Gone.
Swiping a sleeve over his forehead, J.T. backed from the closing ramp, avoiding the friction-hot rollers along the tracks. "Quickest you'll ever throw away a billion dollars. Now get your ass strapped in upstairs."
"Roger that." Spike clapped him on the back on his way toward the front.
J.T. jogged past his loadmaster perch, up the steep stairwell to the cockpit. For a crash landing, the higher up, the better. Two seats waited behind the pilot and copilot. J.T. darted right, Spike left, and buckled into the five-point harness.
The clear windscreen displayed coastline and desert meeting, sunrise cresting. He plugged in his headset again, reconnecting to the voices of the two men in front of him. Their hands flew over the throttle, stick, instrument panel as they battled the hulking craft.
Scorch, their aircraft commander, filled the left seat, a fair-headed guy who looked more like some mythological Greek god from the book in J.T.'s flight-suit pocket, a book he'd packed in anticipation of the quiet time out over the Atlantic. Hell. Scorch would need to tap into some godlike powers to get them out of this one.
Bo, the copilot, sat directly in front of J.T. The dark-haired kid must be all of maybe twenty-five or -six. Not much older than his two kids, for God's sake. Nikki was just finishing up her junior year at UNC. Chris was still in high school.
Regret seared. Damn but he wanted to see his daughter graduate, the first member of his family to get a college education. Of course, he'd attended Rena's graduation a couple of years ago, been proud as hell of her honors grades and quick landing of a job as a civilian counselor employed by the Charleston Air Force Base hospital.
But educational successes were expected for her since all her siblings had already sported a few diplomas triple matted on the wall when he'd met her. Hers had been delayed because of marrying him so young.
His head thunked back against the seat. Images of Rena scrolled through his mind on high speed as if to jam forty years more living into the next four minutes in case he never saw her again.
Never made love to her again.
Hell, right now he'd even settle for fighting with her, something they did as well and frequently as making love, which was mighty damn often. I'm sorry, Rena. For so many things.
Scorch thumbed the interphone button. "We're not going to make it to an airstrip. We'll have to put her down in the desert. Strap in tight. This one's going to smack so hard your children will be born dizzy."
J.T. braced his boots. And if they survived the landing? The Rubistanian government would detain them. Question them. It wouldn't be pleasant by a long shot, but they would make it home.
As long as the tribal warlords didn't get them first.
Chapter 1
May: North Charleston, S.C.
The doorbell echoed through the house.
Rena Price resisted the urge to duck and run upstairs to keep from answering. Instead, she kept her feet planted to the floor for a steadying second while she tipped the watering can into a potted begonia by the sofa.
Yeah, that sure would make a dignified image, a forty-year-old woman cowering under her bedroom quilt. And all because she was scared spitless she wouldn't be able to resist jumping the man standing on the other side of her oak door. But then her emotions had never been easy to contain. Especially around J.T.
Water gushed Niagara Falls style over the sides of the porcelain pot.
"Damn it." Rena dropped the watering can and scooped up a burgundy throw pillow from the sofa to blot the water off the floor. She'd just wash the pillow later.
Sheesh. She wasn't the same eighteen-year-old at an air show all gaga-eyed and drooling over a hot airman in his flight suit. She was a mature woman.
The bell pealed again.
A mature woman who needed to answer her door so her soon-to-be ex-husband could start his weekend visitation with their teenage son.
She Frisbee-tossed the soggy pillow across the room and out of sight into the hall. Flipped her long hair over her shoulder. Whew. Composed? Ha. Not inside. But enough to pass muster outwardly for at least five minutes.
Rena tucked around and past the ficus tree beside the overstuffed armchair. "Hold on. I'm coming. Just, uh—" her eyes fell on the telephone "—finishing up a call."
Liar. Liar. Her heels chanted with each click along hard-wood floors, then muffled on a braid rug as she made her way toward the broad-shouldered shadow darkening the stained-glass inset.
Regret pinched, not for the first time. How sad that she'd come to a point in her life where her husband had to ring the bell at his own house. He deserved so much better than this.
Better from her.