Chapter Three
Zinc watched Sarah as she sat silently on the wing of the plane and stared at the clear blue sky. There wasn’t a cloud to be seen, which should have made for beautiful flying weather, had someone not had it out for them.
Totally exposed to the elements, they ran the risk of severe sunburn if he didn’t find her shelter from the beating rays.
Sarah didn’t seem particularly concerned. Her face passive, her eyes skyward, she seemed almost serene.
“You don’t rattle.” He made it a statement, not a question. He’d seen her in not one but two situations, which would leave most people shaken to their core, and she didn’t seem to have missed a beat.
“I do. Back there when you were crashing us into the water? That was me freaking out.”
“Could have fooled me.” A slight aura formed over her head, and he internally groaned. His fucking migraines. The pain was about to go from mild throb in his temples to full-on assault. Zinc reached into his pocket. He had a lone pill left on him, the rest were buried somewhere in the disaster inside the plane. No matter, he didn’t want to take any medication, which might make him loopy, until whatever rescue Chrome sent arrived.
He stared at his phone. When they’d not died, he’d sent Chrome a text, informing him they were floating in the sea. His former friend and commander’s only response had come a minute later.
She’s Sarah Steele?
Yeah, he must have finally been talking to Titanium. None of the stuff going on at the Metal compound was Zinc’s problem. Keeping the brunette beauty alive until he could place her under cover fell to him.
“That’s the idea,” Sarah finally responded. “You can’t tell what I’m feeling or thinking unless I want you to. It’s why I’m good at my job. Or I was until I got taken.”
“Sweetheart, as a person who has practically earned an advanced degree on the subject over the last three years, you can trust me when I say your situation screams betrayal every way I look at it.”
She held his gaze when she spoke. “Zach, it’s time for you to start explaining. Start with the most logical beginning of your story and move from there. You’re alive, Adam’s alive. I want to know how and why it was kept from me.”
“Okay.” He nodded. “We got sent to Russia to try to stop a uranium exchange with the Iranians. The whole mission stunk from the very beginning. Steele wasn’t supposed to be there, and key members of his team were missing. I was there, with Chrome. And a third team led by a man we’ll call Titanium.”
“And you’re Zinc. I understand it. Metal. Adam would be logically Steele.”
For more reasons than he would share with her. “I’d gotten engaged and I actually asked Adam if he’d be my best man.”
“I met Ally at your funeral. Your sisters introduced me.”
He waited for her to comment more. Didn’t women usually follow declarative statements with things such as I liked her so much or she had beautiful hair? He waited and when nothing came he continued.
“Things went really badly. We had bad intelligence, and for a long time our leaders thought it was from a particular traitorous CIA agent, except we know better about what happened.” Exactly who the person was didn’t fall to him to explain. Adam could tell her what he wanted her to know about his girl when they reconnected. “Anyway, things went to hell fast. We were set up. I have some memory loss of the actual explosion that got me. I remember Adam screaming. I tried to move out of the way. Then I knew I was dying.”
He hadn’t spoken about his death aloud in a very long time and the migraine increased. Yet, Sarah’s steady dark gaze held his and somehow his mouth formed the words.
“We had a big goodbye moment. Very…final. I think I was brave. I only know what happened after because I’ve been told. I didn’t actually witness any of it myself.”
She reached out and took his hand. Her skin was soft in his. She was warm and alive, which reminded him he was as well. “I’m sure you were brave, Zach. It would be hard to imagine you being anything else after you rescued me from David and got the plane down safely.”
“The island was no big deal and the plane landed safely mostly, because of the equipment and the money put in, which would make it mostly indestructible.”
“Don’t push away your role. I didn’t give you the compliment to hear you become sheepish. False modesty doesn’t become you. And I’m not easily distracted. Please, go on. The rest you didn’t see firsthand.”
“Right.” He nodded. Yes, she wanted him to finish. If she kept holding his hand the way she was, he’d tell her whatever she wanted to know. God, he was really pathetic. “Apparently, Titanium had a bad feeling about the whole thing from the start. He paid for a team to be ready to pull his men out if things went to hell. Only, he wasn’t specific with who was to be saved. To be fair, my team wasn’t supposed to be there, originally. And his guys grabbed me and a couple others who shouldn’t have been taken, because we weren’t Titanium’s team. I woke three months later in the hospital.”
How much to confess? The hell of the headaches? When he’d not been able to find words correctly, saying banana when he’d meant television remote. Learning to walk again. Waiting for someone to tell him the whole fucking thing was a terrible nightmare.
“Keep going. Was Adam killed, too?”
He scratched his head. “No, he and the others were sent away, their deaths faked, and they were given new lives by Uncle Sam. In the meantime, Titanium and his people went about figuring out who the traitors were. When I was healed enough, I was assigned a position as a member of his Ghost team. At first, we investigated the others—Adam, Chrome, anyone who might have been the reason it all went to hell. When they were cleared, we brought them in, although we hid our faces from them under masks. They called us the Ghosts. They got to have new lives, go after Red Wolf, make right the wrongs. We watched them, kept them in line.”
“Hold on.” She let go of his hand. “You’re telling me I thought you were both dead, and so did everyone you guys loved. Adam was really running around somewhere for a while having another life until he rejoined with Titanium and yet still, for all that time, he thought you were dead and you let him think so? How fucked is that? It’s bad enough the whole world thought you two were rotting in the ground. You couldn’t have at least let him know he hadn’t lost his best friend.”
“We were strongly prohibited from making contact. Although I did make an effort to try to stick out, to try to make him look and see me. It didn’t work.”
She waited a beat, then said, “And the person who strongly stopped you from making contact for, what, three years, was the Titanium fellow?”
He could almost see her brain working. She tapped her fingers on her knee and pursed her lips. “That’s right.”
“The same dude whose plane you crashed.”
“Bailed out.”
“Whatever.” She sighed loudly. “Sure you didn’t crash it to find a little revenge?”
He snorted. She was funny. The very idea. “I wish I’d thought of it.”
“I bet. Anyway, it must have been quite a reunion for you and Adam. Lots of manly not crying and I missed you my brother going on?”
The light pounded on his head as if someone took a baseball bat and whacked him over and over again. Yep, the full-on migraine had arrived. “I actually beat him pretty hard. Broke his nose. The bone right under his eye. He had to have surgery.”
She didn’t speak for a moment, and when he could manage to look—the sun was really a wicked weapon—it was to find her staring at him with a raised eyebrow. “Why did you do that?”
“Because he left my body there for Titanium’s people to do whatever they did to me. Because he broke his promise to never leave me behind. Forgetting that a Marine never leaves another Marine fallen to the enemies. We had an understanding, which went beyond those rules. He was family to me. And he left my not-so dead corpse to be taken. And then for three years, I had to watch him live his life, move on, fall in love, make things work, while I stared at him from behind my mask. And he never looked. Never got it. Never… The whole world moved on, Sarah, and I had to watch it all.”
He let his voice trail off. No one understood. Even his fellow Ghosts felt different about their situations. Zinc closed his eyes. The migraine was going to win.
A soft hand touched his forehead and he winced, although he liked the human contact. He had so little of it. “You’re in pain.”
“Almost all the time. Headaches. I’m lucky. Some of the others are a lot worse.”
She kissed the side of his cheek, and for a second, he forgot about the mind-splitting pain bearing on him as if his brain wanted to explode from the inside out. He opened his eyes to squint at her.
“Listen, I get what you’re not saying. It blows my mind to hear you say Adam fell in love. He was always so against the idea. And you had Ally. She thought you died, and although I only know her very remotely through mutual friends on Facebook, she’s moved on. Fast.”
Yeah, she had and it burned. He’d really believed her to be the love of his life, had asked her to marry him. If she had died, it wouldn’t have been months before he found someone else. Years, maybe, if ever.
Sarah kept speaking. “What you went through, it blows. Only, I’ll always be grateful Titanium’s people got it wrong and saved you because you’re here with me. Living and breathing. I got to say things to you I’d never have if you were really in the ground, Zach. I mean, you would have lived your whole life and never known how I crushed on you when you were a teenager. What a sheer shame you not knowing would have been.”
He loved the slight laughter to her edge. “Actually, your teenager fixation kind of made my day.”
“Ah, above saving us from bad guys and crashing the plane?”
“Bailed out.”
She shook her head. “Whatever. You’re alive, Zach. I’m so fucking happy about it.”
Those were the most beautiful words he’d ever heard in a long time. Not a single person had cared he was alive. He’d woken from a coma and been a mistake Titanium had to deal with. His life had moved on without him. With the exception of his teammate, Brad, he’d not had a person he trusted with him. The people he’d given his life for were under suspicion. Every day had been a solitary struggle.
Sarah cared he was alive.
There had to be something to say only he’d gotten so far out of practice in talking about himself. “When I was in the coma, for three months, I dreamed.”
She brushed his hair off his forehead. “About what?”
“The summers we spent at the lake. One time after Adam and I had gotten back from hunting with the dads, we were sitting at the edge of the dock and you ran over. You must have been…” He tried to recall exactly how old Sarah was then. She was so captured in his memory from then, from his dreams of the lake when he’d barely been alive, it was hard to put exact details to the images, which had sustained him in sleep.
“Fourteen.” She nodded. “I remember it well. Adam didn’t tell me to shove off and leave you two alone. I sat next to you, and we all had our feet hanging off the dock.”
“Dogs barking in the distance with an eagle circling above our heads.”
“I’d forgotten about the eagle. I think I was more focused on how close I got to sit to you and whether or not you thought I looked pretty in my bathing suit.”
He tweaked her chin. “I wasn’t allowed to. Except, I did.”
Her voice was soft. “Awesome. I’m glad we kept you company when you slept.”
“Or maybe it was my own version of heaven.”
The sound of a helicopter caught his attention and brought with it his headache, which rushed back on him. The ‘copter was unmarked yet he recognized it as one of Titanium’s birds.
“It’s a friendly.” He wobbled to his feet. “Ours.”
“Good. We’re really not prepared to defend ourselves from anything else.”
She made a valid point. He’d pulled off a couple impressive near misses in the last twenty-four hours. Three might be pushing his luck.
A voice came over a loudspeaker directed right at them. “Look at what you did to Titanium’s plane.”
Brad, also known as Tungsten, called to them, and Zach shook his head. “Can never trust me with the expensive machines?”
Sarah squeezed his hand. Even with the aura radiating around her, thanks to his brain injury, she looked solid, real. His. He gasped at the thought as it hit him. The world seemed to shift around his feet. Sarah Steele was all grown. Beautiful, capable, and strong in a way most people would never be. The day he died rules had stopped applying to anything.
So why couldn’t she be his?
A ladder lowered from the hovering machine above their heads.
“Seriously?” Brad called again. “Titanium is going to kill you. You crashed one of two airplanes in his collection, which can’t be seen on radar. He’s going to have to commission another.”
“Wasn’t me who set it to crash.” No, the betraying ass Titanium had sent with him for the mission had been responsible.
“Man, he’s gonna be pissed.” Brad sounded almost gleeful about it. Then again, the man had his own issues with Titanium. “Wouldn’t want to trade places with you this time, brother.”
Bring it on.
***
Sarah watched Zach. He struggled against what had to be a nasty headache, blinking rapidly and rubbing the space between his eyes every few seconds before once again shifting in his seat. They’d been airborne for a few minutes when Brad had passed a note from Chrome back to him. For the sake of transparency, he’d explained, he’d shown it to her.
Don’t bring her back her yet. Not sure what’s happening. Titanium looking into the contractors. I’m looking into other things. Steele blew a gasket when he found out he wasn’t informed. Likely agency betrayal, again. Throw your phone out the window. Brad knows the drill. He’s going to leave you somewhere and lose you.
Find a way to contact me every two days.
Zach had immediately thrown his phone out the window, and presumably when Brad dropped them off they’d be on their own. Agency betrayal. Zach had told her she’d been betrayed and it seemed his people thought the same thing.
He’d died and come back. Her brother was alive and in love. It was hard to wrap her head around any of it. Only, Zach sat next to her very much alive and twitching in agony.
“Do you have any medication you can take?” Her college roommate had migraines. Sarah used to whisper and it had been too loud. Still, she had to make herself heard over the helicopter noise.
“The only pill I have left makes me kind of loopy. Sometimes tired.”
“Either of those options would be better than what you currently are. No offense, you’re no good to me as you are. Take the pill, pass out if you need to. I’ve got you for a while. I can handle the next couple hours if you’re so out of it you can’t be consulted.”
His blood shot gaze bore into her soul. “I don’t know.”
“You know you can trust me.” And she had to believe he did because she had made a decision about her future when she hadn’t died in a plane crash and it had involved Zach. He needed her and she wanted him to. The all but neglected boy had grown into a tough, thoughtful man. One version of him had died in Russia. Whomever he’d become since, they would discover together. Maybe while she sucked on his cock and let him go down on her at the same time.
Or maybe they’d save the discovering and get each other off, simply for fun.
“Take the pill, Zach.”
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small pill case. “Is it bad that I wish I had some whisky to wash it down with?”
“I understand the sentiment, only in your case. Yes, it’s bad.”
His father had destroyed his liver from gin. Zach’s father had been a bitter drunk who had gone in and out of rehab his whole life. Her own father had finally cut ties with him after Adam and Zach died. Or not died, as the case turned out to be. People had to want to be better, and she had enormous respect for people who got sober and worked to stay on track the best they could, even if they relapsed. Only, Zach’s dad was nasty and the booze was the excuse, not the problem. He’d barely seemed to care when the boys were gone. He ignored his daughters, who, in turn, pretended he didn’t exist—total dysfunction from the top to bottom.
Although, she had preferred the old man drunk when he’d been around than the version he became when he spent short periods sober. There had been a time, when Adam had almost died being a jackass in a car race, and Zach had insisted it was his fault to spare her brother more punishment. His lying hadn’t fooled her. She’d seen right through it. He’d made Adam drive in an imbecilic way, he’d claimed. As if anyone made Adam do anything Adam didn’t want to do. Zach had taken the beating from hell for his saving Adam. And he’d never said a word. She doubted her then-hospitalized brother had even known, but she had.
And being twelve at the time, she had no idea what to say or do.
Zach nodded and took a sip of water from the bottle next to him. The helicopter had been stocked to be comfortable and could apparently go silent if Brad felt it necessary to hide their approach. She hoped they weren’t about to face the kind of trouble that warranted his making a go-silent decision.
She took another look at Zach when he’d put down the water. “No more drinking for you, if you have been. Not for a while.”
He silently affirmed her statement again and leaned back against the window. “Shit.”
“Come here.” She patted her lap. “I can rub your temples. It will help.”
She expected him to argue. Tough guys didn’t care to appear needy. Zach surprised her when he gave in without an argument. Or maybe it spoke to his level of pain.
His head rested on her lap, and she immediately felt the sheer warmth she always associated with him. He could rival the sun. She ran her hand through his hair before she let her fingers rub in a circle on his temple. “What have you been doing besides the pills? Acupuncture? Massage? Any dental treatments? Vitamins? Herbal supplements?” He’d had an injury that caused the migraines, which meant changing his diet would likely not offer much relief. Or maybe it would…
He said something she couldn’t understand before he shook his head. All right, he didn’t want to talk, and she understood perfectly. They’d be silent, and she would see if she could give him some pressure point relief for his discomfort.
Minutes later, he was out cold on her lap. She didn’t know how she immediately knew the difference between Zach laying with his eyes closed and Zach fully asleep, except she noticed the second it happened. He didn’t look any less pained in his sleep, yet his breathing evened out.
When he’d been nearly dead, he had dreamed of her and Adam. The thought softened her soul. Sarah had very few emotional triggers anymore. Zach was clearly still someone with the power to throw her off her game. Who was she kidding? He’d always been nothing more than a fantasy. His coma dreams had more to do with his brotherhood with Adam than anything relating to her. Yet, he’d had thousands of dreams he could have recreated with her brother and had chosen instead to include her.
“Hey,” she called into the headset, which would grab Brad’s attention.
“Need something?” he answered.
“You’re supposed to be leaving us somewhere and losing us.”
“Correct,” Brad answered.
“Were you given any specific instructions about where or is the destination decided by us?”
“I’ve been waiting for Zinc to let me know.”
She looked at his out cold form. It was going to be a bit until Zach was giving orders to anyone, and she didn’t want to be in the helicopter endlessly.
“How about Miami?”
“The place come from you or from him?”
She shrugged. Lying was always an option. She couldn’t see his face, although his voice sounded curious, as if he asked for no other reason than his wanting to know the answer without an ulterior motive. Of course, tones could be deceptive, and if Zach’s tale of the last three years proved anything, she was in the presence of very powerful people who could compel someone as tough as Zinc to do what they wanted.
Could hide the truth from Adam. Steele.
Zach said Brad was the other man caught in the web when Titanium had taken control of their lives. Tungsten. And Chrome had sent him specifically to come retrieve them.
She needed to keep track of all the players so she could manage the conspiracy in her mind. Even her brother, who she had misled for years and who had in turn been lying to her, played a role.
Other than Zach and Adam, strangers were trying to save her life when her own agency seemingly left her to die.
“Do you have a hard time taking orders from a woman? Will you only take us to Miami if I tell you Zach, who is out cold at the moment, told me to ask you?”
Silence met her query before a loud burst of masculine laughter caught her by surprise. She had no idea what he found so fucking funny. “Miami it is. Since Zinc showed you his orders, you know I’m to lose you there. I’ll find you guys a car, then I’m going to go find something to eat. When I come back, you’ll be gone. I’d suggest out of Miami by tomorrow morning at the latest. Keep moving until you’re told otherwise.”
“I have a little experience with how to survive. All recent captivity to the contrary.”
“Captivity happens. Make sure Zinc takes good care of you. He’s been on edge a lot.”
She disconnected the conversation button. For the present, she would be seeing to Zach, and she knew herself well herself to understand doing so would be good for her, too. She’d always been good at seeing others got what they needed.
Sarah stroked her hands through his hair and his face relaxed a bit. He liked her touching him. Did he see her as a sister? He’d admitted he’d thought she was hot when he shouldn’t. Did his confession mean anything? Probably not. Was she still hot to him?
His fiancée, Ally—who Sarah would admit, at least to herself, she hated on sight at the funeral—was her complete opposite. If Ally was Zach’s type, he wasn’t going to want to be with Sarah. She could pretend, when need be for the job, to be an Ally-type. Needy. Dependent. Fickle. No, the last word was unfair. How did she know the depth of Ally’s feelings for Zach? Maybe she had settled for the new husband in a grief-ridden move to feel better.
Sarah had never had Zach as her own, had hardly seen him, thanks to her involvement with the agency in the years before his “death.” Yet in the three years since he and her brother had died, she hadn’t stopped seeking answers. If he had been hers, there wouldn’t have been a wedding six months later.
Could the reborn Zach prefer her type instead?