Chapter 9
SEBASTIAN
Two vehicles waited for us on the tarmac. The unmarked black van from Paskal Enterprises looked like it belonged here, at least. I waved to Sam, my driver. He would take Amber back to the lab to run her tests. He also brought two large shopping bags and a few smaller ones for Gunnar and me.
I was surprised to see the pizza delivery van here already. The driver had texted me a million questions about driving through the small airport.
"It's not like LAX," I reassured her.
I didn't even have to tell Sam to tip her. He was already out of his van and at the driver's window, accepting the pizza boxes and handing her a tip.
"Your boss already tipped me," she said.
"He tips half up front and half when you deliver." Sam handed over the $50.
Her mouth dropped open when she saw me. "Aren't you that guy from the news?"
I took the pizza boxes from Sam, and he forked another hundred from his wallet. "No. He's here on business."
She looked at the bill in her hand and made a happy sound. "Yeah, okay. Thanks!" She threw the van in reverse and drove away from us before I could say a word.
"You'd better get out of here as soon as you're refueled," Sam said.
"Agreed."
He grabbed the bags from the front seat of his van, and we walked back to the plane. Amber already stood at the bottom of the stairs. "Piece of pizza for the road?" she asked.
"You weren't the one stranded on the space station for a week." It took effort to withhold a growl.
"Boss ordered pizza for us back at the office." Sam's grin and wide eyes made him look like a caricature of himself. "Right, Boss?"
"I do not pay you enough," I said to him. "I'll order as soon as we're in the air. It should arrive about the same time you do."
Sam took Amber's arm and winked at her. "See? Why have one piece of pizza when you could have the whole thing?"
She shook her head. "Clearly, I do not think big enough for this operation."
Loftus, my pilot, was still fueling the plane.
That was the best part about this airstrip.
The fueling stations were spread out, one for each landing strip, and we had our own.
As long as my dad didn't land here within the next fifteen minutes, we were as good as gone, vanished into the wind for a few months while my loyal employees figured out my dad's plans for my wolfy abilities.
The plane was eerily quiet when I entered. I could hear the engine cooling, but I missed the sound of Gunnar's soft snores.
I didn't find him in the cabin or the bedroom. After everything we'd shared, everything I'd done for him, had he decided to run? LA was no place for a wolf to hide.
I dashed toward the open door and almost ran right into the wolf in question, though he was in his human form. "Where were you?" I sounded frantic, but I didn't care.
"Amber introduced me to Loftus and said they could show me how this thing works." He shrugged. "I've always been interested in aircraft, and Loftus answered all my questions."
I patted my pilot's shoulder as they boarded the plane. "Thank you."
"You picked a good one, Boss." Loftus's genuine grin surprised me. "Knows how to admit when he doesn't know something. It's been ages since I've met someone who didn't claim to fly one of these better than I do." They grinned. "Last one was you, and you were ten."
"Fuck all the way off, Loftus. You haven't been flying this thing since I was ten." We were almost the same age, though they had flown all over the world for Paskal Enterprises when their dad was Ivan's pilot.
"Didn't say I was the one showing you the ropes." They grinned, and then squinted their eyes in pain. Their dad had passed away two years ago, but talking about him hadn't gotten any easier.
"Sorry." I patted their shoulder again. "We both miss him."
"Every damn day." They gave me a slight nod and brushed past me into the cockpit. "Wheels up in five, seatbelt sign off in fifteen. Do what you must with that disgusting pizza."
"Disgusting?" Gunnar asked as he followed me into the cabin.
"They don't eat meat," I said. "Their dad died of liver cancer. Probably all the alcohol he drank, but Amber likes to bitch about processed meat, so … " I trailed off at Gunnar's horrified expression. "You all right?"
"Y'all are so fucking privileged, you think you can pinpoint what causes cancer? Shit, where I came from, we had pesticides in the water, but nobody did anything about them and tried to blame other things."
"We know alcohol and processed meats cause cancer," I said.
"Yeah, but I'll take my chances with a piece of pepperoni over breathing too much car exhaust or drinking tainted water any day." He tugged the pizza boxes from my arms.
"Why does it feel like we're fighting again?" I asked. I enjoyed our verbal sparring, but I kept losing ground in the decent human department. Maybe I was as privileged as he said I was, but I wanted to use my status for good, not evil. That had to count for something.
"Not fighting." Gunnar sighed and sank into the seat I'd buckled him into earlier. "We're having a discussion." He arranged the boxes on the empty seat next to him and crossed his arms like he was daring me to disagree.
"Still feels like I'm losing."
He grinned. "You're still talking to me, and I'm still talking to you. I'd say we're both winning."
I couldn't argue with that. While he opened the top box and dug in, I hurried back to the front of the plane for the shopping bags. I tucked them in the bedroom cupboards before returning to my seat as the engines roared to life.
"We can try our new clothes once we're in the air."
"Only if you eat your half of the cancer-causing pizza before liftoff."
I choked on my first bite, and he laughed. He was going to fit in so well with the few people I called my friends. I almost choked again.
"You're a pain in the ass, but I like you," I said when I could speak again. "I think this makes us friends."
He laughed. "We've been friends since we turned into wolves at the same time."
"No," I argued. "We've known we were mates that long, true, but I like you."
"Wow, only you could say something nice and make it sound like a bad thing." He took another bite of pizza and sauce covered his bottom lip. His tongue darted out to capture it, and the urge to kiss him intensified.
I'd never been big on kissing before. Shied away from it, even. Why was he so different? Yes, we were mates, but I'd expected the pull to be stronger when we were in wolf form. Now, it intensified the longer I was close to him in human form, too.
It didn't get any easier when we finally landed in Geneva after a quick stop at a small airstrip in Ireland to refuel. My dad expected us to stop at the big airports, such as LAX and Heathrow. Unfortunately, Geneva was a major airport, but it was closest to our destination.
I sent Loftus on to Shanghai without us and ordered them to return to Hawaii after some much needed sleep. They merely cocked a brow at me and rolled their eyes. "Whatever boss."
The worst part about the airport was having to share space with so many other people, when I wanted Gunnar all to myself. These big emotions felt surreal. I'd never felt this way about anyone.
I couldn't explain how I felt, either. I wanted him, but it was more than that. I wanted to protect him, to bite and claim him, to share my every thought with him.
I needed to shift. "Soon," I told my wolf.
Gunnar seemed equally restless as he twisted his shoulders in his seat and took out his phone to check the time every five minutes. "Where are we going?" he asked.
"Vevey," I fibbed. We would get off the train at Vevey, but the car I'd hired while we were still in the air would take us to my remote private resort.
"Is that still in Switzerland?"
I nodded.
"I've never been to Europe," he said. "I don't even have a passport."
"Yeah, I kinda took care of that." I handed him the document folder I'd found in one of the shopping bags.
He stared at it so long, I worried he was about to go into another angry tirade. Instead, he glanced up with a look of slight confusion. "You did this for me?"
"Yes."
"But … I don't even know where to find the guy listed as my dad. And I moved around so much."
I nodded. "It wasn't easy, but my team back in LA put everything together. This isn't the permanent document, but the Swiss visa is more important for now."
"Thank you." Gunnar tucked the paperwork into his new backpack. "I was already severely unable to pay you back."
"You never need to pay me back. We're mates. Whatever that means, I'm here for you."
He nodded, but it felt like a dismissal. He didn't believe me. "I'd still like to pull my weight."
"You do. Believe me. You found that link. You're the reason the Coast Guard, Navy, or whoever wasn't waiting for us when we landed."
The new smart phone Sam had picked up for me in LA buzzed, interrupting my speech. "Shit."
He'd promised the phone was untraceable, but I recognized the name on the Caller ID all too well. Ivan Paska.
I pulled up the new chat window to see the message.
"I don't know where you are, but I'll find you."
I blocked the number.
"Everything all right?" Gunnar asked.
"So far." I sighed. "We'll need new phones before we leave Vevey."
"Look, I'm only going to say this once." Beneath his anger lay something soft and vulnerable.
The breath caught in my throat. "I need you to be honest with me.
I have lived my entire life with people sugarcoating any truth they thought I couldn't handle.
I can't deal with that bullshit from you.
Tell it to me straight. If we're going to somewhere beyond Vevey, I need to know. "
I exhaled the breath I'd been holding and took another before attempting to answer. "We're going to my personal resort," I finally said. "Vevey's the closest town, but it's still a good twenty miles away."
"In the mountains."
I nodded.
"Is it a ski resort?"
"It was. I don't have anyone working up there at the moment."
He blinked. "If this place looks anything like that hotel in The Shining, no way am I staying there."
"It's Swiss," I said. "Gorgeous wood trim everywhere, and no weird carpets. I promise."
I didn't even bother texting my driver about the delay as I led Gunnar to the train station's cell phone kiosk.
Gunnar growled when he couldn't transfer his applications and contacts from his old phone to the new one, but I didn't want to take any chances with spyware.
Once we were on the mountain road, I ripped the batteries from his old phone and my new one and waited for the right spot to throw them into the darkness.
"Did you just kidnap me?" Gunnar asked.
"If I were kidnapping you, I wouldn't have bought you clothes or given you a new cell phone."
"So you have kidnapped people in the past …" He waggled his eyebrows, the only sign he was joking.
"I have not."
"That's what a kidnapper would say, right Hans?"
The driver glanced at us through the rearview mirror and went back to driving.
"He doesn't speak much English," I said. "He might understand kid, and napping, but not together."
That didn't stop him from yelling at me in Swiss German.
"Kein Müll werfe," he said when I rolled down my window.
His expression said he would pull this car over and make me climb down the steep embankment to pick up whatever I was about to throw outside.
I pulled the batteries back inside with a grimace.
"I can destroy the GPS chips on the old and new phones, so we can brick the batteries later," Gunnar whispered. "Have him pull over before we get too close to our destination."
I motioned to Hans to pull off to the shoulder, except there was no shoulder. Thankfully, we were alone on the road. He flipped on the hazard lights and watched Gunnar through the rearview mirror.
He had a better seat for the show than I did. Gunnar turned his back to me, so I couldn't see what he was doing. His plastic water bottle crinkled when he took the lid off. Finally, he turned back to me, holding up the bottle. The chips shifted along the bottom when he turned his wrist.
"This should do it," he said.
I hoped the added security would be enough to keep my dad off our tails.