Chapter Seventy-Six
Georgia
H e knew.
Blade knew everything, and I didn’t even know his name.
He’d called me Georgia, and I couldn’t process it.
Georgia .
This wasn’t real.
It couldn’t be real. I couldn’t afford for it to be. I didn’t let my guard down, not ever. And I couldn’t do it now. I wasn’t on a private jet. A SEAL didn’t remove that piece-of-shit drug runner from my equation . That wasn’t possible. I knew what Henry had done. I knew the Culiacán Cartel thought I stole a quarter of a million dollars from them. They would never forgive that—not even if someone paid them. I’d witnessed enough violence over the four horrific years I’d stayed with Henry to know that. I knew what those monsters were capable of. I’d spent an entire year constantly moving, always changing my appearance, never going to the same place twice before I felt safe enough to even think about going to Miami. I couldn’t just walk away and be—
“Hey.”
I looked up.
Standing in the aisle, his head slightly dipped because he was taller than the cabin ceiling, a Navy SEAL held two sandwiches and a bottle of water in one hand, and a can of Coke and a small bag of Lay’s in the other. He held out the chips and soda to me.
“Take these,” he ordered.
I took them.
The sun streaming through the windows landed on his tan arms, his ink stood out even more, and shadows formed like cliffs around his hard-cut muscles.
He looked like a warrior god.
“I don’t even know your last name.”
“Emrik.”
Emrik. Blade Emrik. It suited him. “How did you get the name Blade?”
He took the seat facing me. “You don’t want to know.”
I did. “Is that your real first name?”
“No. Call sign.” He tipped his chin at the food he’d given me. “You need to eat. We need to talk.”
My stomach suddenly churned with a whole new problem, and I glanced at the soda and chips in my hands. Then I remembered the steak last night and the man who’d made me eat it who was currently in the cockpit, apparently flying this jet by himself now that Blade was sitting across from me.
“I’m not hungry.” This could be my last meal.
“I’m not Delta.”
I looked up at him. “No, you’re not.” Not even close. Thank God.
With his gaze locked on mine, he pushed a button, and a table unfolded between us. Then he dumped the sandwiches and water down and took the chips and Coke from me. After opening both, he placed them on the table within my reach.
“I don’t deal in mindfuckery, woman. Not a shrink, and I don’t coddle. You’re not gonna pull that bullshit on me you did yesterday. Everyone fucking eats. If it’s time to refuel, you eat. If I tell you to eat, you do it. If you’re hungry, you fucking eat. You want me to get you something, name it. What you’re not going to do is avoid eating in front of me. You copy?”
I stared at him.
“Two choices,” he warned, his voice more gravel than threat. “You eat. Or I smash that bag of chips to dust, dump it in your caffeine addiction, then force feed you through a fucking straw.”
“Breaking Lay’s into pieces is sacrilegious.”
Making a fist, his hand shot out across the table toward the small yellow bag.
I snatched it up, then shoved a chip in my mouth.
Greasy, salty, fried goodness touched my soul, and I didn’t choke.
He yanked open the packaging on the first sandwich and held out half to me. “Ham and cheese.”
I shook my head as I swallowed the chip. “No ham.” I’m sure it was fine. This plane was probably worth tens of millions of dollars, and everything on it was fancy as hell, but I didn’t do suspect lunch meat.
He took the ham off the half of the sandwich, tossed it into his mouth, then slapped the bread back together and handed it to me. The other half of the sandwich already in his hand, he wolfed it down like he was starving.
I took another chip.
He tore into the next sandwich.
Then we simply, inexplicably, miraculously ate together without me freaking out.
He waited until I’d finished the chips and sandwich before he tipped his chin toward my right breast. “What’s your ink say? The line of script.”
My face flushed hard, but I didn’t think of not telling him. “Time is magic.”
He nodded once. “You got any questions for me?”
I glanced at all of his tattoos. He had too many to ask about. “What favor did you trade to find me?”
“Eliminated an HVT.”
I opened my mouth, then closed it and forced down guilt. “Is that what you do for the company you work for?”
“Yeah.”
Exactly like he said. He killed.
“Who owns this plane?”
“AES.”
“What would I find if I looked them up?”
“A website about a government military contractor. Tell me everything you know about Reena.”
Inhaling to catch my breath at his abrupt subject change to one I didn’t want to talk about, I slowly exhaled. “I don’t know much. I only met her six months before I met you. We worked at an Italian restaurant together and became friends, but we didn’t talk about our past or really anything important. Then one day, out of the blue, she announced she met a guy, Charlie, and was marrying him. The next day, she said we were going day drinking to celebrate before she left for her destination wedding in Fiji or Bali, and we wound up at that shitty bar. Once we got hammered, she said she wasn’t coming back after the honeymoon, that she was going to some country to do some Doctors Without Borders type of thing. I can’t remember the name of it, or what country she said she was going to. Africa, I think?”
“Was she in med school?”
“No. But she said she wanted to be a nurse.”
Taking a sip of his water, Blade froze for a second. Then he pulled out his cell, swiped a few times, and held the phone toward me. “You ever see this guy with her?”
“I never saw her with anyone.” I looked at the picture. A handsome blond guy in fatigues with a wide smile and a military haircut was flipping off the camera. His eyes were the same color blue as Blade’s. “I don’t know him. Who is he?” He was much younger than Blade.
“Charlie.”
I looked up at him.
“My brother.”
Oh. My God. “You think Reena’s Charlie is your brother, Charlie? That’s who you were looking for two years ago?” That’s why he was there?
“I was looking for answers.” Blade shoved his phone back into his pocket. “My brother was KIA shortly before we met. Last call I had with him, he said he was getting married in Bali. Woman was a nurse. He gave me a name, but it wasn’t Reena. After I got the call, I tried to get a hold of the woman. She never answered her cell. She was a no-show at his funeral, then her cell went dark. I drove down to Miami because the last locations my brother’s cell pinged were that bar and the house in Little Havana.”
Oh my God . “I’m so sorry about your brother.” And holy shit, that was a lot of coincidences.
“Not sure you should be.” He glanced at his watch before he looked back at me. “I don’t think Church is dead.”
“Blade,” Delta called from the cockpit. “On approach.”
“Copy,” he called back.
“Church?” I asked.
“My brother’s nickname. Charlie was his call sign.”
Blade and Church? “Was he in the Navy too?”
Blade tipped his chin. “SEAL. Same as my old man. Same as his old man.”
Oh. Dear. God. “You’re Navy Legacy.” Three generations of SEALs.
“Some fucking legacy. My youngest brother wrapped his car around a tree after BUD/S. Church and my old man didn’t make it back from deployments. My mom offed herself with a handful of pills after a cancer diagnosis while I was downrange.”
My eyes welled, and tears fell. “I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t want your apology or tears. The cartel found you because I ran facial rec on an image I snapped of you at that coffee joint.” He stood. “We land in five. After today, you’ll have your life back.”
I didn’t have time to tell him I’d never had a life.
He was already heading to the cockpit.