Page 57 of Operation Rescue
But what Rafe said kicked it into overdrive.
“Head for Foxworth headquarters,” he ordered. “We just got something from Walker’s contact at the local sheriff’s office we need you to look at.”
There was enough of an edge in his voice, and he ended the call so abruptly she looked at Blaine for explanation. But he was already moving, clearly reacting to that tone of command in the former sniper’s voice.
And the next thing she knew they were running.
Chapter 29
If nothing else, the way Erin was driving—fast, chance-taking, and on the edge of reckless—would have told him how wound up she was. Usually she was smooth, careful and polite. He used to joke about how she’d spoiled him, that passengering with anyone else made him carsick. With her he could read a book if he wanted to.
Says the man who can autorotate without getting airsick.
Her usual rejoinder to that joke rang in his head now. That she had that ammo was his own fault, since he’d made the mistake of letting her see a video of what could have been an ugly crash when his engine began to misfire at about a mile up and he’d had to make the dive.
He’d explained as she’d watched, how when the aircraft stopped powering the rotor’s spin, you had to use the airflow itself, from a steep dive, to keep it turning and maintain some kind of control.
“Then at the last minute you flare up, to get the skids under you again, and you’re down.”
He remembered glancing at her expression then and trying to lighten it by joking about the heavy jolt. It didn’t work. She’d just gone from staring at the screen to staring at him.
“It’s just something you learn,” he’d said. “Like knowing that if you’re driving on ice and you start to skid, you turn in the direction of the skid.”
“I have a better idea. When it’s icy, stay off the road.”
“And it’s a good idea,” he’d agreed. “It’s just that the world doesn’t always cooperate.”
He was yanked back to the present when she cut someone off and earned an angry sounding of the horn and an obscene gesture. He wasn’t sure if the jolt he felt was that or the last part of that memory that had been going through his mind. The ever-vivid image of her holding his gaze and saying softly, “Then it’s a good thing there are men like you to make up for that.”
She’d meant it then, he knew she had. Her voice had rung with the sincerity of it. Up until that day when the crash had come. No autorotation that day, because there’d been no rotor left to spin. They’d gone down like the nearly ten tons of bricks they essentially were without that big blade.
His life had nearly ended that day.
Life as he’d known it ended because of that day.
He hated this, the almost constant revisitation of a past he’d tried so hard to put behind him. He’d known when he’d gotten on that plane to come here that he was opening the door to a lot of things he wasn’t going to like, but it wasn’t like he had any choice. Not when Ethan was at stake.
He hadn’t realized he was clenching his jaw so tightly until a bump in the road made him tighten it even more. But he remembered the bump, at the end of the street that was their destination.
The gate was open when they reached the Foxworth building, and Rafe’s vehicle was already there. Erin started to pull in behind it, but changed without protest when Blaine suggested she pull over beside it, so they could either or both exit in a hurry if they had to.
“The kind of thing I never think of,” she muttered as she turned off the engine.
“The kind of thing civilians shouldn’t have to,” he said as they got out and headed, nearly at a run again, to the office door.
Rafe was standing with the remote in his hand when they stepped inside. He turned to look at them, and Blaine once more had that feeling that he would never, ever want to be in this man’s sights.
He didn’t waste any time with niceties. “Walker’s still working his area, but says no sign yet, and Cutter hasn’t signaled anything. But this just came in from the sheriff’s detective he contacted.” At Erin’s curious look, he took a moment to explain. “Foxworth helped him find his kidnapped daughter when all else had failed. So he knows a bit about what you’re going through.”
“That’s why he’s helping?”
Rafe nodded. “That’s all Foxworth ever asks in payment, the willingness to help someone else down the line.”
He turned then to the flat-screen and hit a button on the remote. The screen flared to life, showing a slightly grainy black-and-white image.
“This place is right at the east edge of the area Walker’s working now,” Rafe said.
It looked to Blaine like a convenience store of some kind, apparently at a gas station, since he could see the pumps through the glass front of the structure. For a moment nothing was happening. There were no cars parked, or even at the pumps. The front counter was deserted, too. He assumed whoever was running the place at the moment was out of range of the camera.
