“I’m so sorry, girl,” she buried her face in the Sheltie’s soft fur and whispered for them alone.
“When was the last time you ate?” Claudia asked. Claudia had always been kind to her. Helped her as much as anyone except Mom with language. She also taught Dilya how to shoot a bow and arrow, still her favorite sport.
“Since forever. Wait…what?” She’d expected a tongue lashing not…
Claudia hooked an arm through hers and began guiding her out of the barn toward the big house.
“No… But…” she didn’t know which way was… “What’s happening?”
“You need to eat. Both of you. And get warm.”
“No. Emily doesn’t want me here.” Dilya dug in her heels and tried to turn for her car. She escaped Claudia’s grasp and ran square into Michael. It was alarming to realize they were nearly the same height, but it was still like hitting a brick wall. Zackie let out a surprised yip at being crunched between them. She’d have fallen on her ass if Michael hadn’t grabbed her. Typically, he didn’t say a word.
Instead it was Mark who spoke up. “Wa’ll…” His fake Texas accent usually meant he was amused by something. “That there’s contrarywise to what ol’ Emma had to say. So, who’m I ’spposed to be trusting like? A little pip of a gal like you or the woman what I love and guv me my chill’un?” It was an awful accent, but she was in no mood to tease him about it. And she didn’t think it safe to point out that little was a relative term. She was twenty-five and had been living with someone these last months. Though even at forty-five, Mark was still broad-shouldered enough to make his six feet seem much taller.
She opened her mouth but didn’t know what to say. Emily didn’t want her to leave?
Before she could straighten out her thoughts, they’d escorted her around the back of the main lodge and into the kitchen through the family-and-staff entrance. Zackie’s nose swung away from her face to sniff the air and her own stomach growled.
The big kitchen, which could feed all the hands plus forty-odd guests, was busy with one of the chef’s winter masterclasses. Ten men and women were chopping, rolling out pastries, mixing fillings, and she couldn’t tell what else through her shivers. They were kicking in strongly enough to make it hard to hold onto Zackie.
Past the kitchen was a big table where she’d eaten a few meals in the past. A quarter the size of the monster out in the dining room, but still big enough for a dozen folks at a time. Beyond it was a big area of battered couches and chairs facing a stone fireplace. Emily’s daughters were sitting at small desks off to the side doing homework until they spotted her.
Tessa rushed over to greet her. Little Belle flew. At eleven and nine, they were still girls, safe in their familial world. She envied them that innocence and hoped that it continued far longer than hers had. They both hugged her like a long-lost sister, then they kidnapped Zackie. Tessa at least had the awareness to offer her a smile about Belle’s priorities, but she wasn’t much slower; the Sheltie was a big favorite from prior visits. Most dogs at Henderson’s were war dogs in training or retirement, not cute and cuddly Shelties glad for a child’s attentions.
Dilya tried to imagine Tessa in one more year facing the loss of her home, her country, and the murder of both her parents. Emily and Mark dead? There was no world where that could be allowed to happen.
Once they were out of immediate earshot, she turned to Mark. “I should never have come here. I’ve put you all in danger.”
“Something we dumb cowboys?—”
“And girls,” Claudia interrupted him.
“—and girls know nothing about.”
She could see that Emily had filled them in on what Dilya had told her. They were each among the top warriors the US Army had ever produced. These were the very people who had taught her how to assess and survive danger. Which made Dilya feel even stupider than she already did. Who better anywhere to go to for help? And yet she hadn’t, which was…depressing.
Mark handed her a big mug of butternut squash soup with tortellini and roasted red peppers in it. She wrapped her fingers around it; the warmth hurt all the way to her joints and felt lovely.
They shifted her away from the chefs and over to the fire set against the chill of November in the high plains. There was plenty of covering noise from the work in the kitchen and from the girls tossing a plushie toy for Zackie to bound after with a bright scrabble of her nails on the stone floor.
Unusually, Michael spoke first. “Describe what you saw.”
This wasn’t the simple answer she’d given Emily about two obvious injuries. With a pause or a raise of his eyebrows, he led her deep into the description of Miss Watson’s home and what she’d seen there. She even described the scent paths that Zackie had traced both into the house and back out.
When she was done, Michael nodded. “No need to go investigate. Four attackers, one dead, one injured. Your observation skills are well honed.”
Coming from Michael that was high praise indeed. Of course, he’d taught her many of those skills himself. But it didn’t make her feel any better about Miss Watson.
“Now,” Mark spoke softly with no hint of Texas in his voice, “we need to find out where they took her and how to get her back.”
19
Derek suggested using the Fort Campbell base’s very nature against itself, which Abby went along with it once he explained why. And now they were aloft to prove themselves right—or so very wrong.
Most military helo pilots flew a few hundred hours per year outside of combat to keep their skills fresh; ten to fifteen hours per month. Over dinner last night, Abby had told him that, in contrast, a Night Stalker flew a thousand; twenty a week, every week. That’s what had finally registered with him about how unique they were. He understood because the three hundred operators of Delta typically shot more rounds in a year than the hundred and eighty thousand Marines—a thousand rounds a day was low-typical in a training cycle whereas a Marine might shoot that in a year. And there lay the difference between performance and mastery.
With the ninety-six helos of the two Night Stalkers battalions based at Fort Campbell and three hundred more birds of the 101st Airborne Screaming Eagles, there were always helos in the air. A couple more following apparently random flight paths high and well to the side of the exercise area shouldn’t be noted, especially not with how low they normally flew.
