“You don’t know me so well.” Rusty chuckled, but itsounded fake, and within a second, his face fell flat. “But the long and short of it is, when my grandfather died and left his house in Folkstone and his charter fishing business to my mom, I jumped at the chance to make a fresh start. To try something new.”
Ace couldn’t put his finger on it, but there was something about Rusty’s story that didn’t gel. “And your folks? They were okay withyou moving half a world away?”
Ace wouldn’t have thought it possible, but Rusty’s jaw hardened further. “Not really. But I had to. I needed…um…well, I guess I needed space.”
Call it intuition or a sixth sense, but suddenly Ace knew what Rusty wasn’t saying. His heart sank. “Your folks don’t know you’re gay, do they?”
For a redhead, Rusty’s skin was incredibly tan—all those hours spenton an open deck, no doubt—but Ace still spotted his blush.
“It’d kill my mom if she knew,” Rusty said. “She’s a devout Christian. Some might even call her a bible-beater. And my dad, well…let’s just say he’s made it clear my whole life what he thinks offuckin’ fairies.”
The way Rusty spat out the words, Ace knew Rusty was quoting directly from his old man. Hadn’t Ace heard similar nastinessfrom hisownfather?
His mental lockbox rattled around, threatening to disgorge its contents once again. “You want some advice?” he asked Rusty.
“Not really.”
Ace gave him some anyway. “Rip off the bandage. Even if your folks are hurt, hell, even if they say they never want to see you again, at least you won’t be living a lie.”
A muscle ticked a sharp rhythm in Rusty’s cheek. “Easiersaid than done.”
“Like most things,” Ace insisted. But a final hitch of those shoulders told him Rusty wasn’t buying it.
Too bad, he mused.I thought maybe we could—
He squashed the thought before he could finish it. He’d been down that road before. He refused to go down it again. And besides, his heart belonged to another. Always had. Always would.
Still, it’d been nice to fantasize.Just for a while.
Angel followed the signs directing them to the private hangar at the airport, and they eventually found their way to a meandering access road that would take them there.
Ace had always appreciated private air travel. Since the über-rich and famous, or those folks with bull’s-eyes on their backs, tended to get around that way, it meant private jet hangars were discreet.Discriminating. Exactly what a quintet of covert operators needed. Or rather a trio of covert operators, one mouthy office manager, and one poor, unsuspecting former-marine-turned-civilian.
Passing through the gate of a chain-link fence, they pulled into a small parking lot. Since theirs wasn’t a commercial flight, there was no need for gung-ho security measures. The thought being, if someonewanted to hijack or bring down their own plane, well…so what? It’s not like they’d be taking innocent civilians with them.
With the rain still coming down in sheets, it wasn’t until they were piling out of the truck and wiping it down for fingerprints—leaving behind easy evidence was a no-no, and of course there was Rusty’s identity to protect—that Ace noticed the black SUV swinging in topark three spots down. He didn’t give it a second thought. Figured it was a pilot or a mechanic or even an air traffic controller. That was until he saw two men hop from the vehicle and lift sidearms.
The driver yelled in a thick English accent, “Put your bloody hands in the air!”
