He’d gone to bed that night in a fuming silence. His voice came back with thundering resonance the next morning. He’d been tugged awake by the sound of Sage talking on the phone, agreeing to a forty-minute interview at the KOMO 4 station that afternoon. By the time he’d barreled downstairs, demanding she tell the fuckers no joy, she’d already confirmed the interview time and hung up. He’d picked up the headset to call the station back, but Sage stood there with folded arms and a tight glare, made worse by a backdrop of unshed tears.
The shitty thing was, he knew exactly what caused those tears. She didn’t give a crap about the interview, but his unexplained tension was clearly eating at her. If he canceled the interview, she’d demand some answers and drill at him for explanations. That was so not going to happen—so the interview would.
He’d stormed back upstairs and called Zeke, who relayed that Rayna received the same call and had pulled the sulk on him as well. They’d both shown up to the station and tried to comfort each other with the “let’s hide the targets in plain sight” logic, but it didn’t prevent the afternoon from being one of the longest of his life. While the girls had fun and the phone lines were jammed with Seattleites clamoring to welcome them home, he and Z had battled to keep tabs on the fifteen semisecure entrances into the building. Missions in Bumfuck, Egypt, had been less stressful.
Today’s little “Sage adventure” was going to be worse.
If he didn’t kill her first.
He locked the truck with a flick of the fob over his shoulder. As he stuffed his keys into his backpack, his cell rang. When he saw it was Z, a fusion of dread and relief hit him. He could almost predict what Zeke’s opening comment would be in response to the frantic text he’d fired off before driving here, but his chest already felt lighter knowing one other person on the planet understood the agony assaulting him right now.
He leaned against the outside wall of the hangar and then pressed his wireless earpiece to answer the call on the third ring. Zeke’s roar filled the line as soon as the line activated.
“Is she fucking nuts?”
Garrett grimaced as he glanced up. On the tarmac forty yards away, a DHC-6 Twin Otter was getting checked out, fueled up, and loaded. Several people in nylon parachute suits strode out to the plane with prechecked jump packs. “Apparently, that answer would be yes.”
As he spoke, he swept his stare around the rest of the area. Goddamnit. The Fort Lewis airfield backed right up to several of the McChord Air Force Base tarmacs, making this area one giant snatch-and-go opportunity for any of King’s minions who still knew the base and could get around the security gates in their sleep.
“How the hell did she slip out on you?”
“I took a shower,” he responded. “So sue me.” Hell, he felt like doing much worse than that to himself already. “I thought it was okay. I left her on the couch, half dozing under a blanket and watching a Friends marathon.”
Z made a gagging sound. “Friends. Shit.”
“Uh, yeah. Needless to say, she knew I’d linger in the rain locker.”
“And the second you were under the spray, she left.” His friend blew out a harsh but sympathetic breath. “But she left a note too? I don’t get it.”
Even forming the answer to that made Garrett’s gut feel like a chunk of the concrete under his boots. “The note told me nothing except she was safe and not to worry.”
“Huh?”
“The first ten pages of the Airborne Jump School study guide, dropped in the middle of the driveway, told me something different.”
His buddy chuffed. “Somebody was in a hurry to get into somebody else’s car.”
“Yep.” He emphasized the last of it with a pop of fury.
“And something tells me you know who volunteered for shuttle service.”
“Ditto on that affirmative.” It was all he had to say. He knew Z would figure out the rest. He could practically hear the gears of the guy’s mind at work over the phone.
“Yo, Hawk?”
“Yeah?”
“Don’t kill Archer.”
“Is that an absolute order?”
“He knows four languages, and he’s one of the best heads on the team for negotiating.”
“How nice. I don’t negotiate.”
“You don’t say.”
His friend’s knowing mutter got phased out as Garrett activated the skills he was good at. Z often joked about it being good his family name invoked a bird that saw the world ten times sharper than a human, complete with invisible feathers that stood up when an enemy was near. That was the part that worried him now. His feathers were suddenly at full ceremony salute, as if something wasn’t right about the air around here. About the people around here.
Keeping Z on the line, he tucked his head around the corner. After docking his sunglasses atop his head, he swept his gaze through every nook and crevice in the cavernous building. A crew was working on the Chinook chopper that served as the workhorse for the Reserve Aviation unit in supporting local Ranger troops in search-and-rescue operations. Everyone seemed to know their role. Plenty of smack talk flew while an iPod screamed a Nine Inch Nails song. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. In spite of the way NIN always relaxed him, a frustrated snort peeled loose from his throat.
Wait.
Bastard. There he was!
A machinist lingered near one of the work benches, only that was all he seemed to be doing. Garrett watched the guy rearrange a tray of wrenches three times in a row. The soldier’s uniform looked three sizes too big, and his boots didn’t match the regulation eight-inchers worn by the other techs. He was plenty alert, however. His constant glances around the area, made furtively from beneath his cap, were long enough to qualify as sneaky stares. Or outright infiltration.
The intuition became certainty when Garrett observed the biggest object of the guy’s attention.
Sage stood just outside the hangar, laughing at another joke made by Ethan Archer.
Jealousy screamed for entrance to his brain, but Garrett shoved the feeling aside. There was no time to be chums with the hulking green emotional monster. Protecting Sage was more important than kicking someone’s face in for charming her, though this didn’t mean he deleted Archer off his to-do list. Not by a screaming long shot.
“Zeke.”
“What?”
His friend’s voice, weighted with a quarry of stony meaning, conveyed that he’d heard the change in Garrett’s tone. Not for the first time today, Garrett was deeply grateful that the man knew him so well.
“There’s a face in this place that isn’t saying Go Army to me, man.”
“What is it saying?”
“All the King’s men.”
“Fuck. I had a feeling, when you didn’t speak up for a few seconds…”
“Damn glad you’re turning part hawk too.”
“He’s none of the minions we got in Thailand, though.”
“He wouldn’t be. Only King was extradited, and the bastard’s in solitary now at FDC, thank fuck.”
“Well, someone’s still taking orders from him. Every instinct I’ve got doesn’t trust this guy, especially the way he’s sizing up Sage.”
“Can you get a shot of his face on your cell?”
“Working on it.” He scooted around the perimeter of the hangar, hanging in shadows whenever he could. “Stand by.”
He caught a lucky break when one of the machinists called to the “soldier” from his perch on a ladder next to the copter’s rear rotor. The tech needed a special wrench from the tray right in front of the guy. Sneaky Boy was forced to come out of his corner. As he lifted the tool to the tech, Garrett captured three decent shots of his features. Though the asshat didn’t get the wardrobe right, he was spot-on with the guise from the neck up. He was clean-shaven, and beneath his work cap his haircut looked like a flawless high-and-tight.
“Got ’em,” Zeke confirmed less than two minutes later. “I’ll see what I can find out.”
“Thanks.” Garrett’s gaze swung outside again. Sage was still there and laughing with Archer. Six other guys from the team ambled over to join them. She greeted them with that stunning smile of hers, bouncing a little on her toes, adorable and impish even in her one-piece yellow-and-black jumpsuit. Archer must’ve scrounged that up from somewhere as a cute little gift, damn him.
She was beautiful. Golden. Glowing. Happy. She hadn’t looked like that since the moment he’d cut off her gag in the jungle, half a world away. The realization twisted through him like a poison vine from that jungle, turning his heart just as deep and deadly a shade of green.