Blade (The Alpha Elite #11)

Chapter Sixty-Three

Blade

A ll the shit this woman had been through, and I scared her.

Christ.

Taxiing out of the hangar, I lined us up on the private airstrip Christensen had built for a property he was developing. Fucker had already told me to buy it. Acres of land, a runway, hangar, and a house that wasn’t built yet. Truth was, I was contemplating it.

Dump the Manhattan and Miami Beach properties and buy fucking land in the hurricane belt.

I was out of my goddamn mind.

I glanced at a terrified, mute brunette.

Definitely out of my fucking mind.

I focused up.

Slowly pushing to full throttle, trimming nose up, watching airspeed, I pulled back on the yoke. The Conquest lifted off like a fucking dream.

Her gasp hit though the headset, then her raspy voice followed. “Oh my God.” She looked over at me with wide eyes. “We’re flying.”

“Yeah.” We fucking were.

AES’s fleet of Gulfstream jets were like driving an automated car.

But a turboprop?

This was fucking flying.

I banked west.

Her hand hit my arm and gripped as she let out a sound that was half fear, half excitement. “Oh my God! Do that again.”

“Woman.”

That one fucking word she used on me like a weapon came through the headset. “Please.”

I glanced at the brunette.

She fucking smiled.

I banked.

The Conquest glided, and she let out a small laugh.

My cell vibrated.

I glanced at the screen, then pushed off half my headset to answer. “Climbing to altitude, November. Make it quick.”

“Checking in. You circled back over the airstrip. Problem?”

Yeah, a brunette who liked flying in my plane. “No.”

“Copy. I have some intel.”

“Download.” I glanced at her, but she was looking out the side window.

“I brought in Alpha.”

What the fuck? “I specifically told you not to.”

“Understood, but he has a connection we should use.”

“Not a ‘we’ situation.” I’d stepped in this woman’s world. Not AES. “Headcount, locations.” He knew what I’d asked for. I wanted the name of every motherfucker working for that piece-of-shit trafficker husband of hers.

“Working on it. I’ll have all the intel before you land, but you can’t eliminate an entire territory in that world without backlash.”

“I can handle myself.” It was the brunette I was worried about.

“If you backfill it, you won’t have to. That’s where Alpha’s connection comes in. You infil, clean house, then do a handover.”

“Not happening.” I wasn’t handing over a fucking drug runner’s operation to anyone.

“The territory will be absorbed no matter what. If you do it this way, it takes the woman out of the equation. Otherwise, you’re looking at faking her death, giving her a new identity, and keeping her off the grid the rest of her life if you don’t want the cartel to track her. Which I can do.”

Goddamn it.

I fucking focused on altitude, airspeed, and fuel for half a minute.

“Blade?”

“I fucking hear you.”

“Copy.”

I glanced at a brunette.

The woman gave me a shy smile. After all the shit she’d been through today alone, she still fucking smiled.

“What’s the guarantee?” I asked November.

“Alpha’s working on that now, but he’s already conveyed that the woman’s safety is a nonstarter.”

“Not just safety,” I demanded. “She’s un-fucking-touchable.”

“Understood. I can relay that. We’re a go?”

Fuck. “We’re a go.”

“Good copy. I’ll be in touch.” November hung up.

I pocketed my cell and repositioned the headset.

Her voice came quiet and unsure. “Is everything okay?”

“Yeah.” It would be. For her. I’d make fucking sure of it.

“Can you tell me where we’re going now?”

I gave the woman another opportunity to trust me and tell me who she was. “Does it matter?”

She bit her bottom lip.

I fed her the opening. “Where don’t you want to go?”

She looked me in the eye. Then the woman kept her shit locked down as tight as any Tier One I’d ever met. “The past.”

I shelved the bullshit notion of trust with this woman and leveled off at twenty-four thousand feet. “Montana. Flight time six hours.” I engaged the autopilot, then handed her a protein bar and an electrolyte drink I’d stowed preflight. I didn’t keep shit else on the plane besides bottled water, so it’d have to do. The woman had already lost her balance once today. I wasn’t aiming for a second. “Drink, eat.”

“Thanks.” She took both, but she didn’t do either.

Holding the bottle and bar in her small hands, she leaned her head back and went quiet.