Total pages in book: 122
Estimated words: 115997 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 580(@200wpm)___ 464(@250wpm)___ 387(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 115997 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 580(@200wpm)___ 464(@250wpm)___ 387(@300wpm)
Worse, I couldn’t seem to stop.
“You’ve always been Izzy.” I followed her past the third row of trees that marked the front of the embassy and toward the door.
She stiffened, then spun to face me right in front of Webb. “Izzy is an eighteen-year-old girl who has to have her hand held. I’m not that girl anymore, and if you have a problem with me being here, then go ahead and assign me to someone else, because I have more important things to do than spend the next two weeks proving anything to you.” She jabbed her finger at me, not quite making contact with my chest before turning on her heel and striding inside the embassy.
“So, I take it she’s still pissed?” Torres asked.
I ignored him and the grating pain in my chest, blowing out a long, exasperated breath.
“I’m going to ask you this one more time, Sergeant Green.” Webb fell into step with me as we followed them in. “Is there going to be a problem here? Because I’ve never seen you distracted like that. Ever.”
That was because nothing distracted me like Isabeau Astor. She wasn’t some bright, shiny little diversion. The woman was a meteor, a shooting star capable of granting impossible wishes or destroying life as I knew it.
And she was currently greeting the ambassador behind the glass wall of the conference room directly in front of me with the kind of practiced ease that spoke to a wealth of experience I knew nothing about. Maybe she was right, and she wasn’t my Izzy anymore . . . not that she’d ever been mine. Not really.
“We have history,” I admitted. History didn’t even cut it. We were bound in ways I’d never understood.
“No shit, Sherlock. Is it going to be a liability? Because your replacement should be up and about in a few days, and you can be on your way to the Maldives.”
“I’m processing.” I hadn’t even given my little prepaid overwater bungalow a thought since Izzy had stepped onto the tarmac.
I glanced at Torres.
“Why are you looking at me like I have anything to say that you don’t already know?”
He cocked his head to the side.
My jaw clenched as Izzy smiled and shook the ambassador’s hand.
“Just let me know by tonight,” Webb ordered, then headed toward the conference room. “They added two stops to the itinerary, so this show is on the road tomorrow morning,” he called back over his shoulder.
I slipped into an unoccupied hallway to pull my shit together.
“You going to hand her over to Jenkins?” Torres asked, leaning against the wall next to me.
“Every instinct tells me not to,” I said quietly. “But at least he’d treat her as just another detail.”
“Just another mission.” Torres nodded. “Solid point.”
Jenkins wouldn’t spare a single glance for her eyes, her smile, her curves. He’d be 100 percent focused. “She’ll be safer with me.”
“Because you’re in love with her?” Torres questioned.
I shook my head. “Because Jenkins isn’t willing to die for her.”
“Does it ever cross your mind that dying for someone might not be all it’s cracked up to be?”
“Every single day.” Remorse twisted my stomach.
“That’s not what I meant. One day you’re going to have to let that guilt go.”
“But today is not that day.”
He sighed, rubbing the bridge of his nose. “Look, talking this shit out with me isn’t going to help. We both already know what you’re going to do.”
I nodded. I’d been protecting Izzy for too long to stop now just because it might be uncomfortable.
Graham passed the hallway and then did a double take. “Hey, boss, there you are.” He waved a piece of paper. “New itinerary.”
Torres and I pushed off the wall, and I took the update from Graham.
“Kunduz?” Torres read over my shoulder.
“She added two provinces in the north,” Graham said. “I thought Senator Lauren was focused on the south. That girls’ chess team, right?”
“Right,” I said, scanning over the changes Izzy had obviously made.
Something was up.
CHAPTER FOUR
IZZY
Saint Louis
November 2011
My stomach hit the floor as we pitched sideways, the fire on the wing flowing from the engine like the tail feathers of a macabre phoenix. The engine went silent in a stream of smoke, but there were other noises to take its place.
Shrieks, both human and metal. Mechanics. The high-pitched whine as the other engine fought to carry the burden.
I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think, could only hear the screams from the passengers as our roll became a dive and we careened to the left. The armrest struck my ribs. Overhead compartments burst open, raining down luggage. Something hard hit my shoulder. More screaming.
My hand white-knuckled Nathaniel’s.
“We lost an engine.” His grip tightened. “But we should be—”
The engine on the right sputtered and failed.
Screams erupted around us.
How was this happening? How was this real? We’d lost both engines. The logic in me understood. Down. We were going down.