Cover Me (Elite Force #1)(39)
Author: Catherine Mann

The need to have her, to be inside her again, seared through him so hard and hot and fast he wanted to throw the truck in gear and take her home with him. Did that make him a caveman? Hell if he knew, and right now, hell if he cared. He just burned to keep her with him, to protect her from whatever it was out there that had her so damn frantic. And he could have sworn she wanted to stay with him too.

But then she tore herself away, panting, gasping for air and grappling for the door. “The plane leaves in twenty minutes. I hope I don’t have to leave alone.”

Without a word, she thrust the door open and almost fell out of the truck cab, uncharacteristically clumsy. She yanked her stuffed-full backpack with her and kicked the door closed.

She charged across the parking lot into the mist of blowing snow as if she truly didn’t give a damn whether he joined her or not.

***

Sunny yanked her gloves on and scrubbed the tears from her eyes before they froze, clearing her view of the path to the tiny plane with a propeller on each low wing. A Cessna 303, her brother had told her in his email. As if that even mattered to her now, but she was desperately grasping at minute details to help fill up the gaping hole in her gut over walking away from Wade so abruptly. She’d really thought he would come with her.

Instead he’d only pushed for her to stick around on his terms.

She hefted her backpack into place, the weight somehow heavier than when she’d started out a few days ago. She couldn’t turn her back on Phoenix, her sister, everyone in her mountain village. She had to make sure, in person, that he understood how important it was that he leave Alaska. Leave the U.S. with his family and start over in Canada, and if he’d chosen that option long ago, life would be so much simpler now. Why was he so damn set on staying in Alaska? She had to make everyone understand how important it was not to naïvely think they could block out the rest of the world through limited contact.

Now that she’d stepped out, she realized how foolishly they’d limited themselves in communicating during a crisis.

At least she’d gotten the email from her brother about the wire transfer of the money and how he’d arranged this flight. She didn’t know how he’d worked that miracle and she didn’t care. She just hoped her own warning to him and the community made it through.

She needed to get a move on fast and quit letting the good-bye with Wade tear her up. She would see him when she came back to get Chewie. She would tell him… something. She didn’t know what yet, which of course only served to remind her of his words. Of how he knew she was holding back. He would know in the future too and she couldn’t see how to get past that.

Time. She just needed time to figure out a way to straddle these two worlds.

The pilot stood beside the plane, waiting with a clipboard in his hands. Wearing Nomex coveralls that added bulk to what appeared to be a wiry frame, he jotted notes. With the earflaps down on his snow hat, he didn’t hear her coming until she stopped almost in front of him. He looked up fast, aviator shades covering his eyes and a groomed beard shading his jaw.

“Are you Ms. Foster? Sunny Foster?”

“Yes, I’m here, just me though. My, uh, friend couldn’t join me after all.” Her throat closing with pain, with regret, she resisted the urge to look back at Wade. She juggled her backpack more firmly behind her so she could thrust out a hand. “Thank you for making this flight on such short notice.”

“My pleasure, ma’am. This is how I make my living.” He clasped her gloved hand in his. “My name’s Brett.”

***

His cell phone buzzed in his pocket.

Eyes locked on Sunny talking to the Cessna pilot, Wade ignored the call. He’d taken a week of leave to watch out for Sunny and he wasn’t in the mood to talk to anyone. He would check the number and message as soon as the plane was airborne.

And he was inside it, planted right beside a certain infuriating woman.

Wade reached behind him for the backpack of survival and overnight gear he kept packed in the truck. Countless times he’d landed from one mission only to have the next waiting. And survival gear was a must in Alaska, where a broken-down car could be a matter of life and death.

The cell hummed again, any sound drowned out by the wind roaring down from the mountains to tear across the flat airport. Damn. It could be something about the deputy or those other bodies. He couldn’t afford to ignore it, especially when it could affect Sunny.

He tugged a glove off with his teeth and fished for his phone. “Sergeant Rocha.”

“Rocha, it’s McCabe,” the major said with clipped efficiency. “OSI just passed along some more information on your friend Ms. Foster and I thought you would be interested.”

Wade’s eye zipped back to the plane as Sunny passed over her backpack. He exited the truck and thumbed the automatic lock. “Your tone doesn’t sound great.”

Foreboding crept through him, but he needed every ounce of information he could scavenge, especially with Sunny still holding out on him.

“That’s because the news isn’t good,” McCabe answered unceremoniously. “She and her family had a reason for falling off-the-grid.”

Possibilities raced through his head—criminal ties topping the list. If she was on the run from the law, that was it. His time with her was over. Except she said she’d been in the community for fifteen years, just a teenager. Still… “Details?”

“She has a sister and a half brother. That brother—Phoenix Foster—joined the army straight out of high school.”

Brother in the army. Family slipping away, out of the mainstream. Into hiding. Ah hell, he could already guess at the deserter scenario about to unfold.

“He went AWOL the night before a deployment. He and his entire family haven’t been heard from since.”

Shock, then the bitter taste of bile hit him.

Her brother was a deserter. Her brother had abandoned his brothers in arms when they needed him in battle. Brothers and sisters in arms like his teammates… like his father…

Like his mother, who lived with nursing care round the clock because she couldn’t even dress herself anymore.

What a helluva time to learn the person Sunny had been protecting was the same sort of person who’d turned his back on everything Wade believed in, worked for, was willing to die for just as the pararescue motto declared.

That others may live.

And that very same brother had a lot more reasons for making sure no one left the mountain than the deputy ever had. That didn’t explain the deputy shooting at them, but then little about this had made sense from the beginning.