by Lisa Kessler
I stared at the syringe. “That doesn’t look like paperwork to sign.”
The man stood like a silent sentinel at the door, his expression stern. He smelled human, but I would bet he was one of the Timberwolves. Micah’s scent was human, too.
Deidra held the syringe up, tapping the side as she pressed the plunger to release the air bubble. “It’s a new formula. I think this is going to quiet the beast inside you.”
The white wolf stirred, snarling. Yeah, my guess was if she stuck me with that needle, I’d wake up locked in a cage with the other animals they used for testing. Fear swelled inside me as doubt crept in. There were two of them. I was stronger, but if that guy was like Micah, he’d be every bit as strong as me.
I glanced at the computer the virus file was nearly finished uploading. Between the syringe, the armed guard, and the status bar on the computer screen, I was struggling to keep my heart rate even. I wanted to text Chandler. I wanted someone to save me.
Save yourself.
I kicked my feet out from where I sat on the exam table, hitting Deidra in the abdomen with the force of a truck. She flew backward into her guard. He caught her, but the syringe clanked onto the concrete floor. The computer beeped. It was done. I ripped the flash drive out of the computer and grabbed a pair of bandage scissors from the counter.
“Stop her!” Deidra shouted.
The guard moved her aside and faced off with me, blocking my exit. My pulse was like a bass drum in my ears, but confidence and training muffled the fear. The security camera was still out so as long as no one else came to give this guy backup, I could take him. I hoped.
He widened his feet into a fighting stance, a muscle tensing in his cheek.
Now or never.
Brandishing the scissors in one hand, I took three running steps, dropped to my knees like Naomi had showed me, and punched the asshole in the dick. He fell forward, and I slid between his legs and out the door.
Holy shit! I made it.
I raced into the hallway feeling like a superhero while Deidra screamed behind me, “Code Red! Code Red!”
I ran down the corridor toward the exit. I was almost in the clear.
CHAPTER 16
Chandler
“I can’t let you do that.” I drew my gun, knowing full well this woman was better trained with a firearm than me, but I had to do something. “Wendy is part of my pack.”
“Put that away!” Natasha’s eyes widened. “There are security cameras everywhere. You’re going to get the police involved.”
“I don’t care if the National Guard shows up. I’m not letting you hurt her.” I pulled the slide back on the Glock. “Tell me what’s going on.”
“You’re ready to die for this woman?” She raised a brow. “Does your pack is about to be exposed to the world?”
I kept the gun aimed at her chest. If she made a move, I wouldn’t miss. “Wendy didn’t know they were using her. She’s trying to make things right.”
Natasha lifted her hand and examined her nails. “Ah, pretty boy, she’s playing you.”
I shook my head slowly. “You’re wrong.”
Behind me, the door to Evolution Defense burst open. I spun around as Wendy raced to the car, a man in black close behind her. I didn’t give Natasha a second look as I sprinted for the driver’s seat. I got in, slammed the door, and started the engine. Wendy jumped in the passenger side and locked her door. The tires screeched as I gunned the engine and swerved into traffic.
My attention alternated from the road ahead to my rearview mirror. “Are you all right?”
“I got the files copied.” Her voice was breathless. “I think the virus finished uploading.”
I gripped the wheel tighter. Three blacks behind us two black SUVs were slaloming through traffic, getting closer at every light. At the next intersection, I blew through the light as it turned red. This would put a little more space between us, but we needed a place to lose them.
“I guess we’ll know soon enough,” I said, glancing over at her. “Either way, you did it. You got in and back out. Mission accomplished.”
Her eyes sparkled. It had only been a few days, but she was so different from the woman I’d met at the opera. The shadows and fear had been replaced by newfound confidence and a healthy dose of adrenaline.
“I hope it was worth it. They know I’m not going to visit their lab voluntarily anymore. She claimed she had paperwork for me to sign, but she locked me in the room and came back with an armed guard and a syringe. I had to fight my way out.” Wendy craned her neck to see out the back window. “Are they following us?”
“They were, but I got a little lead at the last light.” I racked my brain. Where could we ditch my car? Then it came to me. “Do you have Asher’s number in your phone?”
“Yeah.” She looked over at me. “Why?”
“Text him that we’ll meet him in Sedona.” I made another left into the industrial district. There was less traffic on the road here so I could give the Z more gas.
“Okay.” She started working on her phone. “You don’t think they’ll catch up on the freeway?”
“We’re leaving the Z in my hangar. They’ll never find it.”
She looked up from her phone. “So we’re…”
“Flying to Sedona.” I stole a glance at her. “I promised you a ride in the plane anyway.”
“That’s true.” Her grin was intoxicating. “You did.”
She finished the text and lowered her phone as I drove through the motorized gate at the airport. I punched the button on my visor and the massive hangar door rolled open. Until now, I hadn’t realized she was my first guest here.
I parked the Z inside the hangar next to one of Vera’s wings and let out a pent-up breath. We wouldn’t be visible from the street. For now, we were safe.
Wendy got out of the car and looked up at my plane. She pointed at the name on the nose and smiled over at me. “Vera. Is that your mom’s name or…?”
“No.” I chuckled, walking around the car to take her hand. Why did I suddenly feel self-conscious? “I named her after Vera Lynn, the WWII singer.”
“Are you a history buff?” She glanced over at me.
“Not really.”
We stopped in front of the propeller and I stared at the jaguar on the Navion’s nose. This hangar, this plane, this was me. I didn’t share this part of myself with anyone. The old pain and rejection whispered through my mind, warning me that the more I opened myself, the more it would hurt when she walked away.
I shoved the thoughts aside, keeping my voice even. “She was built the same year Vera Lynn was at the top if the music charts. Seemed fitting.”
Wendy pointed to the jaguar. “I like the nod to the cat you shift into, too.”
I smirked. “My own inside joke.”
Wendy squeezed my hand and turned to face me. “I feel like you’re slipping away again. What’s wrong?”
“I’ve never brought anyone here before.” God, why was it so easy to talk to her? I cleared my throat. “Other than my sister and my pack, no one else knows I even have my pilot’s license, let alone a plane.” I met her eyes, memorizing every curve of her face. Dammit. I was already mourning her, and she was standing right here. “I’m all right.”
She searched my face and reached up to press her hand to my chest with a sexy light in her eyes that thinned the darkness brewing in my wounded heart. “Oh, you’re much better than ‘all right.’”
A smile tugged at my lips. “Glad to hear you approve.”
“Well…” She peered up at me from under her thick lashes. “I’m looking forward to more soon.”
“Me too.”
She smiled and walked toward the cockpit. Damn, the way her hips swayed had my brain short circuiting. She was the sexiest woman I’d ever seen. Confidence and all-around badassery was a good look on her.
My phone buzzed in my pocket. I took it out and frowned. Madison was calling.
“Just a sec. It’
s my sister.” I pressed to accept the call. “Hey, Madison, what’s up?”
Her voice was clipped, as if she was running. “Chandler. It’s Dad. I think he had a heart attack. The paramedics just left, and I’m taking Mom to the hospital.”
I froze, digesting her words. “Okay.” I struggled for the right thing to say. My relationship with my dad was complicated, but he was still my father. “Thanks for letting me know.”
“Wait.” Madison’s voice dropped. “You’re not coming up to San Francisco?”
I rubbed my forehead. “I have to work.” God, I hated disappointing her. I backtracked a little. “If you need me, I’ll be there.”
“Dad needs you, bro.” She sighed. “I’ll call you after we talk to the doctors.”
“Thanks, Madison. I love you.”
“I love you, too. And so does Dad…in his own way.”
And that was exactly the problem.
She ended the call, and I put my phone in my pocket. When I looked up, Wendy was staring at me. I forgot she’d be able to hear the entire conversation.
Questions lined her eyes. “Everything okay?”
“I’m pretty sure you already know the answer to that.” I grabbed an extra headset from the locker on the wall of the hangar and went back to the plane. Bottling up my emotions, I stepped onto the rung below the wing and climbed up to unlatch the canopy.
“I can call my office and have them send a car.” She wrapped her arms around her middle. “You should go to your family.”
There was my dilemma. The pack was more like family to me than my own was, and the pack was in danger, too. I was being pulled between two worlds. “I haven’t spoken to my dad since before I was bitten. My sister is sweet, and she wants to help him, but seeing me isn’t going to be good for either of us.”
Wendy came closer to the plane. “Speaking as someone who has lost her parents, you might regret it if you don’t go. Don’t leave things unsaid.”
“He doesn’t want to hear what I have to say.” The words came out harsh, echoing through the cavernous hangar. I shook my head. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to snap at you.”
She held her hands up in mock surrender and stopped beside the wing of the plane. “I shouldn’t have butted into your family stuff.” Her gaze lifted to my face. “I’m sorry you’re hurting.”
“Nothing new.”
I appreciated that she didn’t press me about my family situation, but the empathy in her eyes made it clear she wanted to help. Sadly, there was no cure for the bitterness in my gut. If my father was really dying, the last thing he needed was to see the son who never lived up to his expectations.
I cleared my throat, aching to change the subject. “We should get moving.” I reached for her hand. “See the step?”
“Yeah.” She grabbed my hand as she put her foot on the steel rung. I pulled her up onto the wing and steadied her as she climbed into the copilot’s seat. No one had ever sat in it since I’d restored Vera, but Wendy’s presence didn’t feel like an invasion. Instead, there was an undercurrent of excitement. I loved to fly, and I wanted to share it with her.
The realization shook me, but I tried not to examine it any further. I got inside and closed the canopy over us. “Ready to fly?”
She nodded. “I think so.”
“Good.” I handed her the spare headset and faced the instrument panel. My mind calmed as I focused on the task at hand. Preparing for a flight was a process that required all my concentration. Heaven compared to thinking about my father.
I fired up the engine, and the propeller came to life. The roar of the motor echoed through the hangar, deafening my ears. I put on my headset, went through my preflight checklist, and radioed the tower for ground control to taxi.
Finally, I glanced over at my copilot. “Let’s do this.”
I gripped the yoke and we rolled out, taxiing toward the airstrip. With a click of a button, the hangar door lowered behind us, concealing my Z inside.
We rambled across the ramp to the taxiway and into the hold short line. I contacted the tower and waited for them to clear us for runup prior to takeoff.
The air traffic controller finally came through the radio. “Navion 4750 cleared for takeoff on runway three-two right.”
I pressed the comms button and repeated the tower callback, then moved onto the active runway, pushed the throttle to full power, and started my takeoff roll. It was my favorite part. The airspeed indicator came to life, and Vera raced down the airstrip, the landscape racing by outside the cockpit. When we hit eighty miles per hour, I pulled back on the yoke and the wheels left the ground. We soared up into the sky, and Wendy cheered, surprising me. I looked over at her, and something in my heart cracked open. Her eyes were wide as the world shrank below us.
“Sorry!” She laughed. “I’ve never flown in a small plane like this. What a rush!”
I lifted my hand from the landing gear control, and it cycled beneath us. Once it was retracted and locked, the caution light went out and the hydraulics turned off. We were up. No chance of cabin service and there were plenty of bumps, but unlike commercial flights, this wasn’t some hulking airbus. We were birds immersed in the flight. We were fucking flying. Only the thin canopy separated us from Heaven.
And she felt it, too. She understood it. She understood me.
Strange emotions clashed inside me as I turned toward her. “It’s amazing up here, right?”
She nodded, still smiling. “This is incredible.” She peered at the landscape below. “How long have you had Vera?”
“Four years now. She was my therapy after being bitten.” I checked the instrument panel again. “After I got the anchor job in Phoenix, I sold my little Cessna and bought the Navion. It took two years to restore this old war bird, but I loved every second of it.”
The truth was, I had poured all my fear and frustration and rage into this plane. Before I’d found the Sedona Pack, I had spent every minute of free time in my hangar—the one place I didn’t have to keep secrets.
She studied me for a few seconds. “This is your escape, isn’t it?”
I glanced her way and nodded. “Yeah. Anytime work or shifter issues come up, I can leave them behind when I’m up here.” I pointed at the city below. “Everything seems so small from the sky.”
She reached over and rested her hand on my thigh. “I know we’re really hiding from Evolution Defense, but thank you for taking me up with you. This is amazing.”
I brought a hand down to rest over hers. It was so easy to share myself with her. When I had graduated from college and proposed to Vivi, I had thought it made sense. In my head, we’d grow old together, a journalistic team, a unit. I’d envisioned me on TV, her in print, and us both raising three kids in a house in D.C. I had been goal setting, climbing an invisible ladder—one that might have led to my father’s love and approval.
Wendy was the opposite of all that. She wasn’t even remotely involved in journalism, and she didn’t need me. She managed her own charitable foundation and had plenty of money. Living in different worlds and having such different careers kept me guessing in the best kind of way. And seeing the joy in her eyes as she stared out the front of the cockpit, I realized something else. She’d brought me into her world at the opera, and now I was flying her in my plane. Sharing our passions with each other felt right. Had I ever known about Vivi’s passions beyond her career goals?
Wendy gasped beside me as the landscape below changed, and the Red Rock mountains came into view. “Oh my god, it’s… I don’t have words.”
I smiled and banked around to give her a closer look at Cathedral Rock. “They’re pretty awe-inspiring from the ground, but I love seeing them from this angle, too.” We soared across the valley, near the Chapel of the Holy Cross built into the side of the mountain, and finally circled around the airport.
Sedona was an uncontrolled airport with just two runways and some tricky downdrafts as you descended, but I’d made the flight so many times, my co
rrections were second nature.
About five miles out, I adjusted my altimeter and announced my landing intentions on the radio. “Sedona traffic, Navion five miles southeast, entering the pattern on four-five downwind.”
Radio chatter filled the cockpit, and she glanced my way. “Who are you talking to? I don’t see an air traffic control tower down there.”
“All the pilots in the area are on the same frequency. When there’s no tower, we all watch out for each other. There are usually a few people listening on the ground, too.” I pressed the coms button on final approach to let everyone know we were coming in, then I gripped the yolk with both hands. “Here we go…”
Landings offered a delicious spike of adrenaline as I leveled the wings with the ground below and activated the hydraulic power. The landing gear dropped, and the indicator lights came to life. I lowered the flaps by ten degrees as I approached the threshold markings showing the beginning of the runway and then adjusted them again to keep the wings level. Flaring for landing, I kept the nose up slightly and pulled back on the yoke. The landing gear made contact with the pavement, jerking us out of weightless flight. I engaged the brakes until we slowed to a crawl.
Back to Earth, to reality.
She squeezed my thigh. “Nice work.”
I chuckled. “Not my first landing.”
My first with a copilot, though. And I liked it.
We rode in silence as I taxied down to my parking spot and turned off the engine. I leaned over to kiss her cheek, but she turned and pressed her soft lips to mine. I slid my hand back into her hair, tasting her as her lips parted. Damn, I couldn’t get enough of her.
She hummed as she broke the kiss and opened her eyes. “That was amazing. Thank you.”
I rested my forehead against hers. “The kiss or the flight?”
She laughed, a sexy playful spark in her eyes. “Both.”
“Hope you’ll come fly with me again sometime.”
“Deal.” She smiled and looked down at the ground outside. “So how do we get out?”
I unlatched the canopy and slid it open. “Give me a second.” I climbed out of the cockpit and dropped to the ground. If I were still human, I would’ve taken it in steps, climbing out and onto the wing before using the step. But I wasn’t human, and neither was my copilot, even though she was still learning to embrace it.
