Midnight Fire (20 page)

He checked inside himself to see if he felt guilty for throwing her blouse to the floor. At the time, he’d been wild to touch and taste her gorgeous breasts, so...nah. Some things you don’t regret.

“Hey,” he said gently, sitting down. She’d brought her seatback up, was searching for the blouse. He handed it to her, ran the back of his forefinger down her soft cheek. “How you doing?”

“Fine.” She buttoned it, smiled. “Is that a nice way of saying I look like hell?”

Her hair was mussed, there was a small wrinkle in her cheek from the crumpled airplane pillow. She looked adorable. “Nope.”

“Good. So—what’s the plan?”

“There’s a shower on the plane, did you know?”

Her eyes rounded. “A shower? Oh God, yes, please!”

“Thought so. Then we have coffee and breakfast—” He checked his watch. “More like lunch. Then we start going over our notes, what we have.”

“But not Hector’s laptop or his flash drives. Felicity has to check them first. They might be booby-trapped.” Summer slid out and stood up, pulling her pants back up over her long, slim legs. Jack remembered those legs around his waist, tightening around him as he pumped into her...

He mentally checked the time they had en route.

“Jack.” Summer snapped her fingers in his face. “We’ve had quite enough fooling around. Don’t even go there.”

He sighed. “There’s no such thing as too much fooling around, but you’re right. We have work to do. Oh! Forgot! You’re going to love this.” He pulled up his cellphone and showed her a sixteen digit number. “So I want you to log onto the Portland Macy’s or Nordstrom or wherever it is you shop for clothes and order yourself a whole bunch of stuff from there online. Go to town, head to toe, and make sure you include a big down coat, lots of scarves and some floppy hats with brims. Use this credit card, in the name of Charles Iverson. I was told to tell you if you buy from Macy’s to use either the Fifth Avenue Macy’s or the Macy’s at the Lloyd Center. Someone will pick the stuff up, so you’ll have plenty of clean clothes once we arrive in Portland.”

She took the piece of paper, looking uneasy. “I don’t know, Jack. Who is this Charles Iverson? As soon as I can use my credit card I’ll pay him back, but—”

“No need.” Jack waggled his eyebrows. “Felicity—did I tell you she is a genius? She hacked one of Hector’s many offshore accounts and found he had a whole bunch of credit cards in various names. So she gave us the number and identity of a couple. She said she was going to use it too except she was going to buy some gear. So, basically, you’re spending a dead man’s ill-gotten gains. The more you spend, the better. Isabel said she was buying ten cashmere shawls. Four ply. I don’t know what that means.”

“Expensive.” She was grinning. “It means expensive. Good for her.”

“Cool. Take your shower, then we’ll have a bite to eat and we’ll talk to the ASI crowd and come up with a plan.” Jack swallowed. Slid his hand through her hair to cup the back of her head. It always surprised him to feel her hair cool against his hands. It looked like banked fire and he always expected it to be hot to the touch. “But not before you order a whole bunch of expensive stuff online, courtesy of that fucker, Hector Blake.”

Summer laughed and moved to the back of the plane. A minute later, he heard the shower come on. The galley was well-stocked. All he had to do was haul stuff out onto the table. The laptops and tablets were all fully charged. There was a printer and he knew there was a secure comms system. They were good to go.

He sat down, plucking a grape from a fruit platter, and waited for Summer.

It felt good, waiting for her. Felt right. They’d had spectacular sex. Now that he was back to having sex in his life, after having that tap turned off for more time than he cared to count, he wanted more. Right now. But—he was also an adult and capable of deferring gratification. There would be more sex just like that in his near future, he’d make sure of it.

But more than the sex, it was great just sitting here waiting for her. She’d smile at him as she came out and he’d smile back. They’d eat together and start working together. He was really looking forward to that, almost as much as he was looking forward to the sex.

Summer was smart. Smarter than he was, for sure. She understood human psychology and she had a strong grasp of geopolitics. The ASI guys had all looked at this from a military strategic point of view. Nick was all over the law enforcement aspect. The ASI team just wanted to smoke the bad guys. Nick wanted to put bad guys behind bars. Jack was more of the smoke-’em philosophy but above all, he wanted to understand what and why. Just like Summer.

Summer understood this stuff on a deep level. Not only her childhood in third world countries, but her education and her training gave her an ability to cut through smokescreens and grasp hidden patterns.

Jack wanted to sit next to her while they tried to figure this stuff out. He wanted to be with her as she did her thing.

He wanted to be with her, period.

Something profound was settling inside him, some sense of homecoming and it was all centered on Summer. He wanted to protect her but above all, he wanted her by his side.

He had his sister back. He had found his woman.

Now if he could only fuck the fuckers who’d fucked with him, his world would be complete.

“Food.” Summer sat down next to him and he breathed in warm woman, smelling of airline soap and her own smell he’d recognize in a dark room.

“Glorious food,” he replied. The summer she’d been around his parents had appeared in an amateur production of
Oliver
and they’d spent the summer singing “Food, glorious food!”

“I ordered about five thousand dollars’ worth of clothes and I enjoyed every single second of it,” she announced, putting cheese, a chicken wrap and apple slices on a plate. “Man, I’m hungry.” She dug in, eating enthusiastically. “Like I said, I don’t dare open Hector’s laptop or his flash drives. Felicity needs to do that in case he installed a fail-safe, though knowing Hector, he didn’t. He wasn’t exactly what you’d call computer savvy. Though who knows? Maybe he improved these past years. But I am going to link to my cloud files and start going through them, putting some order in my notes from the past few days and adding what you know. Then I’ll—” She stopped, looked at him. “What? Do I have lettuce in my teeth?”

He had to smile at her, he just had to. “No, sweetheart. No lettuce in your teeth. You look great. I’m just really glad you’re here with me.”

She sat back in her chair, unsmiling, food forgotten. Summer looked at him for a long time.

“You broke my heart,” she said finally.

There it was. Jack had been expecting it. He met her gaze directly. “I know I did.”

They stared at each other and Summer broke the link. Jack wasn’t going to back down, make excuses. He’d behaved badly. He
had
broken her heart. He didn’t have any excuse other than he’d been a dick. He’d been a kid. Okay, technically a man. Definitely of age. But considering what he’d been through since then, he’d been like a careless child who’d had fun with a toy but tossed it away when a newer, shinier toy came along. He deeply regretted it and if she wanted to scream at him, hit him, he had no objections. He deserved it.

“I was devastated,” she said simply and he nodded.

“Why?” she whispered, and a long ago grief flitted across her face. For an instant she was the young Summer, barely eighteen, who’d had a tragic childhood and had fallen in love with him and he’d unforgivably walked away from her without a second thought.

“I don’t have an answer for that,” he said evenly. “Not one that makes sense. All I can say is that I was another person. Literally. They say that every cell in our body is renewed every seven years. I’m not that person, twice removed. I can apologize but it wouldn’t mean anything, nor should it.” Jack leaned forward, took her hand, placed it between his. Surreptitiously, he held his thumb across her wrist. She looked calm but her heart was racing.

Ah
,
honey.

Again, Jack opened himself to her, let her see his expression without concealment. He put everything he felt right there on his face for her to see.

“I behaved unforgivably. I have no excuses to offer, none. But the one thing I can say is this. I won’t leave you again, ever.” Her pulse gave a small kick under his thumb and speeded up. “Life has given me a second chance. Believe me when I say I understand what I would lose if I walked away again. Not going to happen. As a matter of fact it would take bolt cutters to get rid of me. And while you’re in danger? I’m going to stick to you like glue. So get used to it.”

Jack meant every word.

Under his finger, the surging heartbeat had slowed. Her breathing was calm and steady.

Hold that thought
,
sweetheart.

His cell rang. From Joe, his soon-to-be brother-in-law.

“I have to take this,” Jack said.

She nodded. “Of course.”

“Yo, Joe. Now’s not really the—”

“Jack.” Joe’s voice was sharp. “You’ve got a TV monitor in the plane. Turn it on. Or link to USNewsNetwork on your laptop, whichever is quicker.”

“What’s wrong?” Summer asked. “What is it?”

Jack switched on the monitor hanging from the ceiling and turned on one of the laptops. The monitor showed a USNN talking head with helmet hair and a map of North Carolina in the background. A moving chyron read
Possible terrorist attack on Fontana Dam
,
tallest dam in the East.

“For those who have just joined us,” the talking head was saying, “we are receiving reports that the Fontana Dam, the tallest dam in the Eastern United States, situated along the Appalachian Trail, has been bombed. The dam holds over 630 million cubic meters of water. Early reports indicate there are heavy casualties down river. Here is footage that was posted on YouTube a few minutes ago.”

Behind the news anchor was shaky footage of an explosion near the foot of the dam. There was no sound and at first it appeared nothing was happening. Then a crack appeared, snaked its way to the top of the dam, water leaking from the crack. A chunk of the wall came away and water spilled out like a small waterfall, then a big, powerful waterfall. The image grew shaky then stopped. Another image, tall and narrow, a cellphone image, showed the breach in the dam from the other side of the valley. The same sequence from another angle. The puff of smoke and debris, the thin line snaking up to the top, chunks falling away, the line becoming an open crack, the growing waterfall.

Summer watched, face pale, and reached for his hand. Jack held on tightly.

The screen showed the anchor again, wide eyed, speaking unscripted. “So far, ahm, reports are sporadic. There is a strong Twitter feed relating to the incident.” The screen showed a feed—#AttackOnFontanaDam with thousands of tweets scrolling down.

“Joining us now by telephone is Dr. Alvin Norris of MIT, a structural engineer and considered one of the world’s greatest experts on concrete dams. Dr. Norris, what could cause the breach in the dam’s wall, other than a bomb? Is there a possible natural explanation?”

Jack switched channels, another news cable feed. But the backdrop was not the dam. Instead it was shaky footage from a helicopter of an overturned train, steam rising from the cars. Men and women in hazmat suits were approaching the center of the train. The helo was circling overhead, a more professional camera being used instead of cellphones.

Another anchor with helmet hair, this time male, with a very serious expression. “Reports are coming in of a train wreck just outside of Los Angeles. We have been told that the train was carrying barrels of highly toxic radioactive waste.”

Jack switched channels, this time showing a smoking plane wreck, parts scattered all over a field. “—reports are of a loud explosion followed by the plane falling out of the sky just after taking off. We repeat, Flight 725 from Boston to Denver has apparently been brought down by an RPG, a shoulder fired missile.”

Jack turned the tablet on, using an ASI proprietary Skype-like program Felicity had designed for them. Joe’s face appeared. He looked drawn. “Christ, Joe, what’s happening? Is this it? Is this what Blake was planning? A whole series of attacks, one after another?”

Jack could see a wall of big monitors behind Joe. Each monitor was tuned to a different channel or website and even without hearing the sound feed, it was clear that a series of disasters was taking place.

Besides the feeds he’d already seen, of the dam, the radioactive train and the plane wreck, there was a scene with hazmat trucks with flashing lights outside a hospital, with heavily-gowned medical staffers offloading patients from gurneys. The chyron at the bottom read:
Chicago:
123 cases of Ebola.

Summer had the plane’s laptop open and was scrolling. “Twitter’s announcing even more disasters, Jack.” She looked up at him, face pale. “Gas mains or a bomb took out twenty city blocks in Dallas.”

The plane’s intercom beeped. “This is the pilot. We’re coming in to Portland International. We will land in twenty minutes. Please return to your seats and fasten your seat belts. The weather is rainy, ground temperature 45 degrees.”

They were going directly in to ASI where they’d contact Nick and the Director. If this was the other shoe dropping, they were in trouble, because there didn’t seem to be an end in sight to the attacks.

“See you on the ground, Joe.”

“Yeah. Jacko will be at the airport to pick you guys up. He’s leaving now, in fact.”

“Roger that.”

Joe reached out a finger to shut off the connection then frowned, looked behind him. In the background, Jack could hear a female voice. Joe’s frown deepened.

“What’s Felicity saying, Joe?” Jack asked.

“She’s—” Joe shook his head. “She’s saying these are fake attacks. Or at least the first one is. She says the dam breaking up and the water spilling out are CGI.”

Summer’s head jerked up. “
What?
”

“And she says she had an algorithm study the Twitter feeds and she can’t trace the tweeters back more than a month. None of them.”