Chapter 8 #2
“I have coordinates for a safe place there. Never been, but my people say it's secure.”
“Your people.” She turned back to the instruments. “The same people who send you to blow up airstrips and don't mind if you die doing it?”
“They mind a little.” He grinned. “I'm pretty fucking expensive to replace.”
She almost smiled. Almost. “Fine. Give me the coordinates once we're airborne. But if this is a trap—”
Levi snorted, interrupting her. “It's not. Why would I trap you?”
She pointed at him. “If it is, I'm shooting you first, then crashing the plane into whatever facility you're working for.”
He shrugged. “That seems fair.”
She started going through the engine start sequence, her hands moving with the unconscious grace of someone who'd done it ten thousand times. The engine coughed and sputtered, and Levi's hand instinctively moved toward the door handle.
“Easy,” Willow murmured, adjusting something. “Come on, baby. You can do this.”
The engine caught. Rough at first, stammering like it was learning to breathe again, then smoothing into a throaty rumble that made the whole airframe vibrate. Beautiful. The sound of resurrection.
“There you go,” she said softly, like she was praising a nervous horse. “That's my girl.”
Levi watched her face—the relief, the pride, the pure joy of bringing something dead back to life. And something in his chest tightened, some part of him that had been cold for a very long time warming despite his better judgment.
Dangerous. This is dangerous.
“We should—” he started.
Then he saw them.
Through the rain and the hangar door, headlights. Multiple vehicles, coming fast down the access road. Four trucks, maybe five, moving in convoy formation. Cartel. Had to be.
“Willow.” His voice went flat. “We've got company.”
She was already moving, hands flying across controls, advancing the throttle. “How many?”
“Enough.” He pulled his Glock, checked the magazine. Full. Good. “We need to go. Now.”
“The hangar doors—”
“I've got it.” He was already moving, dropping from the cockpit and hitting the ground running. His ribs screamed, his leg throbbed, but adrenaline was a hell of a drug. He sprinted to the hangar door controls and slammed the release lever.
Nothing happened.
“Shit.” The mechanism was rusted, seized from years of neglect and humidity. He hit it again, putting his shoulder into it. Still nothing.
The headlights were closer now, close enough he could hear engines over the rain. Maybe two minutes out. Maybe less.
Levi looked at the door, at the Beaver already taxiing toward it, at Willow's face through the cockpit window—calm, focused, trusting him to handle this.
He pulled a small charge from his vest. Not much, just enough to blow the door mechanism. He planted it, armed it, then ran like hell back toward the Beaver.
“Levi!” Willow had stopped the plane, was leaning out the cockpit door. “What are you—”
“Slight change of plans!” He grabbed the wing strut, hauled himself up. “When the door opens, you punch it. Don't wait for me to get settled.”
“When the door—”
The explosion was small, controlled, and precise. The hangar doors blew outward with a screech of tortured metal, and rain poured in through the opening like a waterfall.
“GO!” Levi shouted.
Willow went.
The Beaver surged forward, engine roaring, and Levi was half-in, half-out of the cockpit, one foot on the strut, hands gripping the doorframe. Wind and rain slammed into him as they burst through the hangar door into the storm.
Gunfire erupted behind them—muzzle flashes in the rain, bullets pinging off the fuselage. The trucks had arrived, guards spilling out, weapons raised.
“Get in!” Willow screamed.
“I’m fucking trying!” The plane was accelerating, bouncing over the rough ground, and every jolt threatened to throw him off. His injured leg slipped, and for one heart-stopping moment, he was hanging by his hands, legs dangling over nothing.
Then Willow's hand shot out, grabbed his vest, and hauled with strength that shouldn't be possible for a woman her size. He tumbled into the cockpit, landing in a heap in the co-pilot's seat.
“You're insane!” she shouted over the engine.
“You keep saying that!” He was laughing, breathless, alive. “Like it's news!”
More gunfire. Something hit the tail section with a metallic clang. The Beaver shuddered but kept accelerating, racing down the flooded airstrip. Water sprayed up from the wheels, and the end of the runway was coming up fast—too fast.
“Are we going to make it?” Levi asked.
“Ask me in thirty seconds!” Willow pulled back on the yoke, and the Beaver fought her—sluggish, heavy, reluctant to leave the ground.
Levi glanced back. The trucks were giving chase, trying to cut them off. One pulled alongside as a guard leaned out with an AK-47.
“Contact left!” he shouted, drawing his weapon.
He fired through the open cockpit door, three controlled shots. The guard jerked back, and the truck swerved away.
The Beaver's nose lifted. Wheels left the ground. For one terrifying moment, they hung suspended—too slow, too low, not enough speed.
Then the engine caught properly, power surging, and they climbed.
The runway fell away beneath them. The trucks became toys. The hangar became a smudge in the rain.
Willow banked hard right, using the storm clouds as cover, and the world went gray and wet and wild. Lightning flashed close enough that Levi smelled ozone. Thunder shook the airframe.
And they were flying. Impossibly, miraculously, flying.
“Holy shit,” Levi breathed.
“Yeah.” Willow's hands were white-knuckled on the yoke, but she was grinning, like actually grinning. “Holy shit.”
He looked at her profile, at the way her eyes reflected the storm, at the absolute fearlessness in her expression. She was laughing now, breathless and genuine, the sound cutting through the engine noise and rain.
And Levi Rourke, who'd spent a lifetime keeping himself separate, unreachable, fell a little bit in love with that grin.
Fuck.
“Coordinates,” she said, still smiling. “Where am I taking us?”
He gave them to her, repeating the numbers as Con relayed them to him. She plugged them into the ancient GPS unit they'd salvaged and then swung the Beaver's nose northeast.
Below them, the jungle stretched endless and green. Somewhere down there, Morales's men were coordinating searches, calling in reinforcements, and tightening the net.
But up here in the storm, they were ghosts.
Free.
For now.
Levi leaned back in his seat, letting the adrenaline drain away, leaving exhaustion in its wake. His ribs hurt. His leg throbbed. Blood had soaked through his bandages again.
But they were alive. They had a plane. And for the first time in his career, he was working with someone he could fall for.
“Thank you,” he said quietly.
She looked at him. “For what?”
“For grabbing my vest. It was nip and tuck there for a moment.”
“Couldn't let you have all the fun.” She chuckled a bit.
He tried to keep it light, but something in his voice cracked. “Besides, You've saved my life twice now. Three times if you count helping me crawl into the plane just now.”
“Who's counting?”
“I am.” He held her gaze, rain streaming down the windscreen. “I don't forget debts.”
“It's not a debt, Levi. It's—” She stopped, looked away. “It's what partners do.”
Partners. The word settled in his chest, warm and dangerous and impossibly right.
“Yeah,” he said softly. “I guess it is.”
They flew on through the storm, heading toward coordinates Levi had given her, running from an enemy that owned half the country, bound together by lies and truth in equal measure.
And somewhere in the cargo hold, wrapped in a waterproof tarp, Willow's CIA radio waited to be discovered and explained.
But not today.