Redstone Ever After

by Justine Davis

  “Which them?” Josh asked, accepting the diversion. Or, Tess thought wryly, more likely not even realizing the need for one. Just because her mind had veered into dangerous territory—again—didn’t mean his had.

  “Either them,” she said. “Either Draven makes a move, or these guys do something really stupid.”

  “My money’s on selection B,” Josh said.

  “If they were smart, the way you look now wouldn’t be enough,” Tess said.

  “Question is, should we be glad they’re not smart, or worried?”

  Tess’s mouth quirked. “Yes,” she said.

  Josh grinned. “Ah, Tess, I do love the way you think.”

  And I love you, she thought.

  And wondered if she’d die before she ever said that to him out loud.

  Chapter 14

  We’re going to put you two alone in a room with a bed.

  He’d be thinking a lot clearer if Pinky’s words would stop echoing in his head, Josh thought.

  And if those words hadn’t gotten him to thinking in directions he had no business going. This was Tess, Elizabeth’s adopted sister. The woman he’d promised Eric Machado he would take care of, should anything happen to him. And he’d made that promise knowing that, given Eric’s chosen career, having to keep it was a very real possibility.

  Not that he would have needed a promise to do it; Tess was Redstone; that alone would be enough. But he hadn’t been flattering her when he’d said she was his right hand as much as St. John. It was true; he relied on her common sense and wisdom and wit, in some ways even more than the once dour, laconic St. John.

  And he admired her. Tremendously. Once she’d accepted his job offer, she’d applied herself with an industry that had, in fact, set the standard for all Redstone people who would follow. She’d added her twin engine, instrument and jet ratings so fast that everything had been questioned and double-checked in disbelief. To this day, she was the best sale-closing tool Redstone Aviation had; one flight with her at the controls for one of her trademark featherlight landings, and the customer was ready to sign.

  But it wasn’t just her prodigious flying skills he admired; it was Tess herself. Her generally cheerful outlook despite her share of life’s travails, her attitude and a devotion to Redstone and its people that rivaled his own. He’d long ago lost track of how many times she had uncomplainingly changed her own plans because someone needed her, how many times she had flown Redstone personnel to where they needed to be for reasons professional or often personal.

  And when those personal reasons were grim or painful, Tess was unfailingly compassionate and kind, and he inevitably heard back that she had been a rock in a difficult time.

  “The only good thing I can see about going through that,” she’d told him one day long after they’d buried her husband and handed her the flag that had draped his casket, “is that it helps you understand how to help when others go through it.”

  In that instant, he regretted letting his mind slip back to those long-ago days. Because in the next instant, the memory that followed that one hit him; Tess stretching up on tiptoe to give him a grateful kiss. He’d never forgotten that moment, if for no other reason than the startling inappropriateness of his response.

  He loved Tess like the sister she’d been to Elizabeth, which certainly didn’t include feeling the first jolt of physical attraction since Elizabeth. He knew many said he’d buried his heart with her, and for a very long time he’d thought that true. He’d placed himself in the ranks of the walking wounded—those who had lost a large piece of their heart and soul who kept on living because they didn’t know what else to do, because they’d survived beyond the initial urge to follow that chunk of themselves into the grave it had been consigned to along with the shell of the one who had held that heart and soul.

  There had been times, once the grief had ebbed to a constant but dull pain, when meeting a woman had sent a faint spark of interest through him. But it had always died before he’d summoned up the energy to pursue it. Never had it been strong enough to overcome the memories of what he’d once had, strong enough to quash the sense of betrayal the very idea of being with someone else gave him.

  He knew that there were many who would be glad to see him with someone, others who had actively worked toward that goal, searching out women they thought might interest him. And when whatever it was had gotten into the Redstone water in the past few years, and started the cascade of matchings that had resulted in so many engagements and marriages, he’d gone beyond being bemused to being amazed. He knew it had come with that seemingly inevitable accompaniment; the urge of the newly in love to see everyone around them in the same state.

  “Draven will never let anything happen to you.”

  Tess’s words yanked him out of the reverie, and he wryly told himself to focus on the matter at hand or even Draven might not be able to keep that vow.

  “I wasn’t worried about it,” he said.

  “You looked…preoccupied.”

  “I was,” he said, “but not about that.”

  And he wasn’t about to admit to her what memory loop he’d been caught up in.

  “It’s hard to just wait,” she said.

  “I know.”

  Not that she had been, he thought; she’d been moving about the cabin, searching for anything else that could possibly be used as a weapon. She’d given him one of a couple of razor blades from the head—useful, he supposed, if they ended up tied up—and was hefting a letter opener from the small desk.

  “Harder for me,” she added, giving him a sideways look. “You have a lot more patience.”

  “Tweedledee and Tweedledum out there are running through my patience in a big hurry.”

  She raised a brow at him. “Then, if we see a chance…?”

  “We take it,” he confirmed, deciding in that moment. “I’d just as soon Draven not have to risk any of the team.”

  Tess smiled at that. “That’s their job. You know that’s what he’d say.”

  “Yes. But we’re already in this, we have no choice. If we could end this now…”

  “Part of my job is to not let you risk yourself,” she said.

  He’d always suspected Draven had thoroughly indoctrinated her when he’d absconded with her for a month the day after Josh had announced she’d be flying him regularly from then on. Now he knew it.

  “You are Redstone, no matter how much you like to claim everyone else is. If something happened to you, Redstone as we know it would be over.”

  He grimaced. “Some,” he said sourly, “would like it that way.”

  “Of course they would. You’re a beacon to their enemies, individuals of courage and free spirit,” she said, and he was thankful he didn’t have to explain. But he never did, not to Tess.

  For a moment she looked as if she wanted to say more, but had decided this wasn’t the time. And she was right; they should be planning how to take back this plane, not just waiting for rescue. He had never been simply a reactor, nor had she. But he so rarely had time to just talk with her out from under the load of running Redstone. That despite the situation, and the odd undercurrents that seemed to be running between them, he was…not enjoying it, under the circumstances, but at least savoring it.

  “Tess,” he said suddenly.

  She had been searching through a drawer, but stopped and turned to look at him. “What?”

  “I… Nothing.”

  He had, he realized, just wanted to say her name, and hadn’t thought beyond that. Such vagueness wasn’t something he did, and he felt decidedly and strangely awkward. This was Tess, there was no reason for this odd tangle of emotions.

  Except for the fact that there are two not-too-bright guys with guns in the outer cabin.

  He supposed that must be it. It was one thing to live with the concept of every human being’s mortality; most people past the self-indulgence of their twenties did. It was another to live with the reality of it, as he and Tess did eve
ry day.

  But it was something quite different to live with the possibility of your own potentially imminent death walking around in the next room.

  There had been a time when he would have welcomed it. When he’d ached so much with Elizabeth’s loss that the idea of death had been a constant companion, when he’d wished for it to take him, too. Sometimes only the knowledge that he would be letting down everything she’d stood for, betraying every part of himself she had so completely believed in, had stopped him from taking one of the Hawks up and cratering it into the side of a mountain.

  “We’ll get out of this, Josh,” she said, and it took him a moment to realize she was responding to his uncustomary stammering. She thought he was worried about their situation, and he was. But the urge to simply say her name hadn’t had anything to do with that.

  “I know we will,” he said. “If I’ve descended to the point where two clowns like that can take me out, then I should just give up now.”

  “You? Never. You’re Josh Redstone. You always will be.”

  Her faith in you is endless….

  Eric’s words, spoken at their wedding, echoed in Josh’s head. Her husband had been quiet, steady, and utterly un-threatened by his new wife’s devotion to her job and her boss. He had the same sort of steely strength leavened with innate goodness that his own brother had had, and Josh had liked him immediately.

  And the night after his funeral, Josh had gone to the house Eric and Tess had shared so joyously on his rotations home.

  “I know the path you’re on,” he had told her, refusing to let her send him away. “It twists and turns, and at the fork I know where it can lead. I’ll be here until you’re headed in the direction Eric would have wanted.”

  “What on earth are you thinking?” Tess asked now, telling him he’d been too deeply lost in memory once more. Another thing he didn’t make a habit of, and another thing he’d best be watching out for if they were going to get out of this unharmed.

  “Eric,” he said succinctly, as she had earlier simply said “Elizabeth.”

  “Oh.” Her voice was small, almost deflated, as unlike her as stammering had been unlike him.

  “I promised him, too,” he said.

  “I can take care of myself.” Her tone had shifted, sounding a bit acerbic now.

  “You surely can. And I don’t envy the man or woman who thinks otherwise.”

  “I don’t need looking out for,” she said, but she sounded at least a little mollified.

  “Right now,” he said, “I think we both do. We’ve always looked out for each other, haven’t we?”

  And then she was Tess again, his Tess. “Yes, we have. And we always will. No matter what.”

  Chapter 15

  “What in the hell are they after?” Noah Rider paced the Hawk III cabin, staring at the video feed at every sharp turn he made to come back toward the gathered group.

  “We have no way of knowing since in their view, they don’t have their quarry,” Reeve said, her words reasonable in contrast to her voice, which sounded as if she wanted to swear just as Rider had.

  The two glanced at Draven. “Fine line you’re walking,” Rider said.

  “I know.”

  “No guarantee what they’ll do when they run out of patience,” Alvera said.

  “None,” Draven agreed, eyes fixed on the monitor showing the video feed from the Hawk V.

  For a moment, no one said anything. Then, almost uncertainly, Ryan Barton turned to look over his shoulder at Draven.

  “Sir? I’ve been thinking…” He stopped, hesitating.

  Draven shifted his gaze from the screen to the young tech’s face. Barton might not be security, but he’d done everything asked of him and then some. “Go ahead.”

  “If one of those goofs decides to check out that computer, or tries to boot it up…”

  He paused. Draven doubted either of these two would, but he never discarded input out of hand. Especially when it came to computers; he was a good end user, but Barton’s knowledge was far, far beyond that. “What?”

  “I was thinking if I set up a reverse feed, from here to the system there, we could use it to give them info. You know, whatever we wanted.”

  Draven blinked.

  “I mean,” Barton hastened to go on, “we could send them fake weather reports about a storm, fake news reports, make them nervous, that kind of thing.”

  Draven stared at the young man with the spiky, blond-tipped hair.

  “I just thought it might help at some point,” Barton said, sounding embarrassed now.

  Draven put a hand on Barton’s shoulder. “You,” he said, “are a credit to Josh’s instincts.”

  Barton’s eyes widened, and he flushed slightly. “Thanks,” he muttered.

  “You can get that ready, just in case?”

  “Absolutely!”

  Barton went to work immediately on his own sleek, racy-looking laptop, which Draven guessed was probably more powerful than most corporate servers. The rest of them continued to watch the feed.

  “You think we can just wait them out?” Alvera asked.

  His voice was even, but Draven didn’t miss the undertone. He wasn’t surprised; he had figured it would be Alvera, ever the man of action, who would chafe first at the waiting.

  Or Tess, he thought with an inward smile. She was one for getting the job done, and now. And she inevitably did it well and with Redstone style.

  Now Josh had infinite patience. He was a firm believer in the maxim that if the opposition was in the process of self-destructing, get out of the way and let them do it. Something Draven himself believed in, for the most part.

  As long as they don’t take you down with them, he thought.

  The problem with waiting, besides being frustrating, was that the more time they had, the more chance there was that these two seemingly inept conspirators would tumble to the fact that the man they were waiting for was already there, right under their noses, and had been for some time. Plus, Draven had the feeling they wouldn’t take kindly to the revelation; no one hated being shown up as a fool worse than a real fool.

  And they were fools; Draven had no doubt of that. What he didn’t know was how much of a fool the person pulling the strings was.

  And he would give a great deal to know what the text message that had set off the tall man—and that he assumed had come from that string-puller—had said.

  “Uh-oh,” Sam said suddenly. Draven wheeled around. The tall blonde was looking out a side window of the Hawk III. “The locals…make that local, singular, has arrived.”

  “Guess the airport manager wasn’t completely blinded by your gorgeousness, Sammy,” Rand said. The two, who looked enough alike to be assumed siblings, had often been partnered and used the resemblance in their work, and as a result had developed a camaraderie that resulted in the kind of teasing and jabbing actual siblings were prone to.

  “Let me deal with this,” Draven said, only able to imagine what the reaction of the lone sheriff’s deputy who had pulled up would be to the sight of the entire Redstone contingent now gathered. “The rest of you stay put.”

  “You going to tell him?” Alvera, whose youthful wariness of official uniforms had never quite left him, asked.

  “I won’t lie to him,” Draven said.

  “Now, there’s a nice evasion,” ex-cop Beck said, but he was smiling.

  Draven pulled out his phone, last used to receive the two crystal-clear photographs of the armed men Tess had managed to send. He’d sent them in turn to Lilith and Liana, who were tracking down who the two men were.

  He called up the name and number he’d picked out of all the ones from the local sheriff’s office that Lilith had called him back with, and dialed it.

  The exchange with the man who had once worn the same military uniform and patch was friendly, brief and effective; James Redstone had had the same effect on people as his brother, his reputation had been well-known, and the mention of his name was all i
t had taken.

  By the time he was done, the deputy outside was on foot, walking around the big plane. Draven headed for the rear hatch they’d opened to enable them quick entrance and exit, yet keep the main door secured. The rear one could be closed in motion if necessary; it was an old habit he’d never tried to break.

  The deputy was young, and in the moments before he put on his official face, Draven caught the look of awed surprise as he stared at the Hawk III. Probably didn’t see planes this size here often, if ever.

  Might be seeing a lot of this one, he thought as he walked across the tarmac, since we may never get it out of here.

  The deputy eyed him warily, but without fear or any move toward his sidearm, Draven noted. He knew he had only a short time to decide how far to trust the man, but he’d made a career out of quickly and accurately assessing people.

  “Gary there,” the deputy, whose name tag labeled him as R. Lockner, said, jabbing a thumb back toward the single airport building, “says you’re Redstone. That true?”

  “It is.” He studied the eyes that looked back at him, saw that wariness still, but no fear, and more important no recklessness or macho bravado. “But then, since I’m sure you’ve run the tail number, you already know that.”

  The flicker of a smile that crossed the young man’s face told him he’d judged well. And the assessing look the deputy gave him told him he was doing some measuring of his own.

  “Heard of you guys. Redstone Security, I mean.”

  Draven liked that he didn’t ask. The intelligence in his eyes told him the man probably knew he wouldn’t answer directly anyway.

  “All good,” the deputy said, “even the bad stuff.”

  It sounded nonsensical, but Draven knew exactly what he meant; Redstone Security’s reputation for getting the job done rested in part on their freedom, and that freedom was envied by many in the much more rigid world of government-controlled law enforcement.

  Lockner’s cell phone rang. Draven nodded. “I’ll wait,” he said, and adopted a relaxed posture with arms folded across his chest to tacitly underline he was no threat to the deputy. Besides, he knew what the call would be.