Operation: Endurance (When the Mission Ends) (7 page)

Julie shook her head no and continued to eavesdrop on the girl’s conversation. Why wouldn’t Pete or any of the guys mention it to the class so their students would know to stay extra-vigilant if there had been attacks in Lubbock lately?

A blonde coed continued, “They say this latest girl is in the ICU. They aren’t sure she’s going to survive.”

Julie couldn’t keep quiet any longer. She turned around to face the table of three coeds, all wearing Greek letters somewhere on their t-shirts or jackets. They were obviously sorority sisters from the University. “I’m sorry, but we couldn’t help overhearing. Are you saying that there have been three rapes in Lubbock in the last two weeks?”

The girls nodded in unison, but the girl who’d been talking spoke up first. “Yes, at least those are the ones we know about. The first attack was on one of our sorority sisters and her father has kept us all in the loop about what else has been going on so we can be careful. He works in the mayor’s office so he knows what’s happening, although they don’t want this getting out, so you didn’t hear it from us.” The girls looked worriedly between themselves. They’d obviously been warned not to tell anyone about this.

Toni gasped. “Why wouldn’t the mayor’s office want it getting out that attacks are happening to women so they can be extra careful?”

The blonde shrugged. “It’s some PR thing. They don’t want word getting out because Lubbock is actively trying to get awarded some big NCAA tournament. They think the bad exposure of a serial rapist will hurt their chances.”

Toni snorted. “That’s the biggest load of bullshit I think I’ve ever heard. They’re putting politics ahead of public safety?”

Julie had to agree. Even for political reasons, she couldn’t believe Pete hadn’t said anything about this so they could warn the women in their self-defense classes. She pulled out her cell phone and punched in Pete’s number.

He answered the phone with his usual friendliness. “Hey, Julie. Didn’t I just see you?”

“Yeah, and actually I’m still out with Toni, but we just heard a rumor at the coffee shop that I wanted to verify. Is there a serial rapist in Lubbock?”

His heavy sigh carried through the phone. “What did you hear and from who? No one’s supposed to know about that.”

Julie looked up into the anxious faces of Toni and the sorority girls. It sounded like they had a right to be worried. “So it’s true then. Why aren’t they telling anyone? Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I’m sorry, Julie. The higher-ups are trying to keep this under wraps. They don’t want anyone to know.”

“And no one considered the fact they could be putting the public more at risk by not telling people they need to be more vigilant? I thought you cared about these women, Pete.”

“Hey that’s not fair. It puts my job at risk if I tell things I’m not allowed to and that puts more criminals on the street. My hands are tied here.”

“I’m sorry. You’re right. It’s not fair to blame you, but this isn’t right.”

“I agree, but I can’t do anything about it.”

“Your hands may be tied, but mine aren’t. G’night, Pete. Thanks.”

“Be careful, Julie.”

She closed the phone and looked at the women. “He wouldn’t corroborate anything directly, but it sounds like everything you’ve heard is correct. There’s someone out there attacking women.”

The mood of the evening was effectively shattered so Toni and Julie began to collect their cups and trash. As she passed by the sorority girls’ table on the way out, she dropped a few of her cards. “I teach free self-defense classes at the Health Sciences Center. Tell your friends.”

“Thanks,” they mumbled and snagged up the cards.

The next day at work, Julie did some checking to see if she could find out more information about the attacks. If she had actually been paying attention to anything besides herself and her own worries, she would have heard about them through the hospital before now. The thought of one of her students or friends being attacked sent a chill down her spine. She wasn’t going to allow that to happen.

The hospital grapevine was very informative. There had actually been a total of six attacks over the last five weeks. Each one became more and more violent, but it didn’t appear that the police force were any closer to finding out who was doing it. The only clue was that each of the girls’ hands had been bound closed with duct tape and there was a heart drawn on their palms. No one knew what it meant.

When she returned home for the evening, she began formulating a way to offer more self-defense classes. She worked on the list of everything she needed to do. At the very top, she needed to get Cassie and Penelope into the workout room and give them a refresher course.

Julie was pondering the possibilities of the why’s of the attacks when a knock rattled her door. She looked through her peep hole and her heartbeat sped up. Chris. She took a moment and leaned her head against the back of the door to calm her breathing. No matter what her brain said, her heartbeat raced at the mere sight of him. Every single time she saw him.

She opened the door and was struck again by just how beautiful he was. At this point in the day, he’d developed a bit of scruff on his rugged jaw which just drew her attention to his lips. What those lips could do to her. But she couldn’t dwell on that now. Friends. They were just friends now and that’s how it had to stay.

“Hey, Chris, what’s up?”

“Hi. I was wondering if I could talk to you about something.”

“Sure. Come on in.” She stepped aside so he could come in the door. “Can I get you something to drink?”

“No, thanks.” He sat down on her eggplant-colored couch, rubbing his hand across it for a moment. When he glanced back up at her, she was struck by the raw emotion in his eyes. It wasn’t necessarily pain, but it was definitely something different than normal. “Purple. I’ve never noticed it was purple before.” He looked at her for a moment, again with that strange look on his face. “I miss the purple in your hair. Why’d you change it?”

Her chest tightened with the sudden struggle to breathe. Her hair had been purple on that Valentine’s Day weekend. Oh God. She couldn’t go there with him. She. Just. Couldn’t. She fought to deepen her shallow breaths and refused to meet the question in his eyes.

Instead, she refocused on her table where she had papers about the wedding spread out and started straightening and reorganizing them. She inhaled and worked to regulate the tone of her voice. “Oh, you know how it is for girls. Always trying new things. I wanted to go shorter so I cut the purple off.”

One of the papers she moved was the contract for the caterer. She snagged her planner off the edge of the table and began to make a list for Cassie. She needed to check to make sure Cassie made the appointment, check her choices, and get back to the caterer about the final details.

Chris’s hand grabbed hold of her pen to halt her writing and she startled, raising her eyes to his. His forehead creased with a frown. “Hey, are you okay?”

“Sure, why wouldn’t I be?” Her voice sounded high pitched even to her ears. She couldn’t do this. Not now. Not ever. He could never know.

Change the subject. She needed to change the subject. “Hey, are you dating anyone?” Oh God, not the right subject to change it to.

His eyebrows lifted. “Um, no,” he said slowly. “Why?”

Her brain scrambled for a reason to ask
that
of all things. She was a friend now. Think like a friend. “There’s a new girl who just joined the Physical Therapy department. She’s single and cute. I thought…maybe…” Was she really going to go there? Deep breath. “I could set you up on a blind date, or something.” Oh God, no. That wasn’t what she wanted at all.
Please say no, Chris. Just say no.

He looked stunned, but then suddenly frowned. She couldn’t let him go back to what they were talking about and she sure didn’t want to pursue this line of thinking anymore.

Push through. Just push through and maybe he’d forget this entire conversation. She cleared her throat.

“Why did you come over again? Did you need to borrow something?”

He watched her for a moment, the concern and disbelief palpable in his eyes. She held her breath, again willing him to leave it.

Finally, he shook his head. “I came over to ask for a favor. I could use your organizational skills.” He looked back over the table and the frown continued to mar his forehead. “Actually Mad Rob needs your skills. We’re setting up the office and need to hire someone to run it, but right now, the entire office is a mess and the three of us are useless when it comes to organizing something like that. But we can’t have the whole office in disarray for interviewing or else no one would want to work for us. I was wondering if maybe you could help.”

Relief surged. Organization, the perfect diversion. “Sure, is the office at the airport?”

Chris nodded.

“When would you like me to do it?”

He gave a sheepish shrug. “As soon as possible? Maybe?”

She gave a light giggle, mainly in relief that they’d managed to move on to a different subject. She couldn’t imagine how overwhelmed the guys had to be when faced with organizing a whole office from scratch. This was definitely more her area of expertise than theirs. “What about tonight? I don’t have anything going on besides organizing some more self-defense classes.”

“Tonight would actually be perfect. Thank you so much, Julie. Have you eaten yet?”

“Um, no.” She’d forgotten to do that again when she got home, she’d been so caught up with organizing additional Krav Maga classes.

Chris pressed his lips together as he glanced down at her loose clothes. She knew she’d lost some weight lately and she didn’t need him questioning her anymore, so she beat him to the punch. “How about we pick up some barbeque to take with us? I’ll let you treat since I’m your slave labor for the evening.”

He gave her a wide smile. “Okay, that sounds right. Are you ready? We can take my truck.”

“Sure.”

* * *

Chris groaned as he turned on the lights to their new office space. It looked even worse tonight than it had this afternoon when he’d been here with Colton and Jake. How were they going to transform this into a working office so that they could interview by Friday or Monday at the latest? It was already Wednesday.

The office space was divided into three separate spaces: a reception area with glassed windows that looked out over their hangar and the Mad Rob planes, a large office with room for two desks, and a conference room. The only items in any of the rooms that were distinguishable were the conference table and three desks, two for the office and one for reception. There was also a chest-high reception counter. Everything else including chairs, shelves, electronics and office supplies were in the multitude of boxes spread throughout the rooms.

The guys had spent the last couple of days painting the rooms to match the paint job on the De Havilland, their main plane. The lower half of the walls were white, the upper half painted red, and the two halves were divided by a narrow black stripe that zigzagged like lightening partway across the room. It was a very cool effect and gave the once sterile-looking office an edgy look.

Julie immediately noticed the new paint. She cooed appropriately. “I like it. It matches the plane, doesn’t it?”

He nodded. “Yeah, we’re trying to create an overall branding to our look and that color scheme is the first thing everyone sees. We want them to connect the look with Mad Rob.”

“Are you all working with a marketing company?”

“No.” He shook his head ruefully. “This is all Colton. He has very definite ideas about how he wants the company to look. Luckily, at least so far, Jake and I agree and like what he’s come up with.” It was just a matter of time before Colton and he disagreed and butted heads over something, but for right now he was just enjoying the peace. He realized a lot of Colton’s bliss was because of his relationship with Penelope.

Julie inspected the rooms and the mess of boxes. “So where would you like me to start?”

“Let’s start in the conference room. It has that big table in there where we can open up things and spread out as we need to. I’ll start putting together shelves and chairs and you can start unpacking the office supplies if that will work for you. I know there’s a box somewhere, maybe the office, of wire items like ‘in’ and ‘out’ trays. You may want to start there so you have a place to put stuff as you open it.”

“Okay, will do.” The swinging of her ass caught his attention as she walked away. She may have lost way too much weight recently, but her tight curves were still the stuff of dreams for him.

He considered their discussion earlier. She wanted to set him up with one of her friends? Taking a deep breath, he still couldn’t believe it. Damn, that isn’t what he wanted at all. He wanted her and it was so much more than just a physical want. She obviously didn’t think about him romantically at all anymore. They were friends and he needed to get that through his thick skull, especially if she was thinking about setting him up with someone else. He groaned inwardly. It was just not what he wanted.

Julie came back into the room dragging a box filled with a variety of paper trays, cups, and other wire desktop paraphernalia. She pulled the various items out of the box and spread them out over the top of the huge table. Next she started unpacking the office supplies and filling everything up. Every time she stretched across the table, her shirt raised and he got a glimpse of the smooth expanse of her taut belly. Suddenly his mouth was dry and he was mesmerized. Even with the knowledge that he could never do anything about it, he could sit here and watch her happily all day long.