Page 7 of Beachcomber Enemy

The rush of speeding into takeoff never failed to get his adrenaline flowing. Checking the compass and altimeter, Dane turned the plane to the exact heading to reach the airport on the Cape within twenty minutes. As long as nothing went wrong.

He had his headset on and he gestured for Shana to put hers on too so they could talk more easily without shouting over the roar of engine and wind as they gained speed.

She put the headset on. “I’m okay,” she said. She did look more relaxed now that they were airborne and over the water with no ground-to-air missile launchers in sight. He’d noticed her checking the water and shoreline below them as they flew.

“Of course you’re okay. You’re Shana George. And you’re with me.” He found that he meant the words more than half seriously.

She smiled. And that made all the difference. The tension he hadn’t realized had tightened across his shoulders now released. He rolled his shoulders, testing them. Then he took a deep breath. They had just under twenty minutes of airtime. It was a good time to get her story about who the hell Whitey Nash was and why the hell he would bomb their house.

“You going to tell me about it or do I have to pry it from you?”

She glanced at him, then closed her eyes and leaned her head back against her seat. He thought she was going to ignore him and sleep, but then she spoke.

“Whitey was young for someone with such a prolific career. When we finally caught up with him, I went in first. Hot. In the skirmish, Whitey got cut. Bad.” She rattled a breath, then continued. “They never did any plastic surgery to fix his face because he was in jail, a criminal presumed guilty of heinous crimes.” She stopped talking.

“What kind of crimes, Shana?”

“Kidnapping children. Young girls. He tortured them. We found one little girl that night, barely alive and thoroughly mutilated.”

She turned to Dane and looked him in the eye, her face tortured. “I didn’t consciously try to mutilate Whitey, but I suspect my subconscious had a say in it. When I drew my knife instead of my gun, that should have been a warning that I wanted to cut him. And I did. In more than one place.”

She was gathering steam with anger overriding regret or conscience.

“You don’t have to—”

She raised her chin and her voice too. “I cut his balls and his face. His balls were lost, though not his life. Why they bothered to save that I’ll never know. I’d hoped he’d bleed out and die when I called for the ambulance. I wasn’t the only one there. The other officer had a gun on Whitey, but didn’t fire. He let me take Whitey down my way.

“After that, I guess you could say I became legendary in the department, even beyond. A genuine badass girlie.” She smiled then, a strident smile that stood for a lot of things behind the scenes. Things he was going to need to find out about. But right now, one question stood out in his mind.

“Why did I never know about this until now?” Dane asked with a small tremor of trepidation.

“I have to admit that’s a good question.”

“All those times you gave me shit for my so-called legendary status and you had a legend of your own.” He tried to lighten the tension, not sure if it was his or hers he was more concerned about.

She shrugged.

“No. How could I glorify my most senseless, out-of-control act of destruction?”

“Don’t be too hard on yourself. Every legendary act has two sides.”

“There was no need for it. I know that now after I saw what it did to Whitey Nash. The aftermath was like a horror show. My so-called notoriety never reached the press. The details of the arrest were kept quiet for the most part and glossed over in the files.”

“That’s what makes it a legend,” he said.

* * *

Her takedown of Whitey Nash was something, in the end, that she was both fiercely proud of and fiercely ashamed of at the same time. Too ashamed to admit her shame to Dane.

She remembered the trial.

“Tell me about it, Shana,” he said, using his most convincing sexy rumble of a voice.

“Tell you what?”

“The rest of the story.”

“I’m not in the mood.”