When Missy woke up in hospital, she had an irresistible urge to run. But she was in so much pain, she couldn’t. It took a while for her eyes to focus in the bright light of the room.
Conrad was sitting next to her, reading a magazine. Her heart calmed immediately. She closed her eyes again in relief. He was here. She loved him.
She opened her mouth to speak but was unable make a sound. Her eyes watered at the pain.
Conrad dropped his magazine at her attempt at speaking. “Don’t do that. Your larynx and trachea are really badly bruised. It could take weeks before you’re able to speak properly. But I got you this from the shop downstairs.” He showed her a My Little Pony notebook and pencil. “It was all they had. But I’m reliably informed that the pencil will write in the colors of the ponies.” He shrugged. “I don’t know what that means.”
Her heart swelled at the thought of him taking advice from a store assistant. Missy was sure that the woman would have suspected that he was buying it for a daughter. She closed her eyes and dreamed for a second about what it would be like to have a daughter with Conrad. Exasperating, amazing. She managed to stop a tear that threatened to escape her eye.
“Anyway. This is what’s happened since you lost consciousness. We have a new commander in chief. Man, you’ve slept through two whole presidents! Also the Dolphins won the Super Bowl and we’re in the middle of a war with France. I’ve been deployed twice! The wine and cheese made me consider defecting.”
Her eyes widened in shock. How the hell long…? And then she saw the twinkle in his eye.
She scowled at him and then opened her hand in a question.
“Only a day. You woke up last night, but they sedated you so they could look down your throat. You can go home today. You just have to do some follow-ups—but I’m sure you can sort that out on base.” He’d read her mind. He did exactly what she had been doing to him all these years.
She reached for the paper and pencil.
JANKE?? she wrote, nodding approvingly at the pink and purple letters.
Conrad hesitated. “Swore he was a lone wolf, like Grove. They questioned him and put him back in his cell. And by morning he had hanged himself.”
Her mouth dropped open. She didn’t know what to say, or write. She wasn’t sorry for him at all, and she supposed she should feel bad, but he had tried to hang her, so…
“I know it’s a bit weird, but I suggest you don’t feel bad. I suggest you don’t feel anything. After all, if I hadn’t followed you on a long flight, then saved your life like a goddamned hero, he would have hanged you too,” he said.
She wanted to laugh at him, but she couldn’t.
She breathed out of her nose, as her throat was so sore.
“Open wide, I’ve got something for that.”
She goggle-eyed him.
“No, not that. Jeez. Get your mind out of the gutter. What kind of man do you think I am? It’s okay; you don’t have to answer that. Oh, I forgot, you can’t.” He held up a bottle of green fluid. “It’s a spray for numbing your pain.”
She motioned him to put it all over her.
“It’s for your throat. Open.” He sprayed the liquid down her throat, and most of the pain disappeared instantly. She could swallow without pain. It was a miracle.
Conrad sat on the side of her bed and held her hand. “It’s been a rough few days, but you’ll get through it okay. Where do you want to go from here? Back to the hotel?”
She thought about it. The hotel was lovely, although she wondered if she’d ever be able to take a shower there again. She shook her head.
“Base lodging? I made a reservation in case you wanted to go there instead.”
She nodded.
“Okay, leave everything with me. I’m going to go get your bags, and mine, come to that, and I’ll meet you back here to go to MacDill.”
She closed her eyes and nodded. He got up to go, but she grabbed his hand. “Thank you,” she mouthed.
“You’re my wingman. I’m not going to leave you hanging. Oh, sorry, bad turn of phrase.” He winked at her, and she tugged his hand across her so that he bent over her. She kissed him on the lips and let him go.
Conrad went back to the swanky hotel and picked up all their things—the backpack he’d abandoned at the reception desk and Missy’s things from her room that a concierge had packed. They also comped her the room, which thinking about it was the least they could do after somehow allowing Janke access to her room. They still hadn’t figured out how he’d found her room, or known that she’d ordered room service. Best guess was that he had overheard her ordering when she’d checked in.
He was going to urge them to tell the police when they figured it out, but with Janke dead, he wasn’t sure anyone would be investigating too hard. But he did need to call Colonel Cameron and tell him that TGO just tried to kill another airman. He sighed. Not that being suspicious of military contractors was unusual. It just seemed that this company in particular had the wool pulled firmly over everyone’s eyes.
On his way back to the hospital, he called Cameron’s office and no one picked up, so he tried the guy from Special Investigations. He picked up on the first ring.
“Major Bowman. Have you heard about Colonel Janke?”
Bowman sighed. “No. What’s he got his shorts in a wad about now?”
In any other circumstances, Conrad would have ripped the major a new one for disrespecting a ranking officer, but since it was Janke, he let it ride. “He tried to kill Major Malden in Florida.”
“What the…?” Conrad could hear him scrambling for something to write on.
“He’s dead. The local Tampa police arrested him, and he killed himself in his cell.”
“Sweet Jesus. Is the major all right?”
“He tried to hang her, so she’s not doing much talking right now; in fact, I’m about to spring her from the hospital and take her on base at MacDill. But in case it helps your investigation at Nellis, Janke told her that he was working for TGO. He didn’t explicitly say he was under orders from them, but she strongly got the impression that he was charged with tying up loose ends,” Conrad said wearily, more than ready to leave all this behind.
There was silence on Bowman’s end.
“Did you get that?” Conrad said
“Yeah, I did. Thanks.” Bowman sounded defeated.
“What’s wrong?” Conrad frowned. He’d thought that Bowman would be ecstatic to get a bead on TGO.
“It’s all hearsay. All we have is someone who says a dead guy told her something. I can’t so much as get a search warrant with that.” He seemed to shake it off. “It doesn’t matter. At least I know what I’m looking for now and who to be suspicious around. Thanks for the info. If I need anything else, I’ll get in touch with your local Office of Special Investigations.”
No time soon, he hoped as he ended the call.
While Missy had been sleeping off the anesthetic, Conrad had Googled TGO and looked at its board of directors and the think tank that it operated in DC. There were a lot of people way high up in the government that were entangled with TGO, including senators, congressmen, and people in the White House. He wondered how much money TGO paid for those board positions, because all those people also had full-time jobs. Seems like either they weren’t doing their jobs as government servants, or they were taking money for doing nothing—except maybe directing Pentagon funds their way.
It was way above his pay grade. He was happy to leave all that palace intrigue alone.
Not that he was 100 percent sure what his pay grade was anymore. In the time it had taken him to fly to Tampa, fight for the life of the woman he loved, and sit by her bedside while she slept, he had realized that his life would be nothing without her in it. It was nothing to do with their professional life. Of course she made him better, but spending that long working almost exclusively with anyone would.
It was her. It had always been her, and now he had to make his move and make sure she knew it. What she said—or wrote—would determine his future. Because he sure as shit wasn’t going to let her out of his line of sight again, unless she forced him to.
By the time he rented a car, got back to the hospital with all their gear, waited for the doctor to discharge her, and pick up meds from the pharmacy, it was getting late.
She sat next to him in the car, with her head back against the headrest and her green spray in her hand. When they finally drove onto the most beautiful military base he’d ever set eyes on, she heaved a sigh of relief. The lodging overlooked the sea, and frankly, the salty air seemed to act like an antiseptic to everything they’d gone through.
“This is nice. No wonder you wanted to live here. Do you have a house on base?”
She nodded, looking out at the waves crashing on the rocks beneath them. “I think so,” she whispered. “All instructors do.”
He checked her in and helped her out of the car and up to an open walkway that led to the rooms on the first floor.
The room was considerably less fancy than the one she’d had downtown. “Less fancy is good,” she said.
He paused, and she put her bag on the bed and turned around to face him. “I’ll go then, and—”
A look of alarm flashed across her face as she grabbed his arm. “No. Stay.”
“I can’t. I mean, I need to have a conversation with you about everything, but I can’t do that if you can barely talk.” He took a step toward the door.
She held up a finger and dug in her bag for the damn My Little Pony pad and pencil.
Talk about stalling the momentum. “Look, we can’t have a conversation if only one of us can talk. What if I want to shout at you, and then I have to wait five minutes for you to write a message in all caps so I know you’re shouting too?”
She held up her finger again as she scribbled on the paper. After a couple of moments, she lifted the paper so he could see it. Kind of.
He squinted at it and stepped away from it, still squinting. “I think you need to use all caps anyway. I can’t…what the hell does that even say? There—does that say puppy?”
She shook her fist at him, which was completely adorable. Then she took back her pad and sat at the desk. She was there for a long time. “You see, this is why having a conversation now is ridiculous. Let’s just put a pin in this and revisit it tomorrow,” he said.
“I’ll stick a pin in you, if you don’t shut up,” she whispered.
“Not to labor the point, but I saved your life yesterday. Don’t you go threatening me.” In truth, he wanted to get out of there like there was no tomorrow. He didn’t want to spend another night with her without knowing that she would be his forever.
He didn’t want her to decide today what his fate would be. He wanted more time to have hope, which was the one thing she’d never given him. She’d never inferred or hinted, or even just looked at him as if she wanted him in her life as anything other than a colleague.
Give him just one more night of hope, please.
He opened the room door, and she kicked the trash can hard enough for him to look around again. She was still holding her finger up for him to wait.
He watched as she made deliberate letters on the pad, using God knows how many pieces of paper.
She cleared her throat, and then teared up in pain. He lunged for the spray and handed it to her. She sprayed and took a breath.
She handed him each page one at a time.
If you love me, stay.
Because I love you, even though you are an ASS at times.
And I think we would be good together.
Maybe.
Unless you don’t.
In which case, J/K.
?????
With each page, his heart lurched in his chest until the last few, when he laughed. “Okay. I’ll stay. I’ll give you a little while to sell me on MacDill, and you, of course. But you need to sell hard.”
She threw the multicolored pencil at him. He watched it as it sailed by him about a foot from the target.
“And I won’t tell people what a terrible shot you are when you’re not in an F-15.”
“I love you,” she whispered.
“I love you too. I think I always did.”
Tears appeared in her eyes, and she allowed them to fall unchecked. She held her hand out to him, tears now falling onto her T-shirt. His heart grew by 200 percent as her eyes told him everything he needed to know.