He was shaking his head as he looked at her. Just a little, just a constant, persistent no.
Before he could shut her down with an argument she couldn’t debate, like I’m really sorry, Tash, because I just don’t feel the same way that you do, she grabbed her book and scrambled back to her feet.
“Don’t say anything,” she told him. “Not right now. Just think about what I said. Sit with it. Sleep on it. We both need to sleep, so I’m going to bed.”
She beelined for the bedroom, and when he spoke—“Tasha, I just... can’t...”—she pretended she didn’t hear him and closed and locked the door in the face of whatever it was that he couldn’t or wouldn’t do.
Even though she knew damn well that his sentence, I just can’t ended badly for her with the words force myself to love you the way you want me to.
Until tomorrow morning, when he said it—until the moment that she emerged and let him say it to her face—she’d stay right here in her hope-filled fantasyland of maybe he would.
Yeah, and all she needed was a pink settee, and she’d become a Russian princess for real, too.
Chapter Nineteen
Wednesday
“What’s the deputy’s plan if Ted tries to jump the fence?” Rio asked as Dave rejoined him on the tarmac.
Dawn was starting to lighten the sky in the east—they’d been waiting that freaking long.
But now the Ustanzian jet was finally—finally—approaching the airstrip for a landing, and they were outside the hangar, awaiting the prince’s arrival.
If it was Rio who’d essentially stolen a plane to go after his girlfriend who was in danger, instead of taxiing to the hangar, he’d pull the jet toward the end of the runway, pop open the door, jump out, and make a break for the forest on the other side of the chain-link barrier.
“She says the fence is electrified, and the tower reminded him about that,” Dave reported. “Repeatedly.”
“So, we expect him to just surrender?” That didn’t make sense.
“The deputy said he’s been both compliant and apologetic,” Dave said. “She told me that the prince told the tower that he’ll come out of the plane with his hands up. He doesn’t want to get shot. And he really doesn’t want to get shot down.”
The plane landed then, with a roar and a squeal of tires, and Rio looked back toward the parking lot where they’d left their SUV. “Maybe I should’ve stayed with the car.” Another seven hours of delay, driving to freaking Burlington and back, was bad enough. If they had to spend one minute more than that tracking this mofo down...
But after braking, the plane turned toward the hangar and, jet engines still whining, rolled obediently toward them.
Something was seriously wrong with all of this. Why steal a plane only to chicken out when you land?
And okay, sure. The fighter jet escort had surely been intimidating, and it was still up there, circling, to make sure the Ustanzian jet stayed on the ground.
This tiny airfield had no boarding gates—only portable stairs on wheels. As the engines powered down, a team of workers trotted one of them out to meet the jet and the door opened.
And there he stood. The goddamn Crown Prince of Ustanzia with his trademark navy-blue winter coat, vaguely reminiscent of the Beatles Sgt. Pepper phase, his black skinny jeans, and his long, dark, wavy hair...
Wait a minute. This guy on the stairs had the trademark flowing locks, but his hair was blond.
“That’s not Prince Tedric,” Rio announced, and immediately ran for the SAT phone in the SUV. “Check the plane,” he shouted back at Dave. “Make sure the prince isn’t hiding in there somewhere.”
But he knew in his gut that the prince probably wasn’t—and why this whole situation had been bugging him so damn badly.
There was no doubt about it—this smelled of diversion. Of trickery. Of total goatfuckery. Ted had given some friend or underling his jacket and an order to fly to this airfield to distract and divert anyone following, while he, what...? If it were Rio, he’d be approaching the burned out ski lodge far more covertly, by land.
Yeah.
This was, without a doubt, a complete disaster; a total clusterfuck of a waste of their time.
And the first thing Rio needed to do was bring the admiral up to speed.
Still no contact.
Thomas had extracted from the pod before dawn—before Tasha was awake. He’d written her a very brief sticky note, left on the bathroom door—Back soon.
He’d left unspoken the end of his sentence, which went something like: hopefully with a team of SEALs and FBI agents who will rescue you from the small army of hostiles who are still out here searching for you, and who will also please please PLEASE God rescue me, please sweet Jesus, from having to continue with part eleventy-nine of last’s night’s endless and terrifying conversation.
Although, after she’d gone to bed, while he was lying on the sofa and not-sleeping, he’d come up with his opening salvo, should part eleventy-nine take place: What about Ted? Remember Ted? Your soon-to-be fiancé with whom you share an apartment, a bedroom, a bed...? How does Ted factor into “I want this, to be locked in here with you, Thomas, forever”...?
So, good. He was ready, because part eleventy-nine was sure as shit coming at him at warp speed as soon as he walked through the door, cheerfully calling, “Honey, I’m home!”
Rescue—both physical and emotional—wasn’t coming soon, because there still had been abso-fucking-lutely zero contact.
Although Thomas had heard a jet overhead, slightly before dawn. He’d spotted it, too—an F-15 fighter. It had made at least two circles, but not directly overhead. And up way too high for the pilot to be actively searching for anyone, let alone them.
Thomas was starting to believe that whatever was happening out in the world was a total clusterfuck, because this was day four, and in what universe did Admiral Francisco not manage to send a full team in a guns-bristling warship out to the extraction point to rescue Tasha by day four?
Only dark and scary ones, for sure.
So either the U.S. had had—or was in the middle of having—a 9/11-level attack, or the admiral had, as Tash had initially feared, been among the first casualties.
The very words Thomas had told her when she’d wondered aloud about nuclear war echoed in his head, and he reminded himself again that, at least in this remote part of the Northeast, the electrical grid was still up and running.
Of course, the CONUS grid was a disparate patchwork of systems. Major US cities across the country could well be charred and smoking.
And okay, thoughts like that weren’t going to help him.
Unless he and Tasha were among the very last men and women left alive.
That grim fact would make all of his personal conflicts vanish pretty damn fast.
Except, there was still a motley platoon of men out here in the woods, searching for someone or something. Occam’s Razor said it had to be Tasha and Thomas, even though reasoning and logic couldn’t explain why they were being hunted after they’d so obviously been left alive and let go.
Reasoning and logic did point out that the still-present army of hunters indicated that something less than full nuclear annihilation had occurred. Surely in the event of that enormous a disaster, the leader of this ragtag group would have better things to do—like establishing his warlord status in the new world arena by looting all of the toilet paper from the local Ralph’s or Piggly Wiggly or whatever local grocery chain lived out here in backwoods New England. Everyone knew that in an apocalyptic world, hoarded toilet paper was a king-maker.