Broken Wings

by Terri Schaefer

  Regardless of that intel, she’d taken precautions, cutting her long dark hair into a shoulder-grazing bob, using prosthetics to subtly change the shape of her nose. Contacts to turn her gray eyes an unremarkable brown.

  With a flawless backstory, fresh ID and a massive wardrobe change, she looked every inch the bridal consultant, ready to create the perfect wedding.

  According to the society vlogs and Insta, Ward had met Petra on a trip to Kiev and been enchanted with her. They’d carried on a long-distance romance, and she was finally here in the United States for their wedding next week.

  Which of course was complete bullshit. He’d wanted a trophy wife. Someone beautiful and malleable to hang on his arm and make him look like even more of a wheeler dealer. He had never met Petra before her arrival in the U.S. two weeks ago. A social media firm put together a bells and whistles package on their “romance” that crumbled like a house of cards if you took the time to look into it. Most of his peers wouldn’t, which was what Ward was counting on. Had counted on and capitalized on his entire life.

  If nothing else, her arrival two days ago had stopped him from putting visible bruises on Petra. It hadn’t stopped the verbal assaults, which continued even when Natalie was around.

  Which just made her hate him more with each passing day.

  But it also made it almost too easy for her to dig into his files, because he was just as careless with them as he was with other human beings.

  When Natalie showed up, asking Petra if she needed an escape hatch, the woman had immediately agreed.

  As an official bridal consultant, Natalie had convinced Ward that Petra needed a day of pampering before the wedding, and she knew just the spot in Corpus, and couldn’t they take the helicopter down? It would show what a great husband he was going to be, that he could afford to fly his bride-to-be and her consultant wherever they wanted to go. And the spa was frequented by celebrities, and wouldn’t it be cool if they got on TMZ?

  Pandering to his ego had, of course, worked. In about a minute flat.

  And so this morning they’d packed what Petra couldn’t live without in their monstrous designer handbags, dressed the part of two women out for a day at the spa, and set off to start a new life for the young woman.

  She’d eventually end up in Brazil, but Ward was just slimy enough to go after her if they didn’t send her to ground and effectively cover her tracks. While Natalie was too big a target to go after, if he ever discovered who she really was, Petra was not.

  So Natalie’s father had set up the extraction, with a side job to bring back some serious dirt on Ward as payment for the op. Natalie would have unequivocally refused to engage in corporate espionage, but her father had assured her their true client was an alphabet soup government agency that had promised exceptional top cover for the information.

  Once Natalie got to actually watch Ward in action, she hadn’t felt any true heartburn over the job. Getting information on Ward Dynamics’ dirty deeds had been almost too easy. And it was all dirty.

  What she’d uncovered would destroy Ward’s entire world when it was released. Getting Petra to safety was just the cherry on top.

  It had seemed to be going so well she’d actually ditched the contacts and the prosthetics.

  Today was about getting Petra away from Ward.

  Until this yahoo had shown up and derailed all her extraction plans.

  Or maybe not.

  He handled the chopper with the precision and control she’d expect from a repo agent, if she knew what that even meant. Maybe he’d really take them to El Paso.

  Regardless, she had both the weapon and the skills to ensure this assignment was completed.

  It was what she did. Finish things. Usually by using her brains. Sometimes her looks. And if it got dicey, then she wasn’t averse to throwing a few punches. Bullets were a last resort for her…for anyone at Arrow Security.

  The thought brought a pang to her heart and she forced herself to refocus to the here and now. Didn’t let herself travel to five years ago and losing the one person who had truly mattered to her besides her parents. Losing Cord.

  She had to have her head in the game because their window to get Petra to safety was ridiculously small. Once upon a time, crossing the border had been a piece of cake. Nowadays, there were cameras everywhere, and way too many ICE or Homeland Security agents floating around.

  Transferring Petra to the Arrow Security asset had to be right on time, when the cameras were down and the Mexican border patrol had been well paid to look the other way.

  She gave Petra another comforting pat on the knee, then honed in on their surroundings.

  They’d cleared the high-rise portion of Dallas and were heading due south, just to the west of Interstate 35. Which was right on target. She glanced at her watch.

  From Masters’ projections, they’d be turning due west in about fifteen minutes.

  If he didn’t, then she’d wait until he had to land for gas, slip away and then set out for El Paso, even if she had to charter a private plane.

  She and Petra were going to get there, on time, one way or the other.

  Chapter 2

  Ethan tried not to stare at the woman in the rearview but it was hard. Her presence hit him like nothing he’d ever felt before… tough, capable, yet wrapped in a very, very pretty shell. Dark hair framed a face he’d say was extraordinarily beautiful if it didn’t look so strong.

  This was a woman who’d kick your ass without thinking twice. Even with the foofy clothes.

  She handled the weapon like she knew what she was doing, and while he couldn’t see her using it since that would likely cause them to crash, he had to admire her guts for holding him hostage in his own aircraft.

  He headed due south for Corpus, setting up the diversion she apparently needed. What could possibly be in El Paso? It sure as hell wasn’t shopping.

  Yeah, she was definitely on the run from Ward. But was it her or the girl who looked petrified in the seat next to her?

  It didn’t really matter. He’d call his boss Rob, the owner and operator of Red River Repossessions, as soon as they hit his refueling spot, explain what was going on and that he needed to take the girls to El Paso. Then he’d refuel the chopper and head to Oklahoma City as soon as they were safely there.

  He’d be back at the yard before the sun went down and still have played the rescuing hero to the two women. It was a balm to the constant ache in his heart that he hadn’t known he needed.

  But it still kind of chapped his ass that he was going to be late to the yard today. This repossession should have been a sweet validation. The day he became his own man again.

  The cut on a ten-million-dollar repossession was three hundred grand, and he’d take home a pretty penny of that himself after Rob got the majority of it for the agency. It was more than enough to pay off the rest of his debt to his boss. To get him back to where he needed to be.

  He keyed the mic on his headset and addressed the woman.

  “You got a name, sunshine?”

  She stared at him hard in the rearview, stormy gray eyes hard, expression severe. Stared so long he knew she was contemplating whether to answer or not.

  “Natalie,” she finally said. “Natalie Flynn.”

  His blood iced over.

  “Any relation to Greg Flynn?” Please let the answer be no, he thought, because if she was, he’d entered a whole new universe.

  Her stare still bored into him, then her lips tilted up, just the slightest bit of amusement in her expression.

  “You know Dad?”

  Well hell. Things had just gotten real, and his past had just come back to bite him in the ass.

  What were the odds that the man who’d been complicit in the worst moment in his life was her father?

  Arrow Security hadn’t been running the op that sent him over the deep end, but the company’s operatives had been on board the chopper and had been just as complicit as him at the time. Even more so lat
er, in their debrief.

  He had a decision to make. Head west in about five minutes, stop for fuel in a few hours in Midland, take them to El Paso, then head back to Oklahoma City. He’d be late, but he’d still get his money.

  Or he could say screw it. Drop this bird down right here and now and kick the two women off, then head north. He’d be back at the yard with no one the wiser and would walk away a free man.

  As assured as Natalie Flynn seemed with her weapon, he’d spent a decade in the Air Force working search and rescue, and search and recovery missions. He could easily handle the woman.

  The second option sounded so damned good. Hell of a lot less trouble than the first, that’s for sure. But he still needed to answer her.

  “Yeah, I know of your father. Ran with some of his guys in the desert a few years ago. Things didn’t end well.”

  Her tight smile remained in place, but he could see a new tension around her eyes that she tried to hide.

  “So tell me why I shouldn’t drop this chopper down right now and kick you two out?” He was genuinely curious to hear what she had to say.

  She swallowed, then reached out and pulled the younger girl’s hand into her own.

  He waited for her to convince him. Saw her formulating her best answer, whether it was the truth or not. And when she spoke, he figured he was about to get a fifty-fifty answer.

  “You weren't wrong. We’re running from Ward, that’s true. Petra is supposed to be his wife in less than a week. Ward doesn’t do well around women. Seems to have this idea he can knock them around or belittle and degrade them. I thought differently.”

  She seemed to be telling the truth, or at least maybe what she believed was the truth.

  He shifted his glance to the girl sitting next to her, really took a good look since he’d been looking at Natalie the entire time before.

  She was actually a woman, not the teenager he originally thought. Still looked scared as hell, though.

  Yeah, he could see Ward doing something like that, which made him hate the dude even more.

  So how did Natalie Flynn play into this?

  Arrow Security was a multinational conglomerate, but Greg Flynn ran it with an iron fist and what seemed like the power to look into people’s minds. Just like Ward.

  Ethan had worked with some of Flynn’s contractors in the desert. Walked away after an op that was considered a success by everyone but him.

  He hadn’t pulled himself out of a bottle or the casino for almost a year after that and had run through every asset he’d owned. If his ex-wife Aimee hadn’t left him years before that due to his deployment tempo, she sure as shit would have over the drinking and gambling. And he wouldn’t have blamed her. Hadn’t when she ditched him in the first place.

  He didn’t think about it much these days, beyond paying off his mark to Rob. But if he really had to look at where his descent had begun, it had been at the direction of Greg Flynn and Don Ward. Maybe they hadn’t given the order for Ethan to sit down, shut up and play nice, but they’d created a culture where that kind of attitude flourished.

  He glanced into the mirror again, felt a smile start when it was absolutely the wrong expression to have.

  Natalie Flynn was at his mercy.

  Natalie reeled, pushed back by the absolute ice in the pilot’s smile, in his gaze. Maybe confirming she was Greg Flynn’s daughter hadn’t been the best move. She knew her father had made enemies over the years; anyone running the type of company they did would have, especially with his special operations background. Years in the Green Berets had made him an impervious, hard man. Even to his only child.

  But there’d been more to Masters’ stare. The crow’s feet around his hazel eyes had tightened and there’d been absolute hatred in his tone. This wasn’t a bit of jealousy or mild dislike. And now it was directed at her. Because of who she was, not because of something she’d done.

  Regardless, what the hell was she supposed to do about it? They were cruising two thousand feet above the ground, hauling ass. It wasn’t as if she and Petra could jump out.

  Inside, she was the tiniest bit stung by his censure, even as she bolstered herself to get over it, to get the job done.

  She didn’t have time for hurt feelings. Getting Petra over the border and the data back to their main office in Maryland were her only imperatives.

  How this, her last field assignment, had gone so sideways so fast was nothing short of appalling.

  As Greg Flynn’s only child, it was a given that she’d take over the company. After earning a bachelor’s in international relations and a master’s in forensic accounting, she’d done a decade of field work both stateside and overseas.

  Now, at thirty-five, it was time to take her place at the helm of the company with her father. To learn that piece of the business so he could someday retire.

  And oh, how she was looking forward to it.

  Semi-regular hours. Someplace to go home to every night, maybe with a little yard in the back where she could relax. Getting dressed up for a nice dinner and not wondering if someone was going to try to take out her primary.

  Meeting a man who could hold his own with her father. Someone who ran his own boardroom and wasn’t intimidated by the power her family wielded.

  A dog. She really wanted a dog.

  A small piece of her whispered that she wanted more than the family business. Wanted the restaurant she and her mother had conceptualized before her mom died. But that wasn’t realistic. It was her legacy to take the helm of Arrow Security, and she would. And she’d get the rest of her wishes later. After this was done. Tomorrow.

  In the here and now she had a Ukrainian mail order bride to drop off at the Mexican border and a thumb drive full of explosive secrets that would likely bring down one of the richest men in the United States.

  Ensuring she had Masters’ cooperation was the one thing she could do right now.

  So instead of defending her family in what would likely be a losing bid, she’d use Petra to convince him. She turned, snugged a headset over the woman's ears so they could all hear each other.

  “Petra, tell him what Ward did to you.”

  It was like watching a transformation in the woman.

  The veil of victimhood seemed to lift off her and a harder, more cynical face was revealed. No longer was she a mouse of a girl who jumped at every shadow. Instead, her eyes held the fierceness of a tiger. Natalie had worn enough disguises, played enough parts to know when one was discarded.

  The woman beside her now was just that, a woman. If they weren’t two thousand feet in the air, she would have felt a seismic shift between her feet.

  “He’s a pig,” Petra spat, her English perfect now, with a faint accent. It was as if this wasn’t even the scared, beaten-down person Natalie had grown accustomed to. “He made me want to vomit every time he touched me.”

  “Petra?” she found herself asking, because what the hell was going on? Where was the crying young woman she’d spent the last two days with?

  “Don’t seem so surprised. No one could be as pathetic as I’ve been pretending to be this whole time.” Petra laughed, a mean sound that held little amusement.

  Despite her training, all her years in the field, Natalie’d been had.

  But that couldn’t be right. Arrow had researched Petra, made sure she was who she said she was. Hadn’t they?

  Or had someone dropped the ball and just assumed the mail-order wasn’t worth expending resources to confirm? Because the physical change was startling. Even her posture had morphed completely.

  “Who are you?” Natalie demanded, her stomach turning as she realized the extent of Petra’s deceit. Angry at herself that she’d been played. That they’d all been played.

  Petra turned to her. “I’m still Petra, but he didn’t want me, he wanted a meek wife, a victim he could use as a punching bag, who he could belittle to make him feel more like a man.”

  “You used me,” Natalie stated, her voice devoi
d of the emotion that had stormed through her just seconds ago. Reaching acceptance and moving on, like the professional she was.

  “You used me, as well,” Petra said, staring at her with eyes that gone hard. Cunning. “You weren’t there just to help me. I saw you stealing information from his computer. You would have never had access to it without me.”

  She wasn’t wrong, but it didn’t make Natalie feel any better about missing the woman’s true personality. She was usually better than this.

  Hell, Arrow was usually better than this. How had their handlers missed something this big?

  With Petra’s sudden growth of a spine, everything changed. There was no reason to take her over the border now. Ward might hunt her down, but this woman could stand on her own.

  “You could hide me, here in the U.S. instead of taking me to Mexico,” Petra said.

  Natalie saw Masters’ head jerk a bit and remembered he was listening to everything they said.

  Then his smooth voice filled the comms. “I guess it’s a good thing we didn’t file a real flight plan. I’m going to land soon. We don’t need gas yet, but we need to talk, face to face.”

  Natalie cocked her head, really looked at what she could see of him. In his place she’d have turned around, dropped them back in Dallas, and hauled ass. Not that she’d let him, because she was the one with the gun, after all.

  Instead, he seemed willing to go with this. At least for the time being. He may just kick them out and leave them in the middle of nowhere, but she hadn’t gotten that from his voice, from his inflection.

  So who the hell was Ethan Masters? And what was he up to?

  This whole thing had gone FUBAR, and fast.

  When the young woman had been a victim, he’d felt the need to protect, to get her to safety. But now? Now she sounded like someone he’d been in combat with. But more mercenary than any of them. And that wasn’t something he was willing to go along with until he knew more. And likely not then.