Underestimating her.
And still thinking women are the weaker sex, when all it takes is one look from her to bring me to my knees.
But I’ve got to admire the gamble she’s taking. On the surface, her plan seems ludicrous, but there’s one thing keeping the Nighthawks in check and confused. It’s not just because their ‘father’ and handler, Dr. Maximilian Ross, was captured in Heart’s Edge and has been locked up in a cell for months.
This is still a public airfield.
Security cameras pepper the field damn near everywhere, plus those two TSA guards at the gate who aren’t affiliated with Galentron.
Airport staff, both on the tarmac and in the air control tower.
If they go after Fuchsia, it’ll be on the national news by evening once the airport sorts out the fact that these people aren’t their employees, and they’re covering for a highly wanted man.
They’d have to lie, to make a statement and dissociate themselves.
And then everything falls apart when some smart reporter who hears about the ruckus realizes those were Galentron employees, and someone at the airport was paid very well to let a suspicious person of interest through and just look the other way while one of the most high-profile criminals of our decade made his escape.
There’s too much riding on those giant men. They don’t so much as twitch a muscle at Fuchsia, let alone draw the weapons I know they have concealed under their coveralls, some with fairly blatant outlines of pistols against thin fabric.
And she knows it, too.
That’s why she’s taking gross and filthy advantage of it.
Goddamn, I love her.
But I also can’t let anything happen to her. Once she’s on board that plane and out of sight, it’ll be too easy for Durham to make her disappear.
He’s probably got at least one or two men in there with him, keeping him under guard.
And Fuchsia’s good, but she’s not invincible.
Maybe.
I scan the tarmac quickly, taking stock of the situation. As a dead man who doesn’t technically exist, I’ve got a little more freedom to do things the bold, brazen way.
The Fuchsia way.
When I catch sight of a baggage handling truck near the gate, I smile.
You’ve got to love the times when life gives you an easy answer.
I hurl myself out of my truck. I’m a little stiff, considering the last time I faced an entire pack of assholes in the field I had two flesh and bone legs—now, I’ve got a sleek titanium prosthetic on the left side.
The same sort they give runners who’ve lost legs with the curving metal struts designed to spring and flow to give you a little more oomph in your step.
I’m fifty-five.
I’ve got plenty of oomph, but the fact that one leg is a quarter-inch longer than the other sometimes makes my knee joints creak in protest.
Don’t worry.
I’ve still got this.
And Durham’s men are about to get a whole fucking lot of it.
The hardest part is realizing I’m actually here. I’ve been waiting for this moment forever.
We’ve been waiting.
And there’s no way in hell I’ll miss out on helping my girl annihilate the man who ruined our lives, and so many others.
That’s the thing I hate most about bastards like Leland Durham.
As splashy and powerful as he is, most people forget he even exists.
Galentron is an entity, to them. A faceless corporation. A multinational dragon with no head.
So when things go wrong, the entity takes the blame and gets labeled evil and corrupt.
Meanwhile, pricks like Durham get to stay invisible, clean.
Even with all the news coverage about secretive government contracts—which, of course, the U.S. intelligence community painted as contractors gone rogue and off-assignment, versus doing exactly what the letter agencies wanted of them—and small towns being targeted as test grounds at the cost of innocent civilian lives, he’s not front and center.
Durham could walk into the middle of downtown Seattle tomorrow, stand there and scream his name at the top of his lungs.
And not everyone would recognize him.
Which is why the people who know him for the snake he is have to make sure he doesn’t get away and pull off this body double scheme.
Doesn’t get away and disappear to a place where he could become completely invisible, and live out the rest of his days in luxury.
He might not even be megalomaniacal enough to start acting out again under a shadow corporation. Just quietly retire.
That’s not enough for me.
He doesn’t get to have an easy, restful life.
Not if I have anything to say about it.
I’ve smoothed out that kink in my knee by the time I get to the gate, and breeze past the confused-looking security guards just like Fuchsia did.
If you act like you belong somewhere, people tend not to question it.
So I just give a jovial wave and smile like I know them, leaving them puzzled and exchanging confused glances, while I duck through the gate and make a beeline for the truck.