Joint Forces (Wingmen Warriors 7)

Jealousy pricked with thorny persistence. "When something as life altering as that happens, you should talk to someone about it."

Bo leaned back in his chair, arms on the rests, so obvious in his primal chest-puffing. "We men aren't big on the touchy-feely chitchat stuff."

Well, now didn't that sound like some other jet-jock she knew? "I've gathered that."

"Besides, while the experience sucked, and I hope like hell never to repeat it, the worst was over pretty quick."

"How so?"

"You know. Don't you?" Defensiveness faded, confusion furrowing trenches in his forehead. "Jesus, I figured J.T. would have told you all this and I wouldn't have to spill every detail."

Lightbulb moment. The real reason Bo had selected her dawned.

Too bad he guessed wrong in assuming her husband told her squat. But then if she let Bo know that, he might well reinvent the past to suit his purposes. If she played along, then at least he would be less likely to lie since he assumed she already knew.

That her husband wouldn't tell her pinched her pride and heart more than her over-tight skirt constricting her breathing. "It's always helpful to hear things from another person's perspective. Adds surprising insights."

"Fine. We'll play this your way then if it'll get me out of here quicker."

Unease itched up her spine like the healing skin over her cut foot. She couldn't shake the feeling of disloyalty in hearing what J.T. had chosen not to tell her. Damn it, why couldn't this one have been shuffled to someone else? But even if her boss had relented, the move to a new counselor would mean starting all over again, perhaps delaying Bo's return to flying.

"The part where local warlords got ahold of us at first, was … tense. That's when I got these." He held up his hands. The right could have passed for normal with only one thin scar across the top. But the left shouted pain with fading incisions, the skin pale and peeling after so long in a cast. "Wondering what they would do with us was hell—fearing they might turn us over to one of their terrorist bosses. I wouldn't have made it out alive without your husband keeping them off me."

J.T.'s bruises.

The itch along her nerves turned to a vicious rash—ugly horror spreading through her as Bo confirmed all her worst fears about J.T.'s capture.

The longer her husband stayed silent, the more she'd hoped maybe the images haunting her were just the product of an overactive imagination. So much easier than admitting the worst had happened and her husband wouldn't even tell his wife.

Bo swung his boot back up on his knee, fidgeted with the long black laces. "There were already American hostages over there then, part of what we were checking up on—"

Pausing, he glanced up from his laces. "I swear I'm not being cagey. I can't say more than that for security reasons and it won't make any difference to what's going on here."

"I understand." Understood that her husband was a part of these things he couldn't talk about. Scary things that man-speak translated into the simple word tense.

"Anyhow, the Rubistanians intercepted the rebel caravan, and the bad guys turned us over to the good guys."

"Just turned you over?"

"Yep. They knew they were outgunned, so they gave us up rather than die."

More manspeak understatement. No doubt. "What about the days that followed?"

"Consisted of questioning while we waited for international channels to clear, and for the Rubistanians to poke around inside our plane. I don't remember a whole lot since I was drugged up for the pain most of the time."

"Does it help to downplay the events?"

He looked up, his eyes clear of the fog from reminiscing, if not the horrors of what he'd endured. "Yes."

Pain pulsed from him. She couldn't miss it even with the distance of training. The toughest part of her job. And this was a near stranger. The words would be hell coming from J.T.'s mouth.

If he ever told her.

"I don't mean to sound inane, Lieutenant, but you do realize that if you climb back into the plane, this could happen again?"

"I accept that as part of my job."

"And you're okay with it?" she asked, only noticing as the words fell out of her mouth that she'd opted for J.T.'s abbreviated manspeak.