Night Is Mine (7 page)

“That’s not what she’s asking for. Because of the air-gun incident, she isn’t feeling very safe in their hands. She’s asking for Captain Emily Beale of the 160th Air Regiment.”

“Request permission to refuse, sir?” Damn. That wasn’t supposed to have turned into a question.

Rear Admiral James Parker had the decency to look uncomfortable as he reached into the inner pocket of his jacket. He handed her an envelope with her name on the front.

She didn’t need to see the single sheet of paper within, or the letterhead seal it bore, to identify the author.

She’d know the handwriting anywhere.

Since before she could walk, she’d had a crush on one man, the older boy next door. How mundane was that? Her family part of the Washington power-elite inner circle, his father the Senate majority leader for fifteen years, his mother a Federal judge. She’d spent how many hours watching Mr. Junior Letterman, Mr. High School Running Back, Mr. Most Likely to Succeed?

At six, she could imitate his walk. At eight, could predict thirty seconds ahead when he’d brush his dark hair back out of his eyes, it depended less on the hair and more on how intrigued he became. By nine, she could imitate his handwriting so well that even he couldn’t tell it from his own. Once for Valentine’s Day she’d written love letters to thirty-two popular girls using his lumpy script, including the entire cheerleading squad. Months later he still hadn’t straightened out the mess. They’d been good letters, even if she did say so herself.

But she’d been just a precocious, flat-chested twelve when he left for college and a still flat-chested sixteen when he went to Oxford for his doctorate. She hadn’t graduated from flat to slender until eighteen, and he was long gone. She’d barely seen him since. Eight years younger than JFK when he took office, the youngest president in history, within five days of the youngest allowed by the Constitution. And by a landslide vote.

President Peter Matthews, her commander-in-chief, had asked her please, as a personal favor, to humor his wife’s request.

She’d been right the first time, no choice at all.

Emily stepped back onto the scorching deck of the aircraft carrier but ground to a halt in the relatively safe haven against the ship’s massive superstructure. Here at least there was shade, enough to mitigate the sun from devastating down to merely horrific. She eased the stranglehold of her coveralls, but it didn’t helped.

Reassigned.

She’d just been reassigned to the last place on the planet she’d ever wanted to go. Sixteen hundred Pennsylvania Avenue. The White House. At the side of the First Lady, one degree of separation from the President.

Reassigned.

The word rattled around inside her like a low-energy round ricocheting inside a helicopter still hunting a target.

Reassigned. She leaned back against the wall of the superstructure before her knees gave out. And not to fly. Reassigned to goddamn cook. For the wife of President Peter Matthews, the ultimate proverbial boy next door.

She spotted Mark the moment she raised her eyes from the deck, even as an E-2 Hawkeye trapped in between them, catching the number two wire with a roar of turboprop and a wash of heat and the steamy tang of turbine exhaust.

Major Henderson glared at her from across the width of the aircraft carrier. She’d recognize him from a thousand others even at a distance through shimmering heat haze. No one walked with such power and grace, or stood with such insufferable arrogance.

Time to face The Viper. A quick calculation proved that her day had finally bottomed out. The thought offered a certain amount of freedom; she stood caught in the spin cycle, and no matter what she did, no auto-rotate maneuver would delay the imminent crash landing, so just go with the flow.

He strode to his chopper, deck crew dodging aside to let him by, snagged her duffel, and trotted across the flight line, escorted by a yellow-clad handler.

She snapped the best salute she could manage, which was pretty lame at the moment. He didn’t chew her out, which was a relief, but he barely returned it which she’d had enough of already today.

But before she could bitch about it, he heaved the duffel at her. She caught it against her chest.

“What the—” Her voice disappeared beneath the roar of an F-22 Raptor going to full afterburners before the catapult fired it into the sky. She could feel her lips still moving, but even she couldn’t hear what she was saying.

Only after the major grabbed her arm and dragged her back toward the closest superstructure entrance did the sounds of the deck come crashing in. She’d stepped out with no hearing protection. Had been in such shock she hadn’t noticed the incessant roar as hundreds of crew manned the carrier deck during active flight operations.

He dragged her past the handlers’ stations, through two sets of sound-deadening doors, and into a small rest area sporting a couple of vending machines and a handful of small tables. Echoingly vacant at the moment. He shoved her down in a chair in front of an amazing view of the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Oman. Vastly empty except for a couple of the inevitable support ships that danced around every carrier like a flock of seagulls with nothing better to do than bob about on the waves together.

Rather than joining her, he stood and glared at her through those mirrored shades.

Her brain wouldn’t kick in. She blinked and he disappeared from in front of her. Now he’d come to gloat over her downfall. She blinked again and he was back. He thumped a soda can down on the table in front of her.

“Drink that, then tell me what the hell is going on, Captain.”

She rolled the cold can across the burning heat of her forehead and cheeks. Tell him what? It was easy to remember the Top Secret banner on the video. Easy to know that this was one of those assignments that couldn’t be discussed with anyone. Black Ops, and he wasn’t part of the action team. Emily Beale, team of one. Totally screwed.

“Can’t, sir.”

“Can’t or won’t, Captain?”

“How do you do that?”

He narrowed his eyes at her. She could read that despite the shades.

She was tired and sick at heart enough not to care if she ticked him off.

“How do you manage to communicate your complete and utter contempt for me at the same moment you are chewing me out and threatening my rank?”

With a long sigh, he dropped into a chair opposite hers and kicked a stray into place to prop up his booted feet.

“All I know is I was rousted,” he glanced down at his Kobold Phantom Tactical wristwatch, his sole ostentation other than his shades, “an hour and forty-three minutes ago. I was told to bring you and your complete kit. I’m in no mood for goddamn chatter.”

“Chatter?” His word reached her brain. “Chatter! Pointless goddamn female chatter?” Emily had risen to her feet without noticing. She snagged the duffel, spinning the unopened soda into his lap with a sharp slap.

He caught it neatly and set it back on the table.

“You’ve never wanted me in your outfit! You’d probably rather have that idiot Bronson flying for you than me. Well, you got your wish. You’ve got me sent back stateside, thank you so damn much!” Actually, her mother or father had, but her chances of finding satisfaction there were so slim she might as well take it out on someone handy.

At the door, two handlers in the bright yellow vests of flight-line controllers stood frozen, blocking her exit. Before she could snarl at them, they backpedaled wide-eyed out of the room.

“No! Wait!” His feet thumped to the deck.

Henderson could go to hell. She didn’t stop.

“Captain!” The major snapped out from behind her.

A decade of training jerked her to a halt. Was it possible to hate any man more?

He moved directly in front of her. Her infinitely small self glowered back at her from his mirrored shades.

“I did not assign you stateside. I never would. You’re…” He stopped. If she didn’t know better, she’d bet he was looking to the side as if embarrassed.

“What? I’m what? Is stateside too good for me as well? Well, here, read it for yourself.”

She stopped her hand halfway to the inner right pocket of her flight suit. That was Peter’s letter asking her to come to the White House as a personal favor. Both the location and the form of the request were far more information than she intended to share with Major Jerk Henderson. Let him find out from CNN like everyone else where she landed. No question remained that the painful spotlight of public attention would focus its glaring eye on the First Lady’s newest toy. And that SOAR would never want her back once she’d entered the glare of that spotlight.

Emily shifted the duffel bag to her other hand and dug out the orders Admiral Parker had prepared before she’d even accepted this “voluntary” assignment.

He read the two lines aloud.

“‘Captain Emily Beale, 160th Special Operations Air Regiment (Airborne), reassigned United States, detached. Board first available transport, Ramstein AFB.’ Detached? What the hell does that mean?”

She snatched the orders from his hand and stepped around him. “It means I’m no longer your problem.”

He moved to block her path.

She had to get away from him before she broke down. Damn him, there was no chance on Earth that he’d get to see her go all womany and weepy, and laugh about it later. “So glad to have that irritating wench out of my unit. You know she cried on me when we booted her ass.”

Thumping a fist on his shoulder didn’t cause his broad frame to waver in the slightest. She wanted to bury her face there and let go. All she’d ever wanted to do was fly, and they were taking that away. Surely the major would understand that. Jerk or not, he loved to fly as much as she did. It was obvious they shared that from the core of their souls.

She closed her eyes. Maybe if she counted to ten, he wouldn’t be there. Yea, right. Maybe if she clicked the heels of her army boots together three times, she’d wake up in Oz and marry the Scarecrow. Maybe she’d find…

A hand cradled her face. As her father had done when she was a little girl. Without thought, just as it used to, her mind fell quiet for the first time since Henderson had flipped her out of her bunk with under two hours sleep. She turned her cheek into the comfort of the callused palm.

Lips brushed against hers. Gentle, soft, warm. The whole wretched day was slipping away. Forget the disaster that her life had become. Falling into those lips. Soft as rose petals, as intoxicating as an armful in full bloom, as strong as steel. She could—

Her eyes snapped open, and Major Mark Henderson’s beautiful gray eyes were watching her from an inch away, his shades slid up into that thick dark hair she’d so often craved to toy with. His lips on hers impossibly gentle, especially because of the power of the warrior so close beneath the surface.

By reflex, before the outrageous impossibility could register, she grabbed the hand cupping her cheek. She dug her finger into the median nerve motor joint on the back of his hand, flipped it over, and lifted.

Henderson’s body instinctively twisted to relieve the pain, and he crashed face-first onto one of the little tables.

Emily kept his hand twisted up behind his back, pinning him in place. She listened to his sunglasses skitter across the linoleum floor. With a small “tink,” they stopped against a chair leg. The can of soda bounced and rolled for a moment longer before coming to a rest under the same chair. For the space of three heartbeats, she kept him pinned in place, ignored his muttered grunts of pain.

Was that why he’d tolerated her? Let her fly? Let her be assigned to his unit? Because he wanted to get her in the sack! He was so damn handsome that under normal circumstances, she might not argue. If he hadn’t been her commanding officer. Right now, it was the eighth or ninth thing too many this day.

She dropped his hand as if it were hotter than turbine engine exhaust.

Before he could recover, she marched back onto the flight deck, back where it was too loud to hear herself think.

A yellow-clad deckhand snagged her elbow the moment she hit the flight deck and jabbed a finger toward a jet that was number two at the catapult. Time to move.

The handler practically dragged her toward the plane already moving into the catapult position. An F/A-18F Super Hornet. Somebody wanted her out of the theater of operations fast. Fine with her.

She did her best not to look back before she climbed aboard to see if a lone helicopter pilot in a brown flight suit and mirrored shades stood against the carrier’s superstructure. She really tried not to look.

But it didn’t matter when she did, no one waited for her.

***

Major Mark Henderson made it out the door in time to see Emily Beale slip into the Hornet. Didn’t matter that the flight suit hid her shape, didn’t matter that her helmeted head was already ducked out of view into the cockpit. He’d know her walk, her movements, how she entered an aircraft, how she pulled a gun, how she flew, anywhere.

One moment. One brief damned moment he’d held her. Felt her skin, even softer than he’d imagined. And her lips, someone please help him, held far more than heat, more than fire. An electric shock had stunned him down to his boots. When she’d opened those perfect blue eyes, summer-sky blue, for just that instant, he had fallen in and was gone.