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Chapter Four
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She was going to make him wait for the answer.
And dammit, he was going to let her.
For five seconds. Ten. Fifteen. Seconds they didn’t have. Time they couldn’t afford. But he let the little rebel have them because she fucking blew him away, sitting there as serene as a queen even while smoke coated the sky behind them. Lots of smoke. The very real evidence of what could have been her very real death. The comprehension hadn’t escaped her—he saw evidence of that in the tremble of her fingertips and the brightness in her eyes—she simply chose not to let it daunt her. She decided to reach for courage, even if it meant dragging herself from the pit of fear.
He began to understand why Craig Nichols tapped her for this job.
Even if she maddened the hell out of him while doing it.
Even if she tempted him to tear the remaining spikes of his hair out as she jogged up her chin then stated, “It was me. And I’d do it again in a heartbeat.”
John’s nostrils flared. He knew that because he consciously made them do so. He had to borrow sanity in the form of oxygen, to prevent himself from telling the vice president of the fucking country that the “heartbeat” she referenced might have been her last. Actually, that part was fine. It was the other phrases he longed to jab in with it—like “idiot call” and “damn fool” and “what the hell were you thinking” that stopped him, fuming and flaring—
Up to the second his ear was blasted with furious sound.
“Home base to Dragon. Home base to Dragon. Fuck. Tell me you hear this!”
He slammed the comm link so hard his ear drum was likely in shards, but his brain thanked him. No more of Sol’s berserk blaring.
“Dragon here. Go ahead.” No sense in adding to the fireworks. He’d had enough of those today—to the point that even squeezing his eyes shut couldn’t erase the image of the item flying from the blast at Sam and him, landing with a sick clink at their feet. They’d both skidded to a stop, hoping for the impossible…
It had been Donald’s badge. Fried so badly around the edges, it was still smoking.
Yeah. The impossible.
Fuck.
Donald.
He didn’t even know the guy’s last name. Couldn’t tell Wrightman which form to look up, to contact the people who’d come after Donald’s potato chip of a badge and some goddamn answers. Something other than “he was a hero, and he died serving his country”.
Hadhe?
What the hell purpose had that just served?
What the hell was that?
His teeth locked harder, as he prepared himself for the same demand from Sol Wrightman.
Somebody, somewhere, had to have briefed the man already. Using an internal reverse clock honed from years of experience, Franz backtracked the timeline. It felt like fifteen seconds since the explosion, but it had been more like fifteen minutes. Nine hundred seconds. Precious time. More than ample for word to reach the guy in charge of the VP’s security detail.
Translation: in charge of keeping Tracy Rhodes alive.
A goal he’d gotten pitifully sloppy on.
No.
An objective he’d completely kicked to the curb—for the sake of what her smile could do for his dick.
So yeah, he braced himself for the shit storm.
For the command to deliver her sassy ass back to Wrightman, then get his sorry one on a plane back home.
For the confirmation that maybe the brass up in the Army Head Shed were right all along.
