The Ides of Matt 2015 Read online

  She led Jack Slater into her new apartment.

  7

  Jack woke up tangled in sheets and woman. It was pitch dark and a helicopter had just roared by close overhead. Then another followed it—and several more.

  “Two Black Hawks, four Chinooks,” the woman in his arms whispered. Wonder Woman. And Diana had certainly proved that she completely deserved the accolade.

  “Plus a pair of Little Birds and a partridge in a pear tree,” he replied. “You know that a woman who can tell helo models by their sound is pretty sexy.”

  She nuzzled his neck. “Gods, I feel like such a slut.”

  “I’ve been used,” he groaned in mock complaint. He slid a hand down over that fine soldier’s butt of hers, the other tracing over that long leg of hers draped across his waist. “However, I would point out that no way does a slut feel this good.”

  “You say the sweetest things.”

  “I’m a sweet guy.”

  She snorted against his neck, her laugh sending interesting ripples along where their bodies lay together.

  “Okay,” he admitted. “You caught me,” and he wiggled a finger in the ticklish spot he’d located earlier, the soft inside of her thigh just above the knee.

  She convulsed and he used her momentary imbalance to leverage her back under him.

  He groped for some more protection and she didn’t make a single protest as he did his best to prove that he wasn’t sweet at all.

  8

  Simulator scenarios were mixed with actual night flights. And as one flight turned into a dozen, then two dozen, so did their days together—for daytime is when Night Stalkers slept, or didn’t.

  Diana was going weak in her head for a fellow officer which was stupid in so many ways. It would help if he wasn’t such a joy to fly with or an equal joy to tussle with between the sheets—but he was both of those and more.

  In a blur so fast that it was hard to imagine, a cold October dawn had turned into a bitter December, but she didn’t care. The training regimen from Major Lang-Clark was intense—and serving its purpose. The confusion of that first simulation had turned into a clear set of skills, even if the new simulations posed even harder moral dilemmas and more difficult to perfect tactics.

  And Captain Jack Slater had turned into the best man she’d ever been with. She simply couldn’t get enough of him, no matter how much they both tried.

  They alternated seats, both in the simulator and aloft until one night he looked at her after a particularly complex storm-and-mountain scenario and declared, “You’re pilot-in-command from now on. You’re better than I am.”

  “No way. You’re—” then she saw Major Lang-Clark and Sergeant Hamlin nodding in agreement.

  “You two,” Lois spoke, “make an interesting team in several ways. I’ve met better,” she tapped her own chest in a rare jest, “but I haven’t trained better. We normally would split you up after training, send you out with different units.”

  And the breath had caught in Diana’s throat. She and Jack had been together only a few months and already she couldn’t imagine not waking up to Jack’s hard body and gentle teasing. Or flying with anyone else. They’d developed a synchronicity in the air that was as effortless as their one on the ground.

  “But,” Lois continued, “keep on the way you are and I’ll recommend you remain teamed up.”

  Lois’ look carried a second meaning that Diana wanted to be surprised by, but wasn’t. They’d done their best to keep their relationship behind the closed apartment door, but obviously that hadn’t worked.

  “Of course, long-term planning in these situations is always an interesting challenge,” and Lois left them, shooing the Sergeant out of the simulator ahead of her.

  Only when the cockpit was quiet, all of the systems dark and dormant, and the last echoes of the others’ footsteps down the ladder had long since died away, did she dare turn to look at Jack.

  He wasn’t looking at her.

  He was staring straight ahead, out at the blank screen, with his hands still clenched hard on the controls.

  “Jack?”

  9

  Jack had had plenty of other lovers like Diana Price.

  He was sure he had.

  Oh, maybe not as smart. Or quite as pretty. Or so goddamn amazing in bed. Or such a good pilot he’d finally had to face his own shortcomings—but he was a better gunner and navigator than she was and that had to count for something.

  But all those others had been just like her in…no way he could seem to recall. What the hell?

  “Jack?”

  He heard her voice, distant, worried. He wanted to brush it off. Toss out some Jack-the-Giant-Slaughter joke that had always cracked up the guys, eased any situation.

  But a panic had coursed through him that he didn’t know how to handle.

  “Jack?” This time the voice was worried, afraid. Anyone else he could ignore, any woman but Diana.

  He forced his attention to her.

  Her eyes were pleading with him, wanting to understand something he couldn’t grasp, a past even Jack-the-Giant-Slayer couldn’t kill.

  “I—” he tried and failed. So he started again. “I am a jerk.”

  She blinked at him in surprise.

  “I’m not a permanent sort of guy. No one has ever been dumb enough to think that I was. Especially not me.”

  He could see the pain slam into her as if he’d gut-punched her, hard.

  “Diana. You’re a wondrous woman. You’re way too smart to think that I’m more than I am.” But the pain in her eyes grew worse, darker. “Aren’t you?”

  Tears spilled over and flowed freely down her cheeks.

  One moment she was there, her tears leaving him totally helpless. The next she was racing out of the simulator.

  He slammed against the harness in his effort to follow her and knocked most of the wind out of himself. Slapping the releases, he dumped his helmet—still wired into the simulator’s systems—and ran after her.

  She was fast, but he was faster. He caught her out on the airfield close beside a parked Black Hawk helicopter, barely visible as any hint of dawn was lost beneath the thickly overcast night.

  He grabbed her and the slap came fast and hard. Enough to jerk his head aside and fill the night sky with stars.

  Jack released his hold and she was gone again.

  10

  Jack had never slept in his own apartment. He rubbed his own eyes groggily. Well, his record was unbroken. He’d lain awake through the whole day, aware of Diana lying only a few feet away on the other side of the wall between their apartments.

  At times he imagined he could hear her weeping, at times he’d imagined that he was.

  Half a dozen times he’d crossed the tiny hall to knock on her door, but not knowing what to say, he’d crept silently back to his own room each time.

  On his last try, his packed duffle bag fell into the apartment when he’d opened his door; she’d packed his gear and left it leaning there. He hadn’t the heart to try and cross the vast divide of the small hallway after that.

  “You really are a jerk,” he told his reflection as he shaved.

  At least his reflection wasn’t answering back.

  “Permanent is a lie,” he continued. His parents and numerous stepparents on both sides of the house had proved that time and again. He had no brother or sister, but he had step-ones right and left. And then ex-stepparents were breeding more kin, many of whom he’d never met or maybe never even heard of. They should start holding extended-family reunions, so that there could be more excuses for divorces and marriages among the ever expanding catastrophe that was his family. Maybe they had; he certainly wasn’t in touch with any of them.

  He finished shaving and inspected himself in the mirror. He should have left the five p.m. shadow; clean-shaven, Diana�
�s palm print stood out clearly. Well, maybe not enough for anyone else to notice it, but he could see and feel every line, right down to the whorls of her fingerprints.

  If ever there was a woman who deserved permanent, it was Diana Price.

  He wished it could be him, but it just wasn’t going to happen.

  But he wished it could.

  He got dressed in whatever he found first. Most of his clothes were a jumble, stuffed down into the duffle. At least Diana hadn’t slashed them.

  Had he been leading her on? Making promises he had no intention or ability to keep? No.

  Had his body been making promises he couldn’t keep? He was less comfortable with that answer.

  It was a night off. He hid in the base library like the coward that he was. Not that he understood a word he read. He’d never met anyone like Diana Price the Wonder Woman and had never expected to again.

  So what was he going to do about it?

  Even if he wanted to do something about it, would she let him?

  Not if she was smart. Which she was.

  His stomach growled for the third meal after he’d skipped the first two; the traitor.

  He still had no answers when he saw her eating on the far side of the mess hall from their usual place.

  Nor when the PA system called out their names halfway through the meal to report immediately to the flight line.

  11

  The weather sucked! Which was fine, it completely fit Diana’s equally foul mood. While she hadn’t slept, the first major winter storm had arrived and high winds were now slashing driving sheets of rain across the base. Trees were down throughout Puget Sound. The Nisqually and Puyallup Rivers already racing toward flood stage.

  The television, her only friend through the sleepless night, told the story of massive power outages sweeping far and wide across the Pacific Northwest, though none had hit Joint Base Lewis-McChord.

  A hundred times through the day she’d thought how nice it would be to curl up with Jack Slater, make love while the wind roared and the rain battered—and a hundred times she’d had to push it aside.

  Late within the time she was supposed to be asleep, about three in the afternoon because they were now fully on a nighttime schedule like most Night Stalkers, she’d finally forced herself to start thinking.

  Why had she reacted so strongly?

  Because just like her mother—who had never remarried and maybe at long last Diana understood why—she’d fallen in love.

  Diana had sighed and wished she wasn’t always so goddamn honest with herself. But it was true. Without even noticing, she’d fallen in love with Jack Slater.

  But Jack had made no promises.

  He’d always been appreciative: of her flying, her mind, and her body. He had an uncanny ability to fully focus on each aspect of her. When they were discussing a mission, he wasn’t leering at her body, he was a hundred percent on profile. And when they were making love…he made the rest of the world cease to exist.

  Except for her initial info dump about her father’s death, they’d never discussed their pasts, not even that she was illegitimate. Past missions, training, even schooling, sure. But there’d been a barrier when they got back to family that neither of them had been willing to breach.

  Well, the three-minute trip in the back of the SUV that raced them across the airfield was not the time to discuss it.

  That was the moment when Diana decided that she wasn’t ready to give up on them yet.

  She wanted Jack. She wanted him long-term. He was already in her heart the same way that her father was in Mom’s.

  Forever.

  A hundred yards to the hangar, she did the only thing there was time for, the only thing she could think to do.

  She reached out and took his hand.

  He didn’t turn to look at her, didn’t react in any way.

  Except to nearly crush her fingers in his powerful grip. He held on like a drowning man for every single one of those seconds.

  She’d take that as a good sign.

  12

  “Dungeness Spit lighthouse,” Lois shouted at them over the roar of the storm. “It’s out on a sand spit in the middle of the Strait of San Juan de Fuca. All of the Coast Guard helos are scrambling on emergencies out in the shipping lanes. No way to get a boat out there quickly and they’ve passed the call to us. Civilian caretaker, heart attack. His wife radioed it in.”

  Without a word, he and Diana had prepped the Black Hawk. A base medic and Master Sergeant Hamlin piled aboard.

  “What about you?” he asked the Major.

  She shook her head.

  She’d never told her story, but she was a damn fine pilot with or without two real feet. And she was perhaps the tactically smartest person he’d ever met, definitely about CSAR. There was only one other woman he’d want beside him more.

  Again the Major refused. “I don’t fly enough myself to have the needed edge. And if I go and can’t fly, I’d just make everyone crazy.”

  She made it sound funny, but the pain on her rain-soaked face was enough to send him clambering aboard, because he knew it would be even worse if he said even another word. She gave so much, but she’d lost a lot too.

  Less than three minutes later they were hammering aloft. Usually the hazards were man-made when he flew: bullets, RPGs, missiles. Tonight was much rougher, the storm slashing in from the Pacific was ripped apart by the tall mountains of the Olympic Peninsula then recombined in harsh and unpredictable ways.

  There was no time to talk. Eighty miles should be an easy twenty-minute flight, instead it was a nightmare of blacked-out chaos, battering winds, tall mountains, and numerous aircraft corridors for the four major airports from here to Everett—the last requiring careful navigation to avoid being eaten by a hundred tons of airline. It took everything they could muster to get through the storm.

  Some of the gusts were fully half the speed they were able to fly. And the wind came from all different directions, including vertical. They’d jump from ten thousand feet to twelve and then fall back to eight faster than he could recite the nursery rhyme to remind himself, “Jack be nimble.”

  If the flight out was bad, the approach to Dungeness Spit off Sequim, Washington was insane.

  The Strait was a twenty-mile wide pipeline aimed right at the heart of the storm.

  Sequim was blacked out, of course, except for anyone with a generator.

  Five miles offshore, the lighthouse was a bright beacon, which only made it all the more visible how their helo was being battered about the sky.

  Whole sections of the thin spit of sand that connected the mainland to the lighthouse were being swept by towering waves. He turned on the landing spotlight and they could see drift logs a hundred feet long being tossed about like a game of pickup sticks.

  He monitored the engine and navigation data, and kept his hands on the controls to help when needed.

  “God but you’re good, Wonder Woman,” he told her over the intercom. Why he hadn’t said a word until they were approaching the worst part of the flight was beyond him. That simple hand clasp had given him something incredible. It had given him hope. He wasn’t sure yet hope for what, but it had flooded through him and it was a feeling he didn’t want to lose ever again.

  “Thanks,” he could hear how tight she was holding on, how hard she was working.

  “Take a breath, Diana.”

  She exhaled out hard, then again.

  “Been holding your breath for the whole flight?”

  “Maybe,” some warmth came back into her voice. “We Wonder Women can do that.”

  “Haven’t found a thing you can’t do yet.”

  13

  Diana could. She couldn’t win the heart of Jack Slater. And she didn’t know why. After she’d exposed herself in the car by taking his hand, he hadn’t sa
id a single word to her that wasn’t calling out a flight vector or an engine status.

  At least now he was talking.

  Right when she couldn’t; she had to concentrate.

  The lighthouse itself sat in a broad meadow that rose barely above sea level. The lighthouse and keeper’s cottage crouched at the center of the meadow a hundred meters from the ocean to both the north and south, but if its elevation was five meters, she’d be surprised. Huge logs had been washed up close to the lighthouse to either side.

  There was a helipad, and it was awash. It was also too far from the caretaker’s cottage. But she didn’t dare get too close either or she might catch a rotor blade.

  Everything else faded into the background, storm, waves, even Jack. There was only her and her target. The MH-60M Black Hawk had become merely an extension of her will, as much a part of her as the clothes she wore.

  She fought her way down, a side gust almost flipping her over, but she wrenched the helo back aloft, missed the lighthouse by mere feet over a rotor’s diameter—far closer than she’d meant to come—and tried again.

  She had the feel of the gusts. How each massive wave, rising to attack the seaward shore, momentarily blocked the rush of the wind right at ground level.

  Finally there was a moment…

  “Hang on!” Diana shouted over the intercom and used one of the unusual capabilities of the Black Hawk, its impressive ability to survive a crash.

  From five meters up and driving ahead hard into the wind, she slammed the collective down and yanked back on the cyclic.

  The Black Hawk fell like a brick. The rear wheel hit first, then, like a belly flop, the helicopter hammered down on her main wheels. Diana was slammed down into her seat, but they were designed to take it, even if it didn’t feel like it at the moment. Her teeth clacked together hard.

  The helo bounced, but not high. That’s why Diana had slammed down the collective. The Black Hawk was now pinned to the ground by the rotor blades still trying to descend even though they were on the blowing grass of the meadow.