Poker Face

by Cindy Dees

  Christian caught the young man as he slid down the roof of the helicopter to the ground. Christian yanked out his shirt and his pocket knife, sawing at the bottom of it until he could tear off a long strip. He grabbed the reporter’s hand, shoved it against the gash on his head, and quickly bound the guy’s hand tightly over the wound.

  “Can you make it to that cluster of police cars over there?” He pointed to where the security detail had been staging this evening. “There’s an ambulance parked over there, and the cop cars will also have first aid kits in them.”

  The reporter nodded.

  “Keep pressure on that wound until someone can clean it and bandage it, okay?” Christian gave the guy a gentle push to get him moving in the right direction.

  He looked up at the rescue operation going on over his head and jolted. Stone had disappeared. Only Tucker straddled the now gaping doorway. Stone must have jumped down into the helicopter. “What’s he doing?” Christian called up to Tucker.

  “Looks like the pilot has busted both legs!” Tucker called back. “We’ll need help handing him down.”

  “I smell gas fumes, Travis. It’s possible this thing could explode. Can you guys hurry with your rescue heroics already?”

  The rescued reporter behind him yelled, “There’s a wire in the tail throwing sparks into a puddle of fluid on the ground!”

  He’d be damned if he would leave Stone behind to fry if this thing blew up. Grimly, Christian held his ground, waiting to help with the pilot. Somebody cried out in pain from inside the helicopter, and then Tucker leaned down inside the wrecked cockpit, grunting and straining.

  The upper torso of a man in a flight suit appeared. He was unconscious and hung limp over the edge of the helicopter. Tucker eased the man down to Christian.

  He turned around to catch the injured pilot on his back. He draped the man’s arms over his shoulders in a fireman’s carry and moved away from the crashed craft.

  He took off in a heavy-footed jog and prayed Tucker and Stone were close behind him. But it wasn’t as if he could spare the time or energy to turn around and look. It took an eternity to carry the pilot to the far edge of the square, well away from the crash site. A policeman came up with a bulky first aid kit and identified himself as a first responder. The cop radioed for the next ambulance on scene to be sent to his location, and then he went to work immobilizing the pilot’s legs and neck.

  Following the officer’s instructions, Christian knelt and helped the guy stabilize the pilot’s body. The flier’s breathing was another issue as he gurgled and gasped for air with every breath.

  “Collapsed lung,” the cop announced. “We’ve got to get this guy help now. Help me lift him so I can carry him over to the one ambulance on scene.”

  It was hard to work around the various makeshift splints they’d applied, but they got the pilot draped over the cop’s back, and the officer took off running much the same way Christian had.

  With the pilot safe in a medic’s hands, Christian turned his attention back to the crash site, searching frantically for Stone. He found him and Tucker herding the last of the partygoers away from the helicopter.

  And that was when a spark finally caught up with the pool of jet fuel or maybe the collected fumes. It wasn’t a spectacular explosion like on television. Rather it whooshed and suddenly, there was fire where there’d been none before. It flared up quickly and engulfed the helicopter in flames. Christian saw the outline of Stone’s big body hunching protectively over an elderly man, no doubt to shield him from the heat as the gentleman shambled away from the accident.

  Sirens howled and grew louder as police, fire, and rescue units streamed to the scene. The square was littered with debris from both the crash and the panicked flight of the partygoers, but everyone seemed out of range of any danger.

  The bystanders milled around the edges of the plaza, looking dazed and disheveled. Christian spied more than a few bloodied people, but they all seemed alive and receiving first aid of one kind or another.

  He probably ought to go looking for his grandmother, but she’d been at the farthest edge of the square from the disaster and moving away from the chaos the last time he saw her. Frankly, he was more worried about Stone’s safety. That guy’s heroic streak was a mile wide, after all, and tinged with a touch of self-destructive impulse.

  He searched through the crowd until he spotted the familiar visage. Stone’s tuxedo coat was off, no doubt draped over someone’s shoulders, and at the moment he was bent down in concern over someone seated on the edge of a concrete planter box.

  Christian sprinted for his side. He desperately needed to be close to Stone. Close enough where he could protect his lover if need be. To touch him to be sure he was really alive and unhurt.

  He reached Stone’s side and rasped, “Are you okay?” He was shocked at how hoarse his own voice was.

  “Yeah. You?”

  “I’m good.”

  For an instant their stares met, and raw, profound relief showed in their gazes. It was all there in their eyes: the unspoken attraction that went way deeper than simple lust. Awareness that they could have a future together. That they’d come perilously close to losing it all just now. A promise to do something about it with this second chance they’d miraculously been given.

  “Thanks for carrying out that pilot. We couldn’t have done it without you.”

  Christian responded, “I dunno about that. You and Tucker seemed to have things pretty well in hand.”

  “Time was the problem. We got him out twice as fast with you there to take him. That was the difference between us getting away from the copter before it caught fire and not.”

  “I’m not the hero, and you can stop trying to shift the glory to me. You are. You and Tucker.”

  Stone looked around the square. “There were probably a bunch of heroes out here tonight. For a crowd this size to disperse that fast and not have any serious injuries that I can see means a whole lot of people helped one another.”

  As a fire truck careened into the plaza, then steered up a set of shallow steps and over next to the burning helicopter, he added, “And here come a few more heroes. We need to let them know the passenger and pilot are out of the craft already.”

  “I’m on it,” Christian declared.

  He raced over to the nearest police officer and relayed the information with a request to radio the information to the firefighters immediately. It was taken care of and a brief thanks from the fire department relayed back to him. Indeed, as he looked on, the firefighters backed well away from the copter to spray it with water from a safer distance.

  Tucker came up beside him. “We need to get Stone—Jack—out of here. The police are too busy to hold off the media, and reporters are going to be all over this place in a minute.”

  Aww, hell. The guy was totally right. He hadn’t been thinking about their ruse at all in the past minutes of chaos and danger. “Let’s go get him, Travis.”

  They ran over to Stone, who was comforting someone who seemed to be hyperventilating or maybe having an asthma attack. Christian and Tucker grabbed his elbows and bodily dragged him away from the scene. Christian paused long enough to tell a cop who looked like a supervisor that they were taking the senator back to his hotel, and then they were out of there.

  The SUV wound past a phalanx of emergency response vehicles and then was clear of the inbound emergency response. Tucker accelerated onto a highway, and Christian finally breathed a sigh of relief. He closed his eyes in abrupt exhaustion and eventually opened them to find Stone staring worriedly at him.

  He smiled, or at least tried to, and Stone reached over to hold his hand. “No one was killed, and our side won the battle. It was a good night.”

  Tucker responded soberly from the front seat, “Ooo-rah.”

  He just sat there, focusing on Stone’s warm, strong grip and the reassurance it offered. They were all alive. They’d made it. Everyone he loved had survived the accident.


  They were nearly back to the hotel before he roused himself to ask, “What the heck happened back there? It looked to me like a firework hit the helicopter and brought it down.”

  “Pretty much.” Stone pulled a disgusted face. “Someone obviously thought it would be a great idea to shoot off fireworks from inside the damned plaza. Those were commercial-grade explosives and should have been staged from a lot farther away than that. It’s a miracle not more people were seriously hurt.”

  “Agreed.”

  “How’s the pilot?” Stone asked. “He didn’t look great when I hauled him out.”

  “He was unconscious, had a punctured lung, and multiple broken bones. A cop and I stabilized the bone breaks and then the officer hustled him toward the nearest ambulance to get the guy some oxygen and a high-speed ride to a trauma hospital.”

  “Can we get an update on him?” Stone asked.

  Christian smiled and pulled out his cell phone. “Observe one of the perks of being a United States senator.”

  It took him a second to find the phone number of the nearest major hospital to the crash site and to dial it. “Hello. This is Senator Lacey’s office calling. The senator is worried about the helicopter pilot who crashed down on tonight’s fundraising event. Can you give us a general update on his condition?”

  He put the call on speaker so Stone and Tucker could hear, and they all listened to the good news that the pilot was stable and heading shortly into surgery to set his various broken bones.

  Tucker went into his own room when they reached the suite to call his wife and let her know that he was safe before the story hit the national news channels.

  Christian strode over to Stone, who held out his arms silently as he approached. He grabbed Stone and held on for dear life for a long minute. It was gratifying to feel the fine trembling passing through Stone’s body too. It was nice to know the badass commando was at least a little affected by nearly having a helicopter crash on top of him.

  “You okay?” Stone murmured against his neck.

  “I will be now. For a minute there, before I spotted you in the crowd, I thought I’d lost you. And I confess, it flipped me out worse than I could have imagined.”

  Stone made a sound vaguely like humor. “I’m a tough old bird. I’m harder to kill than that. A dinky little helicopter smashing me flat wouldn’t do the trick.”

  He laughed reluctantly. “You’re such a jerk.”

  “I love you too,” Stone retorted.

  They froze.

  Should he say it back? He’d already had the thought, but did he dare admit it? God, the power it would give Stone over him—

  Did power dynamics in their relationship matter for a damn when Stone had nearly died?

  He opened his mouth to reply. But too late.

  Stone stepped back. Smiled crookedly. “Don’t panic, Christian. I meant it metaphorically. Not literally. You can breathe now.”

  But could he? What if he really did want Stone to love him back?

  He studied Stone’s face intently, but under the Jack makeup, grime from the crash, and the completely closed emotional mask Stone had donned in the past few seconds, he couldn’t read a damned thing. He had no way of telling if Stone was lying about his declaration being just words and not an expression of real feelings.

  “Stone. We need to—”

  The phone rang.

  Of course it fucking rang exactly as he was about to tell Stone they needed to have a serious talk. Honest talk.

  He stared at the phone, still ringing insistently.

  “Need me to get that?” Stone asked.

  Swearing under his breath, he shook himself. “No. This part is my job. You did your hero thing on the plaza. But this is the part of crisis management that I excel at. I’ve got it.”

  He picked up the phone. The reporter on the other end of the line was excited out of all proportion at rumors that the senator himself had pulled the passengers out of a burning helicopter.

  “It wasn’t burning when the senator and his security chief helped the passengers exit the craft,” Christian corrected. Not that the journalist was going to listen to a damned thing he said. They smelled a sensational headline, and the truth could stand aside and get out of the way of it.

  Stone flashed him a thumbs-up and retreated into the bedroom. Probably washing off the Jack face and changing into nonbloody clothes. That and shutting down his emotions and carefully locking them away in some mental drawer way the hell in the darkest corner of his brain.

  Dammit, they’d almost had a breakthrough there. Mr. Emotionally Unavailable had almost been forced to admit to how he really felt about the two of them.

  With a sigh, Christian picked up the next call waiting on hold. He spent the next hour repeating the same line over and over to journalists. “The senator is unharmed and prays for the safety of everyone else involved. He has no further comment at this time.”

  Sometime in the middle of the media frenzy, Stone strolled out of the bedroom, his hair damp, and wearing fresh clothes. He poured himself a stiff whiskey and sprawled on the sofa in front of the television to watch the news, muted of course, so Christian could give telephone interviews.

  “Why don’t you just record a message?” Stone finally muttered, after he’d repeated his stock responses for about the tenth time.

  He rolled his eyes, wishing it were that easy. It was all about forming a personal connection with the reporter and then striking a calm yet concerned tone of voice that conveyed reassurance and empathy to each person who called. His superpower was reading other people and knowing exactly how to connect with each one.

  Gradually the panic in the callers diminished as word got out of no fatalities and only the pilot having suffered serious but not life-threatening injuries. The journalist who’d been on the chopper was already making the rounds doing live interviews, a white bandage prominent on his forehead, and he milked the moment for all the coverage he could squeeze out of it.

  A few channels started to speculate that the helicopter had been shot down. Which made him cover the receiver with his hand and ask Stone, “Is that possible? Could the chopper have been shot by a small missile or something?”

  Stone shook his head decisively. “I know the sound of an incoming missile. I’d recognize it in my sleep. No missile flew into that plaza. It was a couple of firework mortars that took out the chopper. Period.” He added, “You might want to have the press ask what the hell that bird was doing over the plaza, though. Surely that fireworks show had a permit from the city. Which meant air traffic control was notified and wouldn’t have been routing any air traffic over that area.”

  Christian stared. “Are you suggesting that the helicopter didn’t have permission to be there?”

  “I’m not suggesting it. I’m telling you that’s how it was.”

  “Fascinating.” On his laptop, he typed the name of the reporter who’d been in the chopper and sat back, startled when he realized the guy worked for a notorious gossip publication known for making up the wildest tales. They were the people who routinely reported Bigfoot sightings and alien abductions.

  His spiel changed in the next phone call, this one from a reputable news agency who found his questions about why the helicopter had been flying over an active firework display deeply interesting. The caller got off the phone quickly, no doubt to do a little more digging.

  It would be morning before the television stations collected all the information and compiled enough cell phone footage to put together a coherent view of what had happened.

  As the calls petered out, he leaned back, exhausted. He’d done his job and deflected the majority of the interest in the story away from Jack Lacey and onto an investigation of the reporter and pilot in the helicopter. Tucker came into the room, announcing that he was spending tonight on the sofa where he could be close if Stone needed anything. It appeared that Stone had himself an admirer.

  “Thanks for everything you did at the fundraiser, Tr
avis. You were a real hero.”

  “Stone was the hero. When he jumped down into that chopper with smoking and sparking like that—mad props to the guy—that was some dangerous shit.”

  A knock on the door made them both look up sharply.

  A journalist had somehow managed to get past the hotel’s security staff, and Tucker unleashed a hard-core Marine ass-chewing on the guy, chasing him all the way back to the elevator. Christian thought he heard the elevator door close before Tucker quit barking like a pissed-off elephant seal.

  Tucker returned to the suite and snatched up a phone to give the hotel security staff a chippy piece of his mind about their effectiveness at protecting hotel guests. The worst of his outburst over, Tucker rang up room service and ordered a tray of snacks and sandwiches to be sent up to the suite, pronto.

  Then the ex-Marine announced, “I’m getting a chair and parking in front of the damned door of the suite for the rest of the night. And neither of you are going anywhere. Understood?”

  Stone and Christian exchanged amused glances. “Yes, sir!” Christian replied briskly.

  Tucker nodded in satisfaction and replied more calmly, “Holler if you need anything.”

  Christian nodded his thanks at the man, who really was a boon to have around in a crisis.

  He planted himself in front of the television to watch the results of his work intently. The evening news cycle passed and the media blitzkrieg of breaking news reports finally wound down. They’d weathered the storm, and no one was reporting that one of Senator Lacey’s bodyguards had been impersonating him at the disastrous fundraiser.

  He reached for the remote and turned off the TV.

  “We good?” Stone asked.

  “Mischief managed,” he replied, relieved.

  The suite was quiet, and they were alone at last. Their gazes met.

  “You okay, Christian?”

  “I will be.”

  “Combat stress takes some getting used to. It gets easier to handle the more you’re exposed to it.”

  “No, thanks. I don’t need scenes like that mess in the plaza to become a common occurrence in my life.”