“It hasn’t gotten a lot of use lately. We’ve all been pretty busy.” He started the preflight, checking the electrical system, looking for any warning lights, checking the GPS navigation, checking the oil and fuel levels.
He’d already done the walk-around, inspecting the body for damage, looking for fluid leaks: oil, fuel, hydraulics.
“We’re all set.” He put on his headphones and waited for Jessie to put on hers. Settling back, he got on the radio and spoke to the tower, then began taxiing into position on the runway.
Once cleared for takeoff, the plane began to roll down the tarmac, the propellers humming as the engine picked up speed. Jessie studied the landscape outside the window as the plane lifted into the air and climbed to flying altitude. She didn’t say much until the city of Dallas disappeared in the distance behind them.
“As a rule, I’m not crazy about flying,” she said. “But I have to admit this is great.”
He smiled. “Glad you’re enjoying it. For me flying’s mostly a convenient way to get around. Helluva lot better than going through all the hassle at the airport.”
“That’s for sure.”
It was an easy flight, just a few thunderheads beginning to develop, which he was able to skirt by slight course alterations. The patchwork quilt of farmland below held Jessie’s attention, giving Bran a chance to study her.
She really was pretty, he thought, and she was smart. There were plenty of beautiful women in Texas, but when you added brains and a dynamite figure, it was a combination Bran found hard to resist.
But he owed a debt to Danny Kegan that he could never repay. A one-night hookup with his sister or anything remotely similar was out of the question. His sigh went unnoticed beneath the hum of the engines.
Near the halfway point, he landed at a small executive airport in Amarillo and had the fuel topped off while they went into the terminal restaurant for a pit stop and something to eat. Sandwiches and soft drinks and a couple of bags of chips and they were airborne again. A short flight north and a little west and he landed at Cutter Aviation, a private airport a few miles west of Colorado Springs.
The executive terminal, where he’d made arrangements for a hangar to store the plane, was housed in a log building furnished with brown leather sofas, photos of the surrounding snow-capped mountains, and bronze sculptures of wildlife, a place perfectly suited to its location in the Rockies.
Bran had a rental car waiting, a big dark gray metallic Ford Expedition. He grabbed the handle of his carry-on, tossed the black canvas duffel that held his gear over one shoulder, and urged Jessie, towing her own suitcase, toward the parking lot.
“I booked two rooms for us at the Holiday Inn,” she said as he loaded their luggage into the back of the vehicle. “I hope that works for you.”
He paused to take the Glock out of his canvas duffel, clipped the holster to his belt and pulled his Henley out to cover it, then loaded the bag into the back.
“Call and cancel,” he said. “I’ve got a suite for us at the Cheyenne Mountain Resort. It’s up in the hills not far from Fort Carson.” Apparently she hadn’t figured out that separate hotel rooms weren’t an option. People had been shooting at her. He wasn’t letting her get that far away.
“It’s an hour drive from there to the depot,” he said, opening the passenger door. “But we’ll also be spending time at the base, which is fairly close, so we might as well stay somewhere nice.”
“You’re spending a lot of money. I didn’t expect that. I’ll find a way to repay you.”
He stopped walking and turned back. “I told you before—I owe your brother my life. You don’t owe me anything and especially not money. I’ve got plenty of it, far more than we’ll need.” He stared down at her. “All right?”
She shrugged. “I guess so.” She was a foot shorter than he was, petite, but she wasn’t frail. He usually went for tall, buxom women. They just seemed less fragile, a better fit for a guy his size. But there was something about Jessie that drew him.
“No more talk about money,” he said to make the point. “Okay?”
Her chin went up. “Fine.”
He bit back a smile. She was really cute. Too bad she didn’t look more like her silver-haired father and less like her brother, whose good looks had appealed to women around the world.
They belted themselves into their seats, and he started the engine.
“You don’t want to talk about the money you’re spending,” she said. “So what do you want to talk about? The case, I hope.”
He grinned. “Why don’t we talk about why you don’t have a serious boyfriend. That should be interesting.”
Instead of the snarky remark he expected, Jessie’s face went pale. She glanced out the window. “It’s not a good story.”
Bran silently cursed. Dammit, he hadn’t intended to make her uncomfortable, and it was really none of his business. “Hey, I’m sorry. I was just kidding around. You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”
She fell silent and he didn’t press her, just set the nav system for the Cheyenne Mountain Resort and drove out of the parking lot.
Following GPS directions, he found US 24 East and headed for the hotel.
“Something happened three years ago,” Jessie said as the SUV rolled along. “I started corresponding with this guy I met through an online dating site. His name was Jordan Duran.”
“Why the hell would you need to go online to meet someone? Any guy with eyes in his head would want to ask you out.”
Jessie gave him the faintest smile. “I thought I might meet someone more interesting than the men I seemed to attract.”
He kind of got that. Having sex with a good-looking woman wasn’t the same as actually enjoying her company. He didn’t do relationships mostly because very few women understood him and the kind of life he led, and he rarely understood them.
Jessie leaned back in her seat. “Jordy came from a family of teachers, nice, down-to-earth sort of people. Or at least that’s what he said in his emails. He had a way of making me smile, and I really liked that. According to his bio, he was thirty-four, six feet tall, four years of college, looked good in his photo. We were going to meet for lunch but the night before, a man followed me out of the grocery store. I didn’t realize what was happening until it was too late.”
The muscles across Bran’s stomach clenched. “What happened?” Because it sounded as if—Jessie being Danny’s sister—it definitely was his business.
“I guess he used something to knock me out. I remember struggling, remember him pressing something over my mouth and nose, then nothing. The next morning, I woke up bound and gagged, locked in a basement somewhere. That night and the next, the guy showed up in a ski mask. He...touched me. He described in detail what he was going to do to me after we ‘got to know each other better.’”