“Put your hands on the toggles. You can drive awhile.”
“Okay, wow. Look at Nana, Owen! I’m a skydiver. Thank you, Tyler! Hi, Melly, hi, Addy, hi, Sam!” She tipped her head back. “I’m in the sky, and it’s blue silk.”
She fell silent, then sighed. “You were right about the quiet. You were right about everything. I’ll never forget this. Oh, there they are! They’re waving. You’d better take over so I can wave back.”
“You have a beautiful family.”
“I really do. Oh, gosh, oh, wow, here comes the ground.”
“Trust me. Trust yourself. Stay relaxed.”
He brought her down soft.
With excited screams, wild cheers, her family jumped and waved. When Lucas detached the harness, she dropped into an exaggerated curtsy, blew kisses.
Then she spun around, her face glowing, and stunned him by throwing her arms around him and kissing him firmly on the mouth.
“I’d have done that in midair if I could have because, my God, that was orgasmic. I don’t know how to thank you.”
“I think you just did.”
She laughed, made him laugh by doing a quick victory dance. “I jumped out of a damn plane. My ex-husband said I’d be crazy to do it, the jerk. But I
feel
crazy, because I’m going to do it again.”
Still laughing, she ran over, arms wide, to her family.
“Ex-husband,” Lucas managed. And the heat spread up the back of his neck again.
7
W
ith the siren silent, Rowan spent most of her time in the loft checking, clearing or mending chutes. She’d caught up on paperwork, repacked her personal gear bag, checked and rechecked her own chute, readied her jump gear.
She remained first jumper, first stick.
“Going stir-crazy here,” Cards said when he got up from the machine.
“Aren’t we all. And the word of today is . . .”
“Fastidious. We’ve been doing dick-all but cleaning and organizing. The ready room’s freaking fastidious enough to suit my mother’s scary standards.”
“It can’t last much longer.”
“I hope to Christ not. I had to kick my own ass for cheating at solitaire yesterday, and I’m starting to think about crafts. We’ll be knitting next.”
“I’d like a nice scarf to match my eyes.”
“It could happen,” he said darkly. “At least I had phone sex with Vicki last night.” He pulled the deck of cards from his shirt pocket, shuffling as he paced. “It’s fun while it lasts, but it doesn’t really do the job.”
“And gone are the days you’d hunt up a companion for actual sex?”
“Long gone. She’s worth it. I told you she and the kids are coming out next month, right?”
“You mentioned it.” One or two thousand times, Rowan thought.
“Gotta get in some time now, so I can take a couple days next month. I need to work, need the pay, need—”
“To resist trolling the aisle of the craft store,” Rowan finished.
“I won’t be trolling alone if this lull lasts much longer. Have you got anything to read? All Gibbons has are books that give me a headache. I read one of Janis’s romance novels, but that doesn’t help keep my mind off sex.”
“Nothing deep, nothing sexy. Check.” She signed and dated the tag on the repaired chute. “What’re you after?”
“I want something gory, where people die miserable deaths at the hands of a psycho.”
“I could fix you up. Come on. We’ll peruse my library.”
“Dobie’s in the kitchen with Marg,” Cards told her, passing a hand over Rowan’s head, then flipped out an ace of spades. “He got some recipe of his mother’s, and he’s in there cooking up some pie or other.”
Cooking, knitting—that bake sale could be next. Then struck, Rowan paused. “Is Dobie hitting on Marg?”
Cards only shook his head. “She’s got twenty years on him.”
“Men routinely hit on women twenty years younger.”
“I’m bored, Ro, but not bored enough to get into a tangle on that with you.”
“Coward.” But when they stepped outside, she paused again. “Look, check out those clouds.”
“We got scouts.” His face brightened as he studied the clouds over the mountains. “A nice string of them.”
“Could mean smoke today. With any luck, we’ll have that ready room messed up again before afternoon. Do you still want that book?”
“Might as well. I’ll get myself all settled in, good book, good snack. It’s like guaranteeing we’ll fly today.”
“It’s the slowest start to a season I remember. Then again, my father once told me when it starts cool, it ends hot. Maybe we shouldn’t be so eager to get going.”
“If it doesn’t get going, what’re we here for?”
“No argument. So . . .” She tried for a casual tone as they crossed to her end of the barracks. “Have you seen Fast Feet this morning?”
“In the Map Room. Studying. At least he was about an hour ago.”
“Studying. Huh.” She wasn’t interested in settling down with a book, but a little byplay with Gull might be just the solution to boredom she needed.
Inside, she led the way to her quarters. “Gruesome murder,” she began. “Do you want just violence, or sex and violence? As opposed to romantic sexy.”
“I always want sex.”
“Again, it’s hard to—” She broke off as she opened her door. The slaughterhouse stench punched like a fist in the throat.
A pool of blood spread over the bed. Dark rivers of it ran down hills of clothes heaped on the floor. On the wall in letters wet and gleaming dripped the statement:
In the center of the ugliness, Dolly whirled to face the door. Some of the blood in the canister she held splattered on her shirt.
“Son of a
bitch
!” Fists up, her mind as red and vicious as the blood, Rowan charged. A war paint line of pig’s blood splatted on her face as Dolly screamed and dropped to the ground—seconds before Cards grabbed Rowan’s arms.
“Wait a minute, wait a minute.”
“Fuck you.” Rowan pushed off her feet, adding to the blood when the back of her head connected sharply with Cards’s nose and had it spurting.
He yelped, and through sheer grit managed to hold on for another second or two.
“You’re so dead!” Rowan shouted at Dolly, and, blind to anything but payback, jabbed her elbow into Cards’s ribs, sprang free.
Shrieking, scrabbling back, Dolly pitched the canister. Globs of blood flew, striking wall, ceiling, furniture, when Rowan batted it away.
“You like blood? Let’s see how you like painting with yours, you crazy
cunt
.”
Rowan clamped her hands on Dolly’s ankles when Dolly tried to crawl under the bed. Even as she hauled Dolly across the blood-smeared floor, men who’d come running at the commotion dived in to grapple Rowan back.
Rowan didn’t waste her breath. She punched, kicked, jabbed and kneed, heedless of where blows landed, until she ended up facedown on the floor, pinned.
“Just stay down,” Gull said in her ear.
“Get off me. Goddamn you, get off me. Do you see what she did?”
“Everybody sees it. Jesus, somebody get that screaming idiot out of here before
I
punch her.”
“I’m going to kick every square inch of her skanky ass. Let me
up
! You hear that, you psycho? First chance I get it won’t be pig’s blood you’re wearing, it’ll be your own. Let me the fuck
up
!”
“You’re down until you calm down.”
“Fine. I’m calm.”
“Not even close.”
“She’s got Jim’s blood on her,” Dolly wept as Yangtree and Matt pulled her from the room. “You all have his blood on you. I hope you all die. I hope you all burn alive. All of you.”
“I think she lost her religion,” Gull commented. “Listen to me. Rowan, you listen. She’s gone, and if you try to go after her and take a shot at her now, we’re just going to put you down again. You already bloodied Cards’s nose, and I’m pretty sure Janis is going to be sporting a black eye.”
“They shouldn’t have gotten in my way.”
“If they, and the rest of us, hadn’t, you’d have punched a pathetic lunatic, and you’d be off the jump list until it got sorted out.”
That, he noted, had her taking the first calming breath. He signaled for Libby and Trigger to let go of her legs and, when she didn’t try to kick them, pointed to the door.
Libby shut it quietly behind them.
“I’m letting you up.” He eased his grip on her arms, braced to grab them again if necessary. Then, cautiously, he shifted off her, sat on the floor.
Blood covered both of them, but he was pretty sure she had the worst of it. It smeared her face, dripped from her hair, coated her arms, her shirt. She looked as if she’d been whacked with an ax. And it made him sick.
“You know, it’s a goddamn pigsty in here.”
“That’s not funny.”
“No, it’s not, but it’s the best I got.” He eyed her coolly as she pushed up to sit, watched her right hand bunch into a fist. “I can take a punch if you need to throw one.”
“Just get out.”
“No. We’re just going to sit here awhile.”
Rowan used her shoulder to wipe at her face, smeared it with more blood. “She got that crap all over me. All over my bed, the floor, the walls.”
“She’s sick and she’s stupid. And she deserved to have every square inch of her skanky ass kicked. She’ll get fired, and everybody on base and within fifty miles will know why. That might be worse.”
“It’s not as satisfying.” She looked away a moment as, with the wild heat of temper fading, tears wanted to sting. She clamped her hands together; they’d started to shake.
“It smells like a slaughterhouse in here.”
“You can sleep in my room tonight.” He hitched a bandanna out of his pocket, used it to wipe blood from her face. “But everybody who sleeps in my room has to be naked.”
She huffed out a tired breath. “I’ll bunk with Janis until I get it cleaned up. She has the naked rule, too.”
“Now that was just mean.”
She looked at him then, just sat and looked while he ruined his bandanna on a hopeless job. It helped to see he wasn’t as calm as he sounded, helped to see the temper and disgust on his face.
Oddly, seeing it calmed her just a little.
“Did I give you that bloody lip?”
“Yeah. Back fist. Not bad.”
“I’ll probably be sorry for it at some point, but I can’t work it up right now.”
“It took five of us to take you down.”
“That’s something. I have to go wash up.”
She started to rise when L.B. knocked briskly on the door, opened it. “Give us a minute, will you, Gull?”
“Sure.” Before he stood, Gull leaned over, laid a hand on Rowan’s knee. “People like her? They never get people like you. It’s their loss.”
He pushed to his feet, and closed the door on his way out.
L.B. looked around the room, rubbed a hand over his face. “Jesus, Ro. Jesus. I’m sorry. I can’t tell you how sorry.”
“You didn’t do it.”
“I shouldn’t have hired her on. I shouldn’t have taken her back. This is on me.”
“It’s on her.”
“She got the chance to come at you this way because I gave her one.” He hunkered down so their faces were on level. “We’ve got her in my office, with a couple of the guys watching her. She’ll be fired, banned from base. I’m going to call the law on this. Do you want to press charges?”
“I do because she earned it.” The tears had backed off, thank God. Now she only felt sick, sick and tired. “But the baby didn’t. I just want her gone.”
“She’s gone,” he promised. “Come on, you need to get out of here. We’ll have some of the cleaning crew deal with it.”
“I need to get some air. Apologize to some people. I need to take a shower, wash this off me.” She blew out another breath as she looked down at herself. “I probably need the full
Silkwood
.”
“Take as long as you need. And nobody needs you to apologize.”
“I need me to. But this shit’s all over my stuff. I need to clean some of it up myself.”
She got up, opened the door. Looked back. “Did she love him this much? Is this love?”
L.B. stared at the bloody words on the wall. “It’s got nothing to do with love.”
THE SIREN SOUNDED
as she stepped out of the shower.
“Perfect,” she muttered. She dragged on underwear without bothering to dry off, pulled on a shirt, her pants, and zipped them on the run.