Broken Wings

by Terri Schaefer

  He laughed, almost surprised himself with the sound. “You got it, sunshine.”

  He froze as soon as the endearment left his mouth. It’d been okay when they didn’t know each other, or when he was using it to put distance between them. But now, here? It was too close, too intimate. Especially with the thoughts that’d been crossing his mind.

  He was on the verge of apology when her grin cut through his discomfort.

  “Watch it with the nicknames, Masters, otherwise I’ll start to think you like me,” she stood, collected their trash and headed for the food truck window to order more to go.

  He sat there, shellshocked for a moment. If only she knew.

  The expression on his face had been mortified. But she recognized it as the embarrassment of words actually being spoken, rather than being internalized. She did it often enough herself to know of which she spoke.

  She wasn’t altogether sure how she felt about the nickname. He’d called her that before he knew who she was, but apparently the name had stuck in his head. She decided she liked it, but wouldn’t ever let him know. Seeing Ethan Masters off his game just a little was refreshing.

  She ordered a pound of brisket and pulled pork and some mac and cheese, paid, then moved off to the side of the window to make room for the next customer.

  A small television was mounted inside the food truck, muted, but tuned to the local news. She supposed there wasn’t a lot of breaking news for a community of fifty thousand like Roswell, but she was used to the eastern seaboard and the continuous barrage of badness. Given their business model of protecting heads of state and industry, in addition to celebrities, they had to be on top of world events all the time, know who to keep on the radar and who they could ignore.

  It was nice to watch the anchors talk about the prep for the coming festival instead.

  She felt, rather than saw, Ethan walk up behind her, was turning to make a snarky comment, when a change on the screen caught her eye. She turned back to the television and tried not to gasp. It was her and Ethan, right there, in all their glory.

  She involuntarily stepped back, as if to flee, but Ethan was behind her, blanketed her with solid security. “It’s okay. We don’t look anything like that right now.”

  She took a breath. Really looked, and realized he was correct.

  His photo was from the military, his hair shorn close, a cocky smile on his face as he hammed it up with fellow pilots, the brown and buff tones of the desert behind him. He looked young, free, invincible. The man at her back had flashes of that boy, but in the here and now his hair was shaggy, his goatee further shadowing his features, and his eyes were haunted.

  Her picture, on the other hand, was much more recent. Like last week recent, when she’d been shadowing a pop star to an awards ceremony. Because of that, she was dressed to the nines. She’d insisted on a pantsuit to keep her range of motion, but the sparkly coal-black catsuit was, if anything, splashier than the Versace with a thigh-high slit her charge had worn.

  Right now she looked a hundred and eighty degrees different. Just mascara for makeup, her newly-shortened hair pulled into a pony, covered with a pastel ball cap. Wearing shorts and a sunny, frothy blouse.

  She blew out a breath as the cashier pushed their order out of the window, thanked them for their business. Nodding in return, she turned, fell into step with Ethan.

  He escorted her to the Jeep with a hand at her back, and the slight contact sent warmth tumbling through her.

  He popped the takeout into the back seat, then closed her door for her before heading around the front of the vehicle. Once he climbed in, he blew out a breath.

  “Well, we made the news,” his tone was resigned.

  She was still trying to compare the two different Ethans that she’d been presented. Wondered what had happened to the carefree pilot she’d seen on the television. Wondered what in the hell her father had to do with it. Because she was sure he did.

  “You’re right, though,” she finally said. “We look nothing like that now. It’s almost as if they put up the pictures that looked least like us.” As soon as the words crossed her lips she smiled. Knew what had happened. “This is one hundred percent Dad at work.”

  Ethan considered her for a long moment before starting up the Jeep and heading back to the RV. “How so?”

  “You know as well as I do that he’s got contacts everywhere. He pulled the photos that were the opposite of what we look like now. Gave them to someone in the Dallas Police Department to use.” She paused, thought a moment longer. “That’ll only last so long, though. Eventually they’ll put out the footage from the rooftop cams and the lobby.”

  His heavy sigh told her she was right. But at least they had a bit of a reprieve, enough time to get to Vegas and a safe house until Petra was found.

  The running stuck in her craw, but right now she didn’t know what else to do. They had a good thing going for the time being, and continuing on with the plan seemed to be the safest thing to do.

  But as dusk started to close in, today sure seemed like the longest day of her life.

  Chapter 7

  Ethan pulled the Jeep in beside the RV.

  He was twitchy and couldn’t really pinpoint why. There was no way anyone could have identified them from those pictures.

  Those pictures. Jesus. Natalie had looked stunning, like she belonged on the runway rather than the diva she was bodyguarding. A lick of lust curled up his spine as he remembered those mile-long legs and thigh-high boots.

  He shook his head, dislodging those images, replacing them with the photos of him, of his brothers in arms. That’d been a good day. They’d brought a wounded Airman home, saved his life. Had been celebrating a win. He was pretty sure it was the last day he was truly a happy man. And that’d been almost ten years ago.

  Natalie climbed into the RV and began stowing the food. He paced outside, trying to walk off his nerves. He got snappy when he was like this, and the close confines of the RV were just a little too intimate for his liking.

  Around him nightfall had begun to settle in, and with the darkening skies, the temperature began to drop into the eighties. Above him the stars began to peek through. With their campsite on the outskirts of town, there wasn’t as much ambient light, so the bowl of the sky looked like velvet.

  Natalie came out with a glass of wine in her hand, sat on the top of their assigned picnic bench, handed him a beer from their stash. He forced himself to set it down, when all he wanted to do was guzzle the whole damned thing.

  But that man was a year behind him and he never wanted to go back to those dark days again.

  Other couples and families around them were settling in to enjoy the falling temperatures as they chatted amongst themselves. Ethan dipped a nod at the two closest sites, friendly but not memorable, and joined Natalie on the table.

  “We’re going to be okay, you know,” she said. “Once we get to Vegas we use all of Arrow’s resources to hunker down until they find Petra.”

  “What if they don’t, Natalie?” he asked, finally putting voice to some of his concerns. “What if she was here to do a job and has already left the country? She could have easily headed south, into Mexico, with that chopper. What if we’ve been the fall guys for Ward’s murder all along?”

  He was happy that she took her time considering her words rather than just blowing them off. “I don’t see her heading to Mexico,” she said, taking a sip of her glass of wine. “Petra may have fooled me when it comes to what she was, but all of the times we talked about getting her across the border? She didn’t like the idea one little bit. That woman wants to stay in the States. I think she’ll ditch the chopper, it’s too hot right now, and completely disappear.

  “Maybe killing Ward was her one-way ticket here. Maybe she’s gone deep and has another target. Either way, you and I are the face of this because it’s easier to send the feds after you and me, as U.S. citizens. No-one wants to put an international face on the six o’clock news
right now. It’d spook the herd in addition to ramping up the racists.”

  Now it was Ethan’s turn to consider. To turn her words over in his mind, get a taste of them.

  And he had to admit she was right. To his thinking Petra had been one hundred percent assassin, there to take Ward out for whatever reason. He honestly didn’t care. Ward had been a dick of monumental proportions and the world was a better place without him in it.

  But yeah, the Dauphin was memorable and a pretty woman who looked about fifteen piloting it? Even more conspicuous. She’d likely ditch it when she was getting low on gas. And if they could find her before the feds, get their narrative out there first? It would make life about a thousand percent easier for everyone but Petra.

  He ran through a map in his head. She could make Albuquerque on fumes, but would have to figure out a way through the mountain ranges. It would be smarter for her to head north to Oklahoma, set the aircraft down out of Texas jurisdiction.

  Beside him, Natalie sat still, waiting for him to think it through.

  She took another sip of her wine and the movement brought her scent to him again, lemon, light, airy, like the frilly blouse she wore and suddenly he wanted to taste her. To feel the heat that seemed to spark through them whenever they touched.

  It was a horrible idea, but over the past day he’d seen past her beauty and discovered the smart, savvy woman beneath.

  Petra could wait. He wasn’t sure this could.

  He turned to her, saw her do the same, saw her gray eyes go to a low smolder at the expression on his face. “At least we’re on the same page,” she murmured, then tipped her face up to his.

  Kissing Ethan Masters was probably one of the worst ideas of her life, but damn it if it didn’t seem like the right thing to do in this second, in this moment.

  His lips were a soft as they’d looked this morning, and the whiskers of his goatee were a cross between a tickle and a caress as he slanted his head, kissed her harder, his lips molding to hers, sending a streak of heat through her body, waking up parts that had been dead for a long five years.

  He grunted as if in surprise, then framed her face in his hands and nibbled on her lips. She sighed in response, opened for him, and tasted him for the first time. She stroked her tongue over his, learning him, breathing him in as her body softened and her nipples peaked.

  She’d never been so turned on this fast. To hell with being sensible, she was ready to grab him by the shirt and drag him into the RV, test out the queen size bed.

  But a snicker to their left pulled her out of her haze and she pulled away slowly, remembering they were making out on a picnic bench in a RV park in Roswell, New Mexico.

  Ethan kept her face in his hands, as if she was something precious. Ghosted one last kiss across her lips, then pulled away. Shot a death glance at the teenagers on the bench two slots over. “Fucking kids.”

  She smiled in response, took a tiny sip of her wine to regain her composure. “Do we need to talk about this?”

  He turned back to her. “Do we need to? I don’t think so. Should we? Probably. And about more than a kiss that burned my world down.”

  Her heart beat in triple time at the admission and she began to lean back into him again but brought herself up short. “Public place,” she reminded herself, then smiled again as he laughed softly.

  He blew out a big breath.

  “Not to change the subject, but you’re right. Petra would ditch the Dauphin. Stay low to the ground and out of regular airspace, then abandon it when and where she could. But she couldn’t have possibly known where we’d gas up, so her exit plan had to be fluid. Very fluid.” He stood. Paced, just like he had before she’d come out. “I need to check in with Rob, see if he’s heard anything.”

  Natalie nodded, glad he’d gone back to their existential dilemma. She’d been two seconds away from kissing him again, good idea be damned. “Dad needs to know what we’ve just figured out as well. At this point, I don’t see any reason not to tell him about Vegas. We’ll be there in a day, two max, and he can set some things in motion.”

  Ethan still didn’t like it, but couldn’t see the harm in it, not now. So he nodded and dialed Rob.

  “About freakin’ time you checked in,” his boss said, his voice a low growl. Ethan knew he was imagining it, but the man almost sounded…worried? “You need to bug out of Roswell right now. There’s a team inbound with a warrant for your arrest. Not Natalie Flynn’s, just yours. You’ve been burned, Ethan. Acquire wheels and get the fuck out of there. You’ve got fifteen minutes, max, before they get there.” Ethan stood there for precious seconds, his brain trying to process Rob’s cursing and the fact he was wired in so well, and then he was in motion. He’d figure out how the hell Rob had known their location later. His boss had always had his back, and he wasn’t about to start doubting that now.

  Natalie was on the phone with her father, telling him about Vegas. There was a tiny smile on her face. One he was about to rip off. He took the phone from her hand. “Fuck you, Flynn. Fuck you very much.” Then he hung up the phone, grabbed the keys from the dinette. He turned to Natalie. Wondered if their dinner and conversation and kisses had just been a stalling tactic. Everything inside him said no, but Petra had fooled him as well.

  “Dear old Dad’s turned me over to the feds. Team inbound right now, gunning for me. Not you, not Petra. Me. So thanks, Princess.” He grabbed the knapsack he hadn’t bothered to unpack, the to-go bag from the barbeque place. Extra ammo for his weapon.

  Natalie watched him with what could only be described as true shock. Then she reached out, grabbed his forearm. “Ethan, stop. Stop.”

  He whirled, ripped his arm from her grasp. “I don’t have time. They’ll be here any minute. I’m not going down for this, Natalie, I won’t. Your family has the power to bury me six feet under. I’m surprised they didn’t three years ago. Stay here. You’ll be fine. It’s me they’re looking for.” He looked around the RV, knowing his gaze was a little wild, but dammit, he needed to get gone.

  He had food, ammo. He patted his pockets. A bit of cash. He couldn’t dare use the cards Mandy had given them. Or could he?

  “Give me all of the cash cards,” he demanded. “I’ll drain them of what I can on the way out of town, since they already know I’m here.”

  “They already know we’re here,” she said, emphasizing the ‘we’ part, and turned back to face him, her own backpack slung over one shoulder. “We’ll be faster and more agile in the Jeep.” She looked back at the bed longingly, then stepped forward, into his space.

  “I don’t know what the hell is going on right now, but we’re a team, Ethan Masters. And we’ll figure it out when we have a little breathing room. Now let’s get gone.”

  Something about her had turned hard-edged in the past few seconds. Whatever it was, her lickable mouth had tightened into a firm line, and her gray eyes had turned glacial. Dollars to doughnuts it had something to do with Greg Flynn.

  He looked at her for a moment, too long given their tight timeline, then nodded, his motions choppy. “Phones stay here. Period.”

  “Agreed,” she said, “But I have something to do with it before we leave town. I promise it doesn’t go with us further than the Roswell city limits. Now let’s go.”

  “Roswell is big enough to lose ourselves in for five minutes, right?” she asked as they sped away from the campground after loading the cooler and any other things they could gather quickly into the back of the Jeep.

  “Sure. I need to get cash and we need to change plates. I’d lift another car, but the Jeep serves a better purpose if we stay on side roads.”

  “I’m going to call my father, while you get cash.” When he started to protest she cut him a look. “We’ll already be showing our hand by grabbing the cash, right?”

  He nodded, reluctantly.

  “So let me talk to Dad. See what he has to say. It can’t hurt, right?”

  Famous last words, she realized, as they left he
r mouth. She’d said the same thing not ten minutes ago, when she’d convinced Ethan to tell her father about Vegas.

  He shot her a look that was past angry, and she knew they’d need to talk about what her family, her father, had done to him. Soon. Because if they were going on the run, there couldn’t be secrets between them.

  It’d taken her all of ten seconds to know her father had the capacity to do something like this. She’d just never imagined she’d be front and center to witness it. Or that the utter betrayal coursing through her would feel so devastating. Because she knew exactly how her father had found them.

  They crossed to the other side of town, tucking themselves in an alley behind the food truck they’d so recently left and walked to an ATM. Since the feds were looking for Ethan, not her, she withdrew everything she could, which amounted to about nine hundred bucks. More than enough to see them through a few days, especially since they’d grabbed some of the supplies they’d bought earlier in the day.

  Then they sat in the alley and she called her father. Put him on speaker.

  “Natalie, where the hell are you?” he asked, and with those words, he confirmed everything she feared.

  “Why are you framing Ethan?” she asked, keeping her voice cold. Professional.

  “We don’t have time for this. Go back to the RV park, meet up with the team and get on with your life. Don’t let Masters fuck it up.”

  “See, Dad, here’s where you’re mistaken. Ethan isn’t fucking up my life. You are. I’ve got a locator on me, don’t I?” It hadn’t taken a great leap to figure that out. “At first I wondered if it was the RV, but that was so amateurish, not like you at all. And Mandy seemed like more of a pro than that.” She fiddled with the locket around her neck. The one piece of jewelry she was never without. The one she was ninety-nine percent sure her father had tagged her with.