Shrugging, she said, “I go where Artemis sends me. I was fine with it, and there weren’t any problems.” She smiled a little and held up her arm. “I got a really good tan out of it, too.”
“You haven’t changed a bit,” he murmured wryly, shaking his head, giving her a crooked smile.
“No, I probably haven’t,” she agreed, seeing that boyish look on his face for just a moment. She lapped up the amusement in his eyes and felt as if Dan were giving her a thumb’s up—that he approved of her just the way she was.
CHAPTER 4
Sloan looked pensive as she stood in the kitchen gazing at the counter and sink. There was so much he wanted to blurt out to her. To try and explain. But it was all balled up inside of him. He knew he deserved no compassion from her. After all, he’d been the one to walk out on her, not vice-versa.
She was excruciatingly beautiful to him. Just having her nearby made him feel different. His life was one gray day after another, and she was like blinding sunlight suddenly walking back into his life. Of all the women in his life, Sloan stood out. She could be herself. She wasn’t coy. She didn’t play games. There was a refreshing emotional honesty to her that Dan never encountered in any other woman he’d had a relationship with. He stood near the counter, watching her check out her meager kitchen.
“I knew you were coming, so I went down to the open-air market yesterday and bought you some fruits, vegetables, and meat.” He motioned toward the refrigerator. “Not sure what you like, but you’ll probably find something in there that’s edible.”
She turned toward Dan, he seemed so tentative and unsure right now, which wasn’t like him. Giving him a grateful look, she walked to the fridge and opened the door, leaning down to get a momentary relief of cold air. There were bottled juices, salad greens, fruits, and even a bag of cereal that looked like oats to her. Opening the small freezer at the top, she saw two chickens in plastic bags. Her heart turned with warmth over his thoughtfulness to take care of her. Closing it, she said, “I’ll pay you back for whatever it cost.”
“Don’t worry about it,” he said, stuffing his hands into his pockets. “Just didn’t want you arriving hungry and with no food around.” He looked toward the large window in the living room with a view of the airport in the distance. “It’s not like there’s a grocery store you can run down to on the corner and pick up something.”
She pulled out a bottle of pink guava juice. “Want some?” She held it up in his direction. “Come sit with me at the kitchen table, and we’ll talk?”
“Sure.” He retrieved two clean glasses from a cabinet above the sink.
“Any ice in here?”
“Yeah,” he said, “but I just filled the trays before I left to pick you up, so they won’t be frozen yet.”
“That’s okay,” she murmured. She poured the juice into the glasses and sat down. It was so tough to keep her emotions at bay with him.
Taking a sip, she said, “Wyatt wanted me to go over the details of this mission with you. I know he talked to you some already on the sat phone.”
Nodding, Dan absorbed Sloan’s closeness. “I figured you’d lay out the details.”
“Did Wyatt discuss Sharan’s hitman? Fahd Ansari?”
“No, he didn’t.”
In as few words as possible, Sloan painted a full picture of Ansari. “I’m here undercover, Dan. I’ll be your medical assistant. That won’t raise suspicion because part of your flight duties is to take medical groups into the villages everywhere that Delos has a charity.”
“You were an 18 Delta corpsman. What’s your medical designation now that you’re out of the Army?”
“I’m a licensed paramedic now,” she said.
“You were always a great medic,” he said, his voice turning low and thick with memory. He wanted to reach out and touch those long, spare hands of hers, but stopped himself. Her eyes grew thoughtful, a soft smile tugging at her lips.
“I love what I do. It’s a nice feeling to be able to take away someone’s suffering and replace it with comfort and less pain.”
Dan had a direct taste of her bedside manner at the crash site, and those days afterward. He frowned, folding his hands in front of him because if he didn’t, he was going to reach out and connect with her fingers. Dan knew she wouldn’t want to go there. He had no hope there was anything left between them. “When your captain took me and Andy into the caves, I didn’t know where the hell I was.”
“You’d lost a lot of blood, Dan,” she said. “You were in shock, you’d just been shot, and you were in a lot of pain.”
“You were so damned cool, calm, and collected through it all, Sloan. That amazed me. I didn’t understand how anyone could behave like that.”
Her mouth curved faintly, and she looked away, her throat tightening. “I think being a medic, you have to realize that a quiet voice can still be heard through the blast of war going on around you.”
“I sure heard yours,” he said, managing to give her a grateful look. “I didn’t realize how bad off I was until you and the other guys each gave me a pint of blood.”
“I remember that,” she said, her voice turning wistful. “I knew you’d lost at least three pints. We’d been taught how to make a field blood transfusion, and once we found a cave area where we wouldn’t be spotted by the Taliban, I put it into motion.”
“You were really something that night,” he murmured, searching her face. “I’ll never forget it. It was the only thing good about it: you. I didn’t know it was your team we were supposed to pick up. I had no idea where you were out there in the Hindu Kush.”
“You couldn’t know,” Sloan said, “we were on a black-ops mission. The last I saw of you had been three weeks earlier at Bagram. I never knew where we’d be assigned.”
“Yeah, we lived in a world of secrets, didn’t we?” He gave her a wry glance.
“We each led a secret life when we were in the Army,” she agreed. “And speaking of secrets? What can you tell me about the security around your Delos helicopter in that hangar? Is it secure? Can Ansari get in there to plant a bomb somewhere on it?”
“Security is lax at best here in Sudan.”
“What about your mechanics? Are they trustworthy? Or could they be bought off by Ansari?”
“Anything is possible,” Dan said, opening his hand. “I have two really good mechanics. They’re older men who were in the Sudanese air force until they retired. They have families to feed, and I pay a good salary. Ansari could try to convince them to put a bomb on board, but I don’t think it’s likely.”
“Why?”
“Because they’re loyal to me. I pay them three times the amount of money other mechs at the airport are making. Their families are well off, and they’re sending their children to Red Sea University here in Port Sudan. If Ansari tried to talk them into that, their salaries would dry up after the helo was destroyed. They’d be out of a job.”
“That’s a good argument,” Sloan said, thoughtful. “What’s the possibility of Ansari sneaking into the hangar and putting a bomb on the helo without anyone around?”
“There’s loose security at the airport,” Dan said with a shake of his head. “A guard goes around in a vehicle every thirty minutes, driving past all the hangars that are around the facility. It’s not much, and Ansari could jimmie a lock and get inside my hangar.”
“So, how do we deal with this, Dan?”
“I do a pre-flight walk around on the helo before I ever get into the pilot’s seat. I’ll just be looking more closely than usual knowing this.” He liked that she said “we.” Hope threaded through him. There was a solid commitment in Sloan’s expression, and he heard it in her voice as well. If only there could be.
“Can Ansari get inside the Chinook?”
“No. It’s locked up.”
“Who has the keys to it?”
“Me and my lead mech.”