By Break of Day (The Night Stalkers) (11 page)

A corner of the blanket covered her hips and one breast, but the other, her arms, and one long leg of the creamiest golden skin were exposed in the soft light.

“You don’t want me here right now, Kara. You really don’t. Believe me when I tell you that I’m not fit company for woman or horse right now.”

She started to protest, so he leaned down to kiss her as softly as he could.

Almost. Almost her kiss, her incredible body, and her sympathy pulled him back down to lie with her.

Then he stood, pulled on his hat, and offered her a nod.

“Ma’am.” Did his best to smile with it, but knew it was lame.

He tried to say her name, but it wouldn’t come out.

“It will be okay,” he finally managed. “I just need some time.”

He slipped out of her cabin with no one the wiser. It was the middle of the day shift, so the
Peleliu
’s corridors were deserted.

Once he was well clear of her section of the ship, he stopped and leaned against the wall. He locked one hand around a handy pipe to keep himself upright.

Leaving had been the right choice, the only choice.

Kara had welcomed him to her bed.

She wouldn’t have if he had stayed. He’d have taken her, hard, in a desperate effort to purge the images inside his head. He’d made that mistake once and scared the crap out of the poor woman he’d been with. You didn’t take this kind of shit to a woman’s bed.

It didn’t matter if she offered; it was something he would never do again. Ever.

Lying helpless on the ground beside the tortured wreckage of the Chinook, listening to Rom’s screams as he burned alive. A crew chief’s helmet on the ground close beside him. Blown right through the Chinook’s hull by the force of the blast. The scorching so bad, he couldn’t even tell whose it was. Despite the head still strapped in but connected to…nothing.

“Well, don’t you look like shit.”

Kara was nursing her coffee and ignoring the Belgian blueberry waffles on her plate.

Now she could ignore Trisha instead.

Good. It took more effort and attention to ignore a person than an inanimate meal. Maybe that would keep her distracted.

“I see that your boyfriend left.”

Left? Kara jolted up, ignoring the hot coffee that sloshed onto her hand other than to curse the sudden external pain added to the internal and scanned the room. No white cowboy hat! How could—

“Hold on, Kara. I wasn’t talking about Captain Roberts. I was talking about the nameless dude you, Michael, and the cowboy have been locked up with for the last four days.”

There, just coming down the chow line. White hat. Tall Texan beneath it. She settled back, aware of Trisha holding one of her wrists and wiping down Kara’s hand with a napkin dipped in a glass of ice water. It felt good on the coffee burn; thankfully the liquid had cooled some while she was ignoring her breakfast. She took a piece of ice out of her own glass and took over the job.

“Looks like you’ve had a busy couple days, in more ways than one.”

“I don’t think I can talk about that mission.” Now that she’d said that, Kara was pretty sure it was true. She did her best to not make it obvious that she was watching Justin.

He, in turn, touched the brim of his hat to her, then moved to sit with Michael Gibson and the other Delta operators.

“Well, isn’t that interesting. Mission, huh?” Trisha drowned her waffle in butter and syrup. She started to douse Kara’s.

Kara managed to stop Trisha before the deluge hit. She tried scraping off some of the butter, but it had disappeared down into the holes of the waffle and melted.

“No. You’re not going to get by me that easily.” For lack of anything better to do with her hands, Kara tossed the piece of half-melted ice into her mouth and gave it a good crunch.

Trisha shivered at the sound.

Ha!

Kara crunched it again. Her middle brother, Joe, couldn’t stand it either when she chewed on ice; made for a great weapon when he got out of hand.

“Cut that out!”

Kara did, only because she’d finished that bit of ice. “Can’t take the pressure, huh? So much for the kick-ass soldier I always thought you were.”

Trisha gave her the finger and backed it up with a grin.

Kara cut into her waffle. Pretty good, even if it had enough butter to season an entire loaf of garlic bread.

“Well, since I can’t see Michael getting into a four-way, and with the conspicuous absence of the Chinook and DAP Hawk last night… Holy shit!”

Kara concentrated on her waffle.

“Spook city!” Trisha whispered it just below the general ambience of the room.

“What’s spook city?” Lola came up and set her tray to one side of Trisha. Claudia sat on the other side, just as Connie sat beside Kara.

Kara now faced all three female pilots with only the mechanic on her side of the table.

“She got one.” Trisha pointed her fork at Kara’s chest.

They all turned to look at her in unison.

“What, Justin?” The instant Kara said it, she knew it was a mistake. She was sitting with four women who had all married military men.

“I knew it!” Trisha thumped the fist hard enough on the table to make dishes rattle. “High five, girl!”

Kara didn’t feel much like high-fiving her or anyone else at the moment. She just wanted to crawl into a hole. Justin had not only sat in Delta country, but he’d sat with his back to her.

Connie leaned in. “Ninety-eight percent now. I warned you.”

* * *

“Where’s—”

Michael held up a hand cutting him off and then signaled for Justin to look around.

Across from him at their corner table were Michael Gibson and his right hand, Lieutenant Bill Bruce, Trisha’s husband. The next table over had a trio of guys that Justin had long since identified as also Delta. Their corner of the officer’s mess was a quiet haven in a world of turmoil—the main reason he’d come to sit with them.

Farther out from their oasis of silence, Rangers, Navy, and SOAR laughed, rubbed shoulders, and ate.

In their own island sat Kara with the other women of SOAR. Justin was glad for her. She’d need friends after how he’d treated her this morning. There were things that needed fixing. Needed saying. But he wasn’t up to that yet, despite hours of walking the flight deck since he’d left her cabin.

He could still taste her on his lips, smell her on his hands. Her final sweet kiss had been as potent as how she’d bucked and moaned when he drove into her.

He turned back to Michael.

“You do not mention him or his department until you’re sure who’s listening. Bill has met him before.”

Bill Bruce nodded, but didn’t speak before returning his attention to his tall stack of pancakes and sausage. Justin had gone for the same thing and started in on his own.

“Because?” Justin prompted before biting down on a sausage.

“The Activity keeps a very low profile.”

“Major Wi—That guy wasn’t really good at doing that.”

Michael nodded. “Willard turns into a jerk around women. But he is very good at getting his team in and out of places. He’s gone to meet up with them.”

Justin considered. Without Major Wilson’s finding the 5D and the team aboard the
Peleliu
in the Eastern Mediterranean—then pushing hard for three straight nights and much of the days—those guys would be either captured or dead. Instead, they were out with their intel and headed back to wherever The Activity came from.

“As to men who turn into jerks around women…” Michael trailed off.

His tone had Bill’s head coming up, glancing at Michael, then shifting his focus to Justin. The briefest look over Justin’s shoulder toward Kara, then he returned his attention to Justin—except his look had gone dark and dangerous. This was a guy you never wanted to meet in a dark alley—not even if he was on your side. If he was there, it meant that things were going to be very bad very soon.

But Justin hadn’t been a jerk.

Or if he had, it was in favor of not being unintentionally cruel to a woman he’d come to like far more than was decent for a fellow soldier.

Now Michael turned his attention slowly down to the meal that he’d ignored from the moment of Justin’s arrival.

Bill’s attention remained focused on Justin.

Two of the most effective and lethal soldiers there were had just threatened him aboard a United States warship. He wanted to laugh them off, but he was having some trouble holding on to his fork.

* * *

Kara’s stomach was having some trouble holding on to the few bites she’d managed of her breakfast.

Her efforts to keep her mouth shut hadn’t worked. Connie was absolutely right about Trisha’s tenacity. When she looked at the other women, she saw some sympathy…enough that it was clear that each had fallen afoul of Trisha’s ways at one time or another. But she could see a desire for more information.

“No.” Kara aimed her fork at Trisha. “No bloody way, lady. That’s all you’re getting out of me.”

A glint heated up in Trisha’s eye and Kara girded herself for battle—one she had no enthusiasm for at the moment, as she’d just seen the cowboy’s surreptitious inspection of the room. His gaze had barely hesitated at their table.

Then Trisha flinched as if she’d been kicked under the table, fairly hard. She scowled around the group, and all of the others went to some trouble to look innocent.

Connie was a touch too carefully intent on her hot chocolate, and Kara did her best not to give her away.

Perhaps it was just as well. Kara could feel a dose of anger building up, what Rudi, her closest brother, had dubbed the Dreaded Red Brooklyn Haze. Kara’s desire to unleash it on Trisha was building. The fact that she could see the real target’s back wasn’t helping.

Perhaps detecting the gathering storm, or perhaps having a desire to protect her shins from other women wearing Army boots—Kara wished she’d been the one to think of kicking her on the sly—Trisha evaded.

“I wasn’t talking about him, anyway. She got one, I’m telling you.”

There was a respectful silence as they all turned to look at Kara.

“I got one what?”

“A black-in-black mission.”

“No.” Kara shivered at the memory of the black-in-black assignment she’d flown oversight on in her first month with the 5D. Her role in that had been strictly surveillance, but it had been pure hell to even watch. Trisha and Claudia had been front and center on that one; the latter was lucky to be alive.

Lola was looking back and forth. She hadn’t been a part of that mission and was clearly taken by surprise that Kara knew what one was.

“It’s—”

“Shut up, O’Malley.” Lola Maloney, friend, had just been replaced by the woman in charge of the 5D.

And Trisha did keep her trap shut, grimacing and biting her lower lip.

When Lola Maloney spoke with that tone, it would take a braver person than Kara to face her down. Apparently one braver than Trisha too.

Claudia, who flew an attack-version Little Bird just like Trisha, sighed and shook her head. Lola missed seeing the connection between the three of them from that mission.

A side glance showed that Connie had seen it go by, but she didn’t miss anything, so that wasn’t a big surprise. Connie had probably just connected a hundred clues and figured out that they’d flown a secret mission into Azerbaijan to fight with the Russian Navy. The woman was that scary sharp.

A new black-in-black?
Kara rolled it around on her tongue and didn’t like the taste of it. Was that what she and Justin had been in? No, it had been a weird and ugly black op on friendly soil, but no worse than that.

She prayed it wasn’t heading into a black-in-black.

She’d flown surveillance on any number of missions and done her fair share of kill strikes over the years, though most of those had been before SOAR. Killing terrorists from a high-flying RPA platform had been the power spot for the U.S. Air Force 3rd Special Operations Squadron. She’d long since lost count of how many CIA spooks had sat beside her handing out targeting confirmations back in the 3rd SOS.

Those were black ops. You didn’t talk about them. No news to her that Major Willard Wilson fell into that category.

But black-in-black was divulged to no one. Ever. Committing perjury in order to deny its existence was normal operating procedure.

Kara looked at Lola and waited, doing her best to keep her expression naively neutral, as if she’d heard of black-in-black but never been on one…which wasn’t likely. Still, it was the best ploy she could come up with on short notice. She was suddenly grateful that her brothers had taught her to lie straight-faced.

As she waited, she could feel the Red Brooklyn Haze retreating and her focus returning. She wasn’t on the
Peleliu
to deal with some Texan Chinook pilot.

She was here to fly with the 160th SOAR.

Lola glanced around at the other tables, but no one was paying any particular attention to them. She huffed out a long-suffering sigh.

Lola grumbled something that sounded French, Southern, and foul. Oh right, she was New Orleans Creole.

She offered a scowl at Trisha before speaking.

Trisha did look chagrined, not a common expression in Kara’s two months of experience with the woman.

“What you flew the last three days, and what you did last night—which was very well done by the way—was a black op. Which you”—again the glare at Trisha—“are not cleared for, so don’t ask.”

“Okay, okay.” Trisha raised her hands in self-defense. “I got it. Sheesh. Girl can’t even fuck up and get away with it by just being cute in this outfit.” The sass and grin was well on its way back to normal. “It always works on guys just fine. Too many women around, I’m telling ya.”

“A black-in-black.” Lola lowered her voice and they all leaned in. “Well, I just hope to God for your sake that you never do get one of your own.” Lola had clearly caught on that Kara had flown one.

The nods around the group were all emphatic.

“Seriously, she’s not kidding. They’re just the worst,” Trisha said in such a way that it just might hide from Lola that Kara had been a part of that one with Trisha and Claudia. Then Trisha grinned. “So, was the cowboy the best?”

Subject change from hell, but at least it was a change. Kara leaned in even farther until they all went quiet. She kept her voice a whisper. “Dream on, O’Malley.”

Then she sat back and finally started on her breakfast for real, welcomed by the circle of laughter at Trisha’s expense.

* * *

“Heads up,” Bill said softly, the first words he’d spoken during the meal. It had taken some work, but Justin had gotten Michael talking about some of the more public Delta Force missions. Even speaking in general terms, it was downright impressive what these boys had done.

As they had talked, bits and pieces of their missions fit in with some of the “practicals” during his SOAR training. He’d rehearsed things in training that had been developed by the people in this room, at this table. And they’d done it under live fire.

“You need to send that pickup tactic you did at the airfield in for training.” Michael had echoed what the Activity agent had said. “I was watching you from the feed to the DAP. That’s new. It’s good. It needs to be practiced.”

Justin had never had something to send back before. It was an odd feeling to think that the next round of pilots to go through training might be practicing something he’d done in the field.

“Weren’t really anything all that new”—he tried to put it off—“I’m just the first one stupid enough to try it.”

They had then spent most of the meal devising and discarding ways to make it a less risky maneuver. If the driver had been even the least bit less competent, they’d have nosed down into the airstrip and still been smeared along the tarmac when the Israelis arrived.

At Bill’s “Heads up,” Justin glanced over his shoulder.

The women all had their heads close together, then burst out laughing. Kara looked terribly pleased with herself.