Page 26 of Gryphon

Tad had kept his face intent while making frantic-beating-a-tiny-hammer-against-a-window gestures.

She laughed until her gut hurt.

She hadn’t done that in a long time. Taz might be a colonel in the Pentagon—and had grown up on a barrio street rougher than anything Holly could imagine—but she’d never served in the field. And, while Tad hadn’t been in Special Operations Forces like she herself had, he’d flown into plenty enough ugly to share a language.

The last person she’d had that with had been…

Oh shit roasted on a stick! Andi Wu. The pip-sized Night Stalkers pilot, who’d flown missions Tad never could. Andi’s brain had been seriously cutting edge. Which only made what she’d done ten times worse.

Holly refused to miss her.

But Mike had a point. Holly should apologize to him…somehow. Didn’t have a whole lot of practice doing that. She certainly wasn’t going to try it in front of the Holy Trinity he was having breakfast with.

Probably help if she knew exactly what she was apologizing for.

She rubbed her fingertips together hoping for a little magic, like rubbing a genie’s lantern. Instead she felt the memory of the neck bones of the dead 737 pilot grating against each other.

Who the hell was she supposed to talk to about that?

Mike was squeamish at the strangest of times. Miranda could be interested in a technical way that would have her visiting morgues to calibrate different vertebrae fracture patterns. Tad? Not a chance. He was a whirly-boy, not about to get his hands dirty.

But that left only Jeremy, who would start telling her the anatomical variations of different types of breaks until she was ready to shoot herself rather than listen to another detail about—

“Incoming on your six,” Tad said in that perfectly even tone designed not to draw anyone else’s attention. It was the sound of her past, mission deep and ingrained by years of training.

Affirm: The restaurant door had a conspicuous squeak she hadn’t consciously noted earlier, but it had sounded less than two seconds before Tad’s warning.

Assess: Her position? Between Miranda’s table and whatever threat Tad had identified as inbound. She wouldn’t fail Miranda again.

Assets: Sole line of defense.

Action: Best defense—give no warning before going on offense.

Holly kicked her chair back with a crash to create a distraction as she rolled into the aisle between tables. With her left hand, she reached along her back waistband and yanked out her horizontal-carry SOG Altair fixed blade. Ready to slash a femoral artery or punch it into the groin for the iliac artery. Landing in a squat, she had her other hand on the long Fairbairn-Sykes dagger on her thigh, ready to drive for the heart or lunge up and slice from under the chin directly into the brain.

Her target—

Frozen.

Stock-still.

He was a tall man in a sharp-pressed Swedish military uniform. Sporting an Air Force major’s bars and wings. His hands were empty except for a slim portfolio.

An abrupt silence permeated the restaurant.

“Shit, woman!” Tad’s whisper was the first sound in the utter void.

Her knee joints creaked with adrenal-forced tension. Again her heart was racing like a triple-espresso hit, not the three sips of coffee she’d managed.

Without a word, well aware of everyone watching her, she tucked her knives away, righted her chair, and sat on it as if it might explode—which would be a relief at the moment.

Instead, with a soft crack, the right front leg gave way.

She braced her feet to keep the chair level as if nothing had happened.

Her coffee spread across half the table—Jeremy fought the tide bravely with their napkins.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the major scoot by, giving their table a wide berth.

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