I Own the Dawn: The Night Stalkers Read online

  “Just like a guy,” Kee did her best to keep her voice steady against the need for air, “to think that size matters.”

  Kee planted both hands atop a fence post and swung her legs over the board fence in a side vault. Archie, who’d been taken by surprise at her move, hurdled it clean with his long legs and they were again running even.

  Open field running, tall grass slapping against her bare legs.

  “I’m always looking forward. Looking forward to those legs wrapped around me.”

  “You also need to see what’s around you, cowboy.” Her minigun was for side and aft work. His weaponry lay mostly in line with the helicopter’s nose. The rest of the field of fire was up to her and John. “Got to focus everywhere.”

  “Breasts, too. I can do that.”

  No question he could. She veered around a boulder. “My most dazzling weapons.”

  “No.” He gasped for air. “That’s your eyes.”

  Damn the man, he kept knocking the wind out of her.

  A steep slope took any remaining wind she might have used to egg him on. Instead, she kicked into a hard sprint. Finally she gained a lead on him.

  She beat Archie to the hill’s crest by half a dozen strides. Already had her water bottle out of her fanny pack when he hit the peak. Chalk one up for the girls’ team. Both gasping for breath, they crossed back and forth across the grassy bluff, walking off what had to be at least eight kilometers and over a thousand meters of climbing up the rolling hills.

  From the look, they were on the highest point around. The countryside rolled away in all directions. Trees and vineyards, cattle and sheep. Little towns tucked on the cliffs above cultivated terraces. Darker lines of shrubs and trees marking where streams slid through, headed for the sea. And off in the distance, so bright that it was painful to view, so hazy it looked like a dream, hung the Mediterranean.

  All shocking in its normalcy. She’d been forward deployed for just three weeks, and already this world felt foreign. Not foreign in that they ran across Italian soil. But foreign in that the only guns within a dozen klicks or more were used strictly for varmint or deer hunting. It felt wrong. Exposed. Which gave her an idea.

  “Hey, Night Stalker!”

  “What?”

  “One thing you need to know about. I mean running in the daylight and all.”

  “Yeah?”

  She’d managed to maneuver her back-and-forth stride so that she passed close by him.

  “Leaves a Night Stalker all exposed.” She grabbed the waistband of his shorts and jerked them down around his knees. Caught in mid-stride, he almost face-planted at the unexpected constraint.

  He struggled and weaved and managed to remain upright. His butt hanging out in the wind.

  She peeled off his shirt and her sports bra as one and tossed them at his feet. His effort to catch them proved too much and he went to his knees.

  “I didn’t.” He gasped and tried to move his feet back together, reach for his shorts, and not fall over the rest of the way all at the same time. “Bring any—”

  Kee reached into her fanny pack and waved a string of condoms in the air. A long string.

  The Professor, being a wise man, gave up on the shorts.

  Hot, sweaty, gasping, they came together like a pair of steam engines. Unstoppable, hungry, devouring.

  In moments they were naked but for their sneakers beneath the midday sun, cushioned by the deep grass and pounding away at each other. Last night had been no illusion. Their bodies responded to each other so hard and strong that by the time they were both done, by the time they’d ridden each other right up into the sky, they collapsed spent in each other’s arms.

  “Now we have to. Run back.” Archie’s tone was as dry as her throat. Their breathing still ragged from the workout they’d just had in the high grass.

  “Frankly, I highly doubt if I can stand.”

  Kee laughed. One of the benefits of sex for her, it acted like a supercharger. The girls’ team chalks up another one. Right now she could run twice as far as they’d come already.

  They tried lying together, but the view remained hidden by the hill’s grassy crown, and the grass itself, so soft a moment before, now prickled and poked. They finally ended up sitting on their clothes, leaning back to back and looking out at the world in opposite directions, letting the sun and the wind wash their bodies clean.

  “What is it about you, Kee Smith?”

  “I’m sexually gifted.”

  “No, you’re a damned sexual goddess! But that’s not what I mean.”

  She had to admit, the sex was beyond anything she’d ever experienced, but she didn’t have to admit it out loud.

  “Can you explain it?”

  “I don’t have a clue what you’re on about, Professor.”

  He harrumphed, a grunt more felt through her back than heard through her ears.

  She lay her head back on his shoulder, and he tipped his cheek atop her head. Comfortable. Too comfortable, but she didn’t want to move.

  “Mom said she couldn’t picture such a pretty and pleasant girl flying around killing people.”

  “Your mom is a civilian. She could never understand why we do what we do.”

  “Actually, she was a chief supply officer in Saigon for two years. Air Force. Two bad years right near the end of the war. That’s how I got started in flying, hoping she’d notice me.”

  Kee swallowed hard.

  “You’re never quite what I expect, Professor. Not you or your family.”

  “What do you mean?”

  She gave it a moment for the picture to come clear.

  “Nah, you’d just get all mad or offended.”

  “I’m not much given to such reactions.”

  He wasn’t. Another point in the damn man’s favor. She kept liking him more all the time, and if that kept up, he’d make her plenty angry. She had no problem connecting to that particular emotion. Gotten her in trouble often enough, too.

  “Go ahead. Lay it on me.”

  “Thought I just did.”

  He slid a hand back to find one of hers. She went to move it away but ended up with her fingers wound around his instead. She almost raised her head to see how that had happened, but leaning against the Professor proved too comfortable.

  “When I picture your family…” She closed her eyes and it appeared exactly as in the movies. “Big house, security hedge hiding an old stone wall, family all at leisure. Laughing over dinner. Getting wound up over whose wife was getting it on with the country club golf pro. At least a cook and housekeeper, if not more.

  “You’ve got money. Real money. Old Boston money. But the picture doesn’t hold together in my head. Your dad’s hands show the calluses from building wooden sailboats. And your mom never speaks, but she doesn’t miss a thing. She loves you so much, it almost hurts to watch.”

  “You’re kidding.” His head popped upright and turned a bit as if he could turn to face her, though they still leaned back against back.

  Kee released his hand and turned to face him. The breeze suddenly cool across her bare shoulder blades.

  “How can you not know that? I would kill for what you have, and you don’t even know it’s there. It’s written in everything she does. Did you know that she’s the one who found me and got me back to the boat?”

  “Mom? I wondered why you came back, but I was so thankful, I didn’t want to spoil it by asking.” Archie watched her eyes. Not her bare breasts. Nor the rest of her bare body he’d been so happily plundering moments before. He watched her eyes and listened intently. Concentrating. Intent. Now why was that more arousing than the wrestle they’d just had in the tall grass?

  She slid around to straddle his lap and slowly worked her hips against him. His body hadn’t recovered enough yet, but it was thinking about it. His hands definitely had, digging deep into shoulder muscles.

  “She sees you.” She arched back against the pleasure of his fingers. “She may have done a tour in �
��Nam and run a big, fancy corporation. But she sees you. That is one very smart woman who loves you more than she knows how to say.”

  She nibbled on his shoulder for the taste of it. The Professor was fresh and warm, and the heat of the run and the sex and the sun made him taste very male. Far more than she’d expect from a long, lean rich boy.

  “Funny, she said somewhat the same thing about you.”

  “What?” Kee could feel herself going all lazy and liquid as she worked her chest slowly back and forth across his magnificent torso.

  “She said you wear your heart on your sleeve. That’s a direct quote. And you do. I knew that was true the moment I saw you, but I lacked the proper words. Why can I see it on you and not on my own mother?”

  He slowly tipped her onto her back, nuzzling down between her breasts. But rather than attacking them, he laid his ear on her heart.

  “That’s a great sound.”

  “What?”

  “The beating of that heart you wear on your sleeve.”

  Kee had no response. Her own heart, the one thing she kept so carefully guarded she sometimes wondered if it still existed. In the dark of the night, she was often left to wonder if it too had died with Anna.

  And Archie claimed he could see it like a goddamn shoulder patch.

  She’d have to be more careful about that, too.

  She didn’t want it. Didn’t want her heart out in the world. She lifted his head and rolled enough that one of her breasts brushed over his lips.

  Kee led him until she knew he’d forgotten about her heart and only thought of her body.

  If only she could do the same for herself.

  Chapter 25

  Kee’d set off at a good clip, but Archie wasn’t there. She slowed to little better than a jog trot as they worked their way back over the hills and fields toward the ocean.

  The Professor wasn’t hurting. Without a pack, this was an easy run for a SOAR pilot, especially for a Black Adder. Major Henderson’s company, Kee was pleased to be discovering, always worked harder, flew longer, and posted seriously high successful completion ratios in a regiment that valued that above all else.

  So, if he wasn’t tapped… He had his thinking face on. His body ran along, but he wasn’t paying it much attention.

  “Okay, before you joined the Army is an out-of-bounds topic. Understood. So, how did you end up in SOAR?”

  “How did you?”

  “I asked first.”

  “I’m a girl, I can change the subject anytime I want.”

  “I’m your superior officer and that’s purest drivel.”

  Kee reached for the waistband of his shorts. If there’d been a ditch, he’d have veered into it trying to get away from her.

  “Cheater.”

  “Cheapskate.”

  “Cheapskate?”

  “Sure.” Kee kept the pace and let Archie catch back up to her. “I give you gooood sex, Masser Stevenson, and you won’t even let me change the subject in exchange.”

  “I don’t keep a score sheet.”

  “I do.”

  Archie ran in silence.

  Kee could feel that silence. Feel it clamp down between them.

  “Sorry. Things like that keep coming out shitty around you. I really don’t mean it that way.”

  Archie ran a little farther, though it felt as if the pressure had eased off.

  “It sounds that way. It really does, Kee. It stings like hell when you do that.”

  “Sorry.”

  The silence continued. They plodded along in one of the slowest half kilometers she’d probably ever turned. Up to her to break it. She was about to open her mouth when he forgave her enough to do it himself.

  “So what do you want to know?” Archie’d even given her the lead. Damn him for being decent.

  “Why SOAR?” Kee considered phrasing it nicely, but it just wasn’t in her. She couldn’t resist the dig at the Professor’s perfect manners. Digging at all that wealth. All those options he’d been raised to take for granted.

  “Why didn’t you marry Muffy or Pinkie and pop out a couple of perfect Harvard girls? Why fly a DAP Hawk alongside Major Emily Beale?”

  “I ended up at West Point. I wanted my mom to notice me, but I didn’t want to follow right in her footsteps either. I was a total loss at the Point. Sure, I had brains enough to nail the classroom. Additionally, building wooden boats is hard work, so I was strong. Getting into Army shape only took time and focus.”

  His words came slower as they trotted up a long slope. This time, the sheep that had spun aside barely broke from their grazing to inspect the passersby. Certified inside those furry heads as “not wolf,” they were soon ignored.

  “But I never fit in. I tried to be smarter, which was easy, but that only increased the heat from my classmates. I tried being stronger, but my physique doesn’t go that way.” He waved at his long, lean frame. “I’m not built the way you are.”

  Kee put on her best streetwalker tone and grabbed her breasts. “Hey, no one’s built the way I am.”

  That earned a grin, but not much of one.

  “Emily Beale was a year ahead. She was already a legend by the time I came along. Every woman’s athletic record, and several of the men’s, were hers. She outran, out-studied, out-survived everyone. Junior year she finished her senior coursework. Senior year she spent one on one with some of the best instructors the Point could offer. Tactics, strategy, leadership. Everyone knew she was someone special.”

  The Professor inspected the sky in a long silence broken only by the rhythm of their feet slapping the road. A lone hawk pinwheeled overhead.

  “Actually, those classes were two on one. She picked me out of the crowd in my second month, first year. With her watching over me, I’d have graduated anywhere other than the Point in three years. My junior year I did my junior coursework and joined in her tutoring sessions at the same time. Double duty. After that, senior year was a cakewalk.

  “Special Forces, Airborne, Rangers, Fort Rucker flight school. She paved every inch of the way, I followed right behind.”

  “But how did she break the barrier at SOAR?” Kee’d never unraveled that one. “The first woman. Special Forces isn’t big on that.”

  When they reached the stone wall they’d first vaulted, Archie stopped and sat down on it.

  Kee sat a few feet from him and took a hit off her water bottle.

  “My mother told you she took over her father’s company.”

  “Sure. Blair something.”

  “Blair Research. A government think tank. Very small. Very elite. Most of her staff is made up of retired generals, Secretaries of State and Defense, even a former President. When BR speaks, everyone right up to the President listens very carefully. On Emily’s side, her dad is the Director of the FBI.”

  “Whoa!” Kee couldn’t think of anything more intelligent to say. She’d stumbled into an enclave of overachievers even more driven than herself. Of course, they’d started with a damn sight more potential than she had.

  “Between them they pointed out the loss to SOAR if they didn’t take Emily Beale on board. When she went, she insisted on me as her copilot.”

  “Did you two ever—” Kee clamped down on her tongue and felt dirty. “Sorry. I’m so sorry, Archie. I’m just a heartless bitch inside. None of my business.”

  She folded her hands over her knees and stared down at them. How could that come out of her mouth? She just called him the Major’s boy toy. She’d as much as stated that he didn’t have the skills on his own, negating his years of experience and training. SOAR wasn’t a free ride for anyone.

  “Sorry.” A nightmare. She kept stumbling into a nightmare around Archie.

  She’d just crossed way past any line. She rose and turned away without looking up. There’d be no forgiving that. Now she’d need to find a reassignment.

  His hand caught her by the upper arm.

  She braced for the blow. Eyes closed. Head turned. Just as she’d
seen the whores take it when their pimp taught them a lesson.

  It didn’t come.

  And didn’t come.

  She finally opened her eyes and glanced at him sidelong.

  He sat and watched her. No anger. No sign of any emotion. He just watched.

  “Kee.” He nodded to the wall. “Sit down.”

  She did as he ordered.

  “Now—you’re going to tell me who hurt you so badly.”

  Chapter 26

  Kee couldn’t find the engine start on her brain.

  Archie sat calm as could be and waited on the stone wall. The light breeze left her with a chill despite the warm smell of grass in the summer sun.

  “I’d take someone down who said I got on that Hawk because I slept with you. It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life, getting on that bird. How can you not hate me?”

  Archie smiled a little. Not humor, more as if he were considering whether or not he held an emotion inside that he didn’t know about.

  “Keeping up with Emily Beale is the hardest thing I’ve ever done, and I’ve been doing it for ten years now. But I did it, Kee. Whether you believe it or not, I know it. I know to the core that I’m the one who did it. Sure, Emily picked me out of the crowd and drove my ass into the ground. But I’m the one who stood out from the crowd, and at West Point that is a seriously high-class crowd.

  “And I kept up. Did better at a few things. Not many, but a few. She can outfly anyone, even Henderson. But I can outgun her, especially in high-speed situations. I have a better strategic feel for what the enemy is doing before they do it. She is the master of the tactical situation, how to take out the key pin. I know what to do to keep the enemy from placing that pin in the first place.”

  Kee kept her mouth shut.

  “So, Kee, what I want to know is why you of all people would say what you just did? You fought just as hard to get where you are, or you wouldn’t be here. Maybe harder, considering your background. Henderson picked you out of the crowd. Convinced Emily you were good enough, and trust me, being her husband probably made that task harder rather than easier. Emily doesn’t believe in favoritism.”