Chapter Two #2
This was the part where he would pull back and look at me with pity.
I’d had other soldiers do it, and I knew they weren’t really seeing me anymore but thinking of people they’d served with, feeling that terrible tug of survivor’s guilt for making it out of some hellhole unscathed when so many others hadn’t.
Jakob didn’t pull away, and he didn’t look at me with pity. He put a hand on my injured hip, gently, and leaned in instead. “What happened?”
For some reason our forced intimacy made talking about it easier than usual.
Maybe that was because with his nose buried in my hair, I didn’t have to look at him as I spoke or because he hadn’t reacted the way I anticipated, or maybe it was because I knew that as a Night Stalker, he’d seen worse shit than I had and could understand what I was about to say.
“We took heavy fire during the siege of Kolomyya,” I told him.
“Ukraine?” he asked, his voice low enough that it had a little bit of growl to it.
I nodded again, thinking back to the brief but bloody shadow war the US had fought with Russia after they’d claimed the Crimean Peninsula and then tried to drag the rest of Ukraine back into the fold of the new USSR.
“The landing gear was damaged during the battle,” I said.
“Our pilot was forced to execute a controlled crash on a dirt road outside the city. Engine number four hit the ground. Its casing cracked, and the oil lines broke, spewing jet fuel everywhere. Something must have sparked because the right wing caught fire.”
“That doesn’t explain your leg,” he all but purred into my ear.
I took a deep breath. “Our equipment broke loose during the crash. My leg got pinned as I was trying to jump clear. It took four of my crewmates to free me. They almost burned to death in the process.”
“The pilot?” he asked.
“It wasn’t a flat road,” I said. “The nose caved after we hit. He was crushed.”
Those were the facts. Straightforward, no-nonsense, clinical.
It was the standard story I told. If I didn’t let myself think about it, sometimes that’s all it was.
Sometimes I didn’t see the ground rushing up at us through the open bay doors.
I didn’t feel our youngest crewmate squeezing my hand for dear life.
I forgot how scared I was when she and I were ripped apart at that first jarring impact.
I didn’t hear the metal screaming over dirt and rocks or the wrenching groan of steel as it buckled under an immense pressure it was never designed to take.
I didn’t feel my body broken under an impossible weight.
Hear my crewmates screaming over me as I dipped in and out of consciousness.
Feel the unbearable heat of the nearby flames or my terror of being left behind and burned alive.
“I remember that crash,” Jakob said. “It was maybe fifty miles away from where I was.”
A swell of surprise put a swift end to the tears that threatened. He’d been there? And near enough that he might have seen our plane if he’d looked up at the right time?
It was bizarre to think that he was in the same place as me on the worst day of my life, and yet it made me feel even closer to him somehow, our intimacy losing its forced edge and turning into something far more dangerous.
I didn’t ask him where exactly he’d been or what he’d been doing on the outskirts of Kolomyya. The answers might be classified, which meant we’d both go to jail if he told me, and I didn’t relish the idea of spending the rest of my days in Leavenworth.
He squeezed my hip again, oh so gently, and stepped back. “I’m sorry that happened to you.”
My head swam. Maybe he wasn’t an alpha douche after all. Maybe I was the asshole for judging him too soon.
“Thanks,” I said.
“Ready to go up?”
I nodded, still trying to get my shit together.
He led me to the back door of a small brownstone. We were in an older section of downtown where the buildings sat in various states of disrepair and gentrification had yet to move in.
“How many flights of stairs?” I asked.
He held the door open for me, letting me go first. “Two.”
I looked up at the first set and sighed. I could go down stairs just fine, but going up could be a struggle sometimes, like right now when I was already tired and my entire leg throbbed with sharp flashes of pain.
Jakob stayed behind me, letting me take the lead and set our pace.
I put my left foot on the bottom step, took a deep breath, and started the climb.
My hip joint protested. My lower leg ached like one giant shin splint.
The bones of my knee felt like they were grinding to dust against the metal that held them in place.
I grit my jaw and kept going, hand on the rail to help me push off.
After what felt like a small eternity, we made it to the final landing. I paused outside Jakob’s door and caught my breath. There better be one hell of a comfortable couch on the other side of this.
“Please tell me you have aspirin,” I said.
Jakob slipped past me and slid his key into the lock. Or he tried to. At the slight press of his hand, the door opened with a whoosh. I looked down and saw the now obvious signs of forced entry.
Jakob spun away from the doorway, pulling a gun from inside his jacket.
I yanked mine free at the same time, dropping my handbag to the floor beside me.
Thanks to our military training, we held our weapons in identical fashion: muzzle turned toward the floor, right hand around the grip stock, left hand cupped underneath, pointer finger along the barrel.
Our eyes met. He used his left hand to make some weird gestures at me.
“I don’t speak Army,” I whispered.
He sent me an unreadable look and squatted, ready to take point.
Most people holding a gun aim at chest height by default.
If Jakob went in lower, he had a better chance of catching whoever was inside off guard.
The problem was, no lights were on. Darkness radiated out of the apartment like a beast waiting to bite.
I signaled for Jakob to wait a second and then pulled my phone from my purse.
Fingers shaking, I hit the flashlight button, ground my teeth against the pain from crouching, and whipped the phone across his floor.
It spun over the hardwood, lighting up the room like a disco ball.
Jakob waited half a second and ducked around the corner, gun aimed.
When he didn’t immediately fire or jump back into the hallway, I assumed no one was inside.
He rose from his crouch. “Clear.”
I let out a shaky breath and lowered my gun.
“Hi, Daniel,” Jakob said.
Wait. What?
I peered around the doorframe. My eyes adjusted to the weak light of my phone, and Daniel King materialized in front of me.
The meanest son of a bitch in Kearny sat in the middle of the apartment on the couch I had so recently lusted after.
No one else was in sight, so he must have been the one to bust the door open.
What the hell was going on here?