Give me something I can tell her. Someone deserves to sleep at night.”

  A grandchild.

  A baby with Carrie’s dark curls and Turner’s blue eyes.

  Eve pushed the sight from her mind. She had to.

  For Carrie and for Sergeant Turner.

  She pushed Rick’s hands from her shoulders and sprang up from the sofa, rounding her coffee table before he could stop her. There, she filled her lungs with desperately needed air. Air that didn’t carry Rick’s subtle woodsy scent.

  Only then did she turn to face him.

  “I told you in the jungle. Carrie did nothing wrong. Yes, we argued. We both know her head wasn’t into flying that day, but that had nothing to do with the crash. I swear it. Once I initiated crash procedures, Carrie did exactly as I ordered. Her behavior might have had a lot to do with where that chopper went down, but it didn’t have a thing to do with how.”

  “Then why didn’t you pull pitch?”

  “I did.”

  “Eve—”

  “Dammit, Bishop. They told me what you said. I don’t care what you think you felt—or rather, what you think you didn’t. I pulled pitch.”

  He tracked her around the coffee table, stopping short when she backed away farther, this time all the way to the kitchen. He raked his fingers through his hair and pulled them down to knead the base of his neck as he sighed. “Sometimes in the heat of battle soldiers do things they later swear they didn’t, mainly because they don’t remember doing it. Maybe the reverse happened to you. Maybe you’ve just trained to crash-land a chopper so many times that when it actually happened—”

  “Read my lips! How many times do I have to say it? Without that bird I can’t prove a blasted thing, but I know I hauled back on that collective. I pulled pitch.”

  Rick stared at Eve, stunned by the absolute conviction burning within her gaze. The devil with her gaze, it burned within every inch of her body.

  It practically radiated off her.

  She truly believed she hadn’t screwed up. He knew it as surely as he knew she was withholding something crucial about Carrie Evans. Until their rescue chopper had hit that thermal pocket over San Sebastián’s capital, he hadn’t realized what had been missing from the crash. But from that second on, he’d been positive he hadn’t felt her Black Hawk pull pitch.

  Was he wrong?

  Was he the one who couldn’t remember what had really happened during the heat of the moment? His heart had been pounding fairly fast and furious as they’d screamed down into the trees. Had he truly missed the sudden, cushioning lift seconds before they’d hit? Or was it possible that the crack to his skull had left more than another scar?

  Had it left a faulty memory?

  “You don’t believe me.”

  He blinked. Until that moment, he hadn’t realized he’d been staring at the group photograph on the counter beside her. He jerked his attention from the cracked glass and stared into her eyes. The resignation he found cut him to the bone.

  “Yes—no.” He shook his head. “I don’t know.”

  Damn. He hadn’t meant for it to come out that baldly.

  She stiffened. “Wh-what did you say?”

  The hope in her eyes cut almost as deep. It would have been so easy to give her what she wanted. So much so, it scared the daylights out of him. He forced himself to choose his words carefully, determined to give her what she deserved and nothing less. The truth.

  “I believe that you believe you pulled pitch.”

  She stood there for several moments, silent.

  And then she nodded. “Thank you. I’ll admit, that’s not the ringing endorsement I’d like, but I’ll take it.” She slid her hand across the counter and retrieved the picture. His heart tightened inexplicably as her neatly filed nails traced the silver vines that framed the photo. She sighed. “A lot of good it’ll do. What I really need is proof.” Her fingers traced the frame again but this time they trembled.

  Before he realized what he was doing, he reached out, his own fingers closing over hers before he could stop them. When she didn’t recoil from his touch, he squeezed gently, struck silent by the sudden, intense need to see these too-slender hands as they’d been less than two months ago. As Eve had been. Confident, capable.

  Content.

  The moment she’d fired up that chopper back on that LZ, he’d known that Eve Paris was a woman who’d found her calling in life and gloried in it. The woman standing two inches in front of him was not the real Eve. This was an empty shell.

  Dammit, he wanted her back.

  He might never be able to breathe life into his sergeant again, but he just might be able do it for Eve.

  She needed proof? “Go get it.”

  The photo clattered to the floor. “What did you say?”

  “You heard me.”

  “I heard you. I just can’t believe you’re suggesting what I think you’re suggesting.”

  “I am.”

  She pulled her hands from his and stepped back as she gaped up at him. “You’re nuts.”

  He had to grin at that. “No, I’m Special Forces. Though I have heard it’s the same thing.” He stepped up to the counter, committing himself to the rapidly forming plan in his head even before he had a chance to think through the details. He’d planned enough missions over the years to know it would work.

  It was also the only way.

  �
�You said it yourself, Eve. Without examining that bird there’s no way to prove anything. So let’s go do it.”

  “Let’s?” She shook her head. “Uh-uh. No way. Even if I do decide to put my ass on the line, there is no way I’m letting you do the same. My career is already over. Yours isn’t. But it will be if you get caught.”

  He cracked another grin. “If you have so little faith in me, why’d you let me lead you out of there the first time?”

  “Dammit, Bishop, this is serious!”

  So was he.

  He’d also made up his mind. “Trust me.”

  “I already did.” From the pain shafting through her whisper, she wasn’t talking about the jungle anymore.

  “Eve—”

  “I said, no.”

  He did what any Special Forces soldier would do under the circumstances. He changed his tactics.

  “You need me.”

  Unfortunately, all that earned him was a snort. “The hell I do. You might be able to rig a bridge to blow up at precisely five seconds to midnight with your hands tied behind your back, but you don’t know squat about examining the remains of a charred chopper.”

  “I do know how to survive in the jungle undetected.”

  Silence.

  When it deepened, he knew he’d managed to sway the battle with that one. It was time to turn the tide on the war.

  “Sergeant Turner.”

  She flinched.

  As anticipated, the man’s name drove home the obvious. He might not have quite as much of a stake in the outcome as she did, but it was close. Rick ignored the fresh stab of pain and guilt at using his platoon sergeant like this. Of all men, Turner would have understood. There was no way he was letting Eve go back into that jungle without protection.

  His protection.

  Nor was this mission about her alone.

  Rick reached down and snagged the picture from the floor. Carrie Evans grinned up at him as he laid the frame on the counter between them. He’d told the truth. He needed to know why Bill Turner had died. For reasons Eve would never know.

  “Okay.”

  He snapped his gaze to hers, relieved at what he found. She was serious. Committed. To the mission and, for the moment at least, to him. “Good. I signed out on three weeks leave shortly before I showed up at your door. You?”