“Then go see whoever she is.” He flicked a hand toward the door.
Conversation over.
Out in the squadron room, he got a few curious stares, but he ignored them all.
He needed to call Cheri. She’d done a stint as an instructor pilot right out of undergradflight training, and she’d gotten her choice of airplanes afterward and a near-guarantee of a thirty-year career. Being offered an IP job now, as opposed to right out of pilot training, apparently implied a cushy chance to kick back and count on retiring ten years earlier than planned.
The Air Force might still tap him to do IP duty, but damn if he’d volunteer for it.
Still, later that afternoon, he still found himself on the James Robert campus, strolling through the main physics building to the musty lecture hall.
He slipped into the back of the room unnoticed.
Odd. When he was an undergrad, the back rows had always had a smattering of people in them.
In Kaci’s lecture, the whole class was no farther back than halfway.
She stood down front, facing the side wallwhile she hung a stuffed pink pig on a string connected to a pulley. Her voice carried without the aid of a microphone. In fact, he wasn’t certain the room was even equipped for a microphone. They were old-school here.
Instead of her usual sassy twang, she spoke with a confident authority. Still Southern, but not redneck. He’d noticed the same authority, though her voice had been more relaxed when she’d been with her student last week. And though Lance couldn’t see her students’ faces today, he recognized the posture.
Leaning in. Interested. Not sleeping.
Some took notes, mostly on their electronic devices but a few on paper notepads.
Kaci was making gravity the most fascinating concept in the world.
Impressive skill.
Too bad she was afraid to fly. Half the guyswho showed up for C-130 training were disappointed they hadn’t gotten fighters. Needed that fire lit under them to love their birds the way Lance did.
He tugged at his collar and sank lower in his seat, letting Kaci pull him out of his own thoughts.
She yanked the pig up until it was at the top of the pulley, about twenty feet in the air, with a red laser dot centered on it.
The dot, he realized, was coming from the laser scope mounted on a crossbow on the table. He smothered a grin behind his hand.
She was going to shoot a stuffed pink pig in her classroom. A pink pig identical to the one sitting on the bar at Pony’s man cave.
“Who wants to tell me what’s going to happen when we fire this crossbow?” she said.
“It’ll miss,” said a girl up front.
“Why?”
“Gravity.”
The door opened behind him. Three older men in slacks and button-downs entered and took seats across the aisle. Two women hovered in the doorway. “Has she shot it yet?” one whispered.
“I don’t think so,” the other whispered back.
The dark-haired one was vaguely familiar—had she been with Kaci on trivia night?—and he was almost certain the short-haired one was the department secretary. She’d helped him get into Kaci’s office to deliver his offer.
“She’s insane,” one of the men across the aisle muttered to his colleagues.
“Can’t believe she’s going to Germany,” another added. “What the hell were they thinking?”
Lance curled his fingers around the armrests. He’d endured years of lectures from Cheri about letting her fight her own battles since they both signed up for ROTC in college. About letting her earn her respectwithout interference.
