The lights blink. Because, of course, the bastards have my keys.
Their heads duck into the vehicle. For a few minutes, they rifle through the interior.
Meathead one taps his hand on the roof and says, “Let’s roll. We’ll catch her later.”
Not if I can help it.
They won’t ever see me again.
I sink deeper behind the tree and pray that I’m out of sight. My teeth are chattering, my heart is still in overdrive. A few seconds later headlights illuminate a path near me.
The driver pulls out very slowly.
The passenger’s face is a scary shadow, half lit in the truck as he scans the area. Looking for me.
A fresh wave of terror hits me. These are the men who may have killed my brother and his girlfriend.
And these menwillkill me if I can’t get the upper hand.
Chapter Thirty-Three
COLE
I shove a hand into my hair and look around. Plush leather. Gleaming wood. Perfect lighting. The chartered plane would be nice, if I gave a fuck.
Honestly, you could have strapped me to a missile if the damn thing could have gotten me to Virginia faster.
Only one thing matters—seeing Sierra safe with my own two eyes.
Simona watches me as I get up for the fifth time in the last hour. “You’re making me tired,” she mutters.
I cut her a dose of side eye. “Take a nap.”
She raises a brow and twists her lips to the side. If Simona’s anything, she’s a hardass. “I don’t need a nap. But someone does.” Her gaze falls back to the gun magazine in her hands as she curls her legs beneath her in the chair, effectively dismissing me.
This flight needs to end.
Now.
After a lap down the aisle and back, I land in the seat again,as agitated as I felt the time I got fire ants in my uniform during a field training exercise. Only this time, ditching my clothes would do nada to fix the problem.
For lack of anything else to do, I watch Simona casually flipping through the pages of ads for pistols and holsters. She glances up, pinning me with her ice-blue eyes.
“How’d you meet her?”
Way to kick a man while he’s down.
My frown deepens as I recall the day I met the woman who would be the best and worst thing that’s ever happened to my heart.
“It was an Air Force deployment briefing. She walked in…” I let out a slow breath. “Felt like a thousand pound bull had hit me square in the gut.”
She motions her hand for me to go on.
“Of course, it was taboo. She was an officer. I was enlisted. So we danced around the subject for a month until I got my discharge papers. I didn’t want to take a chance of wrecking her career with fraternization. And since I was close to the end of my enlistment, I decided to wait until I got out ”
In her signature move, she raises one very narrow, perfectly tweezed brow. “Hm.”
Turning to the window, I let the memories of that day loose inside my head. “Sierra was as beautiful as any model, even in her plain Air Force uniform. Confident. Totally in her element. And those eyes… the most amazing shade of smokey blue. The second she turned them on me, something hard inside of me had evaporated. I wanted her. Full stop. Nothing was going to keep me from having her.”