CHAPTER TEN
The train pulled into the station sometime midmorning. Miller’s body was lethargic from lack of sleep, her movements slow and clumsy. Her brain had stopped processing conversation about half an hour before.
As long as she’d stayed busy, she hadn’t had time to worry about Justin. But the last leg of their trip had been spent in silence, and she’d had too much time to retreat into her head. To worry and wonder if he was still alive. What if he needed help and she wasn’t in time to get it to him?
The train whistle blew and jerked her out of a half doze, and the gradual slowdown made her body sway to the locomotive rhythm. Their bags were packed and ready to go, and Miller had a brand-new passport to her name. Elise Miller, married woman. And not just a married woman. But a woman married to Elias Cole. Or Elias Miller. But the result was still the same. It gave her a panic attack either way. And the weight on her ring finger was a constant reminder.
“How are we supposed to get out of here?” she asked. “We’re in a crazy futuristic train car with a bag full of guns and cash. Someone is bound to notice.”
“Only if you yell it out loud,” he said wryly. “It’s ten o’clock. Ten o’clock is the busiest time of day for the station. It’s pure chaos. The trains come in, and several of them connect to other locations. There will be people everywhere. No one will pay any attention to us.”
“Unless I yell out about the guns and cash.”
“Right, unless you do that,” he said, giving her a droll look. “Try to restrain yourself. Ready, Mrs. Miller?”
“Ohmigod,” she said, just as he placed his hand on the wall plate, unlocking the exterior door.
“Better get used to it,” he said as the door slid open.
The smell of oiled engines and concrete assaulted her, steam rising from the tracks as the whistle blew again. The sunlight was blinding, streaming in through the glass-topped roof of the station, and she used her hand to shade her eyes until they adjusted. Elias had been right. It was pure chaos. The noise was deafening—passengers switched trains and moved at a frenzied pace that was impossible to keep up with. She suddenly remembered why she enjoyed staying in her comfort zone. She hated crowds.
Elias stepped out and then reached up to give her a hand, surprising her when he just lifted her at the waist, bags and all, and set her on the ground. Then he placed his hand on the outside plate, closing the door, and the railcar looked exactly like all the rest of them. She wouldn’t have been able to pick out theirs in the lineup.
“Let’s go,” he said, taking her hand and leading her through the crowd. “We’ve got a car waiting for us. I’m anxious to get to the islands. My gut is telling me our time is going to be shorter than we want.”
“Maybe you should take some Pepto-Bismol,” she said. “You said we have a car waiting for us. Who takes care of stuff like that? Cars and planes and reservations? All the day-to-day stuff.”
“The little travel agency in Last Stop. They mostly get all the reservations right.”
She stopped in her tracks, people jostling around her, and he looked back at her quizzically.
“You let Martha Danforth make all your travel arrangements?” she asked, horrified. “You know Tess’s grandmother tried to do one of those around-the-world cruises about ten years back and she got Martha to do all the booking for her. But instead of the around-the-world trip she accidentally booked Mrs. Sherman on one of those swingers cruises to Amsterdam.”
“Yikes,” he said, tugging her hand again to get her moving. “I’ll never get that image out of my head.”
“Apparently everyone on board couldn’t get it out of their head either. They made her disembark in The Netherlands. If anyone is bad for erections, it’s Tatiana Sherman.”
Elias’s body shook with laughter, but he kept moving them through the crowd. “I was kidding,” he said. “Tess takes care of all the organizational-type stuff. We follow a mission plan for each op, and we always have backup plans, but Tess is great at the details. She makes sure we have everything we could possibly need, and she thinks ahead. It’s been nice to have her on board, even though her security clearance is limited. She’s become a huge asset to the team.”
“So her knowledge of y’all really is recent?” Miller asked. “She hasn’t been hiding this from me for a long time?”
“She found out by accident,” he told her. “When Levi crossed over from his former life, there were some complications and we thought we’d lost him. Tess found his body, and then it turned out Levi wasn’t dead after all. If anyone knows dead from alive, it’s Tess, and she isn’t stupid. She’s also relentless as hell.”
“She’s got that stubborn redhead’s temper. Sometimes it’s endearing.”
“Ha,” he said, grinning. “Y’all have a good friendship. Don’t ever take it for granted.”
“Believe me, I don’t. There’s no one else in this world I can trust like her. She knows everything about me, flaws and all, and she loves me anyway. And I feel the same about her.”
They made it to the outside of the train station, and to the right was a long line of taxis and an even longer line of people waiting for them.
“I didn’t realize so many people used trains,” she said. “I’ve never thought of it for travel.”
“You’d be surprised. It’s a great way to commute or a great way to see parts of the country you wouldn’t see from the highways. It seems like something you’d love. You should check it out.”
It did sound like something she’d love, and it only made her slightly uncomfortable that he would know that. Who was this man that was able to read her so well? It was disconcerting.
A black SUV bypassed the taxis and pulled to a stop in the crowded street. Horns blared, but the SUV didn’t budge. Elias headed toward it, opening the back door and tossing their bags in the back. He looked around and gently pushed her to the back passenger door, opening it for her so she could slide in first. She’d noticed that about Elias over the time they’d known each other. It was rare he made eye contact for long. He was always looking around, and now that she knew his true background she understood why.
She settled into the SUV, and Elias got in beside her. It was then she noticed his weapon was out and he was holding it comfortably in his lap. He leaned back in the bucket seat and laid his head against the headrest. He looked more than comfortable with the weapon in his lap, but it seemed like overkill considering they were in the back of a government vehicle.
An opaque partition went up, dividing the front and back seats, and she could no longer see the driver. And then the driver took off with a squeal of tires out of the train station
“What the hell?” she asked, holding on for dear life. “This doesn’t feel safe. Who the hell is that guy?”
“You’re just now thinking this doesn’t feel safe? After masked men broke into your home and you had to escape your hometown in a casket?”
“Don’t be so dramatic,” she said. “I’m just saying it seems like a bad idea to get in the back of a mysterious vehicle that appears out of nowhere. That should be Spy 101. You didn’t even say hello to the driver. How do you know we’re in the right car?”
“There’s a trident where the car emblem would normally be.”
She’d missed that little detail. She needed to pay closer attention in the future.
“And the driver is part of The Shadow,” he said. “He gave me the signal before the partition went up. If he hadn’t, I would have shot him.”
“Holy cow,” she said. “That’s why you have your gun out? You would have shot him just like that?”
“Believe me, if he hadn’t given me the signal, it means he’d have been shooting at us first. The signal is necessary. We don’t know them and they don’t know us. I’ve never seen the same person from The Shadow twice. Everyone just does their job.”
“How does he know where we’re going?”
“Tess would’ve relayed the information. They’ll be expecting us at a small private airfield. Money has exchanged hands with who it has needed to for us to travel without any complications. Once we get in the air it should be smooth sailing.”
“Oh man,” she said. “Don’t you know anything? The first person to say something like that in a movie is usually the one who ends up dead. You jinxed us.”
He rolled his eyes and looked over at her. “I did not jinx us. Life is not a movie. You should get a grip.”
“I have a grip. And I have great instincts,” she told him. “Don’t be surprised if this guy tries to kidnap us or holds us at gunpoint. We’ll probably end up going over a bridge and into the water. I don’t want to drown. I can think of lots of ways I’d rather die than drowning.”
“Yeah, that one would suck. Especially since I was a SEAL. You should focus on different ways we could die. I’m not going to let us drown. It’d be too embarrassing.”
She stared at him for a few seconds and said, “That’s really comforting. Great suggestion.”
He winked and then laid his head back down and closed his eyes.
“I’m just saying,” she said, “if we pass by a large body of water, I’m rolling my window down ahead of time. In the movies, the driver usually gets shot and drives over the bridge, or another car will ram us from behind. I can’t decide if I should go ahead and take my seat belt off. I don’t want it to get stuck.”
“Living in your head must be interesting,” he said.
“I keep myself entertained,” she said with a shrug. “At least I’ll never be boring.”
“You’re definitely not that,” he agreed.
It wasn’t a long drive to the airport. Or at least what she assumed was an airport. There was one white rectangular metal building, and in back were a couple of small planes and a runway of cracked asphalt and patches of grass. All of it was surrounded by a ten-foot chain-link fence with barbed wire at the top.
“Please tell me one of those two little planes isn’t ours,” she said, eyeing the planes with genuine concern. They both had seen better days, and she was preparing to add flying in small aircraft to her list of fears.
“Yeah,” he said. “That one that the mechanics are working on is ours. Engine caught on fire on its last run, so they’re giving it a look. But I’m sure it’ll be fine.”
Her head snapped to look at him, eyes wide, and then she saw his laughter. “Not funny.”
“Really? I thought it was.” He pointed straight ahead. “Our plane is down there. It’s fueled up and ready to go. Pilot is waiting.”
The driver stopped in front of a gate and typed in a code at the box, and the chain-link opened to allow them entry. The SUV pulled right up next to a plane that looked to be in perfectly good working order, and she immediately saw the trident on the side.
“Let’s roll,” Elias said. “Can you carry the bag? I want to leave my hands free just in case things don’t go as smoothly as I planned.”
“I can do it,” she said.
They’d barely gotten out of the SUV and closed the doors when the driver took off. “Wow,” she said. “I guess we wore out our welcome.”
“That’s his job. They’re never one for small talk or lingered good-byes.”
“Still, my mother always said that it never costs anything to give someone a hello and a smile. You should send Eve a memo so they can work on that.”
He barked out a laugh. “She’d love that. I might do it just for the hell of it.” He moved in front of her as they went up the short flight of steps and into the plane. He had his serious face on and wasn’t speaking.
“Oh, praise Jesus,” she said. “There’s a couch.”
She put her stuff in the overhead bins and looked around, soaking in every detail. She figured this was her last chance to ever be in this type of luxury, so she wanted to make the most of it.
“Stay cool, Miller,” she said, trying to calm her excitement.
It was everything she could do to keep from jumping up and down and testing out all the furniture. She’d been in a plane before, but it had been nothing like this one. This one was like a traveling hotel room. And not like the rooms at the Bluebonnet Inn. This was pure luxury.
There were six seats on board, and she guessed she should’ve realized after seeing HQ and the railcar that everything this organization did was top-of-the-line. She felt much better about the engine not falling out of the plane and them crashing into the Pacific.
It wasn’t a large plane—just the cockpit, a small kitchen area, seating, and then a closed door she assumed was the bathroom. The walls of the interior were light gray, and the plush carpet a dark gray. A soft leather couch a color somewhere in between the walls and the carpet was against one wall, and two oversized reclining chairs sat across from it. Two other chairs sat adjacent to the couch, in front of the bathroom door. There was plenty of room to work at each station, and she had to imagine there were some pretty cool electronics concealed like in the railcar.
“It’s all going into a book,” she muttered. She bounced up and down on the couch a little, too excited to sit still, and making sure no one could see her. “I need to get out more.”
She found the fridge was stocked full of the soft drinks she liked when she wasn’t mainlining coffee, and she also found a bag of trail mix. She would’ve given anything for her laptop.
She took her finds back to the couch and stretched out. And then she saw the office supplies stuck in the side of each chair, and reached over to grab a legal pad and a pen. She could still get some work done and transcribe it all later. As long as her notepad didn’t fall into the Aguas Mortales.
Elias came out of the cockpit after speaking to the pilot and noticed her snack, and he got a bottle of water for himself and a protein bar. It was no wonder he stayed in good shape. He didn’t eat any of the good stuff. Of course, if she didn’t eat any of the good stuff, she wouldn’t have to work out five days a week, but food wasn’t something she was willing to give up. Elias could have his water and twigs with her blessing.
“There’s a hot breakfast available if you’d like it,” he said. “We just have to put it in the oven. It’ll take about fifteen minutes after takeoff.”
“How long is the flight?” she asked.
“About five hours.”
“Then I’ll take the breakfast. It seems like forever since I’ve had a real meal.”
He settled in one of the seats across from her and buckled his seat belt. “I don’t want to tell you what to do,” he said. “But my suggestion is for you to move to one of the chairs for takeoff. It might be embarrassing to fall off the couch and spill your trail mix.”
She pursed her lips together and said, “Believe me, I’ve done more embarrassing things than that.” And then because she was a strong believer in Murphy’s Law, she got off the couch and took one of the seats, buckling her seat belt. It would’ve been a shame to waste the trail mix.
“You’ll have to tell me some of those embarrassing stories sometime,” he said.
“I’d have to have lots of wine first. Or maybe just give Tess the wine and let her tell them. She was there for most of my brightest moments.”
They began to taxi down the runway and she fiddled with the buttons on the seat. “You’ve said before you’re from Texas. Where’d you grow up?” she asked.
“A little town called Wimberley. It’s just a couple thousand people, but it was a good place to grow up. It’s beautiful country. Lots of hunting and fishing. A place where everyone knows your name and your business. It’s a little slice of Americana, you know? Flags flying in everyone’s yard and Friday nights spent at high school football games.”
“It sounds kind of like Last Stop,” she said as the plane picked up speed and lifted into the air.
“Not far off,” he said. “And no offense, but there’s all these beautiful areas of Texas, and then it was like God got tired when he reached Last Stop and took a nap instead of finishing creating the earth.”
She snorted out a laugh and leaned back, discovering that the seat reclined and the footrest came all the way up. “I bet you were nothing but trouble growing up. They probably had your parents on speed dial at school.”
He grinned and a hint of dimples showed. She realized despite his always joking around and seemingly jovial and sarcastic attitude, he rarely smiled a genuine smile. It was all surface.
“I was creative,” he said. “You can’t put kids like me in the confines of a classroom. I was much better off taking a day now and then to run a trotline. And during hunting season, it was best they didn’t even try to keep me there. I never fell behind and I graduated third in my class, so I figure I wasn’t missing much after all.”
“You miss your home?” she asked. “You’re relaxed when you talk about it. The memories there must be good.”
“I miss parts of it,” he said, shrugging. He unbuckled and went to the kitchen to put the breakfast trays in the oven. “But I outgrew it once I became a SEAL. It’s hard to go back to small-town life once you’ve done that job. Tell me about Solomon’s table,” he said. “Cordova said in his letter that your brother has part of the table. What size are we talking about? Would he be able to carry it around easily?”
She was a little taken aback at the quick subject change. He was clearly done talking about his past. The second he mentioned being a SEAL his entire attitude changed.
“King Solomon’s table is considered one of the most treasured items that was in the temple, along with the Ark of the Covenant. It’s said the table was as tall as a man, which in those times was somewhere in the mid-five-foot range. The entire table was made of solid gold, but inlaid in the gold were diamonds, sapphires, rubies, emeralds, and pearls. If Justin has a table leg, I can’t imagine it’s easy to travel with. Not because of the weight necessarily, but just because of the length and size.”
“It’s doable if he strapped it to his back. We’re trained to carry a lot heavier weight than that.”
“But he’s injured. He might not be able to manage what he normally would.”
“Justin’s a SEAL, and he’s had worse injuries than a missing finger. He’d be able to manage, unless he has severe blood loss. The issue is going to be conditions. We don’t know how long he’s been out there. Then there’s lack of food and water to consider. There could be any number of variables.”
The timer dinged on the oven, and Miller’s mouth started watering when the smell of food reached her nose. Her last twenty-four hours had been nonstop, and she hadn’t had anything in her stomach but wine, caffeine, and junk food. She pulled the tray from the side of her seat and settled it over her lap.
“Thank you,” she said, and then waited until he took his own seat before asking, “Why do you hate my brother so much? You don’t talk about him like you do about the others on your team.”
She thought at first he wasn’t going to answer. He buttered his roll and salted his food like the words weren’t hanging between them.
“I don’t think ‘hate’ is the right word,” he finally said. “He was my brother. We went through BUD/S and hell week together. We spent ten years together. That kind of bond is stronger than most marriages.
“He’d always had the obsession,” he said. “We’d lie in our bunks after a grueling day and fall asleep with him telling the stories of Solomon and Sheba. It was nice at first. You know, everyone had their quirks or things that brought them comfort. It’s a rough life, and sometimes there’s little solace when you’re lying in bed, trying to let the memories of the day fade.
“But as the years went on, his obsession grew. To the point he’d disappear for hours or a day, and then come back just in time to be debriefed for the mission. He got several slaps on the wrist and a couple of write-ups. But he didn’t care. He was always looking for something, but he’d never say what it was. I wasn’t sure he even knew.
“We were on a mission in Palestine. An eight-man team sent in to rescue Israeli hostages and take out a terrorist by the name of Tariq Pitafi. The timing of it got messed up and we had to move a good twelve hours before we’d planned. But we had to go in with a seven-man team because Justin was gone.
“The rest of us were so focused on every mission. We’d go off from time to time, but we were always ready to move at a moment’s notice. For Justin, it was like the mission was an afterthought. I was the team sniper, and because we were down a man I was minus a spotter.
“I lay there on my belly in the hardpacked dirt, rocks digging into my ribs and stomach and sweat stinging my eyes. Live fire started and we got our asses handed to us. I really didn’t think we were going to make it out of there alive. I still don’t know how we got out of that mess, but we accomplished our goal and there were no casualties. And when we got back to the rendezvous point, there was Justin, bold as you please, pissed because we’d left without him and not giving a shit that he’d left us a man down. I was pissed,” Elias admitted. “I punched him in the jaw and kept walking. He got reprimanded and had his rank busted down because he refused to say where he’d been, just that he hadn’t been in range for his comm unit to pick up the new orders.
“No one can stay too mad for long,” he said. “We work in too close of quarters and have to rely on one another too often for there to be bad blood. But I think from that point, no one really trusted him anymore. He knew it too, but there was nothing to be done at that point. So no, I don’t hate your brother at all. He was my friend at one point. I don’t know what he is now. But it sounds like he hasn’t changed much.”
She needed something to do while she thought, so she stood and gathered up their dishes and put everything away.
“You should catch a couple of hours of sleep,” he told her. “We can turn off all the cabin lights. It’ll be like you’re back in the casket.”
“Wake me up if anything important happens,” she said and burrowed down on the couch with a pillow and blanket.
“We’re on a five-hour flight to the Galápagos Islands,” he said. “What would constitute something important enough to wake you up for?”
“Like if the plane is going to crash,” she told him. “I want to be awake if I’m going to die.”
Elias stared at her hard a few seconds and then he shook his head. “You’re nuts,” he said.
She narrowed her eyes and said, “Stop calling me nuts. I’m eccentric. You’re the one making me crazy. You left me so turned on I could’ve self-combusted, and now you keep kissing me. Make up your damned mind. I think you’re the one that’s crazy.”
“I must be,” he agreed. “Sleep tight, nut job.”