Before anyone could arrive to investigate the gunshots, the two men jumped into the chopper and in seconds Saint had them in the air. They were a good fifteen minutes away from San Felipe before either of the Rosens spoke.
“Thank you.” Jim Rosen was holding his wife’s hand. “I don’t know who you are or where you came from, but thanks is such a small word for what you did.”
“Yes.” Nita Rosen gave a brief nod in agreement. “What Jim said.”
Blaze had his first chance to look them over carefully. They seemed to be fairly ordinary people dressed in disheveled but obviously expensive clothing. They also appeared to have somehow kept their shit together during their ordeal, which Blaze knew could destroy a lot of people.
“I’m glad you two are doing okay.”
“Okay?” Jim’s laugh was anything but humorous. “Trust me. We are far from okay. But we’ve been through a lot of tough times to get where we are. You learn that keeping it together is the only way to survive.”
“The kidnappers weren’t very smart,” Blaze told them. “And those can be the most dangerous kind.”
“Well, thank you again. We owe you a lot.”
“We’re just glad you’re safe now.”
Blaze leaned back in his seat, pulled out his cell and texted Angela Rosen that the team had her parents and was on the way back to the hangar. He was more than ready to deliver them to her, get showered, get out on the town and get laid in spades. He’d learned long ago that high-octane sex was a much better mood relaxer than any alcohol on the market. Thank god he knew plenty of women whose drug of choice was no-strings sex.
His cell dinged and he read the message, then sifted to look at the Rosens.
“I texted your daughter, Angela, earlier to let her know you were okay. She just texted back to let me know she’s waiting at the hangar.”
“Oh.” Nina Rosen took a deep breath. “Oh, thank you.”
“Yes.” Jim nodded. “More thanks. I—” He paused, swallowed. “We are more grateful than you can imagine. And happy that we can come home to our daughter.”
Neither of the Rosens said much after that. Blaze was pretty sure the aftereffects of their harrowing experience were finally taking over their bodies and minds. They wouldn’t be forgetting this for a long time, if ever. He buckled into the seat next to Saint, his location of choice. Watching the world slip by beneath them helped settle him after one of their missions.
He leaned his head back and closed his eyes, thinking about the night ahead. He’d call Fran as soon as they landed, ready for a night of hot, unrestrained sex. Just as when he’d been an active SEAL, the work came first. When he was on a mission, he was totally focused on it. No distractions. But when the job was done and there was down time, he played as hard as he worked.
Fran was one of few women he felt comfortable with, a woman who made no emotional demands of him and wanted nothing more than a great night and hot, steamy sex. Fran was focused on her own career, as she’d told him the first time they’d had dinner, and she had neither time nor energy to invest in a relationship.
Fine by him. She had a body he could lose himself in, luscious breasts, full lips that knew exactly with to do with his cock, and—
Fuck!
As images flashed through his mind, said cock swelled and tried to push its way through the denim of his fly. He tried to shift without calling attention to himself, but Saint slid a glance at him and laughed.
“Getting a little ahead of yourself there? At least wait until we land.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Blaze growled.
“By the way.” He glanced over at Blaze. “Your brother called while you were doing the retrieval.”
Blaze lifted an eyebrow. His brother seldom called, busy as he was at the hospital. “Nolan? Called you?”
“Texted, actually. Said he wasn’t sure if you were around or not but knew I could get hold of you.”
“Huh. He’s usually too tied up with patients to call during the day. Did he say what he wanted?”
“Just that he gave your number to someone and you should definitely take her case.”
That was weird. Nolan never got involved in Galaxy business. The man’s position as head of the surgical department took up enormous amounts of his time, although Blaze knew Nolan wouldn’t have it any other way. Nor could he imagine who Nolan, in his very conservative world, would have come into contact with that he thought needed Galaxy.
“I don’t suppose he gave you a name or anything.”
“Yeah, as a matter of fact, he texted me the info.” He pointed to the cell phone in a side pocket of his seat. “Go ahead. Look it up. You know the code.”
One of the things they had all agreed on from the beginning was how they handled their cell phones. With no landline, by design, they’d purchased the most powerful cells made, phones that they could use to call someone on the ground and maintain a conversation from the air if necessary. They also knew each other’s codes. In a high-risk situation, they needed to be able to access one another’s information.
Blaze picked the phone up and punched in the code to unlock it, then hit the text icon and found Nolan’s.
Hey. Can you pass along to Blaze that a woman named Peyton West will be calling his secret phone? Take good care of her.
Blaze read the message twice.
“That’s it? That’s all he said?”
Saint nodded. “He called me because he knew the four of you were actively involved with the rescue while all I did was sit my fat ass here in the chopper waiting for you guys.”
Blaze chuckled. “That’s one way of putting it.” He looked at the screen again. “I’ll wait until I check with my brother. I wonder if it’s anything urgent?”
“Dude.” Saint maneuvered the helo into a new flight path. “Everyone who calls you guys is urgent.”
Blaze supposed that was true. When the four of them had gathered to celebrate becoming civilians after sixteen years as SEALs, little had they expected that their festive dinner would change their lives so dramatically. But getting a little drunk and buying a hundred dollars’ worth of lottery tickets had seemed a good way to celebrate. Who knew they’d win the largest Powerball lottery ever, and wind up with almost one-point-six billion dollars?
Billion!
Blaze’s mind still tripped over that every time.
But after the original craziness had settled down, the four of them had realized the sky was now the limit. They could afford their dream, and Galaxy was born. With a Gulfstream 500 that served both as their office and transportation, a luxury cabin cruiser and a small racing boat docked at Viper’s home on Davis Islands, they were ready to go anywhere at any time. It suited all of them not to be tied down to regular offices and their type of clientele didn’t want a paper trail.
He wondered idly what kind of woman Nolan had connected with and what her story was that he’d felt compelled to give her the phone number. Although he and his brother were close, they were also extremely busy with their own lives. He didn’t think any of Nolan’s patients were the kind to need Galaxy’s services, but of course he never knew. But he was damn curious what had brought about the out-of-character phone call.