Page 6 of The Kings of Kearny

“That doesn’t explain your leg,” he all but purred into my ear.

I took a deep breath. “Our equipment broke loose during the crash. My leg got pinned as I was trying to jump clear. It took four of my crewmates to free me. They almost burned to death in the process.”

“The pilot?” he asked.

“It wasn’t a flat road,” I said. “The nose caved after we hit. He was crushed.”

Those were the facts. Straightforward, no-nonsense, clinical. It was the standard story I told. If I didn’t let myself think about it, sometimes that’s all it was. Sometimes I didn’t see the ground rushing up at us through the open bay doors. I didn’t feel our youngest crewmate squeezing my hand for dear life. I forgot how scared I was when she and I were ripped apart during that first jarring impact. I didn’t hear the metal screaming over dirt and rocks or the wrenching groan of steel as it buckled under an immense pressure it was never designed to take. I didn’t feel my body broken under an impossible weight. Hear my crewmates screaming over me as I dipped in and out of consciousness. Feel the unbearable heat of the nearby flames or my terror of being left behind and burned alive.

“I remember that crash,” Jakob said. “I was maybe fifty miles away.”

A swell of surprise put a swift end to the tears that threatened. He’d been there? And near enough that he might have seen our plane if he’d looked up at the right time?

It was bizarre to think that he was in the same place as me on the worst day of my life, and yet it made me feel even closer to him somehow, our intimacy losing its forced edge and turning into something far more dangerous.

I didn’t ask him where exactly he’d been or what he’d been doing on the outskirts of Kolomyya. The answers might be classified, which meant we’d both go to jail if he told me, and I didn’t relish the idea of spending the rest of my days in Leavenworth.

He squeezed my hip again, oh so gently, and stepped back. “I’m sorry that happened to you.”

My head swam. Maybe he wasn’t an alpha douche after all. Maybe I was the asshole for judging him too soon.

“Thanks,” I said.

“Ready to go up?”

I nodded, still trying to get my shit together.

He led me to the back door of a small brownstone. We were in an older section of downtown where the buildings ran into each other like row houses and gentrification had yet to move in.

“How many flights of stairs?” I asked.

He held the door open for me, letting me go first. “Two.”

I looked up at the first set and sighed. I could go down stairs just fine, but going up could be a struggle sometimes, like right now when I was already tired and my entire leg throbbed with sharp flashes of pain.

Jakob stayed behind me, letting me take the lead and set our pace. I put my left foot on the bottom step, took a deep breath, and started the climb. My hip joint protested. My lower leg ached like one giant shin splint. The bones of my knee felt like they were grinding to dust against the metal that held them in place. I grit my jaw and kept going, hand on the rail to help me push off.

After what felt like a small eternity, we made it to the final landing. I paused outside Jakob’s door and caught my breath. There better be one hell of a comfortable couch on the other side of this.

“Please tell me you have aspirin,” I said.

Jakob slipped past me and slid his key into the lock. Or he tried to. At the slight press of his hand, the door opened with awhoosh.I looked down and saw the now obvious signs of forced entry.

So did Jakob. He spun away from the doorway, pulling a gun from inside his jacket. I yanked mine free at the same time, dropping my handbag to the floor beside me. Thanks to our military training, we held our weapons in identical fashion: muzzle turned toward the floor, right hand around the grip stock, left hand cupped underneath, pointer finger along the barrel.

Our eyes met across the divide. He let go with his left hand and made some weird gestures at me.

“I don’t speak Army,” I whispered.

He sent me an unreadable look and squatted down, ready to take point. Most people holding a gun aim at chest height by default. If Jakob went in lower, he had a better chance of catching whoever was inside off guard. The problem was, there weren’t any lights on. Darkness radiated out of the maw of the apartment like a beast waiting to bite.

I signaled for Jakob to wait a second and then pulled my phone from my purse. Fingers shaking, I hit the flashlight button, ground my teeth against the pain of crouching down, and whipped the phone across his floor. It spun over the hardwood, lighting up the room like a disco ball. Jakob waited half a second and ducked around the corner, gun aimed. When he didn’t immediately fire or jump back into the hallway, I assumed no one was inside.

He rose from his crouch. “Clear.”

I let out a shaky breath and lowered my gun.

“Hi, Daniel,” Jakob said.

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