Pursued

“Yes, sir, right out on the back porch. It would be a crime to paint over it.”

“Outstanding. I’ll bet it’s full now.” He turned to Bridges. “What do you say we check it out, gentlemen?”

As Josie watched them leave, warning lights blazed in her mind. What was up with their unscheduled visit? There were too many upsets crashing down in one day for her liking.

First the flight with a reporter who hated her guts. Then a congressional oversight appointee who didn’t give a crap about anything but shooting the breeze with flyers over a beer. And now the general directly in her chain of command showing up out of the blue on the same day—and talking about her.

Coincidence? It didn’t feel that way.

She shook off the paranoia. Wouldn’t they have a field day if she expressed her concerns? It was already going to hit the fan anyway when Shannon’s story came out if something wasn’t done to counterbalance that report.

Starting now. She’d never been one to wait around for fate to stab her in the back.

Fishing out her keys, Josie thumbed the unlock button. She hadn’t stood a chance with Shannon’s interview anyway. The dazzling flight plan was her only hope of showing higher-ups she’d at least tried to give the reporter her money’s worth—even if she’d also taken some personal satisfaction in shaking up Shannon.

Josie slid into her car, locked herself inside and tugged her e-mail pager from her flight suit thigh pocket. Sure she could e-mail at home in twenty minutes, but she hated the solitariness of her place. Probably came from spending years in a jam-packed boarding-school environment.

She needed to send out feelers to her network of contacts and discover what was going on with the congressional investigation. Athena Academy grads watched each other’s backs. Nobody messed with their friends and got away with it.

And Athena afforded her some hefty contacts. Only the best were invited to attend.

Their high-powered professions around the world made group reunions in person damn near impossible, so instead Athena alumni relied on the Internet and their government-secure alumni Web site for communication in their high-octane lives. She hadn’t even been able to make the recent funeral for one of her older classmates and a personal friend, Rainy Miller.

How unfair and unbelievable to think of Rainy as gone. Nothing about her death made sense.

Josie sagged back against her seat, feeling too mortal. She’d tried to think through everything on her project. But then so had her mother, and still someone had died.

Rainy had also died in a suspicious car accident only days after calling an emergency meeting with Josie and their five closest friends from Athena Academy. Rainy had died on the way to the meeting. Now they were all seeking answers, and the questions were piling up even faster. Most recently, Samantha St. John had tracked down the man responsible for killing Rainy, an assassin known as the Cipher. Unfortunately, Sam had killed him without learning who had sent him to murder Rainy.

God, she was getting morbid and that wasn’t her style. She preferred action. She clutched the e-mailer in her hand and scanned through her inbox, which was packed with everything from questions about the Cipher to details of Tory Patton’s latest date with the new man in her life.

A reply to Tory would be a good place to start in diffusing Shannon. Josie tapped through a message to her old classmate and closest friend Tory, who worked for Shannon’s rival network. Tory would be more than glad to one-up Shannon, since she’d recently caught the traitorous witch buck naked in bed with Tory’s former producer and now ex-boyfriend. Things had worked out for the best, though. Tory had hooked up with Ben Forsythe, a man worthy of her. Ben was the brother of another member of the group, Alexandra. Or Alex, as she preferred to be called.

Josie hit Send on her e-mail, then started a second note to her sister, who’d graduated a few classes behind her at Athena Academy. Damn, but Diana had been young when Dad had shipped them both off to the boarding school.

Her fingers paused midway through the message.

She and Diana hardly ever talked anymore, the rift between them widening over the years. Rainy’s death should remind them all to reach out more.

Josie fished in her leg pocket for her cell phone. Her fingers closed around her lip gloss. She pitched it in her lap before tugging free the phone and dialing Diana’s number. The fact that her baby sister worked in army intelligence out in Arizona would offer enough of an excuse to call that Diana wouldn’t go into shock over hearing her voice.

If she even recognized it.

While the phone rang, Josie defiantly swiped on a coating of lip gloss. She’d wear orange tryst if she wanted, and it had nothing to do with questionable looks from Diego Morel or Mike Bridges.

The extension picked up. “Hello?”

“Hey, Diehard.” Josie pumped cheer into her voice and worked to recall happier times of horseback races, her little sister’s blond pigtails streaking behind her. “It’s me. Your bossy big sister. I’ve got a favor to ask, if you have time to talk for a minute.”

The five-count silence was deafening.

“Uh, sure, Josie. What can I do for you?”

Stunned or resentful? Who could tell anymore with Diana?

Josie tucked down into her leather seat for a more comfy chat, her eyes locked on the neon spotlight showcasing the plane tail sticking out of the top of the bar’s roof.

“I was wondering if you could track down some insider scoop on a retired air force test pilot, Major Diego Morel.”

Through the air conditioner-fogged bar window, he watched Josie Lockworth’s silver-gray Mustang, the car the same color as her arrogant eyes.

The bitch had to be stopped.

“Birddog,” as he was called these days, nursed his bottle of beer while others at the table discussed her project and her future, how lucky she’d been to have this chance to resurrect her mother’s work. Of course, some made their own luck. He savored the taste of hops and success. His eyes stayed focused on the window, on Lockworth. He kept silent. Listened. Planned while his thumb cleaned condensation from his bottle.

Her test data would be proved eventually. He didn’t doubt that. But with Lockworth out of the picture, he could make his own modifications. The success would be deemed his.

He could not allow her to assume the credit—her or her mother. By the time they split all the accolades, there’d be little left to go around. Tough enough to accept defeat if another man assumed the glory, but how unacceptable to be beaten by a woman.

Ego? Sure. But ego was damned important for fliers. The godlike feeling in the air had enabled him to hurtle his body through the clouds in nothing more than a tin can.

And walk away victorious.

It was all about the victory.

He’d been willing to share the fame at one time, until the subtle rejections started from her. Never anything overt, but the back off was clear all the same. The Lockworth bitch barely noticed his existence.

But he’d sure as hell noticed her.

His eyes lasered in on the Mustang convertible, where a feminine shadow moved inside. Images reeled through his mind of womanly flesh. Lithe, soft.

Naked.

He flexed his fingers along the scarred wood table to capture the imagined sensation of sliding his hand through silky brown hair. Tighter he gripped as if to tug her closer, pulling harder while he pounded deeper. The mere fantasy left him shaking. What he wouldn’t give for the reality of having her under him.

Definitely under.

“Birddog, are you with us?”

Hearing his call sign brought him back to the present. Lust still pounded through him, painful, unrelenting and with no hope of relief. Not with the kind he wanted, anyway.

He forced his fingers to relax, his thoughts to clear and flicked away stray pretzels from the table. “Absolutely. How about another round? This one’s on me.”

Cheers lifted, blending with the camaraderie of the bar. Birddog instructed the waitress to keep his tab open while he assessed his drinking partners. Nobody suspected a thing. And they never would, because he had control of every detail.

He would simply keep closer watch now. The opportunity to stall her project would present itself. He only needed to be patient. Then he would bring Josie Lockworth down fast in a ball of flames.

The conversation with her sister was spiraling downward.

Fast.

Josie tucked the cell phone to her ear with one hand and pitched a Beanie Baby puppy up and down in her other while watching car after car pull out of the bar parking lot. She and her sister had covered work, Athena news and exhausted every superficial conversational topic on the planet. Neither sister wanted to be the one to say they really had nothing important to discuss, nothing important to share, sister style.

And if they dared try broaching a deeper topic, they could very well end up arguing about their parents. Diana defensive of their father and disdainful of their mother. Josie protective of their mother and pissed at their father’s emotional abandonment. How ironic that their parents were still together, but the discord between the sisters had never fully healed.

So she continued to pitch the toy basset hound and keep the conversation light, an odd turnabout when she’d never been a quitter or a coward. Why back off in a relationship that should be special?

The whole mortality deal swamped over her again.

Okay. She’d take a shot at communicating with her sister while staying off dangerous territory about their parents.

“How’s life treating you, kid?” She mentally kicked herself for the kid comment. What a way to sabotage reaching out from the get-go.

Diana had prickly down to a fine art when it came to being the younger sister wanting to outdo her older sibling. But sometimes it was hard to imagine Diana as anything other than a dimple-cheeked kid with no front teeth.

“I’m fine. Busy at work, but fine, Josephine.”

Josephine. Josie stifled a wince at her sister’s apparent payback for the kid comment.

What a name to be saddled with for life. God, she’d hated the first day of any new school year when the “official” roll was called. Josephine Lockworth. Those early days at Athena seemed so long ago, the initial days when the Cassandra group had formed under Rainy’s senior leadership. Sam, with her huge chip on her shoulder. Tory, the motor-mouth attention hog. Darcy, the kiss-ass. Serious Kayla, with no sense of humor. Alex the snob. And, of course, Josephine, the Tattletale Queen.

A smile flickered. It was a wonder they hadn’t blown apart the school with their arguments in the early days. But slowly, surely, an unbreakable bond had formed as a group of hardheaded leaders figured out how to combine their strengths into an unbeatable team. Rainy, a senior, had been their group leader. Before she’d graduated, they’d all made a vow. If one called for help, the others would rally. No questions asked. They called it their Cassandra promise—a promise invoked by Rainy’s call just before her fatal accident.

Another car grumbled past the bar’s front window. “I’m glad to hear work’s going well.”

Gotta love those deep and intense answers.

Your turn, kiddo. Josie waited.

And waited.

The thickening air damn near smothered her. Unease prickled with the sense of eyes boring into her forehead. Josie scanned the parking lot, rechecked that her doors were locked. She found nothing. Sheesh. She really was paranoid tonight. But then talking to her sister always left her on edge.

Fine. Diana didn’t want to talk. Better to hang up and try again lat—

“So what are you doing calling me on a Friday night?” Diana asked. “No hot date with some pilot pal of yours?”

Hot pilot? Her mind immediately winged to both Morel and Bridges. Two hot men in so very different ways.

And both a serious pain in her side right now. So, yeah, She was seriously hot under the collar about Diego Morel and Mike Bridges, and the threat this congressional investigation posed to her project. “I just finished up a late business-dinner meeting after a flight. What about you?”

“Only me all alone with my big bowl of macaroni and cheese.”

“Ah. Comfort food.” Some people turned to ice cream or chocolate. She and her sister always dug into a bowl of cheesy starch to fill the emptiness when life got them down. A boxing match between them afterward worked off the calories and steam. “I gotta confess, after my luck with men lately, I wish I had a bowl for myself right about now.”

“Mac and cheese beats the hell out of most guys any day of the month. It lasts longer anyway.”

A laugh trucked up and out so hard Josie missed catching the Beanie Baby. She adored her little sister’s sense of humor, even if occasionally it turned to prickly sarcasm directed at her. She also envied Diana’s ability to find the humor in life.

Josie lifted the Beanie puppy from her lap and tucked him into the drink holder, paws over the edge, basset hound eyes sadly pleading from between two floppy ears. “I guess I’ll have to wait until I get home to make a batch.”

“I wish I could have some of yours.” The clink of a spoon against pottery echoed. “How come when you cook the boxed stuff it tastes good and mine tastes like soupy crap?”

“Secret ingredient.” Just a slice of processed cheese dropped in, not that she intended to share that her single claim to culinary brilliance could be attributed to peeling off a plastic wrapper.

“Remember the time Dad tried to cook us macaroni and cheese like Mom always did?” Diana’s words slipped through the earpiece and past Josie’s defenses.

Her throat closed up like she’d tried to swallow down too much at once. Which was a damn good thing since it choked back the urge to snap at Diana’s transparent bid for their father.

Diana was always trying to make her remember better days with their father before he gave up and shipped them off to boarding school rather than be bothered with parenting. Just as she was always trying to help Diana remember the happier days with their mom before she checked out mentally.

Josie forced a lighthearted answer. “Yeah, the noodles were so hard my loose tooth popped out.”

“He stomped around the kitchen cursing about how the directions must be wrong because somehow he’d overcooked the stuff until it was too tough.”

“I remember.” And it hurt, thinking of that time. Her father’s abandonment afterward hurt even more. At least her mother had illness as an excuse for leaving her kids. “I figured I’d better learn to make mac and cheese or we’d be toothless by Christmas.”

“We sure needed comfort starch in those days.”

Could that be a concession on Diana’s part? “That we did, Diehard.”

Silence ticked by with cyber wave crackles. Josie reached to the coffee holder and flipped a doggie ear backward on the Beanie puppy. She rubbed the fuzzy softness between two fingers until finally she surrendered and asked, “Talked to Dad lately?”

“Just last week.” Diana’s voice gentled with a sympathy Josie wasn’t sure she wanted.

Her eyes gravitated to the puppy, the latest in the Beanie Baby collection her mother had started for her. “And what’s the news?”

“He and Mom just got back from a cruise. They’re enjoying his retirement dollars.”

They should have had a double retirement fund at the end of two fruitful military careers. Her mother had been robbed of her career as well as her dreams.

The parking-lot lights dimmed. Or was it only her gloomy mood? Josie glanced over as the lot brightened and dimmed again with the intrusion of passing people finding their way back to their cars. “Yeah, I got an e-mail from their stopover in—”

Thud.

The noise echoed overhead from her convertible roof.

Josie jolted, stared up at the soft top, pathetic protection against a determined intruder. Her free hand snaking down toward her survival knife in her boot, she turned—and looked straight into cold, dark eyes peering through her window.

“Uh, Diana.” Josie kept her eyes trained on the man standing beside her car. “I gotta go.”

Chapter 4

“Jesus, Morel!” Josie slid her knife back into her boot, phone dropping to her lap. She lowered the window. “What the hell were you thinking, scaring the crap out of me like that?”

Her heart pounded over how close she’d come to drawing a weapon because of some whoo-hoo feeling that somebody was watching her. She was becoming paranoid, and that scared her more than any threat from the outside world.

Diego slumped back against the car parked beside her. “You can quit looking at me like I’m roadkill. I’m not some freaking Peeping Tom.”

“Then why are you here?”

He shrugged. “I was watching you through the window. Saw you hadn’t left. Got worried something might be wrong.”

Her senses itched again, leaving her longing for the security of her knife in her hand. Cars growled and crunched out of the lot, disguising other sounds, while streetlights cast shadows for hiding.

“You came out to check up on me?”

“Sure, why not?”

That was actually kind of…thoughtful. Even if she could defend herself.

Definitely thoughtful…even nice. Both making her more uncomfortable than the pissed off feeling this man usually engendered. “Thank you.”

“Sorry to cut your conversation short.”

“We were through talking anyway.” She tossed her cell phone into the cup holder with a small stuffed dog. “Time for me to head home.”

“I need a ride.”

So much for him being nice. Now his real agenda rolled out. “I thought you already had one or I wouldn’t have left.”

“I did. But he hooked up with a waitress. Suffice it to say that for a guy, a willing babe in the sack beats talking with a legend any day.”

Definitely roadkill. Just when she’d thought she might have an amicable working relationship with this guy. “How lovely.”

“This’ll shock you I’m sure, but we men can be pigs sometimes. Not much I can say in our defense.” His gaze hitched on the strap of her seat belt tucked between her breasts. He looked back up. “So? Give me a ride back to my place?”

She considered booting him on his butt. Was he sober enough to remember in the morning? “I could call you a cab.”

“You could. But I’m not sure they even come out this way, and I’d have to wait at least an hour if they do. Maybe more. Then I’ll be dragging ass all weekend, which will probably set back my whole week. For the good of your test project, you really should give me a ride home so I can get more shut-eye.”

Her eyes closed with resignation. “Climb in.”

“Thanks, even if it is for the good of your project.” He settled into the bucket seat beside her and sighed. “Ah, nothing like a fine-performance machine.”

Finally, common ground. “This might not be a jet or even a Harley, but a Mustang Cobra with a three-twenty horsepower V-eight engine can come mighty damn close to flying. So where to?”

He recited the address.

She smacked her steering wheel. “Good God, Morel. That’s an hour away.”

“Do you have somewhere to be?”

“No.”

“How about we do the ride topless?”

Anger spiked. “Damn it, Morel—”

“The car top. Down. So we can see the night sky full of a half moon and stars.” Grinning, he draped a hand over her gearshift. “What else would you think I meant?”

She knocked his hand off. “I think you meant to rile me and it’s working.”

“Sorry, Buttercup. Just can’t resist.” He hooked his elbow on his open window. “Getting a rise out of you is the most fun I’ve had since I performed a lomcevak maneuver in test-pilot school.”

She gasped, interest snagged against her will and better judgment. “A lomcevak? You actually pulled off that tumbling insanity on purpose? In what airplane?”

“A Christian Eagle biplane. And did I do it on purpose? As far as you know.”

“Amazing.” She shook her head, hair tickling her chin. “And a stupid risk.”

“No arguments from me on that. Do I still get the ride?”

“Yes,” she sighed her surrender. She would just have to keep her mouth shut until she dropped him off. “But only if you promise to tell me the rest of that lomcevak story someday.”

“Done deal.”

She pressed the controls to roll away the roof, then backed out of her parking spot. “You’re lucky I’ve got a full tank of gas and a crummy social life.”

Josie shifted gears with smooth force, her knuckle brushing his leather-covered thigh. Hot. Diana’s words from earlier came back to haunt her.

Holy crap. This guy was hot, in more ways than one. And she had no desire to get burned.

The sooner she got him home the better. She had a pile of her mother’s old test-data printouts waiting at the apartment to keep her plenty busy.

Josie nailed the gas, gravel spewing from the tires on her way out of the lot.

Sprawled in Josie’s Mustang, Diego stared up at the stars speckling the purple-black sky overhead planetarium style, the desert night clear. A perfect night sky for flying.

If he hadn’t nailed his feet to the ground three years ago.

Electric poles whipped past with increasing speed on the desolate two-lane road. Creosote bushes and Joshua trees dotted the inky horizon for mile after mile.

Already he anticipated another beer to rid himself of the bitter aftertaste of the hangar meeting earlier. He was a washed-up test pilot. His life was in the crapper along with his career. This job only proved it.

Baby-sitter, spy, paper pusher, and for a low-budget project at that.

This assignment only proved how far down on the food chain he dwelled these days. The subcontractor he freelanced for kept him around to trot out a legend and his medals. Apparently his surliness was starting to chafe, if this job was any indication.

He worked because he had bills to pay. For putting his feet on the floor and getting dressed each morning, he rewarded himself with a race across a dry lake bed on his Harley, the only thing other than his dogs that he’d kept when his ex-wife walked after the accident. For making it through another workday—a necessity if he wanted to keep the bike and feed the dogs—he rewarded himself with a beer.

Long-neck. Budweiser, like any self-respecting Mississippi native.

And with any luck, the bottle was thrust his way in the hands of a hot woman who for some reason didn’t know he was a washed-up test pilot who’d killed his best friend.

Bailout. Bailout. Bailout.

Even now, he could hear his own hoarse shouts. His wingman, flying alongside, had ignored the order during that last test, vowing he could recover, the instrumentation reading agreed. The poor bastard had flown right into the ground trusting his data.

Data Diego himself had supplied prior to take off.

Shit. Screw thinking about that. Rewind back to the image of a hot blond waitress thrusting a beer his way along with her bountiful breasts. Except his brain kept overlaying the image of a buxom blonde with a smart-mouthed brunette, one with minimal curves and maximum moxie.

Josie Lockworth might not be his type, but no question about it, she was hot. Self-assurance echoed from her, whether she was gliding on long legs into a bar or steering her Mustang convertible along rural desert roads.

He remembered well the idealistic days when he’d expected his work to change the world. These days, he preferred to think about beer…and breasts.

The ones beside him, to be exact.

The green flight suit hugged her slim body. High, pert breasts thrust a subtle invitation increased by the cooling blasts of night wind. Velcro straps cinched at her sides, accenting a hint of hips—

Whoa. Stop. He geared down his thoughts.

The woman who was ready to kick his ass over a simple “little lady” comment would fillet his liver if she could step inside his brain right now.