Missy landed at Tampa Airport five hours after she had left Conrad. She had spent the flight trying to read, trying to sleep, and trying to muster up an appetite for a soggy meat sandwich and pretzels. She should have known better. No airman worth their salt traveled anywhere without jerky and protein bars. She had neither.
She was trying hard to feel as if this was a new beginning. She knew this new position was the right thing to do. Without Conrad in the pilot seat, she wouldn’t miss being in the air. It never felt quite right, though, any time she was at 30,000 feet and Conrad wasn’t flying the plane.
As soon as the plane doors opened and she felt the warm, humid air wash through the cabin, she felt like she was in the right place. It was a new day. A new job. And a new state.
She followed the line of people off the aircraft and into the airport. Only after she got to the bathroom did she remember to turn on her phone. One voice mail.
After washing her hands, she tapped the icon to see who’d called. Conrad’s voice halted her in her tracks. The message was full of bad reception static.
“The last passenger on your flight came late. It’s Janke, the JAG you told me about. The airline employee told me he’d only booked his flight an hour before departure. Keep your…” Then there was some static and the message ended.
She paced backward away from the entrance of the bathroom and dialed Conrad back. It went straight to voice mail. Damn! Okay, so maybe Colonel Janke is a Floridian. Maybe he’s coming home after Red Flag. She squinted at herself in the mirror. No. JAGs were assigned to the base, not the exercise. So he must be based at Nellis.
Conrad obviously thought there was something sinister going on. And it wasn’t as if she could dismiss it out of hand, given what they’ve both been through.
She took a heavy breath; she couldn’t stay in the bathroom all day. Hopefully Janke was already on his way, but at least she could keep her eye open for him now.
She emerged from the bathroom, trying not to look around her, trying not to catch his eye, if he was there. She walked down the concourse toward baggage claim and ground transportation, first walking slowly and then speeding up before slowing down again and looking in the store windows. It wasn’t until she was looking in the window of the National Geographic store that she saw his reflection in the glass.
He was standing on the other side of the concourse with Ray-Bans on, looking at her, thinking that she probably wouldn’t recognize him without his uniform. But she never forgot a man who tried to intimidate her.
Fight or flight? Fight or flight?
She turned and walked right across the concourse toward him, not looking at him until she was just a few feet away.
“What a coinkydink! What are you doing in Tampa, Colonel?”
His mouth fell open and he fumbled as he took off his sunglasses.
She remained silent, waiting for him to fill in the dead air.
“I…I’m here…I—”
“You’re not a very convincing spy, sir. Who sent you?” Please let it be someone in charge. Someone who sent him to keep me safe for some reason. It was a wild and ridiculous guess.
“I’m here on vacation,” he said, finally finding his authoritative voice.
“Cool. Where are you staying?” she asked.
He just shook his head.
“Wherever you’re vacationing, stay away from me or I will call the police.” She spun away and walked fast to the ground transportation area. She looked back and found him standing in place, his cell phone pressed against his ear.
She sat in the back of a cab and asked the driver to take her downtown. The car was cool, so she slipped on her hoodie and tried Conrad’s phone again. Voice mail. Again. But then she guessed he was on a flight to Virginia, back to Langley Air Force Base. He’d probably land soon.
What she wouldn’t give to have him here with her. Just to be with him.
But no, she had to shake it off and get on with her life without him. Without him. Alone. The thought sent dread through her. Okay, so instead of searching for excitement or positive vibes, maybe she had to go through her own grieving process? She stuck her tongue out in disgust.
“Can you take me to the nicest hotel in Tampa?” she asked the driver.
“Sure. That would be the Kings Castle. It’s expensive,” he warned.
“Good.” That would mean no freaking colonel on a military per diem would stay there. And she didn’t care. She had a load of savings that came of being a single officer, with no dependents and no social life to talk of. She even shared ownership of her horses. So, she’d saved a lot.
She checked into the hotel and tried not to wince at the price. Eh, she deserved it. She booked room service with the receptionist and a massage for later. She was looking forward to an early night, with no worries except reporting to base on Monday. She was having a well-deserved vacation full of room service and swimming in the rooftop pool.
Except as good as all that sounded, what was it without Conrad to talk to? To share the experience? To punch his shoulder when he snarked on something. As frustrating as her life had been with him in it, it seemed disproportionately empty now he had gone. Well truthfully, she had gone. She’d gone to reclaim her life, but it felt now as if she had left her life behind.
Everything was so confusing. She had left her job to gain clarity, but it seemed running away brought the same feelings with just a different surrounding.
She took a breath. It had been only a few hours. It might be months before she could claim this new base, and job, as her own. She had to be patient. Live a little.
A few hours later, she stretched out on the bed, wearing the fluffy dressing gown the spa downstairs had given her. She reckoned she had half an hour before her steak and key lime pie arrived. If she was being honest, she could have done with just the key lime pie, but ordering a proper meal made her at least feel as if she had her shit together.
There was a knock at the door. Even better. The earlier her meal arrived, the earlier she could take to her big, white, puffy bed. She raced to the door and peeked through the keyhole. All she could see was a tray with a silver dome on it moving as if it were being held up high by the waiter.
She yanked open the door, her hand already on the folded up $5 bill she had ready in her pocket and a looking-forward-to-pie smile on her face.
What confronted her was not pie, but a black 9 mm pointing at her face.
Shock paralyzed her for a second, and then she tried to slam the door on him. It hit his arm, and he dropped the tray he’d been carrying. She leaned against the door, squashing his arm. “Help! Help!” she yelled, but the sound was muffled by the expensive carpets and thick walls.
Her back pressed against the door, trying to keep him from coming in, his arm bent around the door toward her. Her heart pounded, looking around for anything to use as a weapon.
There was nothing—the room was too big to reach anything. Fear loosened everything in her body, her hands became cold, and her bare feet started to slip on the carpet. Terror zipped through her. If that muzzle managed to point her way, if that man made it into the room, it was basically game over.
She reached for his gun, pushing his arm away from her, but as his arm straightened, her purchase against the door weakened.
An unknown man was trying to kill her? There was no way she was putting up with this crap.
She slid one of her hands down from the gun and used her short nails to rip through his skin. No hesitation. She drew blood the first time.
The man grunted on the other side of the door, but as she’d had to loosen her grip on the gun to scratch him, he used the brief weakness to his advantage and barged the door.
Missy did the best she could. She counted to three and let go of his hand and jumped away from the door. It banged open, and the man staggered into the room, caught off guard. She caught a glimpse of his face. Janke.
She was more than furious and then more than scared. Storming her hotel room with a gun was career ending for him, so she probably wasn’t going to be able to talk him out of killing her.
Fight or flight. Fight or flight.
For the first time in her life, there was no upside to fighting. None that her frazzled brain could parse. She dashed for the door that was closing very slowly the way they do in expensive hotels. She managed to get through it, into the corridor, but he was on her immediately, using his height and strength to lift her right off the ground with arms around her waist.
“Help! Fire!” she shrieked as loud as she could. A door banged at the end of the corridor, but no one came to help. He carried her back into the room. She kicked and punched behind her to try to make contact with him, and he threw her on the bed.
He aimed his weapon on her again. “Stay.”
She bit her lip to prevent it from trembling. She shook her head. “Why are you doing this?” she asked, horrified at the lack of control she had over her jagged voice.
“I’m being a patriot. Sometimes you have to sacrifice one life to save thousands.” He said the words as if he were repeating something he’d heard.
Either way, it didn’t sound good. “So, you’re going to kill me? What about all the people I’ve told? Will you kill them to stop them talking too?” Now she was swimming in unchartered waters. She didn’t know exactly what had brought him to her, but she was hedging her bets that TGO had something to do with it.
His jaw clenched. “Who have you told? What did you tell them?” He raised his gun again.
“I’m not going to tell you anything!”
Missy took a deep breath and looked for something to use as a weapon. Maybe the phone. Maybe the lamp.
He gritted his teeth. “I’m not playing games here. Tell me who else knows.” He pulled the gun back up and aimed it, double-handed—the way they’d both been taught—at her head.
Instinctively she dipped her head down, cowering from the inevitable shot, waiting for the sound of the death shot. Her death. Her life didn’t flash before her eyes, only Conrad did. His easy smile, flying with him… The hands clasped in her lap became wet, and she realized she was crying big, hot tears.
She wasn’t getting out of this alive. She understood that now. And she wasn’t putting the MPs, Bowman, or Conrad in the crosshairs when she wouldn’t be around to protect them. She took a deep breath. “How did you find me?” she asked, stalling for time and wondering if it was even worth it.
“Grove put a tracker on you when he met you before. You probably didn’t see it. It just looks like a tiny sticker,” he said.
A shiver pulsed down her back at the thought of Grove knowing where she was at all times. And then she realized. That’s why she’d been released. They couldn’t get to her while she was in custody. They’d only be able to get to her when she was out.
Her head came up, and her back straightened. “Did you try to shoot me last night?”
Janke’s mouth twisted. He didn’t answer.
Couldn’t take failure, huh? “You missed by a mile, man. I hope you never tried out to be a sniper…What an embarrassment that would have been.” She shook her head at him, trying to look normal. Trying not to show the terror that was almost controlling her whole body.
He approached her, and she fought the urge to scramble away from him across the bed. Instead of shooting her, or hitting her, he picked up the pad and pen that was by the bed and threw them at her. “Write down the names of everyone you told.”
That made her laugh. “Riiiight. And what’s the upside of doing that for me?”
“I won’t kill you,” he said.
No one believed that. She didn’t believe it. She just rolled her eyes at him.
“Why are you here?” she asked.
“Major Daniels—Eleanor—told you about the conversation she overheard between her father—the general—and Mr. Danvers,” he said, switching gun hands so he could pull off the messenger bag he was wearing across his chest.
What? “No, she didn’t. What conversation?”
Janke hesitated for a moment, tipping his head to one side. “You told the general and Mr. Danvers that you’d seen Grove leaving your hangar and that you knew Eleanor had told him about it, because she told you about their conversation.”
He brain clicked one time, and everything fell into place. “Wait. All of this is because I told the general that Eleanor had told me about their conversation? No. She told me she was going to have a conversation with him. I barely saw her after that.” Only that one time after Missy had been with Conrad. God, she hoped Eleanor was alive.
He paused, then shrugged. “Under normal circumstances, I’d tell you that you need to work on your communication skills, but you probably don’t have time now.” He pulled out a length of paracord from his bag.
Was he going to tie her up? She tried to play for time…Maybe the real room service would come. “So why would killing me save thousands of people?”
“I take orders. I don’t need to see the fine print.” He beckoned her with the gun.
She got up slowly, her thoughts now only on Conrad. She should have stayed with him at Red Flag, but she was so eager to flee before she confessed her feelings to him. Her thoughts flittered away to a life a MacDill that she wouldn’t get to enjoy now.
Heat pooled in her gut as he poked her with the muzzle of his gun. “Stop doing that. Just tell me where you want me to go,” she snapped.
He backed away from her and opened the bathroom door, taking the fastest look over his shoulder to see what was in there. “This will do fine.” He beckoned her again, and when she reached the bathroom door, he handed her the rope. “Do you know how to make a noose?”
“I think she may have just forgotten that I was coming.” He rolled his eyes and shook his head, trying to flirt with the receptionist here, as he’d done at the airport. “She probably just checked in, booked a massage, and forgot all about me.”
It had taken Conrad an hour and a half to find the hotel she was checked into. She wasn’t in base lodging, so he had called every hotel, asking to be put through to her room. He knew she would be looking for a big hotel in the city, so he started with the top ten on a travel website. It had only taken him this long because the fancy-ass hotel she had picked was so expensive, it wasn’t even in the top twenty of the most popular hotels. Damn her for switching off her cell phone.
And now he was trying to chat up the receptionist to find out where she was. He’d started off by claiming that he was due to meet her in the lobby, and he had asked the receptionist to call her. But it turned out she had left a do not disturb notice on her phone line and her door. He tried her cell again. It went straight to voice mail.
So it was left to him now to persuade the receptionist to call her room anyway. “I absolutely swear she will not mind if you call through to her room.” He slid a folded $20 bill over the reception desk and immediately regretted it when he saw her expression. Yeah, even the most basic rooms here ran around $500, so $20 was probably the equivalent of slipping a maître d’ at a fancy restaurant a dollar.
“I’m so sorry. It’s all I have. I’ve just flown in from a war zone, and I spent all my cash on a taxi.” He wasn’t strictly lying; Red Flag had seemed like a legitimate war zone this year.
Her eyes gave off a suddenly interested air. “Are you in the military?” she asked.
He smiled. “Yes, ma’am, I am. I’m a pilot. I fly fighter jets, and so does my colleague, Missy Malden.” He nodded his head back to her computer screen. “I’m just a little earlier than she expected. I’m sure she won’t mind you calling.”
The receptionist blinked slowly, pushed the $20 back toward Conrad, and picked up her phone. He smiled, but his eyes were on the button she pressed—1856.
The receptionist frowned. “I think she picked up, but all I can hear are sounds.” She handed the receiver to Conrad and he listened. It sounded like a struggle. Jesus.
He sprang into action. He dumped his backpack in front of the reception desk. “Call security to her room. Call the police!” He sprinted to the bank of elevators at the center of the hotel. His eyes widened as the elevators stood resolutely shut.
He couldn’t just stand there while she was in danger. He looked for the stairwell, but as his gaze rested on the sign, the elevator pinged open. Two old people stepped out slowly, and Conrad got in. A couple with children tried to get in but he held his hand out to stop them. “No, sorry, emergency.”
They looked angry, but they didn’t try to force themselves on the elevator with him. His worst nightmare would have been sharing the elevator with a kid who’d think it was funny to hit all the buttons.
It felt like it took five minutes to get to the eighteenth floor, but it was probably only seconds. Long enough, though, for him to think about someone hurting Missy. Or worse, his life without her.
The elevator pinged, and he was out in the corridor before they fully opened. He stopped only to check the location of her room. None of the doors were open, which meant he wouldn’t be able to get in. He ran in the opposite direction, looking for a maid. He found one, and with the very force of his expression probably, made her run with him to Missy’s door.
He put his finger to his lips. “Shh.” He took the card from her and quietly slid it into the lock. He made a sign of a telephone. “Call the police.”
She paled and nodded, backing down the hallway and taking out a walkie-talkie from her uniform pocket.
Conrad took a breath and crouched on the floor. With one hand he steadied himself on the doorjamb; with the other, he slowly pushed open the door.
The main room was empty, but all the noise was coming from the bathroom. The door was open and the light was on, and he could see shadows moving and loud bangs. He had planned on closing the door quietly so he could take whoever it was—Janke, he supposed—by surprise. But when he heard the groans and thumps, well. Fuck that.
The door slammed behind him just as he appeared in the doorway of the bathroom. His eyes boggled at the sight. Missy was hanging from the corner of the built-in shower. Rope was wrapped around her throat. She was struggling, trying to get purchase on the glass with her bare feet. Her face was bright red under the pressure. She croaked when she saw him.
Every molecule in his body demanded he save her, but Janke had a gun trained on him.
Conrad just had to get him to lower his guard for a second. Then he realized that his hand was on a towel that was hanging on a hook on the wall. He took it without looking and threw it over Janke’s head. In his surprise, he slipped back against the towel heater and slid to the floor, his gun clacking against the tile floor as he braced himself. In the moments it took him to scrabble free from under the fluffy towel, Conrad lifted Missy free and dropped her on the floor of the bathroom.
Janke leveled his 9 mm at him again. Fuck no. He wasn’t going to let him get away with that shit. He jumped on him, and the gun, and using the full weight of his body, pinned him to the floor. He could feel Janke trying to wrestle the gun out from under him.
He held him as long as he could, trying to look over to see what state Missy was in. It killed him that he couldn’t go over to her. Janke was wrestling so hard that he couldn’t even see if she was breathing. Red infused his brain and vision. He punched Janke in the head with one hand while holding his gun hand out of the way with the other.
He rammed his fist down on Janke’s wrist and the gun clattered away. Missy moaned, and Conrad spun his head to see her. She was alive.
He felt the rush of wind before he felt the blow to his chin. Conrad fell sideways, fighting the blackness that speckled the edge of his vision. No. He would not pass out. He refused to leave her.
The bathroom was too damn big, with too many sharp corners. He dragged himself up using the door frame, and Janke did the same using the basin. Except his foot slipped in a patch of water.
As soon as Janke went down, Conrad caught hold of his pant leg and dragged him out of the bathroom, wanting to get as much space between him and Missy as possible.
Janke leapt up as soon as he was on the carpet. Conrad deflected two blows to his head, worried that if he took one more, it would be game over for Missy. Where the hell was security?
He stepped back from Janke and kicked him dead in the chest. Air rattled out of the man as he fell backward…onto Missy, who had just pulled herself up in the doorway.
She crumpled beneath him. Jesus.
With one hand, Conrad gripped Janke’s shirt and threw him off her. The colonel scrambled to stay on his feet, and like freaking Jason Bourne, he ran at Conrad, low and hard.
Son of a— Conrad shifted in place, and then sidestepped and threw a punch. Janke’s momentum brought his face in contact with Conrad’s fist at maximum velocity.
He went down, out cold.
Relief washed over Conrad as his body started to complain at the abuse it had taken. He shook the hand that had taken Janke down and dived for Missy. He took off what was remaining of the cord around her neck and hands and lay her on the bed as gently as he could.
She opened her mouth to speak, but no sound came out. “Don’t say anything. Your neck…” He took a second to get his emotions under control. “It’s damaged, probably badly. Just…don’t talk.”
Her neck was red and black and was bleeding from what looked like scratches. She’d probably been trying to loosen the coil to give her some breathing room.
His heart clenched at the sight, knowing he had so nearly lost her. She’d been seconds away. It was only the adrenaline forcing itself around his body that prevented him from bawling his eyes out.
He got a wet towel from the bathroom and put it over her neck, hoping the cold water would help with the inflammation.
There was a noise at the door, and four men dressed in black burst into the room. “Stand back from the bed, sir,” the first man said. Conrad was going to resist, but the sight of a Taser on the man’s hip persuaded him otherwise. “Please call an ambulance for my friend and the police for this guy, who tried to kill her.” He nodded to the still-unconscious Janke. Security put a plastic tie around his wrists.
Missy’s eyes were wide and bloodshot, her expression fixed. “Missy. Can you see me?” he asked gently.
She moved her head just a tiny bit up and down. “Okay, it’s all over. Janke’s in cuffs, hotel security is here, and the police and ambulance are on their way. Okay? It’s all over.”
A tear leaked out of her eye, and he squeezed the top of her arm gently, not knowing where else she had been hurt. He looked for her wallet and ID and tucked them into his pocket. “I’m going to come with you to the hospital. I’m not going to let you out of my sight, okay?”
She nodded again and closed her eyes.