Authors: Christina Moore
Rex had then said that in case Andre Sardetsky was still tracking their movements—which was likely to be the case—he was going to arrange for a changeover to a commercial flight for their trip to D.C. John had thanked him and they’d hung up. Once more he’d tried to relax, as a glance at his watch showed there was still another hour to go before they reached Miami.
It seemed as though he had just drifted off when suddenly the pilot of their plane announced they were approaching Miami airspace. Billie had woken up as he spoke, rolling her neck from side to side and refusing to meet his gaze.
It was just as well. If he looked too long at her face, his eyes might drift to that mouth of hers. He didn’t need any reminders that she had perfect lips—not thin, but not Angelina plump—lips he wanted to taste again despite the dangers of doing so.
John relayed the information from Rex that their flight plan h
ad changed and she nodded, conceding that switching airlines was probably for the best if they wanted to keep Andre Sardetsky from following them. He would have to be dealt with eventually, she said, and John had agreed.
“Right now, however, we have more important matters to deal with,” he’d added as the plane was beginning its descent.
“That reminds me,” she began, looking at him finally. “Do you have any way to contact General Wainright?”
“Contact information’s back at my desk in Langley,” he told her.
Billie rolled her eyes. “Of course it is. I should have known nothing about this would be straightforward—I’m dealing with the CIA, after all. But it would have been nice of you to bring it with you, so I could get the proverbial ball rolling tonight. I want to get this fuck-up of Wainright’s taken care of as quickly as possible.”
John raised an eyebrow. “You’re really going with that? Planning on telling that one-star BG that he fucked up to his face?”
“You’re damn right I am,” she replied, her expression clearly showing that she meant it. “Because he did. He treated my team like fucking lab rats for his own ends, and because of that monumental lapse in judgment, one of them is dead. I mean to see to it that he gives Eddie the hero’s burial he deserves.”
At that moment the plane’s phone rang. John rose and went to the small desk where it sat and picked it up; Rex was letting him know that he’d managed to get them a couple of seats on an American Airlines flight.
“Unfortunately, they’re in Economy… and the flight’s not scheduled to depart Miami-Dade until 5:00 p.m.”
“Shit,” John muttered. “Just what I don’t need: a two hour delay
, in a crowded airport, with a woman who apparently has a bounty on her head. Just fuckin’ perfect.”
After hanging up, he turned around to find Billie staring up at him, a dangerously innocent expression on her face.
“What’s the matter, Agent Courtney? Afraid I might attract unwanted attention?” she asked, her voice sugary and child-like. He would have laughed if the situation weren’t so screwed up.
Her countenance changed into a smile as they felt the plane touching down on the tarmac. After the initial bounce, Billie rose and stepped into the small aisle, moving to stand directly in front of him, at which time she raised a hand and patted his cheek. One, two, three times—with the each successive pat a little sharper than the one before.
“Find your balls, Johnny B. Goode, and remember that you work for the CIA,” she told him, then moved past him and headed for the closet where their gear was stowed.
The two hours she and John had spent waiting at the gate for American Airlines Flight 239 passed without incident, though she was not remiss to the breath of relief he expelled as soon as the “Now boarding” announcement was made. Though in truth she had been half expecting another attack herself, at least she hadn’t spent the entire wait with her shoulders bunched up with tension. Worrying about what could be had never been her style—her brothers had taught her to roll with the punches.
Because they had entered the airport through a secure gate, there’d been no need, thankfully, to pass through Customs. That she had been able to retain possession of her firearms had been a welcome relief, and had relaxed her immeasurably. The sudden thought that without them the wait might have been harder for her made Billie smile
, and she shook her head as they joined the queue of passengers waiting to board.
John apparently noticed, and he raised a curious eyebrow. “What is it?” he asked.
“I’ve just been wondering what it says about me that I would have been as wound up as you if we’d have had to check our gear,” she told him.
For a moment he only stared, and then when the understanding hit him, he smiled. “I’m sure the company shrinks would have a few suggestions, such as you’ve equated safety with possession of weaponry, or some other BS psychobabble.”
Billie considered that. “Sounds about right.”
“And for your information, I was not wound up,” John added.
She scoffed. “Please! You turned your head every time someone got up from their seat, and you’ve checked out every man that approached the ticket counter as if you were looking for a gun.”
“I did not!” he exclaimed.
Billie faced him with her “You can’t bullshit a bullshitter” expression, and John laughed. “All right, fine. I was maybe a little tense,” he admitted. “But can you blame me? Given we were shot at twice in less than 12 hours?”
Punching him in the shoulder she said, “Having a point is becoming a bad habit of yours.”
He caught her hand as she dropped it and laced their fingers together. Billie frowned and tried to pull away but he tightened his grip. John leaned down and whispered into her ear, “We’re supposed to be married, remember?”
It was all she could do not to shiver at the heat of his breath on her skin. Swallowing hard, Billie reminded herself that her body’s reaction to this man was unwanted and unwelcome. There were more pressing matters on her mind, not the least of which was the fact that one of the most powerful families in the Russian mafia wanted her dead. She had to find out what about the experimental drugs in Wainright’s program had flipped Eddie’s switch, and she needed to find the rest of her team before the same thing happened to them.
Sexual attraction to a man she had threatened to kill more than once and couldn’t even say she liked was fast becoming a pain in the ass.
She decided to play along, however, and returned the squeeze—though of course she added a little more pressure than was necessary (okay, a lot more). Out of the corner of her eye she noticed John flexing his jaw and smiled.
“Only for three more hours, darling,” she murmured as the line finally moved into the gangway.
It was after 8:00 p.m. before the plane touched down at Dulles International. After disembarking, John led her out of the building and toward a shuttle bus that would take them to the short-term lot where he’d parked his car. Although he’d used the lateness of the hour as an excuse to put off seeing Wainright until morning, on the flight Billie had insisted on seeing him right away.
“Maybe I can’t physically do anything tonight,” she’d said, “but once I have all the information I need about this damn training program, I’ll be able to use the rest of the night to come up with a plan for finding the guys.”
John had been unable to argue with her logic, and so he’d reluctantly agreed to drive her. “You realize, of course, that given the time, Wainright’s probably gone home for the evening?” he said again as the shuttle dropped them off.
“He’s a brigadier general in the United States Marine Corps, and any BG worth his salt all but sleeps at the Pentagon,” Billie threw back. “If he’s not there, then we knock on his door.”
“Billie, be reasonable. It’ll be almost nine o’clock before we even get close to the Pentagon.”
“Agent Courtney, the more you argue with me, the more time you waste,” she said succinctly. “Let’s just find your car and get going.”
He’d only shook his head at her, but she imagined he was also cussing her out in his head, calling her all kinds of impatient and other choice words.
Damn right she was impatient. She had been comfortable in her life down in St. Thomas with Sergei. They had a solid friendship and ran a profiting business. Being with someone who understood the pain she felt had somehow made it easier to bear. It had taken nearly the entire year, but dreams of Travis had begun to come fewer and far between. As much as it hurt to say goodbye to him, she was thankful she’d been dreaming of him less lately—it hurt too much to look on that face in her sleep only to wake up alone.
And then John Courtney just
had
to walk into her bar to suck her back into the life she’d left behind. Andre Sardetsky just
had
to choose that night to exact punishment on her and his uncle. It had been painstaking work picking up the shattered pieces of her heart and moving on with her life, and now the new one she’d built for herself had been destroyed, just as thoroughly as the one she’d had before Travis had been killed. Billie felt directionless, unsure of where she was going to go from here. Who she was going to be.
She hated that feeling so much it made her blood boil. So she was grasping onto the one thing she found herself able to focus on: getting the information she needed to do the job she was here to do. After th
at…? Well, she’d see when this was over.
Billie was not altogether surprised to see that John owned a late-model Dodge Charger, a powerful American vehicle that had become popular with law enforcement agencies across the country in recent years. She’d owned a Ford Escape before heading down to the Virgin Islands, though she’d sold it in order to help pay for her trip. John opened the trunk and they both dropped their bags into it, then he hit a button on his key fob and the door locks clicked open. Billie settled into the
passenger bucket seat and found it more comfortable than she’d expected. She was fastening her seatbelt when John slid into the driver’s seat and slipped the key into the ignition.
His face lit up with a satisfactory smile when the engine roared to life, and he turned to grin in her direction as it idled into a quiet rumble. “Gotta love the sound of good ol’ American muscle.”
Billie tried and failed to stifle a laugh. “Boys and their toys,” she said with a shake of her head. “Come on, Agent Courtney, let’s drive.”
Just over half an hour later, they were pulling up to the
North Parking Visitor Screening Facility at the Pentagon. When the guard on duty asked for their identification, Billie nonchalantly pulled the Virgin Islands driver’s license identifying her as Georgia Ross from her wallet and handed it to John. He only lifted an eyebrow as he glanced at it, before passing it over with his own.
The guard scrutinized the IDs closely, leaning down to peer into the car at each of them in order to compare them with the pictures on the plastic in his hand. It occurred to her then that John’s CIA credentials would have come in handy at this point. Official identification always made things go smoother, unless you were dealing with an operative from another agency—none of the federal agencies liked sharing information or credit.
The guard handed their IDs back. “What’s the nature of your business Mr. Courtney? I’m certain you’re aware of the time—and the last tour ended a good six hours ago.”
“Sergeant, my associate and I have urgent business with Brigadier General Sterling Wainright,” John said. “Could you please see if he’s still on the premises?”
The staff sergeant looked as though he wanted to refuse the request, but nevertheless he stepped back into the guard booth and picked up a phone, while his partner, although standing casually, held his M-16 ready.
They watched the sergeant speak to someone briefly, then he hung up and returned. “I’m afraid the gener
al is no longer on site, Mr. Courtney.”
“Can you tell us why?” Billie leaned forward to ask before John could speak.
The staff sergeant looked at her. “I do not know the general’s itinerary, Ms. Ross.”
“Shit,” she muttered as John thanked the man.
A moment later John was backing out of the drive and turning around. “This is great,” Billie grumbled. “We’ve got no clue where the man is—‘no longer on site’ could mean anything.”
“Don’t get your panties in a bunch, Billie,” John said. “Let me find a phone and I’ll get a hold of Rex. He can call the Brigadier’s house and see if he’s there. If he’s not home, you’re just going to have to wait until tomorrow to throw his monumental mistake in his face.”
Fifteen minutes later, they had confirmation that Wainright was not home—he was at Georgetown University Hospital with his family, where his daughter was in labor with his first grandchild.
“And no, I will not take you there,” John added as he’d relayed the information from Rex.
“Kiss my ass, Courtney. Do you really think I’m so inconsiderate as to interrupt a family waiting on a baby?” Billie asked with a sneer. “Give me some fucking credit for having common decency.”
“I’m almost surprised you even know what that is,” he countered, his voice laced with sarcasm. “I already tried to tell you this could wait until tomorrow.”
She crossed her arms over her chest and stared at him pointedly over the top of his car. “Oh really? Eddie Lamacek had a bad reaction to the experimental drugs—”