“I’m a first lieutenant.”
“Present tense?” Henry nodded to himself and Sam realized his potential mistake. It wasn’t that big a deal but after what had come earlier in their conversation, it was significant.
Sam shrugged. “Once an officer, always an officer.”
“True,” Henry allowed. “What did you go to school for?”
“Aeronautical Science, believe it or not. I went to Embry-Riddle.” That was the truth and had been included in Sam’s cover story. His lifelong love of flying had led him to study it in college. He’d perfected his skills over the years to the point where he could fly pretty much anything with wings.
“Why didn’t you go Air Force?”
It was a common question. Anyone with his aviation background could have had his choice of spots in most of the armed services, yet he’d chosen for deeply personal reasons.
“My dad served in Nam. He was a Green Beret. When I joined up, there was no question but that I’d go Army like him.”
Sam hadn’t taken the easy route. If he’d joined the Air Force, no doubt he’d be equal or higher ranked than Emily’s brother. But Sam’s skills as a pilot were secondary to the plethora of combat talents he’d had to develop as a special operator. He wouldn’t change his choices, even if he could. He loved being a Green Beret like his father before him. Tradition was important to him and he had a strong belief that his choices had led him to this place—to being in the right place at the right time with the right skills to get this most important of jobs done.
“Family loyalty is something I understand.” Henry’s gaze turned hard again. They had an uneasy truce but the protective brother wasn’t far away.
A piercing whistle got their attention and Sam turned toward the hangar to see Emily waving at them.
“Was that her?” Sam asked. That whistle had been one of the loudest and most piercing he’d ever heard.
“The girl’s got talent,” her brother replied as they began to walk toward where she waited in the shade of the hangar door. “She perfected that ear shattering whistle when we were kids. Drove our father crazy when he was trying to work.”
“I bet it’s hard to grade papers with sounds like that breaking your concentration.”
“She told you about our dad?”
Sam tried hard not to sound smug but it felt good to surprise the other man. He nodded as they walked together toward Emily.
“And how you got your nickname, Shotgun.”
“No way.”
“Way,” Sam replied.
Henry let out an appreciative, if disbelieving, whistle. Seemed the talent for expressing themselves via sharp noises ran in the family.
“You move fast, lieutenant. You’ve been with the company how long? A month or two?”
“Actually, just a couple of days.”
“Damn.”
Sam looked over to see Henry’s jaw clench. He was prevented from saying anything else because they’d arrived at the door. Emily was clearly getting impatient, and a little suspicious.
“You two talking about me?”
She’d chosen the direct approach. Sam could respect that.
“As a matter of fact, we were talking about me,” he replied, giving her a playful wink.
Her whole demeanor changed. She went from defensive annoyance to outrage in the blink of an eye. Sam was glad the outrage wasn’t directed at him. He wasn’t sure he could have survived the full frontal assault she was about to rain down on her brother.
Henry Parkington was made of sterner stuff than Sam had believed. He gave his sister a grin that only seemed to inflame her anger more. She gave him the dirtiest look Sam had ever seen before turning on her heel and stomping off toward her car.
“Wish me luck,” Henry said as he turned to follow his sister.
“You’re a braver man than I, Shotgun,” Sam complimented the pilot heading into the tornado of his sister’s temper.
Henry only laughed. “Her bark is worse than her bite.” His gaze left his sister’s retreating form and settled on Sam once more. All amusement faded. “But I’m the opposite. You mess with my sister, you should remember that.”
“I have no intention of hurting her in any way.” Sam knew that was parsing words at best. Sure, he didn’t
intend
to hurt her, but if she was involved with the conspiracy, he might have to kill her.
The emotional aspect was even more of a minefield. Sam didn’t know what he wanted where Emily was concerned except that he needed to protect her and wanted to make love to her. All night. Every night. For a long, long time.
She was quickly becoming an obsession. A fire in his blood he didn’t know how to quench.
In all likelihood, he’d hurt her when this ended, even if she wasn’t on the wrong side. If they got involved romantically, he couldn’t foresee much of a future for them. He couldn’t foresee much of a future for him and any woman. Not with the job he did and his new medical condition that made him immune to the zombie contagion and able to heal faster than any normal person. Who knew what other side effects the serum he’d been given could have long term? He didn’t want to expose anyone, much less Emily, to that uncertainty.
“See that you don’t,” Henry ordered him, a wary look in his eye. “Emily is the most important person in the world to me. I’d do anything—kill anyone—for her.”
Once again the earsplitting whistle rent the air, spoiling Henry’s badass vibe. Sam had to hand it to him, he may not be a special operator, but he had the attitude down. They both looked over to see Emily at her car, peering over the roof, glaring in their general direction.
“You coming, or what?” she shouted to her brother in an exasperated tone.
Henry held up one hand to her, indicating he was on his way, but he turned to face Sam.
“Just watch your step, lieutenant. I protect my own.”
“Understood. I do the same. And as long as Emily is my copilot, I’ll watch out for her in the air and on the ground.”
A new respect entered Henry’s eyes for a fleeting moment. They’d reached detente. For now. How long it would last was anyone’s guess. Best case scenario, this could be the start of a lifelong friendship. And if Commander Sykes tapped Henry to join their team, it could be the beginning of a good working relationship as well.
Or it could be the beginning of the end for both twins if they were aiding the terrorists trying to sell the zombie contagion to the highest bidder.
“I can’t believe you gave Sam the third degree.” Emily slammed her refrigerator door and popped the top on a soda can before placing it in front of her twin.
Henry sat at the breakfast bar in her small kitchen, his expression alternating between annoyance and worry as they discussed his encounter with her new copilot. And why was he annoyed? Emily was the one who had to work with Sam every day. She was the one Henry had embarrassed with his questions.
“He’s more than he seems, Em. That dude has Special Forces written all over him. You need to be careful.”
“Oh, come on. There’s nothing in his file except a stint in the Army after college.”
“There wouldn’t be if he was Delta Force or some other kind of black ops guy. I’m serious, sis. This is one guy you don’t want to get tangled up with. He’s bad news.”
“He’s a talented pilot and is becoming a friend. I’ll make my own decisions where he’s concerned.”
“Sis, come on. If he’s here, something is up. I don’t buy that he’s not in service anymore. He’s too rough, too lean. He’s still on edge and ready for action. He’s not retired. He’s here on an op.”
“You’ve got to be kidding . . .” Emily trailed off as she lost steam. All her suspicions about the airline came rushing back to her.
“What? What is it?”
“I’ve . . .” She didn’t know where to begin. She’d been keeping it all to herself for a long time, not wanting her brother to get involved. She didn’t want to endanger his career—which is exactly what she’d be doing if he decided to go AWOL to protect his twin sister.
“Come clean, Em. What have you been keeping from me?”
She was well and truly caught now. She had no choice.
“I think Scott’s using Praxis Air to smuggle drugs. Or something.” She shook her head in annoyance. “I don’t know exactly what he’s doing but there have been a number of weird cargo shipments. High tech stuff sent to obscure places. Never the same airport twice. And I think the two recent crashes had something to do with it. Whatever
it
is.”
Henry grew utterly still. She knew that look. He was taking in data and trying to come up with a logical answer. Henry had inherited at least that analytical skill from their dad.
“Tell me more. What have you seen that makes you suspicious?”
“Scott has plans to change more than a third of the fleet to cargo carriers. It’s already begun in a big way. I’ve flown a few of the cargo runs. Mostly they keep me away from them since the board meeting.”
“What happened at the board meeting?”
“I made the mistake of confronting Scott about it. The manifests for those flights weren’t filled out properly and every one of them I’ve seen has had his original signature on it. It’s like he signed a bunch of blanks and gave them to someone carte blanche. But the origins and destinations are never the same, nor are the sending and receiving parties. The only common factor is Scott’s signature on those forms. It’s like the clients are going out of their way to be as anonymous as possible.”
“Which isn’t what I’d do if I wanted to really be anonymous. They aroused suspicion by being too cautious.” Henry was thinking aloud, puzzling through the facts she presented him with. She could work with him in this mood. She only feared what would happen when she told him what came next.
“After the meeting, I nearly drove off a cliff. I found out later, my car had been tampered with. I think Scott did it, or ordered it done.”
“God, Em!” Henry jumped to his feet but the danger had long since passed. “What makes you think Scott was behind it? And how do you know for sure it was tampering?”
“He delayed me with some cock-and-bull story about having coffee with him after the meeting, though he had assistants coming and going while we chatted about stuff he already knew. He was asking me about hangar business we’d already gone over in the meeting. It was like he was delaying me, though I only realized it later, when the mechanic showed me the cut lines and asked me if I wanted to file a police report. He was upset when I declined but I told him I’d handle it.”
“Who was the mechanic?” Henry’s brows lowered into an ominous frown. She’d bet he already knew the answer.
“Buddy. I called him on my cell phone after the paramedics took a look at my scratches. I was okay and I didn’t want to go to the hospital. Buddy understood and came to get me. He also took a moment to check under my car while the wrecker hoisted it up onto a flatbed. There wasn’t much left of it that wasn’t damaged but you know Buddy.”
“Best mechanic in the entire United States,” Henry confirmed Buddy’s oft-repeated boast.
“He saw right away that my car had been sabotaged. He wanted me to involve the police but I figured that would only make things worse. If Scott was involving Praxis Air in something illegal, I wanted a chance to shut him down without ruining the company in the process. I had to try. For mom.”
“While I understand the sentiment, I can’t agree with your decision.” Henry gave a long suffering sigh and sat back down. “The police should handle this. If there is something illegal going on, they’re the ones to uncover it. Not you. Not Buddy. I can’t believe he let you talk him into this.” Henry was heading toward anger and she didn’t want to go there with him. She was too tired. Too drained from the emotions of the last few minutes. She had to get him back on track.
“Regardless, I’ve been keeping an eye out. The cargo seems to be mostly high tech scientific equipment. The little I’ve been able to sneak a peek at is way beyond anything I’ve seen before but there were a few things I recognize. Centrifuges, all kinds of lab glassware, something called a mass spectrometer according to the tag on its side and a few Geiger counters and radiation monitoring badges. I also saw a little crate that had a gamma counter and a giant crate that had a beta counter in it. I did a quick internet search and both of those are used in medical labs to do quantitative analysis of radioactive compounds.”
“Doesn’t sound like drugs. This could be so much worse than drugs, Em.”
“Don’t you think I know that? But then what about all the regular lab equipment—distillation equipment, Bunsen burners, flasks, beakers, and all that stuff? That could be a drug lab. Or maybe it’s both. Maybe Scott has his fingers in more than one cookie jar and is smuggling stuff for anyone who’ll pay.”
“That’s exactly what I’m afraid of, sis. Damn,” Henry cursed. “Have you told anyone else about this?”
“No. Only Buddy. And he warned me not to talk about it to anyone. Even him. We’ve been pretending everything is normal and neither one of us has said anything since the wreck. We’re just both keeping our eyes open.”