Freefall. Jodie Bailey

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СКАЧАТЬ her pulse was reacting to him right now, she was likely the one with stress issues. Why was she even letting him stand here? After what he’d done...

      Anger flared at herself for letting him goad her senses. “Know what? Just go.” Cassidy rounded her desk, ashamed at herself for hiding. “I’ve had more than enough—”

      “You’re missing a shipping container.”

      The declaration choked off the rest of her words. “Wh—” Cassidy’s knees lost their strength, threatening to drop her hard into her chair. She knuckled the top of her desk. This was information she’d only just received that morning. “How did you know that?”

      “It’s not important.” Shane flattened his palms against the top of her desk and leaned toward her. “Someone on the other side is packing your parachutes with heroin and shipping it back to the States.”

      Cassidy stood and held her hands up between them to put a stop to this crazy train. Shane was clearly out of his head. “I don’t know how you found out about the missing CONEX, but that last part? You’ve lost your mind. You can’t come in here on a day like today and start messing with my head.” Her fingers wrapped around the receiver of her desk phone. “You’ve got ten seconds to get out before I call the MPs back here to have them talk to you.”

      For a full half minute, Shane eyed her as though he were trying to judge the veracity of her threat, then his shoulders lost some of their squareness in acceptance. “Fine. For now.”

      “No. For good.” Cassidy rounded the desk, careful not to brush her sleeve against Shane’s shoulder, and marched toward the door. “Ten years hasn’t been long enough for me to be ready to listen to you again.”

      Before Shane could respond, motion from the outer office jerked Cassidy’s attention sideways.

      Jackson Reese straightened from where he’d been leaning against the edge of the counter on the far side of the room, his brow creased. “Everything okay, Cass?”

      Cassidy glanced from her friend to Sergeant Erin Landon, who stood a few feet from Jackson, arms crossed, studying her right back. “It’s fine. Major Logan was just leaving.”

      Ignoring Shane’s attempt to catch her eye, she focused her attention on Sergeant Landon as he brushed past her and disappeared at the door to the stairs. As soon as he was gone and the pressure in her chest eased, she spoke to the younger woman. “Did you need something, Sergeant?”

      “I—” She took a step away from Jackson and shook her head. “You looked so upset earlier, ma’am. I wanted to come up before I left and make sure you were okay.”

      “I am.” Cassidy never had been able to read Landon. Since the day the girl had arrived last winter, it had been hard to tell if her gestures were genuine or edged with sarcasm. If this wasn’t the army, she’d swear that woman was angling for her job. “You can go.”

      As the younger woman’s bootfalls echoed in the stairwell, Cassidy turned to Jackson and caught him watching the door. “You know her?” She turned and headed back into her office, certain he’d follow.

      “Her? Nope. Cute, though, isn’t she?”

      “If you like the thick wavy hair, pale skin, supermodel type.” Cassidy shook her head and dropped into one of the chairs in front of her desk. “Still not quite sure how a girl like her survived basic. She’s so...”

      “Not a soldier?” Jackson rounded her desk and dropped into her chair, leaning forward and clasping his hands together over her paperwork.

      “You could say that. She definitely toes the line when it comes to overstepping her position. Landon makes me feel like she’s just letting me think I’m the one in charge.”

      “And yet there’s nothing you can specifically bust her on, right?” He eyed her until she nodded. “So, who was the major you were in here with? You need me to go after him and tell him it’s not a good idea to visit with you again?” Ever since he’d taken care of a couple of contractors in Afghanistan who thought she might like to be their plaything, he viewed himself as her protector. Typically, the role didn’t bother her, but when it came to Shane...

      “No. And I doubt you will see him again anyway.” Shane had waited forever to make this reappearance in her life, so why had he picked today? Weary with the day, weary with Shane’s intrusion and weary with life in general, Cassidy dug for a sense of normalcy that would take away the dull throb in her head. “So, who told you I could use a friendly face?”

      Jackson relaxed and ran his hand through thick blond hair. “Word travels fast. Heard you had a little excitement over here and thought I’d come over and check on you.” His brown eyes grew dark with concern. “You okay?”

      “Other than thinking I was back in Baghdad for a few minutes, I’m fine.” I’d be even better if the past hadn’t picked today to intrude.

      “Yeah, I’d imagine that kind of noise would trigger a flashback or two.” He aimed a finger at her forehead. “How did you get the bruise?” Anger flashed in his eyes, and he straightened. “It wasn’t that guy, was it?”

      “What? No, not at all.” Shane had never laid a finger on her, nor had she ever feared he would. If anything, he was overly protective. Cassidy pressed her fingertips to a spot above her right eyebrow and winced at the sting. “Desk diving.” She grabbed her laptop and shoved it into the case as she glanced at her desk for her ID card. “At least it wasn’t a car bomb. More like mechanical ineptitude.”

      “So they know what caused it?”

      Cassidy nodded, relieved to talk about anything but Shane, even if it was an exploding vehicle.

      Jackson relaxed and leaned back in her chair. “A little too much power in those modifications, huh?”

      “Boys and their toys.” She shrugged and glanced at her computer, wanting nothing more than to mark this day down as a distant memory. “Hey, see if you see my ID card anywhere.”

      Easing the chair back, Jackson eyed the floor beneath her desk. “You lost it?”

      “Actually, I’m not sure. I had just pulled it out of the card reader on my computer when the explosion happened. I must have launched it somewhere.”

      Jackson laughed, but it was different from his usual, easy laugh.

      Cassidy looked at him, but he was doubled over, searching under her desk. With a shake of her head, she wrote the cold tingle in her spine off to postexplosion adrenaline and Shane-induced emotions. “Not funny, my friend. You try thinking you’re under attack on home soil sometime.”

      “Been there, done that, liking my cushy contractor job over at Brigade now, thank you very much. So far, nothing’s blown up outside my building.”

      “You’re lucky I like you.” She scanned the baseboards behind her desk.

      “Got it.”

      Cassidy looked up to find Jackson holding her ID card between two fingers. “It was under your desk.”

      “That’s a relief. It would be an international incident if I lost that thing.”

      “Ah, СКАЧАТЬ