Forged in Fire (4 page)

Or the sex.

Russ scowled. Somehow Beth Brown was the key. Her reaction when she’d caught sight of Winters had verged on bizarre. She’d literally stopped in her tracks. Swayed. Almost fainted. But why?

Winters’ reaction to her had been almost as odd. He’d noticed her the moment she’d arrived, hadn’t been able to keep his eyes off her. Yet when she’d finally approached, he’d turned his back on her? A lovers’ spat? Unlikely. Special Operators didn’t turn away from confrontation, even when it came to their chicks.

And while that kiss had generated some serious steam, they were not lovers. Couples who’d indulged in the intimacy of sex announced their involvement in the most subtle of ways: lingering glances, fleeting touches, a melting of muscles and guards. Beth Brown and Winters hadn’t shown any of those signs.

Besides, intel on Winters indicated that priests got more action. If he’d been rocking the mattress with some new girl, it would have been brought to their attention.

Sighing, Russ rubbed his forehead. Maybe he was reading the signs wrong.

SQT taught caution. The scanning and recon could be simple conditioning. If those fucking SEALs suspected his plans for that plane, they’d have shut the flight down. But according to the reader board, the departure remained on schedule.

As for Brown, maybe she’d been struck dumb by the testosterone saturating the air. The trio had drawn a good chunk of admiring eyes—both male and female. Maybe she was looking for a vacation fuck, and after 6 months of evolution Winters was ready to oblige.

Except… Russ caught a flash of wheat-colored hair as Seth Rawlings trailed after his buddies. If Winters’ interest in the woman was some good old-fashioned fucking, he wouldn’t have invited his lieutenants along for the ride. The guy was a Boy Scout, conservative to the core. He wasn’t the type to appreciate a ménage.

He glanced around. The only person close enough to catch his end of the conversation was the fat cow across from him, but she was deaf, dumb and blind to everything except the pornographic piece of trash she was reading.

Swearing softly, he stared down at the cell phone. After a moment, he reluctantly punched the first number in the keypad. As each successive number lit the diminutive screen, the muscles of his chest tightened until it felt like Horton the elephant was sitting on his chest.

The woman’s appearance could mean nothing. But they’d gut him, cut off his testicles, and leave him to rot if things went south because he hadn’t updated them on a potential problem.

A cultured voice replaced the ringing. “Our agreement was no contact until the plane was in the air.”

Sweat broke out over Russ’s palms. “You requested updates in the event something unexpected occurred.”

A pulse of silence fell. “Continue then.”

“One of our acquaintances has acquired a new girlfriend by the name of Beth Brown. She’s booked on his flight.”

“There is no Beth Brown on the passenger manifest.” The voice coolly observed. “Which acquaintance?”

The fingers of his right hand started cramping. Russ relaxed their tense hold on the plastic casing of the phone. “LC.”

A short, thoughtful pause. “Our intel suggests Lieutenant Commander Winters is unattached.”

Russ thought back to that kiss. With a frown, he scrubbed a hand down his face. The kiss could mean nothing… or everything. “We may need a refresher course.”

A hum of agreement echoed down the line. “Do you sense a problem?”

“LC and the lady disappeared. Five minutes later, his buddies vanished as well.”

“If such is the case, it’s unlikely to be a lovers’ rendezvous.”

“Agreed.”

Cold silence trickled down the line. “Had you removed this obstacle when you were advised, we would not be having this conversation.”

Russ’s fingers cramped again. Christ, there had been every possibility the team would go wheels-up before the flight departed. Not to mention taking out three members of ST7 would have brought HQ1 down on their ass. It had seemed best to keep Coronado out of the picture until the plane was in the air and on its way down to Puerto Jardin.

“Taking action too soon would have raised… concerns.”

“So you convinced us at the time.” The voice chilled even further. “Considerable resources have been expended. We expect a return on our investment.”

Russ chanced a quick, shallow breath. “The flight remains on schedule.”

“Make certain it remains that way.”

The line went dead.

Russ eased his numb fingers off the phone, and dropped it into a side pocket on the laptop’s case.

Ten years ago he’d taken the skills he’d honed through the military’s generosity and gone into business for himself. He’d quickly discovered he had a knack for the work. Russ knew his strengths. He was good at what he did. Damn good. Maybe even the best. And that wasn’t boasting. That was an honest-to-God fact. He hadn’t lost an operation yet. Which was why his current employers had sought him out.

The money they’d offered had been impossible to refuse. The first half of his payment had paid off Jilly’s house, her car, and set up college funds for the kids. The second half would fund his retirement.

He’d handled jobs for extremists, drug cartels, and organized crime. Christ, he’d worked with various Third World dictators a time or two. Men in power didn’t scare him. There were always exit strategies. You just had to look for them. Nor had he questioned his ability to handle a troublesome employer.

Until now. Until this job.

But then he’d never taken on clients like his current masters—rich beyond imagination, political powerhouses and batshit insane.

Those crazy rich bastards were just insane enough to pull this whole thing off. Their operation had taken months of planning, God only knew how much cash, and enough cogs to run a small country.

But the test flight had gone smooth as pie, bloody as a coup.

Russ didn’t doubt, regardless of ST7’s interference, that’d he’d get that plane down to Puerto Jardin as directed.

And once the plane landed, he'd take his fee and get the hell out of P.J. Assuming his reward for a job well done wasn’t a bullet through the brain.

* * *

Zane glanced down, those glittering eyes lingering on her lips. “What’s your name?”

Her voice caught in her throat. “Beth.”

She caught herself before her last name spilled out. Her full name would give him the means to track her down.

His eyebrows plunged and the bones of his face sharpened. “Well, Beth, you keep that up and there won’t be much talking. There’ll be a whole lot of kissing instead.”

Beth choked and dragged her gaze away. “Keep what up?”

She wasn’t touching the rest of that, thank you very much.

“Licking your lip.”

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him turn his head and glance behind them, then take a long, slow look around. “Reminds me where I want that mouth of yours.”

She swallowed a whimper. She seriously needed to get control of this conversation, like now, before her bones dissolved and her brain disintegrated. Or her skin started tanning from sexual heat.

“Look.” She didn’t stop walking, because she didn’t want to have this dialogue face-to-face. Lord knows, the last thing they needed was more face-to-face time. “I’m not interested, okay? I’m already involved with someone.”

He stopped so abruptly she was in mid-stride when he jerked her back.

“Too bad.” He caught her chin in an iron grip and forced her gaze up. The face staring back was hard, determined. Lethal. “You can fight what’s between us all you want. It won’t change a thing. You’re mine. And sweetheart, you don’t want to bring another guy into this, not unless you want to watch him bleed. I don’t share.”

“
Excuse me?
” Beth’s jaw would have dropped if he hadn’t had hold of her chin.

A wave of intense disorientation swept over her. For a moment she was convinced she was still dreaming. That she’d fallen asleep while reading one of JR Ward’s
Brotherhood of The Black Dagger
romances and had inserted herself into a dream based on the book. Any moment now he was going to start growling
Mine Mine Mine
and let loose with some spicy bonding scent. Or flash a massive set of fangs.

Except… if she was dreaming, wouldn’t he be a jacked-up, massively muscled vampire warrior, rather than the testosterone laden, far-too-alpha—but human—pain-in-the-derriere?

She concentrated on the hard fingers under her chin, and the sense of disorientation dissipated. Oh no, this was real. And it just went to show that her secret weakness in literary escapism did not translate well into reality. The last thing she needed or wanted in real life was a bonded alpha male. Romantic fiction aside, they were serious jackass material.

“You’re mine,” he said again, his voice flat, yet in that you-just-need-to-be-reasonable-about-this tone that men had been driving women crazy with throughout history.

She told herself she shouldn’t even respond to that insane claim, but the words just burst out. “I am not yours. You don’t even
know
me. I could be married, or a murderer, or a nun for all you know.”

He snorted and amusement kicked up the edges of that sensual mouth. “We’ll get to know each other soon enough.”

“I don’t
want
to get to know you.” She jerked her chin loose. “Crazy, psychotic men are not on my list of possible partners.”

What in the world was going on with him?

“Problems, boss?” a dry voice asked from behind them.

Zane half turned to glance over his shoulder. “Nothing I can’t handle,” he said in that calm way of his. “Anything jump out at you back there?”

“Nothing. We’re not being followed. Rawls is on his way. You find out what the hell’s going on?”

“Not here.” Electric green eyes narrowed and swept the corridor, shifted to a shallower hall that branched off the main path and dead-ended a few feet past a steel door marked
Authorized Personnel Only
. He nodded at the posted door. “There.”

He dropped his arm back to Beth’s waist and steered her toward their rendezvous point. When he tried the steel doorknob, it didn’t budge. “Cosky?”

Shifting up, he eased Beth in line beside him until their bodies created a barricade, blocking the main corridor’s view of the door, and whatever Zane’s buddy was doing to it. She heard the whisper of cloth rubbing on cloth, followed by the scratch of steel on steel.

“We’re in,” Cosky said a second or so later.

He’d picked the lock much faster than Beth had expected. With the way her luck was running, these three probably weren’t even the good guys; she’d probably accosted a trio of criminals. It suddenly occurred to her that she was about to disappear inside a room with three men she didn’t even know, yet for some odd reason she felt perfectly safe.

Maybe she was the crazy one.

Zane’s low whistle brought Beth’s attention front and center again, just in time to see the sandy-haired southerner swivel in mid-stride and head in their direction. Zane scanned the airport corridor and waited for an Asian couple to pass. Once the coast was clear, he swung Beth around and pushed her through the open door, following her inside. Someone must have hit a switch, because bright white light exploded all around her.

They were in a supply closet. Floor-to-ceiling steel shelves stocked full of paper towels, toilet paper, and plastic soap dispensers covered three of the four walls. Against the far wall was a jumbled mess of mops, buckets, brooms, and vacuum cleaners. The interior reeked of industrial cleaner.

Although the space wasn’t small, by the time Zane’s two friends followed them inside and closed the door, Beth felt claustrophobic. All those huge male bodies seemed to suck the oxygen from the air.

As the other two settled against the shelves and studied her with sharp, curious eyes, Beth waited for their leader to drop his arm and let her go. He didn’t. When the silence expanded, and he still hadn’t released her, Beth tried stepping to the side, only to find herself hauled back against him again.

“Boys, this is Beth,” Zane said. “Beth, meet Simcosky and Rawlings.” He glanced down, his hair gleaming like dark chocolate beneath the fluorescent lights. “I’m—”

It was now or never. Beth didn’t hesitate. “Zane Winters,” she interrupted. “Lieutenant Zane Winters. I know who you are.”

Dead silence followed. All three men went still. Alert. Zane dropped his arm from her waist.

“You know my name.” Zane’s tone remained controlled. “How? I’d sure as hell remember if we’d met.”

“We’ve never met.”

Simcosky and Rawlings exchanged glances.

Zane waited for her attention to return to his face. “How do you know who I am?”

Those green eyes shone with a different expression now. Watchfulness? Suspicion? She couldn’t quite tell, but the hunger was banked. She tried to convince herself the change was an improvement.

Her arms contracted around her purse, hugging it to her chest. There was no easy way to say it, so Beth just tossed the answer out. “Because I dreamed of you. I watched the three of you die.”

Chapter Three

Absolute silence raged for seven or eight seconds. To Beth, it seemed to last forever.

“You dreamed about us.” Zane’s tone remained level. But his eyes went flat and his face still, radiating skepticism.

Beth rushed the explanation out. “That’s how I know your name and rank. I heard them in the dream.” She nodded toward Rawlings. “He called you lieutenant.”

The blond man didn’t look so easygoing now. With his expressionless face and icy eyes, he looked like the warrior she’d instinctively recognized him to be the night before—the kind of man who could kill without hesitation or regret.

For the first time a flicker of emotion crossed Zane’s face. He frowned, his forehead creasing, but those chilly eyes remained locked on her face. It was amazing; even the heat his big body generated felt banked, as though his suspicions had locked him down physically as well as emotionally.

“Tell me what you heard.”

This was good, right?
He was asking questions. He hadn’t called her a liar, or told her to up her meds. She studied his rigid face, the frosty gaze, the subtle distance he’d put between them.
Yeah, right. Who was she kidding?
He didn’t believe a word she’d said. She shifted her attention to his two warrior buddies. Both regarded her with complete blankness. They didn’t believe her either.

But then she’d known they’d need some major convincing.

“It was right after the three of you entered the departure gate and settled against the wall.” She thought back, visualizing that moment in the dream. “Your dark-haired friend—” What had Zane called him? Simcosky. That was it. “Your buddy Simcosky said, ‘He agreed to Hawaii, for God’s sake. He’s whipped. End of discussion.’ And then your blond friend slapped you on the back and said, ‘Don’t know what you’re complaining about anyway. At least it’s not some Somalian rat hole. We’re talking beaches, Lieutenant, bikinis. We’ve been stuck in worse places.”’

The green flecks in Zane’s eyes warmed, and he shifted his attention to Rawlings. “She heard you call Cosky Lieutenant and thought you were talking to me.”

“You’re not a lieutenant?”

“Lieutenant Commander.” His eyes turned distant as though he were thinking back to that moment, trying to picture her there. “I would have noticed her, if she’d been close enough to hear that,” he said after a moment, the comment directed toward his two friends. More of that non-verbal communication flowed between them.

“I didn’t hear that exchange in the terminal. I heard it in the dream.”

“Okay. Say I buy this.” Zane turned back to her, his gaze sharpening. “That still doesn’t give you my name.”

Beth shrugged. “Well, your friends kept calling you skipper, boss or Zane. But I got your last name from your driver’s license.”

Simcosky lifted his eyebrows. “You dreamed about his driver’s license?” he asked, his voice faintly mocking.

Beth stiffened, and forced herself to hold his gaze. His eyes were hard, the color of concrete.

“What I dreamed,” she emphasized, crossing her arms and gripping her elbows, “is that he was dead. They rolled him over and pulled out his wallet. They seemed to be confirming his identity.”

Another few seconds of that intense, silent communication passed.

Zane broke the silence. “Who are
they
?”

Beth took a deep breath, but it didn’t ease the tightness in her chest. She gripped her elbows harder. “
They
are the hijackers. The men who take control of the plane and kill everyone in coach.”

“Hijacking?” Zane froze for a second, glanced at his dark-haired buddy, then rocked back on his heels and shook his head. “You’re telling us you dreamed a hijacking? How are they going to accomplish that? Since 9/11, security at airports has quadrupled. And then there are the passengers. They aren’t as complacent. They band together and act now. Box knives and bombs aren’t going to control an airliner.”

But there was an odd expression in his eyes. Watchful, rather than disbelieving.

“They had guns, not box knives,” Beth retorted, squeezing her elbows so hard she knew they’d sport bruises by evening. “And they don’t try to control their passengers, they slaughter them. At least the ones in coach.”

Zane ran a hand through his hair and frowned harder. Recognition kindled in his gaze. Something she’d said had struck a chord with him.

Simcosky straightened from his slouch against the metal shelving. The ice had melted from his eyes, but his face hadn’t lost its impassiveness. “What you’re describing requires major firepower. We passed through the security gate. It’s state of the art. Maybe a single person carrying a single weapon could slip through undetected, but multiple men, smuggling multiple weapons? It stretches credibility.”

“The guns are already on the plane. They’re beneath the seats. All the hijackers have to do is bend down and pull them out.” She paused, but forced herself to continue, her voice growing hoarser with each word. “Once the plane levels out, they grab the guns and start shooting. When the gunfire stops, everyone in coach is dead.”

The screams still echoed in her head. Beth scrubbed her palms down her face, and pressed her fingers against her burning eyes. “I don’t understand it, though.” She dropped her hands. “Why kill them? It doesn’t make sense. PacAtlantic would negotiate for their release.”

Zane studied her face, tilted his head and slowly shook it. “PacAtlantic wouldn’t be in control. The FBI and DHS would step in.” He paused a beat. “Skyjacking’s considered an act of terrorism. And the United States government does not negotiate with terrorists. Since coach passengers were apparently no use to them, they could have been eliminating any potential threats.” Deep in thought, he stared at the whitewashed door. “What did they do with the first-class passengers?”

“It sounded like they were being held for ransom.”

“Depending on who’s flying first class, that would net some pretty hefty profits,” Zane acknowledged, but the observation wasn’t directed at Beth. Absently he reached out to settle his palm over the nape of her neck, a silent comfort, as well as a leash. “Where did these bastards land the plane?”

Beth thought back, trying to remember the name of the tiny country they’d diverted the airliner to, trying to ignore the way his hand warmed her skin. The contact shouldn’t have felt so good. She barely knew the man. Fifteen minutes in his company should not have conditioned her to his touch. She could not possibly have missed the contact during those chilly minutes of disbelief and suspicion.

“They called it Puerto Jardin. They blew the cockpit doors and killed the pilots. One of the hijackers took over flying.”

“Puerto Jardin,” Zane repeated beneath his breath. “Son of a bitch. That would explain why they targeted this flight. Seattle to Hawaii would be one of the few domestic flights that would net them wealthy passengers, expensive cargo and enough fuel to escape to South America.” He fell silent, frowning, his eyebrows a heavy black line above his hooded gaze. A moment later he glanced at Simcosky. “The M.O. she’s describing is identical to that hijacking down in Buenos Aries last summer. They slaughtered everyone in coach, but ransomed the first-class passengers. Argentina kept a lid on it.”

Did this mean they were beginning to believe her?

Rawlings rubbed his palm over his flat stomach. That merciless coldness still lurked in his brilliant blue eyes, but the chill wasn’t directed at her any longer. “Zane’s right—the M.O.’s identical. And the plane was diverted to the interior of Puerto Jardin. This has to be the same crew.”

“Or,” Simcosky said, his voice dry. He crossed his arms over his chest and settled into a subtly challenging stance. “She could be blowing smoke up our asses. She dreamed the entire hijacking from start to finish? Including the landing? Dreams don’t last that long. Nor are they so cohesive. Hell, even if she did have this dream, it’s more likely it was triggered by fear of flying.”

“I didn’t dream the whole thing at once,” Beth interjected. “I kept waking up. But every time I fell back asleep it would pick up where it had left off. As for fear of flying….” She held Simcosky’s cold gaze. “I work for PAL—PacAtlantic,” she explained when Zane frowned. “We get to fly free. I’ve been all over the world, so believe me, boarding a plane doesn’t scare me. Besides, I wasn’t planning on taking this flight.”

Zane froze, every muscle in his body rigid. His head turned, and he scanned her face. “You don’t have a ticket for our flight?”

“I’m on standby. Listing myself was the only way I could pick up a boarding pass.”

“When did you register?” Zane’s asked, his voice tense, his face tight, as though he already suspected the answer and didn’t like it. Not one bit.

“I don’t know—maybe an hour ago.” She watched his jaw clench.

“Fuck.” He dropped his hand from her neck and stalked a tight circuit around the cramped room. His two friends watched in silence.

“What’s wrong?” When he simply shook his head, she felt compelled to explain. “Signing up for standby was the only way I could get through the security gate and over to the departure terminal. It was the only way I could take a look at the passengers waiting to board.”

“And you didn’t check any baggage.” Zane sounded grimmer by the moment.

Alarm skittered down Beth’s spine. “Well, no, even if a seat became available I wasn’t going to take it. I was going to cancel the listing.”

“Did you at least tell someone else about this dream and what you were planning to do?”

“Uh… no.” At the sharp curse that echoed through the room, Beth flinched and stumbled into more explanations. “The whole thing seemed so crazy… and I didn’t want anyone at work to think that I was… well… crazy.”

“Great. Just. Fucking. Great.” Zane swung around, frustration stamped across his face.

“You’re buying trouble,” Simcosky told him calmly. “We don’t know whether weapons are stashed on that plane.”

“The hell we don’t.” Zane squared off against his buddy, every muscle in his body radiating aggression. “You know what I—” He broke off, glanced at Beth and shook his head. “She repeated—word for word—that entire exchange in the terminal. An exchange that took place an
hour
before she arrived. If she’d been listening in from somewhere, I would have known. I would have sensed her.”

Rawlings nodded in solemn agreement. “His spontaneous erection would have given her away.”

He spoke with such sincerity it took a moment for his words to register. When they did, Beth’s face flared like a stovetop.

Zane sent his mouthy friend a glare, but Simcosky ignored the comment.

Without even glancing in the blond jokester’s direction, Simcosky focused on Beth’s face. “You have these dreams often? The kind that come true?”

Beth shook her head and wished she could fan some of the heat from her face. “Never. I’m not psychic.”

“True.” There was an undercurrent of dryness in Simcosky’s tone. “Psychic visions aren’t nearly so detailed.” He paused a moment and raised his eyebrows, his gaze steady on Zane’s face. “Or helpful.”

Beth frowned, watching another round of silent messages shoot back and forth.

Zane swung back to her. “What made you question this dream? Most people would shrug it off the next morning.”

“The dream didn’t start in the terminal. It started with me driving to work… only I couldn’t take my normal route because of a fire in an abandoned warehouse. And then when I got to work, I got this call from a friend—”

Zane instantly picked up on what she hadn’t said. “The fire happened, so did the call from your friend. That’s what sent you to the terminal to check out the passengers.”

Beth nodded and coughed to clear her throat. “After Shelby called, I started wondering about the plane. It kept niggling at me, so I asked for a vacation day and listed myself on standby. But I never expected to recognize anyone.”

With quick strides, Zane paced back to her side. “We must have come as a shock.”

“You have no idea.”

Zane grinned, but it quickly faded. For a long moment he stared into space. “How many hijackers are we talking about?”

“There were six. Two sets of three. They were seated across the aisle from each other, in the middle of the plane.”

There was a pregnant pause. Rawlings broke it. “If the guns were already on board, there has to be an inside man,” he said, his face devoid of the lazy humor Beth associated with him.

“No shit.” Zane scowled into the corner of the supply closet.

“Odds are it’s someone from PacAtlantic,” Rawlings pressed.

Zane growled and pivoted to face Beth. “Who would have access to the plane between flights?”

“Well, of course the bag smashers have access.” When Zane grinned, Beth realized what she’d said and flushed. The company didn’t appreciate that particular nickname.

She held up a hand and started ticking off the possibilities as they occurred to her. “The cleaners, caterers, gate agents, mechanics, fuelers, the flight crew…. She fell silent as a final department occurred to her.

“What?” Zane asked those green eyes locked on her face.

“The engineering department,
my
department, has access as well,” she reluctantly admitted.

It felt like a betrayal to even mention it. There was no way anyone she worked with could be involved in something so horrific. But her engineers did have complete access between flights and the ground crew wouldn’t think twice about someone from engineering boarding the plane.

Although Zane didn’t make a sound, the muscles across his shoulders bunched.

Simcosky watched him for a few moments before turning those steel eyes on Beth. “Tell us about this dream of yours. Start to finish. Everything.”

The three men listened intently as she described her nightmare. When she mentioned the blocks of clay-like substance they’d used to blow the cockpit doors, Zane hissed. “C4,” he said and the other two nodded. “They’re pros. Too much and they’d blow the plane. Not enough and they wouldn’t breach the cockpit door.” Zane’s comment was followed by another round of nods. “What kind of guns?”