by Linda Howard
Clumsily she reached behind her back. Boom had had her do this time after time; she knew where the pilot chute was, she had to pull it free.
She pulled it.
For an agonizingly long time that was really only a couple of seconds, nothing happened; their plummet down was as fast as ever, and her heart sank, because it hadn’t worked, the parachute hadn’t worked. Then there was a whoosh that she felt, a vibration that shivered through her harness, and they were jerked violently upward as if attached to a bungee cord. Somehow she had air in her lungs now and she screamed because surely, surely Levi and Boom would be jerked away from her. She grabbed for their hands—
She felt them lose their grips on her harness.
The horror she’d felt during the first two jumps was nothing compared to the awful sense of disaster that overwhelmed her, smashing into her chest like an avalanche. A guttural scream tore out of her throat, long and agonized, and her eyes popped open as she searched frantically for their falling bodies even though she knew there was no way she could reach them, nothing she could do to stop their headlong plunge to their deaths. Here she was swinging under that damn chute, and they were gone.
Levi! Sobs choked her. She tried to scream his name, tried to turn her chute so she could look for them, tried to—
The world stopped. Two canopies were floating down near hers, one slightly behind and below her, the other slightly above. Levi. Boom. With their own freakin’ parachutes.
Rage filled her like whiskey, hot and potent. They’d tricked her. They’d made a fool of her. Yeah, they’d gotten her to control her own jump, but she freakin’ hated them for this whole miserable day and this was the cherry on top of the whole shit shake.
Her arms were shaking violently as she grabbed the toggles, so violently that her parachute began swinging back and forth. Terrified, she turned them loose, then grabbed them again when she remembered she had to hold them. Looking down, she saw her feet swinging and way, way below them was the patchwork of the earth, thousands of feet down. The shaking got worse and desperately she switched her gaze to the horizon, the blur where sky met earth.
She had to get down. She had to safely navigate all those thousands of feet of nothing but air, she had to steer this stupid parachute—and what moron first thought it was a good idea to jump out of a plane with nothing but a glorified umbrella to float him down like he was Mary Fucking Poppins—to somewhere close to the landing zone and then actually make it down without breaking a leg, her back, her neck, or any other bone, because she had to be relatively whole and unhurt in order to kill them, not just for scaring her to death but likely laughing while they did it, and on top of all that they’d made her dis Mary Poppins. People went to hell for less than that.
Tears kept pouring down her face. She tried to stop crying, tried to wipe her face on her hunched shoulder, but every time she did the motion started her parachute swinging and she’d just now gotten the damn thing fairly stable. She could hear both Levi and Boom yelling encouragement and instructions at her, but she didn’t acknowledge them in any way, didn’t look at them, didn’t even scream at them to eat shit and die the way she wanted to.
She had several minutes before they were on the ground. Technically she knew that was how long it took, though the descent had seemed so much longer the first two times—and this one felt even longer. In that short length of time she had to wipe away any sign of tears because damned if she’d let them know they’d made her cry, that she’d been so terrified for them.
On the other hand, pride would carry her only so far, and in order to wipe her face she had to release one of the toggles. Not going to happen.
Besides, the effort would have been useless. She couldn’t stop crying. Through the blur of her tears she identified the landing zone, jerkily pulled on the toggles to steer herself toward it. The ground was coming up fast, gaining in speed. She started to pull her feet up, then remembered she wasn’t tandem with Levi now, she had to land on her own feet. She choked on a sob, flared the parachute the way Boom had taught her, and her feet hit the ground.
Her landing had none of the powerful grace of Levi keeping his balance and taking a couple of steps, it was more that she stumbled and went down, hitting knees first then tumbling flat on her face before the billowing chute pulled her to the side. She wanted to just lie there and sob, but there were things she had to do. She struggled to her knees and unhooked, scrabbled around to begin hauling in her parachute, which was streaming across the ground like some kind of giant amoeba. It felt as if the fabric was fighting her, trying to catch the wind again and pull free.
She wanted to let the damn thing go, but controlling the parachute and pulling it in had been drilled into her by Boom. She hauled on it, scrabbling on her knees, throwing her weight back, digging in her heels. Her movements were clumsy, or the chore wouldn’t have been nearly as difficult. She was bad at this, spectacularly bad.
Then she had the damn thing under control. She sat on her ass on the ground, pulled a handful of the nylon to her, and buried her face in it while sobs choked her and her whole body shook.
She knew Levi and Boom were both on the ground, knew they had gathered in their nylon; she heard steps as one, maybe both, of them approached her. She didn’t look up.
“Babe.” It was Levi. A hard hand grasped her shoulder. She twisted away from his touch, scrambled to the side, and managed to get to her feet even though she had to put a hand on the ground to brace herself. She felt a rock under her fingers and before she knew it she’d whipped her arm around and hurled the rock at him.
He jerked his head aside barely in time to keep from being brained with it. He was too close, and she’d thrown thousands of rocks during her childhood. She saw him scowl, saw him start to bark something at her, then he saw her face and closed his mouth. Behind her Boom laughed; Levi held up a warning hand and Boom cut off the sound like slicing it with a knife.
She stood there, crying and angry, clutching a fistful of nylon in one hand and her other hand knotted into a fist. She wished she had a whole supply of rocks to throw at them. She wished she had a hammer to throw at them. She wished she had her car here so she could just drive off and leave them standing here, because she wanted to do a lot of damage to both of them and there was no way she could unless they let her, which took all the fun out of it.
“You jerks,” she gasped in a wobbly voice. She could barely talk, her throat was so raw.
Carefully Levi said, “You should have known we weren’t stupid enough to jump without a parachute.”
“I did!” she shot back, glaring at him through her tears. “On your orders! So evidently I was stupid enough.”
Boom winced. “Got us there.”
Levi was watching her as if she were a rabid squirrel, about to pounce on him. She’d had all she could take today, she was done. Swallowing hard, she turned her back on them and began gathering the parachute up in her arms.
Their ride was there, and silently Jina marched toward the pickup. Logistically she assessed her options: if she got in the back of the king cab, she’d be riding beside one of them, and she didn’t want either of them that close. If she got in the front with the driver, they’d both have to get in back. Good enough. That’s exactly what she did, climbing into the front passenger seat and slamming the door before they even reached the truck. She held the parachute bundled on her lap and stared straight ahead.
She expected to be taken back to that godforsaken Twin Otter—she was ready to blow the damn thing up, except they probably had a replacement—but when the driver asked, Levi said, “We’re done for today, take us to the truck.”
The relief was overwhelming.
During the short ride to the truck, Jina accepted the bitter realization that she had to do something. As much as she felt her dudgeon was justified, that wasn’t the way team dynamics worked, especially not a paramilitary team. Likely none of the guys would feel the way she did, or even if they did, they’d bury it unde
r their guy-camaraderie reaction, with cussing and some insults, then laughing. She felt up to the cussing and insults, but laughing was beyond her right now.
She couldn’t be a girl about this. If she wanted to be part of the team, she had to put up with a certain amount of bullshit. Besides, yeah, if she hadn’t already been so mentally exhausted, she’d have realized the obvious, that they had chutes. They’d even put them on in front of her. She just hadn’t been capable of paying attention right then, and that was on her.
That didn’t mean they wouldn’t pay.
They had nothing to say as they got into Boom’s truck, which suited her fine. She got in back, positioned herself in the middle, which if they’d given that a minute’s thought would have alerted them to the possibility of retaliation. But she’d cried and made them uncomfortable, and they were inclined to leave well enough alone. She wished she hadn’t cried, but she had, so now she’d use the advantage.
She waited, biding her time, looking for the right moment. She wanted some traffic around them, but nothing close behind.
Levi took out his phone and started texting. They stopped at a traffic light; Boom lightly drummed his fingertips against the steering wheel, looking off to the left. The traffic light changed, and they started forward. Jina made a quick check behind, saw the coast was clear; she drew up her knees, yelled, “Look out!,” as loudly as she could, and with all the strength in her legs kicked their seat backs.
Boom slammed on the brakes. “Shit!” Tires squealed and smoked. He and Levi were both thrown forward against their seat belts, and both braced for impact while wildly looking around for whatever was about to T-bone them. Jina was already braced, her legs against their seat backs. The truck slid a little sideways, then rocked to a stop.
Silence.
Slowly the two big men in the front turned their heads to glare at her.
She smiled, buffed her nails against her sweatshirt, and said, “Payback.”
After dragging her weary butt home, Jina showered, washed her hair, put antibiotic salve on her scrapes, drank some hot tea with honey to soothe her throat, then put on clean sweats and crashed on the couch. She had the energy of a noodle, and she didn’t want to think about the day, not even the Levi-kissing-her part. With the TV on and a light blanket over her, she even napped for a couple of hours and woke feeling hungry, so evidently the emotional trauma hadn’t been bad enough to affect her stomach.
Holy shit. She’d jumped out of an airplane—three times. Okay, so she hadn’t jumped so much as she’d been thrown, but still. If she added the altitude three times, today she’d fallen more than the distance from the top of Mount Everest to the bottom. That was quite an accomplishment, but she didn’t think she’d tell her mom about it.
The sun was going down and she was thinking about ordering in a pizza when her doorbell rang.
A quick look through the peephole revealed the guys, or at least five of them. Even Voodoo was there, though not Levi or Boom. She opened the door, gave them a puzzled look. “What’s up?”
“You made the team,” Snake announced, grinning. “We came to take you out and get you drunk.”
What?
“I did?”
Trapper grabbed her, tugged her out of the door. “Yep. Jumping was the last segment, and you passed it.”
“Mostly they threw me out of the plane and I lived to tell about it . . . barely.” She tacked on the last word in the spirit of being honest. “Wait! I’m not going out wearing sweats. I need to change clothes.”
All five of them got that look that said they didn’t understand, then Crutch hitched a shoulder and said, “Girls.”
“Undeniably,” she countered, and let them in to watch TV while she hurriedly pulled on jeans and sneakers, and a bra. Deciding her sweatshirt was good enough, she grabbed her phone and wallet and keys and rejoined them within three minutes, start to finish. Because she was cautious, getting drunk wasn’t likely to happen, but she’d have a drink with them. She’d made the team!
She didn’t know how that made her feel, other than giddy and scared all at once. The training was over, or at least the preparatory phase was. The guys constantly trained to keep their skills sharp and she’d be expected to do the same, but now it was all maintenance instead of proving herself.
Going down the stairs, she said, “Ace and Boom nearly killed me. I’m not speaking to them.”
“Yeah, we know,” Jelly said cheerfully, giving her his deceptively sweet smile. “You’ll have to get over it. They’re waiting for us at the bar.”
All of them? That sounded ominous. She skidded to a stop, holding on to the railing in case they tried to drag her the rest of the way down. “Wait. If this is any kind of initiation, I’m going back upstairs and locking the door.”
Snake snorted. “You’re kidding, right? Boom and I had to tell our wives about this. My orders were you can’t be hurt, embarrassed, or humiliated. That leaves getting you drunk.”
Jelly shook his head. “Sad but true.”
Reassured, she released the railing and went down the rest of the stairs. “I’ve already been hurt and humiliated today, but I was too scared to worry about being embarrassed. I don’t know why anyone goes skydiving for fun.”
“Not Voodoo’s favorite way to exit a plane, either,” Trapper said. Voodoo just looked surly and shrugged.
Oddly, that made Jina like Voodoo just a tiny bit more, because not liking skydiving proved he wasn’t an idiot, at least in her book.
The bar and restaurant they took her to was on the lowbrow side, which made her comfortable with her jeans and sweatshirt; she hadn’t expected fine dining, anyway. The booths and tables were mostly occupied, and to her surprise she recognized more than a few faces; several guys from other teams were there. They lifted their beers in her direction. She’d made it!
A small table had been pushed up to a big booth that would easily seat six people, so there was more than enough room for the eight members of the team. Sure enough, Levi and Boom were already there, beers in front of them. Levi slid out of the booth and somehow she was herded in on that side, he slid back in beside her, and she ended up against the wall with no escape.
His thigh pressed against hers. The booth was large enough that even with Voodoo taking a seat beside Levi there was enough room that they didn’t need to touch, but there his leg was, and she had nowhere to go.
“I don’t want to sit next to you,” she said. “You tried to kill me.”
“You got back at us,” he replied, then told the guys what she’d done in the truck. “Scared the shit out of us.”
Boom blew out a breath and shook his head. “My heart’s still pounding.” There was a lot of laughter and joking, a waitress came to take their orders, and to her relief there was a lot of food ordered as well as drinks.
In short order a burger and fries were in front of her, as well as a lemon drop martini, which the guys called a sissy drink, but she didn’t like beer, so tough; that was her celebration drink, the one she’d gotten when she turned the legal age to drink, as well as when she’d finished college.
It was also a strong lemon drop martini.
Like any made-the-team celebration, this one involved a lot of toasts, not just from her guys but from the other team members, too. By the fifth toast, she was feeling the martini, though she tried to be careful with her sips. By the time the drink was gone, she was very happy indeed, so much so that she’d stopped worrying about Levi’s leg touching hers.
A jukebox was playing and one of the other team members—she couldn’t remember his name—had the balls to approach and ask if she wanted to dance. As happy as she was, Jina started to accept, but then realized something.
“I’m trapped,” she announced to her would-be dance partner. “I can’t get out.”
“They’ll let you out—”
“No,” Levi said. “We won’t. There’s a reason she’s where she is, and that’s to keep assholes like you from hassling our girl.�
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“Aw, c’mon, Ace, it’s just a dance.”
“I’ve seen you dance, you damn octopus. She stays where she is.”
“Damn right,” Trapper added, smiling his calm, sniper smile. “Go dance with your own trainee.”
There was some good-natured griping back and forth, but the guy left smiling. They were generally a good bunch of guys, all the teams, she thought. They hadn’t been recruited because they were criminals or didn’t play well with others, they were recruited because of their abilities and how they functioned within the team framework.
Another drink appeared in front of her. Her fries were salty, and the drink was welcome.
Somewhere around eight-thirty, her phone buzzed in her jeans pocket. She pulled it out, blinked until the name and number came into focus, and announced, “It’s my mom!”
She swiped the phone and happily said, “Hi, Mom!”
There was a pause, and her mother said, “Hi, honey. Where are you? There’s a lot of noise.”
“A bar. I finished training today, and the guys are getting me drunk.”
There was a symphony of groans and rolling eyes around her, and she blinked at them in surprise. She lowered the phone a bit. “What?”
Deftly Levi snagged the phone away from her, heaved a sigh, and put it to his ear. “Mrs. Modell? I’m Levi Butcher, Ba—uh, Jina’s boss. She’s safe. The whole group is here.” He listened a minute. “Yes, ma’am, I’ll personally guarantee her safety.”
“Hah, that’s a joke!” Jina muttered. “You tried to kill me today.”
“Shhh!” came from several big men.
“Don’t shush me. I want to talk to my mom.” She scowled at them.
Voodoo popped a fry into his mouth. “Let this be a lesson,” he commented. “She’s a lightweight.”