White Jade (The PROJECT) (6 page)

Chapter
Nine

Sunlight
shone on
streets wet with early morning rain.
Water
on the pavement
mirrored
a clear, bright sky of light blue with scattered white clouds. The
heat wave had broken
. T
he
smog had blown away in the night
. T
he city smelled fresh and clean.

A black Ford Crown Vic with
plain wheels and
government plates pulled up
where
Carter
waited outside his building
.
A man
sat
in the
front
passenger seat wearing a gaudy
red
Hawaiian shirt
covered with
white
flowers
. A loose, cream colored linen jacket bulged over his holstered
Glock
.
He was wearing
wraparound shades and
a
pork pie hat
.
H
e
looked like he
'
d just stepped off the set of CSI Miami.

Ronnie
Peete
was a full blooded
Navajo
, born on the
Reservation. His skin was a light, reddish brown. He had broad shoulders and narrow hips
and s
leepy
brown
eyes
that could spot a hawk
or a sniper
at a thousand yards.
Ronnie had been a Gunnery Sergeant in Nick's
Recon
unit.
Carter considered him the best combat Marine he'd ever known. He was also a friend.

"
How
'
s the ear?
"
Ronnie asked through the open window.

"
Itches like hell.
"

Nick climbed in back. They pulled away. Ronnie looked back over the front seat.

"
They had some great shots on the news last night. Bodies
and
wrecks on the highway, you covered with blood. How come you have all the fun?
"

"
Lucky, I guess. Harker find anything
out
yet?
"

"
Nope. No ID on any of them. The attackers were
probably
Chinese.
Harker filled me in.
Maybe it
'
s about that book. It
'
s too much of a coincidence.
"

"
That
'
s what I think.
"

"
She
asked me to ride along to the airport, just in case.
"

They
pulled up at the Mayflower. Selena w
aited
outside
with her bodyguard, dressed in jeans and Nikes, a light jacket over a gray silk blouse. She got in the back with
Nick
. She looked tired, stressed out.

"
Morning
," he said. "
Sleep well?
"

"
Good morning. Not very. I kept thinking about yesterday.
"

"This is
Ronnie.
You'll see a lot of him.
"

"
Morning.
"

The driver picked his way through traffic. Sele
na was quiet, lost in thought. They
got to the airport without incident.

Ronnie left
them
at the
counter.
Carter
looked at
his
ticket
.
B
ooked
in First Class.

"
How did we luck out with this? I usually end up next to the baggage.
"

"
I called in and got us upgraded. I didn
'
t see any point in getting squeezed into coach. It
'
s a long flight.
"

"
Maybe they
'
ll have some real food for a change.
"

"
I wouldn
'
t count on it. I bring my own. The hotel ma
de
up a package for me. Do you like roast beef?
"

"
Any horseradish with it?
"

"
I haven
'
t looked, but they seem to think of everything.
"

Carter
took Selena through
private
security
.
There was a discussion about his gun. A look at his ID
with the Presidential seal on it
and they let him keep it.
T
hey
settled into the comfort of First Class.

The attendant brought mimosas.

Selena said,
"
I was thinking about immortality. If you
'
re immortal, what happens to your friends and lovers? Are they immortal? Do you think someone could stay married for, say, a thousand years?
"

"
No one could stay married that long.
"

"
Have you ever been married?
"

His
whole body went tense.

"
No. I was engaged, once.
"

He remembered.

Megan was laughing, her fine, brown hair blowing in the wind coming off the Pacific.
They
'
d
gone up the coast to
Trinidad
for the weekend and found a Victorian bed and breakfast, on the cliffs looking out over the water.

From the deck outside
the
room
they
'
d watched the seals sunning themselves on the black rocks out in the ocean.

They
were getting ready to leave. Megan was beautiful, that day, her green eyes sparkling in the morning sun, excited about
going to
her new job down in
San Diego
.
Nick
had
held her close.

"
I love you
,
"
he
'
d
said.
"
I
'
ll always love you.
"

"
Nick. You
'
ve got to come back to me, come back safe.
"

"
We
'
ll get married when I get back. My tour
is
up
in
six months. I
'
ll be a civilian and we can have a real life together.
"

"
And a very, very fine house?
"
She
'
d
smiled and punched
him
lightly in the chest with both hands while
he
held her.

"
And two cats in the yard, just like the song.
"
He
'
d
kissed her.

"
Why didn
'
t you get married?
"
Selena asked.

He
took a breath.
"
She died.
"

"I'm sorry."

"
It
'
s all right. Anyway, I haven
'
t been involved with anyone since then.
"

The
plane lifted into the air.

They
'
d gotten to the airport in plenty of time.
They were both
flying out, Megan to
San Diego
,
Nick
back to the East Coast.

They
'
d
killed time in one of the airport cafes until she had to go.
Nick
had
watched her enter the gangway to board her plane
. She'd
turn
ed and smiled,
wave
d
at
him
,
and
disappear
ed
in the stream of passengers.

He
'
d
stood by one of the big windows looking out over the runways, waiting to see her plane take off.

In a few minutes
he
'
d seen
it. The plane
picked up speed down the runway, lifted into the air, the wheels coming up.
He
was about to turn away when the aircraft made a strange motion, the wings dipping unevenly right and then left, the nose angling downward.

F
ingers of ice wrapped around
his
chest.

Then the right wing turned straight down
. T
he plane
arced into the ground and exploded in a
billowing
fireball. The shock wave slammed against the
window
and shook the terminal.
At
the end of the runway a dense column of orange flame and black smoke
bo
iled up into an indifferent sky.

Megan.

He shoved the
memories
back into their dark box.

"
Have you ever been married?
"
he
said.

"
No
.
I was close,
once
.
I
thought I was in love. We
'
d had dinner and a few drinks
and then we
got into a big fight. I forget what it was about, some stupid thing. He hit me
. I
t made me mad. I broke his nose, kicked him where it hurts and walked out.
"

"
You broke his nose?
"

"
He asked for it.
I
'
m good at martial arts.
"

She shrugged, as if to say what else could she have done?

"
Since then I haven
'
t met anyone I wanted to know better. Men are attracted by the way I look
. W
hen they find out who I am and don
'
t get what they want, they back off. I guess I scare them away.
"

"
Too much competition for the male ego?
"

"
If it is, that
'
s
not my
problem.
"

She shifted gears.
"
How would those men yesterday know where I was?
"

"
It
'
s not hard.
You're high profile.
"

"
Do you think they
'
ll try again?
"

"
They might
. Until this gets resolved you should always have people around you. Right now all you
'
ve got is me.
"

"
That was good enough yesterday
.
"

She looked out the window, pulled a box from under the seat.

"
Hungry?
"

After lunch and the mimosas,
he
was slowing down.
He
fell asleep. One thing
he
'
d
learned in the Corps
was
how to fall asleep anywhere.
A
sleep
,
he wasn
'
t
remembering anything, u
nless he was dreaming.

C
hapter
Ten

Selena looked over at
the man sleeping next to her
.

Who is he
, she
wondered
.
T
hey let him take
his gun
right on the plane. H
e
'
s some kind of spy or something
. H
e lost half an ear and killed five people
and
never blinked an eye
.
All I know
about him
is he
'
s got a mother and a sister, had a jerk for a father and he probably saved my life yesterday.

His fiancé died. He didn
'
t say how. Maybe
that
explains the wariness I feel in him
. L
ike he
'
s waiting for something bad to happen.
Like he thinks something is going to jump out at him.

She watched Nick twitch in his sleep.

Black hair, strong jaw, he
'
s already got a trace of shadow. He
'
s not  handsome, but he
'
s not bad either. Black eyebrows. And he
'
s got those odd eyes. I
'
ve never seen eyes like that, like some kind of animal, a big cat or a wolf. He
'
s built, but not like one of those body freaks in the gyms. I wonder how he is in bed?

Sudden heat and moisture
between her legs
took her by surprise. She couldn
'
t remember the last time she
'
d had that thought about someone.

She shook her head. No way was she getting in bed with
him
. She
felt
too vulnerable
to
deal
with the intimacy sex would bring up. Besides, this man was dangerous.

Selena looked out the window at
a
layer of white cloud
passing
below
. She thought about her uncle and her parents.

She could remember
her parents
, but
s
he couldn
'
t quite remember their voices. The day everything changed, she
'
d been playing by the window
at home
. She wasn
'
t supposed to
. S
he was sick and supposed to stay in bed while
her brother
and her mother and father headed down
Highway One
toward
Big
Sur.

When her Uncle
came
into the room she
'
d known something
bad had happened
. He
'
d
started
to tell her
but s
he wouldn
'
t listen, drowning
his
words
with
a song she
'
d learned in school the week before.

The engines droned outside her window.
I should have been with them in the car
, she thought
. If I
'
d been there it would
have been all right.
We would have stopped somewhere, to get something to eat or so I could go to the bathroom or something
. T
hen they wouldn
'
t have been there when th
e
truck
came around that curve.

Her fault.

She
'd
buried the guilt and armored herself
against the world
. She knew she'd done it, she wasn't unaware.
er armor was
B
e t
he best in everything. Sports, dangerous hobbies,
martial arts,
academics.
All that success, all her training, hadn't prepared her for this. S
he was
n't in
control
anymore. She couldn't
make things work the way she wanted.

It scared her
, and that was something new. She didn't like it.

She took a few deep breaths and glanced again at Nick. This man doesn
'
t scare, she thought. Maybe he
'
ll make it right, if anyone can.