by Cherry Adair
The heat of his arm against hers as he pulled his own belt low across his lap, made River realize how cold her skin was. Nerves. It certainly wasn't cold. Hell, even in the middle of the night, the temperature had to be in the eighties.
His elbow brushed her shoulder as he put the noise cancelling headgear over his own ears. Beneath her lashes, as she pretended to fiddle with the webbed belt across her lap, she observed Ash's hands, which he placed on his slightly spread knees. He had beautiful hands, despite a couple of scars and right now, dried mud. She wanted to take his hand and thread her fingers through his. She wanted to lean her head on his arm, so close beside her, and close her eyes.
She wanted him to say a lot of stupid promises he wouldn't mean and wouldn't keep. It was better this way. A clean break.
She envisioned them standing three feet apart on the tarmac, the plane's engine revving impatiently as they said awkward goodbyes. Because, honestly how could it not be uncomfortable? Thanks for the great sex. Awesome sex actually.
"Brace yourself," Ash shouted, then said a low, "Fuck it," and shifted to wrap both arms around her, dragging her half way across his body, surrounding her like a steel cage, one large hand covering the back of her head.
Despite the belt still harnessing her, cutting off her circulation, River wasn't about to complain as she slid her arms around his waist. Hanging onto the back of his shirt with both hands, she pressed her face to his broad chest. He smelled of fresh sweat, mud, and a faint trace of honey. Squeezing her eyes shut, she buried her nose against the hard beating of his heart and the dried mud on his chest.
#
"Brace!" he shouted over her head. "Blast wave incoming. Brace. Brace. Brace!"
The explosion was his best yet. E-1x was a HE—a high-order explosive. HE detonated to produce defining supersonic over-pressurized shock waves. The jarring force hit the body of the Apache with the force of a high-speed freight train going at supersonic speed. Bam.
Up. Down. Around, sideways, and vertical the bird tumbled in the fiery sky while the passengers and crew held on for dear life.
Spectacularly large, impressively bright, deafeningly loud. Energy released from the explosion radiated outward from the mountain in all directions, at speeds of up to nine kilometers per second. The burst of light flashed and wavered behind his closed lids, and even with the noise-cancelling headset, the supersonic blast hurt his eardrums.
The chopper rocked and rolled, pitching as if on an angry sea. The armor plating might help. Some. Only if they put enough distance between themselves and the epicenter of the explosion. If they were too fucking close, nothing would save them.
Not. A. Damned. Fucking. Thing.
His arms clamped so tightly around River, he was afraid he'd break her ribs. It would be the least of her problems; since there was a damned good chance the concussive blast would knock them out of the fucking sky or melt their guts to soup.
With every hard knock of his heart, Daklin waited for the velocity of the shock wave to impart more energy than the object it passed through, be it a solid concrete wall, or their fucking vital organs.
Were they out of reach? He'd soon know if his body compressed and he was dead. He had no worries for himself, but he definitely had them for her.
Death by his own lethal explosion was his chosen path. In no lifetime would he have taken this route if he’d have known the blast would kill her too. Fuck it all to hell and back.
It would have been one hell of a way to die. Yet River, smaller, lighter, more fucking vulnerable, would die first. He’d be aware of her dying. Fate was playing the cruelest of tricks, that he would, once again in his sorry life, know the gut- wrenching pain that came with heartbreak, grief, and regret.
As the blast wave passed over them or near enough to impact them, it would destroy everything. The supersonic wall of air would leave a near vacuum in its wake. Like the sonic wave created by an atomic bomb, it would shatter everything and leave nothing behind. He counted off the seconds before their bodies became severely compressed, followed almost immediately by an equally massive opposing depressurizing force. They were about to become human pancakes or, alternatively, human confetti.
Were they in the triple point? The mach stem formation would occur when the blast wave reflected off the ground and the reflection caught up with the original shock front, creating a high-pressure zone that extended from the ground up to the triple point at the edge of the blast wave.
One.
So fucking far, so good. They weren’t pancakes. Yet.
Two.
The explosion wasn't over just yet. Air immediately rushed in to fill the atmospheric void left behind by the blast wave, pulling careening debris and objects past the open door of the chopper and back toward the source of the explosion. The annihilated mountain range.
Three.
Even strapped in, Daklin's body lifted and twisted as the wind tried to rip River from his arms, and tear him from his seat. Her face was pressed against his chest, her arms wrapped as tightly around him as his were around her.
Four.
Barotrauma could destroy any air filled organs—lungs, ears, stomach—and yank at joints and ligaments where tissues of different densities met. Hemorrhaging. Organ rupture. The effects of an explosion of this magnitude on the human body would force bodily fluids into the brain and skull.
Jesus. Daklin's arms crushed River's slender bones against his chest.
Five.
Were they far enough away to avoid the brunt of it? The waves would dissipate as they traveled. The only thing that could protect them from the shock waves was distance.
Her teeth bit into his shoulder as he pressed her head against him. No up. No down. It was like being tossed around inside a cement mixer as the world spun and twisted inside the sun. The chopper bounced on air. Hard.
With River held in a death grip in his arms, Daklin buried his face against her hair. Don’t die. Don't die. Don't fucking die.
"Clear," he heard the pilot say. The chopper dropped a jarring two hundred feet before it evened out. Daklin's arms tightened around River. He'd loosened his harness so that he could hold onto her through the turbulence. Choking clouds of dust and debris swirled around inside the chopper. They all wore their masks pulled up like bandits. Daklin adjusted River's mask so it came just under her beautiful eyes. His heart clenched with profound relief that they'd made it. She'd made it. They were fortunate the blast hadn't liquefied them. Extremely fucking fortunate. "Everyone have solid organs and all their teeth?" Daklin asked through his comm, as he ran his hand over the back of River's head, then lifted the headset from her ears.
"Okay?" he asked.
Eyes dazed, she raised her head and nodded.
He wasn't letting go. Not until he absolutely had to. "ETA?" he asked into his comm. "Seven minutes."
"Make it five. Give me a visual." He needed to see his handiwork.
The chopper turned, angling to give him a view of the explosion site. Through billowing brown smoke, fragmented debris, and thick dust, he observed a glowing, flat plain. It was a new geological feature. Hours earlier, the eight-thousand-foot-high Qhapaq Mountain peak had shadowed the valley. For miles beneath them, as far as he could see, towers of red and orange flame shot into the dark night sky. The air vibrated as another pocket of E-1x exploded, followed in quick succession by a half dozen more explosions from deep within the earth; the gift that kept on giving.
"Fucking A." Feeling the satisfaction of a job well done, he was also painfully aware that his biggest misstep was gripping his shirt, trusting him to keep her safe. He might not have gotten her killed as he'd done Josh, but by God, he seemed to have done just about everything he could to keep her in the fucking line of fire.
Fail. Fail. Fucking epic fail. It wouldn't be fair to voice any of his hopes and desires. Giving voice to what was in his heart would put her in the untenable position of telling him the party was over and that she wanted nothing more to do with h
is sorry self. What bright, beautiful woman in her right mind would want a broken alcoholic with a dubious future?
His chest ached with pending loss as he brushed his lips over her hair. He took one more satisfied look at his masterpiece of sharp explosions, billowing flames, and annihilation before the chopper peeled away. The pride he felt at the destruction was a reminder that there was always collateral damage, no matter how hard he tried to mitigate it. It was a sharp reminder that he shouldn't form attachments to anything that could be destroyed by his actions.
Josh.
River.
"We're done here," he said into his lip mic. "Head out." The helicopter swooped in a wide circle, flying through the dust-choked darkness toward Abad.
#
Even though the motion indicated they'd straightened out, River still kept her eyes squeezed shut against the stinging debris swirling around inside the helicopter. It was one hell of a way to get a freaking face peel.
The viselike grip of Ash's arms was all but cutting off her circulation, and she shifted to get a little more breathing room from his implacably steely grip. Instead of releasing her, his arms tightened. Considering the air quality, breathing was highly overrated, anyway.
“Clear in a minute. Keep your eyes closed."
River forced her clenched muscles to relax against the hard wall of Ash's chest. Despite the mask over her nose and mouth, and her face pressed against the solid column of his throat, she coughed against the toxic swirling mix of thick dust and hot, gritty sand. Everyone on board had the same problem. Coughing and hacking, their lungs being scoured from the inside. Still, there were whoops of triumph as the operatives got a look at their handiwork.
Ears ringing, chest aching, she gripped the back of Ash's shirt as the helicopter bounced on heated air.
It wasn't just the people of Los Santos who'd had their lives irreversibly changed. The past few days had irrevocably changed hers, too, so much, that now she couldn’t imagine walking away from him and never seeing him again.
But did that feeling, that certainty that she needed to see him again, mean they had a future? If they did, what, if anything, could that future hold? A few nights together? No. Not enough. More than that? Zero likelihood. One look at him as he coolly and with great interest surveyed the destruction below them had given her all the information she needed to answer her question.
He was his job.
And once she was no longer connected to this job, she would no longer be connected to him. Their time together had been too short, too full of issues, for him to form the kind of bond she'd instantly felt for him. That visceral reaction had been quick and a first for her. There was no need to put him in the uncomfortable position of fending off her unwanted declarations of love. Dear God. River jerked in his hold.
She was in love with this tough, battle-scarred warrior who had several massive freaking chips on his shoulders.
The realization was so huge, that she was still reeling from it when the helicopter landed with a light thump some time later. Ash’s arms tightened around her briefly, before he released her. The separation pulled at a level deeper than her skin, leaving River bereft and filled with a combination of sadness and elation. Sadness that it was almost time for them to go their separate ways, elation that they were at least alive to walk away from each other unscathed. Or, for her part, unscathed physically.
Her foolish heart, another matter altogether, was shattered by what she knew was coming. By the hard set of his jaw, and the steely determination in his eyes, he appeared unaffected by their apocalyptic surroundings.
Unaffected by her.
Tall, broad, and filthy, Ash looked like the fallen angel she'd first thought him to be. River drank him in, committing to memory his broad shoulders, the tilt of his head, the way his dark hair spiked as he'd tried to get the muddy strands off his face. The liquid Mediterranean blue of his eyes told her absolutely nothing.
Asher Daklin was the whole package. Her heart physically ached with wanting him. Not just wanting him physically, which was a given, but wanting him.
Stay.
The word repeated, over and over in her head, turning the chopchopchop of the helicopter blades into a plea of Stay. Stay. Stay.
Want me as much as I want you. If you did, you’d stay.
Of course, he wouldn't. To her, the past few days were indelibly imprinted on her synapses, events etched for life upon her heart, mind, and soul. To him, this had merely been an interlude while he did his job. She’d been an enjoyable bonus, nothing more.
Drawing in a shallow breath, she choked on the hot, clogged air. The night sky glowed an eerie orange as showers of burning embers swirled from the sky like rain.
Damned if she'd waste the last few precious moments with Ash moping for the unattainable. River unsnapped the harness, and got unsteadily to her feet as he did the same. A thousand questions and pleas fluttered inside her like a swarm of bees. Knowing how useless it would be to voice any of them, especially now, the words remained an unyielding, unsaid buzz within her. "Okay to say goodbye to my brother?"
Coughing, Ash readjusted her face mask, then his own. "Wait till we're on the tarmac. You can speak to him then. Wheels up ASAP, the fires are burning this way."
Without a door covering the wide opening, River could look directly over the leaping flames, and realized just how close those fires were. Probably less than two miles away, and eating trees at a furious rate. She'd never seen a fire this big, nor been close enough to a wildfire to feel its scalding heat on her skin. They'd gone from one intense situation to the next with barely a breath drawn in between. Surges of adrenaline and erratic heartbeats were becoming her new norm. She wondered briefly how she'd adjust to sitting at her drawing board listening to the Mamas and Papas once she got home.
The stink of burning wood, wet vegetation, and the unpleasantly sweet smell of burning flesh permeated the air. The sky rained fire. Narrowing her eyes against the acrid smoke, River looked out over fiery chaos. "Can the pilots take off with zero visibility like this?"
"Ours can." A blast of blistering air surrounded them as soon as they cleared the shelter of the helicopter. God, she'd stepped straight into the depths of Hell. The thick choking smoke made her eyes and nose water, despite the mask. The world around them was an inferno, a living, breathing blaze destroying everything in its path.
As everyone disembarked, they ran. More people joined them on the runway, presumably Ash's men who'd been waiting in Abad. The airstrip was in the middle of nowhere. No buildings visible, only the large helicopter behind them, and the white shimmer of two sleek jets parked, ready to take off midway down the runway. The aircraft and humans were right in the middle of a ring of fast approaching fire.
Grabbing her upper arm in a death grip, almost cutting off her circulation, Ash yelled, "Faster!" over the snap crackle and pop of the leaping flames.
Running flat out, he pulled, pushed and half-carried her toward the planes as loud explosions rent the air. Ear- shattering blasts reverberated as the earth was torn apart from the inside.
If they made it out of there, it would be a freaking miracle.
River kept up despite Ash's longer strides. Suddenly he slammed his forearm across her chest, stopping her mid-stride. It was like crashing into a solid brick wall.
"Shit."
Shit indeed. She saw, felt and heard the same thing he did. There was a massive roar and a super-heated blast of air as one of the planes three hundred yards away burst into flame, spewing chunks of metal and debris high into the air, dangerously close to the people on the tarmac.
Wrapping his arm around her waist, Ash switched direction and propelled her toward the second plane. As embers rained down on them, he constantly brushed them off her hair and face. "Delta and Echo teams, take the chopper. The rest of you with me. Go, for fucksake.
Men, black silhouetted against orange and gold, reversed to race back to the helicopter.
Ahead, all she saw of
Oliver was his pale hair amongst the men in black surrounding him as they ran up the steps of the second plane. Several groups converged to board the same plane as her brother.
Ash shoved her ahead of him, catching her as she stumbled up the steep steps to the plane. "Close the hatch," he instructed Ram, who waited for them. "Wheels up," he said into his comm. Ram pulled the door shut, sealing them inside. "Push it." Powerful engines vibrated beneath her feet, ready to take off. Thank God.
The interior of the private jet was air-conditioned, furnished with plush creams and tans, and as far from the noisy, dirty, explosion-marked helicopter as transportation could possibly be. Ash nudged her to the back of the plane as River took several tentative breaths.
Her lungs protested, but she kept breathing in the clean air as a powerful ventilation system filtered out the smoke and particles that had come inside with them.
"Go," he ordered. The plane taxied down the runway even as people found their seats.
The plane seated about twenty comfortably. Four wide seats faced each other in groups on either side of the aisle.
River dropped into the seat Ash indicated, and he sat beside her. When she fumbled with clumsy fingers to fasten her seat belt, he did it for her. Quick, efficient. Then he did his own.
The take-off was shockingly fast, throwing her back against her seat as the powerful engines catapulted them into the sky above the inferno. She was not sorry to see the last of Los Santos, or Cosio. Now, if only her heart would stop beating in fight or flight mode, she’d be able to draw a normal breath.
Ash stood, grabbing a couple of bottles of water from a compartment in the bulkhead, twisting off the top of one, then handing it to her. He drank his own in two gulps.
Barely pausing between swallows, River finished the entire bottle, then wiped her chin as he handed her a second. The membranes in her throat felt parched and it actually hurt to swallow. She felt better after downing the second bottle. "Thanks, I needed that."
