Glad of something to do, they didn’t run to their birds—they sprinted.
Once they were on the move, Abby glanced at him and raised an eyebrow. Charlene One’s team were up on their toes, just waiting for an assignment. Abby wasn’t ordering, she was asking. Damned decent of her.
“Uh,” officer training had taught him that you could hesitate for data and recon, but you didn’t hesitate in making decisions once it was all in hand. “Okay, this team is going to look just as busy, but we’re going to stay low profile. We don’t want the Charlene to grab the Brit’s attention. Stay here in the hangar?”
Abby shook her head. “We’ll roll out into the open and spin up the rotors. But we stay on ground.”
“Excellent. DAGOR team, switch it up. Compass, you drive. Hot Rod, you’re in the nav seat. Cross train each other in high-speed load and unload. The key is never be more than twenty seconds from ready for action—immediate departure or attack. This is the action team. For now, those folks,” he waved at the other two birds already loaded up and rolling out of the hangar, “are just a distraction from us. Go! Go! Go!”
Abby pulled Misty aside and Derek shuffled close enough to overhear. “You do everything you can to screw them up—both your team and mine. Steal a chain. Be a prisoner, but escape when they least expect it. Grab one of those small cargo trailers and load it in the bird when they aren’t paying attention, whatever you can think of.”
Misty’s grin almost matched the evil redhead’s back at SOAR headquarters. Then she too took off.
“Damn but I like the way you think, Captain Rose.”
“Right back at you, Captain Kylie.”
“You two are so cute together,” Dilya effused from, again, close by his elbow.
Derek jumped in surprise. D-boys never flinched. “Goddamn it, Dilya. You’re messing with my cool.”
“You aren’t cool, so don’t worry about it. But you are good. Michael would approve.”
That took his breath away. To earn praise from Colonel Gibson, even secondhand, was a big deal. The colonel’s reputation said he wasn’t known for doing much of that.
“And what are you doing? Why didn’t you fade in with the others?”
“Because Captain Cutcher may not know about Miss Watson, which means she can’t help us. Or she does know, and would never lead us to her. Either way, I’m better off staying close by the two of you if I want to find her.”
“Oh joy,” he teased her.
Her smile said she fully understood the joke.
“Look, Dilya. I don’t know all your skills. But if things go dynamic, I’m going to look for you one step behind me and a half step to my left. Clear?”
The young woman turned instantly serious, almost looking as if she was going to cry. Instead, she rested a hand on his arm and whispered, “Thank you.” Then she and her dog hurried to the wet line that the rain painted on the lip of the hangar’s open door where she stood facing out into the predawn light.
“What did I say?” Derek looked to Abby because it wasn’t the reaction he’d expected.
Abby rested her hand gently on his other arm. “You honestly don’t know?”
He shook his head. Sass. An argument. A scoff. Any of those he’d have expected. Not the shock.
Abby went up on her toes and kissed him…then cursed him. “Damn you for being a decent man, Captain Kylie. It would be much easier to dismiss you if all you wanted was sex.”
“That is all I want.”
Her crooked smile called it a lie. Which it was. Because if it was a lie, any future sex wouldn’t have to be with Abby. But she was the only woman he wanted in his bed—which wasn’t like him. Which only made the whole conversation about the chance of something longer term happening between them worse. It wouldn’t be freaking him out if it didn’t feel so real. With all that mushed together in his aching head, the one thing he knew for certain was that he absolutely didn’t want the conversation to go any farther down that mine-strewn road.
“So, what did I say?” He could see he hadn’t fooled Abby. Well, as long as he kept fooling himself, that would have to be enough.
“Dilya is a girl, a young woman out on the edge of a clandestine world beyond our imagining. On the edge where people die suddenly and unexpectedly. You didn’t shut her out or treat her as if she was a newborn fawn not worthy of note. You just said that you expected her in the action and then offered to protect her.”
“Well, sure. It’s what we do, protect civilians.”
“You heard Beale. Dilya is no more a civilian than we are. And you just acknowledged that. That’s something I expect she doesn’t get to hear very often. That girl is seriously alone in the world. Like recognizes like, except I have family and the Night Stalkers. I’m guessing she doesn’t.” Abby turned back to watch his team racing the DAGOR backward onto her helo.
Derek studied her. If he wanted to keep Dilya safe, who he barely knew, where the hell did that leave him with Abby? Protect her? No, far more than that. He’d guard her with his life.
