by Kat Martin
He smiled. “You’re going to kill me, I swear.”
Jessie pressed a last kiss on his lips. “Whatever happens, I’ll always be grateful to you for saving me.”
He knew what she meant, that he had helped her deal with her trauma. It was the whatever happens part that bothered him. He liked being with Jessie, liked it way too much. Sooner or later, it would have to end. Both of them knew it, accepted it.
His mood darkened. Apparently he wasn’t ready for that to happen.
“It’s getting late. We need to get going.” While he left to deal with the condom and get dressed, Jessie freshened up and rearranged her clothes. She was ready to leave when he returned. Only the flush in her cheeks gave away what they had been doing. It made him want her all over again.
Disgusted with himself, he scraped a hand through his hair. He needed to stop thinking about Jessie and focus on his upcoming meeting with the general.
Fortunately, life-and-death matters had a way of dulling his sex drive.
* * *
Jessie followed Lieutenant Dickerson down the hall to General Holloway’s office, Bran right beside her. She managed not to think about the amazing sex she’d just had by telling herself it would be okay if it happened again.
The general rose from behind his desk, spine straight, short, silver-touched brown hair perfectly groomed. He greeted Jessie, then turned to Bran.
“Captain Garrett. I gather you suffered a rather unpleasant night.”
“The deputies were just doing what they’re paid for, trying to keep all of us safe.”
Holloway nodded, seemed satisfied with his words. “I’ve got questions I need answered. Why don’t we sit down?”
They sat around the same table and chairs Jessie had been seated at earlier that morning.
Holloway focused on Bran. “Let’s start with you explaining what led to the conclusion that the man we now have in custody, Wayne Conrad Coffman, is linked to terrorism. You understand the risk I took in acting on the information Jessie gave me.”
“I do, sir. Completely.” Bran started from the beginning, describing the chain of events that had led to the murder of Jessie’s father, progressed to attempts on Jessie’s life, followed by the murder of Janos Petrov and the arrest of Wayne Coffman, a member of the Aryan Brotherhood. Bran made the case that if Coffman could be induced to implicate Weaver as the man who had hired him, they could pressure Weaver into giving them the name of whoever hired him, someone directly involved in the theft of the chemical weapons. It was the same case Jessie had made, but the general would want to hear from them both.
“Near as we can tell,” Bran said, “Weaver used his Aryan Brotherhood connections to arrange the colonel’s murder. That, combined with someone planting money in a forged offshore account, deflected the investigation away from the real thieves.”
“Weaver was moved from the penitentiary in Georgia to ADMAX because he found a way to continue giving orders to the Brotherhood,” Jessie said. “We believe that’s exactly what he’s still doing.”
“After I spoke to you this morning,” the general said, “I received a call from Special Agent Tripp, CID. Weaver’s first name is Edgar. He’s been convicted of three brutal murders and been implicated in half a dozen more.”
“Fits what we were told,” Bran said.
“CID investigators specifically asked Coffman about Weaver, but he insists he’s innocent of all charges and says he’s never heard of anyone by that name.”
“Apparently, he’s more afraid of the man who hired him than being held on terrorism charges,” Jessie said.
“Which gives you an idea of the kind of man we’re dealing with,” Bran stated.
The general sat up a little straighter. “Our people are good at what they do. They’ll be pressing Coffman hard, but from what they tell me, I’m not convinced anything short of waterboarding will get him to talk—and you know the odds of that happening.”
Jessie thought of the fifteen thousand pounds of missing chemical weapons and the hundreds of lives at stake and understood the moral dilemma.
The general rose from the table. “I’ll let you know if anything changes. I’d appreciate if you’d do the same for me. Should you run across information that might give us a break in the case, I want you to call me.” He handed Bran and Jessie each a card. “My direct number is listed at the bottom.”
“Thank you, sir,” Bran said.
“In the meantime, unless we can come up with a credible link between Coffman and the missing weapons, he’ll be released back into civilian custody to face multiple murder charges.”
Bran’s jaw clenched. “I’d appreciate if you’d hold him as long as you possibly can.”
The general nodded. “I’ll do my best.”
TWENTY-FIVE
By the time they left Fort Carson and headed back to the motel, the temperature was sliding toward freezing. To the north, the sky had turned an ominous shade of bluish purple, a harbinger of snow.
Jessie was driving. Bran fidgeted occasionally, not used to someone else being in control. She might have smiled if she weren’t so worried and disappointed. As it was, unless Coffman talked, they had reached a dead end.
“So what do we do now?” she asked into the gloomy silence muted only by the hum of the Honda’s engine.
“I talked to Hunter Brady,” Bran said. “He’s one of the PIs at The Max in San Diego. Hunt ran a check on Mara Ramos, says the DMV address for her is still valid. Mara lives in an apartment in La Jolla.”
“We really need to talk to her.” Though she definitely wasn’t looking forward to meeting her dad’s...what? Paramour? Mistress? Hookup? Or was she someone who’d been involved in the conspiracy that got him killed?
If Bran was right, Mara could have slept with her father to gain access to his credit cards and other personal data in order to help the thieves deposit money in an offshore account in his name.
Bran stared out the window at the overcast sky. “Storm’s sweeping down from the north. I’ll check with FAA flight service, see if I can figure a way to fly south before the bad weather hits. If we can get out of Colorado, we should be able to make sunny California easy enough.”
“Sounds good.”
“As soon as we get back to the motel, we’ll check things out and make a plan. Colt may be there by now with my gear.”
Bran’s tall blond friend was there, indeed. Waiting inside their room though he didn’t have a key. Bran seemed unfazed.
“Jessie, this is Colt Wheeler. We met in the army. He’s the guy who helped me bring Tank in.” Blond and blue-eyed, even with a black patch over one eye and a scar along his jaw, the guy was beyond good-looking. Or maybe the war wounds were part of his sex appeal.
Jessie had more than she could handle with one hot male. “Nice to meet you, Colt. Thanks for helping Brandon.”
He just shrugged. “No problem.” He had a broad-shouldered, V-shaped build similar to Bran’s, probably from years of the same kind of training. “Just glad he’s out of jail.”
“Me, too,” Jessie said. While they talked, Bran phoned FAA flight service, but Jessie couldn’t hear the conversation.
“So where does your investigation go from here?” Colt asked her.
“If the weather holds, Bran’s flying us down to California to talk to a woman my father was dating when he was killed. She disappeared just days after he died and no one’s seen her since.”
Bran ended the call. “We’ve got about a two-hour window to get the plane in the air. After that, the weather’ll keep us grounded.”
“Then you better get going,” Colt said. “Your gear bag’s on the bed. You coming back this way?”
“Jessie lives in Denver, so yeah, eventually we’ll be back.”
Or at least she would be. Bran would be going back to Dallas. The weight that suddenly
pressed like a steel ball on her chest was not a good sign.
Colt took off, Jessie changed into jeans, winter boots, and a sweater, and they checked out of the motel. No use keeping the room not knowing how long they’d be in California or where the investigation might lead next. As they loaded the stuff in her car, Bran made a sweep of the vehicle with the bug detector he’d retrieved from his gear bag. Jessie breathed a sigh of relief when the car came up clean.
Bran had called ahead and had the twin-engine Baron towed out of its hangar. Gleaming white with a narrow blue stripe, it sat waiting, fueled and ready for takeoff. It seemed Bran spent an inordinate amount of time doing his exterior flight check, and it occurred to her he was look for more than GPS tracking devices. Her stomach knotted as she realized he was searching for explosives.
Eventually, he seemed satisfied and they climbed into the cockpit. Jessie didn’t like the thought of flying in rough weather, but she had faith in the pilot. They settled themselves in the seats, strapped in, and put on their headsets. Bran completed the flight check, cleared with the tower, the engine revved, and the plane began to roll down the tarmac.
“How far will we be going today?” Jessie asked, communicating through the mic on her headset as the Baron lifted into the air.
“It won’t be too long before dark and the weather starts closing in. We’ll stay out of the mountains, head south over the valley, then turn west to Albuquerque. It’s a little less than a two-hour flight. We’ll spend the night there, get an early start, fly on down to San Diego in the morning.”
She relaxed back in her seat. It sounded like a good plan.
Or it did until the plane flew into a cloud bank a few miles south of town and started pitching and shaking.
“Hang on. It’s just turbulence. We’ll be out of it in a minute.”
The plane battled through the rough air and flew on. Eventually, the flight smoothed out enough for her to enjoy the view over the flat, arid landscape. Mountains rose on both sides, some covered with snow, but they were miles away. She was just beginning to relax when the engine started sputtering, and an odd shudder rippled through the cabin.
She flashed Bran an uneasy glance, saw that he was wearing the same expression he’d worn the night he’d gone after Tank, and her heart began to beat a little faster. Bran toggled switches and checked a panel of gauges, flipped more switches, then the wings suddenly tipped sideways as the left engine coughed, sputtered, and died.
Oh, my God!
“Fuck.”
Hysteria threatened, but she battled it down. Features grim, Bran worked to level the wings and attempted to restart the engine, adjusting the throttle and working levers, but the engine never fired.
“Something’s wrong with the fuel.” He cut the gas to the now silent engine and continued working switches and checking gauges. “If we lose the other engine, we’re in trouble. I need to find a place to set down.”
She swallowed, her heart racing, trying to pound its way through her ribs. She wondered if her face was as bloodless as it felt.
Bran nosed the plane downward, his gaze searching the vast open landscape beneath them. Jessie started looking, too, though she wasn’t sure what kind of spot he needed to land a twin-engine plane.
“Sh-shouldn’t we radio for help?”
Bran didn’t answer and she realized the other engine was sputtering, threatening to fail. Fear gripped her. Her stomach rolled with nausea. She had never liked flying. Now she knew why. Bran worked the controls, dropping altitude as fast as he dared, his gaze still scanning the ground below.
“There!” He pointed to a flat stretch of open land covered mostly with short, dry grass. The second engine was gasping and choking, the stall light buzzing, but the propeller was still spinning. She felt the landing gear lock into place and then he was lining up, leveling off, descending, the ground rushing up with frightening speed.
“Put your head down and brace yourself!” he commanded. The wheels barely missed a barbed wire fence and the second propeller went deadly silent.
Jessie jerked off her headset, braced, and covered her head. All she could hear was the whistle of wind as the wheels hit the ground with bone-jarring force, then the plane bounced into the air for a few terrifying seconds, fell to the ground again and kept rolling, skittering and bumping across the uneven landscape.
When the plane veered sideways, Bran fought the controls, keeping the nose straight ahead. Then one of the wheels hit something solid, bringing everything on that side of the plane to a sudden jarring halt, spinning the wings around in a half circle and flipping the plane into the air then down on its nose. The propellers chewed into the ground. One of the blades snapped off and a piece of metal flew through the windshield, shattering the Plexiglas. Jessie screamed as the world went black.
* * *
They were down. Bran shook his head to clear it, then forced himself to focus on what he needed to do. Hurriedly cleaning the board, he turned everything off to prevent a fire or explosion. As he finished the crucial task, he flicked a glance at Jessie, saw her sprawled unconscious in her seat, blood streaming down the side of her head. His insides clenched into a terrified knot, and everything inside him went cold.
“Jessie! Jessie!” His world seemed to tilt sideways as he popped his seat belt and leaned over her, checked for a pulse with a shaking hand. Feeling a soft, steady heartbeat, he told himself the burn behind his eyes was only a rush of relief.
Jessie moaned. He had to get her out of there, get her somewhere safe until he was sure the plane wasn’t going to explode into an inferno. He managed to open the bent cabin door and climb out, hurried around and opened the door on her side of the plane. Easing her down into his arms, he carried her a safe distance away and placed her carefully on the hard-packed earth.
“Jessie. Talk to me, baby.” Inspecting the streak of crimson on the side of her head, his mouth went dry. His usual control abandoned him, replaced by gut-wrenching fear. “Jessie!”
Her eyes fluttered open. She looked into his face, reached up and touched his cheek. “You’re...bleeding.”
His stomach unclenched, some of his fear receding. “I’m okay. We’re down. Everything’s okay.” He touched his forehead, came away with crimson streaks on his fingers, hadn’t realized some of the broken bits of Plexiglas had nicked him.
He looked at Jessie and took a shaky breath. “A chunk of the propeller came through the windshield and creased the side of your head. You were out for a couple of minutes so you’ve probably got a concussion. No idea how bad it is. How are you feeling?”
“My head hurts, but I’m not dizzy or anything.”
He held up three fingers. “How many do you see?”
“Five.” She grinned at the look on his face. “I’m kidding. Three fingers.”
He didn’t laugh, just unzipped his down vest and tore a chunk off the bottom of his Henley, folded it and pressed it gently against the side of her head. His eyes closed for a moment. If she’d been hit squarely instead of just grazed, she’d be dead.
“Hold this until the bleeding stops.” But it looked like the cut was shallower than it had first appeared, head wounds being notorious for bleeding. The trail of scarlet near her hairline was already drying. “I’d feel better if I could get you to a hospital, but I don’t think that’s going to happen anytime soon.”
“I’ve hit my head harder falling out of the trees my brother convinced me to climb. I’ll be okay.”
He tipped her face up and softly kissed her. Since he couldn’t find words for what he wanted to say, he looked away, back at the plane. He needed to make sure the fuel tanks hadn’t been ruptured when they ground-looped. If it looked safe, he needed to get their gear.
“What happened up there?” Jessie asked, some of the color back in her face.
He worked a muscle in his jaw. “Someone doctored the fuel. I
don’t know what they added, maybe a pellet of some kind, something that didn’t dissolve right away. No way to check for something like that.”
She shivered. “They want to kill me that much?”
His mouth edged up. “Looks like we’ve both made the bad guys’ hit list.”
She tried to smile, but didn’t quite make it. “Is that why you didn’t radio for help?”
“Someone at the airport got paid to look the other way. I didn’t send out a Mayday because I figured I could get us down in one piece and I didn’t want whoever fucked up the fuel knowing where we ended up. With any luck, they’ll think we’re dead—at least for a while.”
The hard truth was, they were still on the run, still being hunted by people connected with the theft of the chemical weapons.
“What now?” Jessie asked.
“I need to check out the plane. Doesn’t look like it’s going to explode so I’m going to get our gear and get us the hell out of here. If you’re up to walking, there’s a highway about three miles away. We’ll catch a ride as far as the first town we come to. Get a room and spend the night.”
He needed some downtime himself. With the impact of the plane, every part of his body felt battered and bruised, and with no sleep last night, he was tired clear to the bone. He knew Jessie had to be feeling the same. “Soon as I get cell service, I’ll call my brother, let him know what happened.”
Jessie’s gaze swung across the open field to where the Baron sat at a cockeyed angle, tipped up on its nose. “Chase was upset about the broken windows in his office. He’s really going to be mad about his plane.”
Bran laughed and some of the tension he was feeling slid away. “The insurance company won’t be happy, but I’m pretty sure my brother will just be thankful we’re both still alive.”
He took a last look at Jessie and prayed she wasn’t hurt any worse than she seemed. They had to get going. If they didn’t, it would be dark by the time they reached the highway.
