Player - The Elite Part Four

by KB Winters

  “I know I’m the last person you want to see, but Aaron, I need your help.”

  I folded my arms and leaned up against my desk. “Actually, you’re the second to last person I want to see. Your boyfriend—oh, I’m sorry,” I sneered, “—your ex-boyfriend, would be the last, last person I’d want to see.”

  She took a beat and then pushed back her long waves, tossing them over her shoulders. “Okay, I deserved that.”

  Her lack of arguing riled me further. If she didn’t argue and snipe back, it just made me feel like an asshole.

  I sighed. “What do you need?”

  “I need to escape. I need to go somewhere.” She licked her lips. “Somewhere far…away from here.”

  “What’s going on? Why?” I could feel myself getting pulled back into her web, but I was powerless to stop it. Regardless of what had happened between us, and the way she’d used me, I still wanted her.

  “Henry’s having me followed.”

  “Followed?” My eyebrows shot up. “What for?”

  “Like I told you at the bar last night, I left him, a couple of weeks ago. Well, as you can imagine, that didn’t go over so well with him. At first, he threatened me with taking me to court, accusing me of breaching our contract.” She stopped and sucked in a deep breath. “He called me last night, screaming and yelling at me to get back over to his house where I, quote, unquote, belong. I told him no, and that’s when he really lost it…”

  She crossed my office and sat on the couch along the opposite wall. Only when she was sitting, did I realize that her hands were shaking. She braced them on her knees and continued, “I told him that if he dragged me to court, that I’d testify against him.”

  “Oh shit…” I didn’t know everything O’Keefe had his hands in, but threatening a power player like him wasn’t a smart move. Sure, I’d told him to go fuck himself, but I had the proper leverage. Talia—without help—would be a sitting duck. A problem. The kind of problem that usually ended up on the six o’clock news as a missing person case.

  She nodded and sucked in another long breath, steeling herself. “I don’t know everything, but I know enough to be dangerous. God, I don’t know what I was thinking…it was stupid.”

  “Ya think?”

  She shot me a dirty look.

  I held up my hands. “Sorry, but Talia, you, of all people, know who he is and what he’s capable of. He’s not the kind of guy you fuck with.”

  “I know.” She nodded frantically. Her beautiful face crumpled under the strain of keeping it together for so long and she folded forward, burying her face in her hands. “It was stupid. I know that. Aaron…he’s going to kill me. There’s been a dark town car following me around ever since last night. I’ve been keeping to public places all day, but now…I have nowhere to go where he won’t be able to find me.”

  “So you came here?” I jumped up and looked out the blinds that hung over the large window over my desk. I dropped the slats closed again and turned to face Talia again. It was hard to hold on to my grudge when she was so obviously broken over it. “Talia, do they know you’re here? Did they follow you here?”

  She shook her head. “No. I lost them. But…”

  I waited, holding my breath.

  “He knows about us, so it’s not a stretch to think he’ll send someone to come looking. That’s why you have to get me out of here. Tonight.”

  “Why me? And why do you think I’d take you somewhere?”

  “Because you can fly me somewhere. If I go through an airport, he’ll find me. He’s probably got his private dicks checking local train stations too. I don’t know. It’s like he’s everywhere!”

  “Okay, okay. Hold on.” I paced across the office, stirring through a pot of ideas in my head. I snapped my fingers when the right idea cycled through. “I know what to do. I know a guy who takes charters down to Mexico. He’ll keep you off the record. Not to get into it, but he’s…got experience with that…”

  If she was scandalized, she didn’t show it.

  “I can take you up to him, he’s outside San Francisco, and first thing tomorrow, he can take you down to Mexico. I trust that from there you can disappear?”

  She nodded. “I have cash, and I had a friend make me a new ID. Henry won’t be able to track me there, and I can get on a plane to Europe. I have family in Italy.”

  “Good. Good. Don’t tell me anything else.”

  I didn’t want to know any details in case O’Keefe’s men came sniffing around. I didn’t know the lengths they would go to in order to get information. And I didn’t want to find out.

  “Thank you, Aaron,” Talia’s voice cracked. I went to the couch and sat down beside her. She leaned against me and I wrapped an arm around her shoulders. Once she was in my arms, she released the tears she’d been holding onto, and cried into my chest. “I know I don’t have any right asking you for help. After what I’ve done. But…somehow I knew you would…you’re a good person, Aaron.”

  I chuckled into her hair. “I don’t know if I’d go that far.”

  After a few minutes, Talia managed to pull herself together long enough to go retrieve her bag that she’d dropped in the foyer of the museum while I made a call to my buddy Fitz who ran the…questionable…charter service to Mexico.

  * * * *

  “You ready?” I asked, sliding my eyes over to Talia as she adjusted herself in the co-pilot seat. It was impossible not to let my thoughts drift back to the last time I’d taken her up for a flight. Granted, it had been a helluva lot more fun than the trip we were about to embark on.

  She offered me a small smile and I saw a glimmer of her former self—the unstoppable powerhouse I’d originally met—shining back at me. “Ready.”

  We pushed off and began our trip down the runway, lifting off the ground at the exact moment, and took to the sky. It had been awhile since my last night time flight. All of the tours at the museum were day tours, the sole purpose revolving around the spectacular views of the ocean and shoreline along the Californian coast. Flying at night brought me back to some of my memories from the missions I’d flown overseas, most of which had been carried out in the dead of night.

  “I’m really sorry I got you tangled up in this, Aaron,” Talia said, using both of her hands to push her hair back as she leaned her head against the seat. “But I do appreciate it, you know.”

  “It’s fine. I—”

  The rest of my sentence died on my lips at the flashing lights and alarms blaring in the cockpit. We were a few hundred feet off the ground but I was losing power. Warning lights lit up like dominoes falling, one after another.

  “What’s wrong?” Talia demanded, snapping up straight in her seat.

  I ignored her, channeling all my focus on keeping the plane in the air. We didn’t have enough air speed and then, it hit me, we’d lost power. No matter what I did, I couldn’t get more throttle.

  “Aaron!”

  I tore my eyes from the panel to look over at her, wishing I could impart some confidence. She was white as a ghost and I was sure I didn’t look any better. “Talia, hold on! We’ve lost power,” I said, keeping my voice as calm as possible. A skill my years in the Navy had taught me. No matter what happened, you stayed calm.

  “Oh God! Aaron! Can’t we jump? Parachute?”

  I shook my head. “We’re not high enough.” I glanced at the panels again, my mind spinning with calculations. “I got this. Just hold on tight and don’t let go. I’ll get you—”

  I sent a prayer up, but I knew we were like a falling rock. The water was our best bet at softening our inevitable crash. The bluff…not so good.

  “Talia!”

  Chapter Three

  “Talia!” My eyes ripped open and I was instantly blinded by bright lights that blocked out everything else from sight. I shut my eyes again and instead, threw all my energy into sitting up, only to find that I couldn’t move a muscle without agony threating to pull me back under. “Talia? Talia!”

&n
bsp; I muttered her name over and over again. Can she hear me?

  Voices called out numbers, stats, data, overpowering my cries.

  No one was listening to me.

  “Talia…”

  “Mr. Rosen, my name is Gemma. Can you hear me? I need you to open your eyes for me, please.” I opened one eye, this time squinting at the blinding light above me. I slowly opened the other. “That’s good. So you can hear me. Can you talk? Can you tell me what you’re feeling?”

  It took a moment to adjust my eyes to the lights and I found the source of the voice. The commanding voice belonged to a brunette wearing a stethoscope around her neck.

  “Yeah,” I whispered, surprised at the weakness of my voice. “Where—am I?” My throat was scratchy. I coughed to clear my throat and it was like razorblades were sliding down my neck. “God, where am I?”

  “Shh. You’re all right. Mr. Rosen, you’re in the Emergency Room. I’m Gemma, your nurse.”

  “Talia? She continued talking but it was getting harder to focus. Could she hear me? My eyes felt so heavy. My body went warm and limp.

  The lights dimmed and I succumbed to the heaviness that was tugging on me.

  * * * *

  When I woke up again, I had no idea what time it was or where I was. But, things started to make more sense. Bits and pieces of my memory came back to me and I remembered the plane had gone down. Fuck. We hadn’t even made it to the ocean, instead, crashing to the sand below the bluff where the Rosen Air Museum stood. There was broken glass. A fire. Everything had been smoky and hard to see. Then, lights and sirens.

  The most painful memory of all came forth slowly, as though somewhere inside my subconscious, my mind was protecting me from the most horrific piece of all.

  Talia’s head lolled to the side. Blood covering her face from the spray of glass that must have cut her to pieces.

  “Talia.” I croaked.

  It was no longer a question.

  I knew she wasn’t there with me.

  She was gone.

  And it was my fault.

  A familiar face cut into my line of sight, but I couldn’t make the connection as to why she looked familiar. “Aaron?” The sound of her voice triggered my most recent memory. Gina? Jenna? Something like that. She was my doctor? No, nurse. “Mr. Rosen? Can you hear me?” I nodded and pressed my eyes closed against the light of her small flashlight. “I’m Gemma, your nurse. I need you to open your eyes.”

  I did as she asked and my eyes watered as I followed her instructions to follow the light with my eyes. She was likely checking me for a concussion. I’d played enough sports in high school to recognize the test.

  “Looks good. Your vitals are strong.” She pocketed the flashlight and I struggled to sit up, all of a sudden finding it odd to be flat while she hovered over me.

  Not that I wasn’t used to gorgeous women being on top…

  I chastised myself for the fleeting thought. This was serious. It took all my energy, but I channeled my rampant thoughts back into a singular question, “Talia?”

  The cringe around the corners of Gemma’s eyes answered the deep, dark fear that had taken root in my gut. “I’m very sorry, Aaron. Your friend didn’t survive the crash.”

  I was surprised by the tear that slid down the side of my face. I hadn’t cried since my dad’s death. Nothing short of that had held the power to break me.

  “It was all my fault,” I whispered. I forced my eyes closed, wanting to hide.

  I’d gone through the pre-flight checklist, just like normal, but my mind had been so distracted. I must have missed something. I should have taken a second pass through the procedures.

  I’d made a mistake, somehow, and Talia had paid the price.

  The ultimate price.

  My stomach rolled. I tried to turn over as the remnants of my dinner started to come up, but at the slight motion, my side flared with agonizing pain, as though it were being torn in two.

  “Whoa, whoa,” Gemma pinned my shoulders back against the bed. “Turn your head.”

  I did as she said just in time for my stomach contents to spray over the side of the bed.

  Gemma continued to instruct me with her cool, soothing tone, and when I was done, she cleaned away the mess I’d made without so much as a cringe. When I was lying back again, panting from the exertion and trauma of it all, she stripped off her rubber gloves, and came to sit beside me, on the clean side of the bed. “I know it’s hard not to move, but you need to try, Aaron. You’ve lost a lot of blood tonight. A piece of shrapnel from the crash gored your side. You’re lucky you still have all your internal organs. Regardless, we had to open you up to stop the bleeding. You have an incision on your left side. That alone will take four to six weeks to fully heal. You also have a broken wrist—” she nodded down to my right arm. “—and a smattering of other contusions, mostly from the safety harness from what I can deduce.”

  I sucked in a slow breath and looked away, over at the window behind Gemma, wishing I could go outside and get away from the sterile air inside the hospital room.

  “Mr. Rosen, do you understand?”

  I dragged my eyes back to hers, noticing, for the first time, how the soft grey mixed with a hint of blue, like the horizon after a storm when the sky began to clear. I let my eyes rove over the rest of her features. Her dark hair was cut just past her shoulders and hung down, like she’d spent the day at the beach, not in an emergency room. Her face was soft, but there was a fierceness to the set of her jaw as she waited for my answer.

  “I understand,” I finally replied with a nod.

  “Do you have anyone you’d like me to call? Your parents? Siblings?”

  A new pain—one that had nothing to do with the stitches in my side—flooded over me, knocking the air from my lungs. “I don’t have anyone.”

  Gemma placed her hand on my shoulder, the warmth spreading through the thin hospital gown I hadn’t even realized I was wearing until she touched me. “I’m sorry. Please let me know if you need anything. Here’s the call button,” she gestured at a small control panel on the side of the bed. “If you want to adjust your position, you can use this, but be careful. You’re on some pretty heavy painkillers right now, so you might not feel the discomfort at first, but that makes it even more imperative that you stay still and don’t try to move around too much. If you need to use the restroom, please call, and someone will be here within minutes to assist you.”

  I nodded my understanding before she could ask, and she lifted up from the side of the bed. She slipped from the room with a smile.

  * * * *

  My condition improved, thanks to a lot of sleep, and by the next afternoon, I was finally able to get out of bed with minimal assistance. The only problem with getting better, and sleeping so much in the first twenty-four hours, meant that I couldn’t get back to sleep—and when I wasn’t asleep—I was thinking about Talia. It was hard to believe she was gone. I’d only known her for a handful of weeks, but now, I knew I’d never be able to forget her.

  As the hours ticked by, I tried to watch the game on TV, but I kept waiting for her family—if she had any—to come bursting through the door to my hospital room, ranting and bitching at how I’d killed her. That I was a murderer.

  But, as the afternoon dragged on, no one other than nurses and doctors came and went. Gemma had come by earlier in the morning, and I found myself wishing she would return. For some reason, it was easier to not think about Talia when she was there.

  “Aaron!”

  I turned away from the TV to see Jack “Boomer” McGuire rushing into my room, his face tight with concern and his voice thick with emotion. Behind him was his girlfriend, Holly, who looked like she’d been crying.

  “Shit man! Boomer! What are you two doing here?” I asked, frantically pushing the buttons on my bed to get into a sitting position. Jack and Holly had been living in Germany for months, on a naval base, while Jack completed a three-year stint as a hot shot Lieutenant Comma
nder after his heroic tour over in the Middle East.

  Jack came to my side and gingerly wrapped his arms around me in a brotherly embrace. “Player, man…dude—the fuck? How are you?”

  “I’m all right Boom, how’d ya know I was here?”

  “Carly messaged Holly on Facebook to let us know you’d been involved in a crash.”

  I nodded and he released me. Holly gave me a quick embrace and began sniffling before she pulled away. “Sorry,” she whispered, wiping her eyes. “I can’t seem to stop. Are you okay?”

  Jack wrapped her in his arms and she automatically lay her head against his chest, still wiping at her tears before they could get too far.

  I forced a weak smile. “Hey, hey, Holls, no tears. I’m okay.” Jack lifted a brow. “Well okay, I was gutted like a fish, but other than that…tip top.”

  “Player…” Jack knew me well enough to have a permanent bullshit detector on me at all times.

  My facade crumbled and I clenched my jaw to keep my own emotions in check. “I’ll be all right.”

  “What happened?” Jack asked. He—more than anyone—knew how good of a pilot I was. I could only imagine him on the flight from Germany running through every possible scenario. “I hate to ask this, I know you man, but were you drunk?”

  “Boomer, what kind of shit is that? You know I’d never get in the cockpit drunk. Seriously? Fuck, man.” I scoffed. I couldn’t believe he’d just asked me that.

  “I know. But I had to ask. Do you think it was just a plane malfunction?”

  “I wish I knew. It all happened so fast. Fuck, we were barely on takeoff. I lost all power. Like bam! And there it was.”

  Jack waited, silently prompting me to continue. All I could do was offer a shrug. Of course I’d run through it myself. Probably a million times since waking up in the hospital. But I was no closer to getting an answer for myself than I had been in those final moments before the crash with all the lights and warnings flashing at me.

  “I don’t know, Boomer. It went to hell, no thrust, no engine, nothing. I couldn’t even steer the mother fucker, Sorry, Holly.”

  She nodded. I usually wasn’t so crass in front of the ladies.