Page 28 of Gryphon

The two of them shared no traits, yet—

As the engines spun to life, Meg wiggled her way out from behind Miranda’s pilot seat and climbed up into Holly’s lap. At least someone was still talking to her. She tickled the dog’s nose until she got a sneeze, then gave the terrier a good scritch to apologize for the teasing. Soon the dog was asleep. She rested her palm against Meg’s curly gray fur and felt her heartbeat and slow breathing.

“You just like my lap because it’s warm.”

Meg snored in response.

Holly avoided looking aft when Tad’s laugh rang out.

And looking forward? The main thing she saw was the back of Miranda’s head. Mike in the copilot’s seat was invisible behind the partition by her right shoulder.

Doing her best to follow Meg’s example, she leaned her head back on the curve of the hull and prayed for sleep as the takeoff dragged at her sideways.

22

Mike decided it was an awkward distance.

Uppsala Air Base lay only a fifteen-minute flight from Ludvika. Definitely not long enough for him to go back and find out what the hell Holly was thinking. Yet long enough for him to think about the plusses and minuses of doing so. Did he even want to know? Now, that was an ugly question.

Normally he always wanted to know what a person was thinking so that he could second guess their next action. At the moment, not so much. Besides, that had never worked on Holly anyway.

A glance over his shoulder revealed Holly’s well-scuffed Australian Army Redback boots stretched out across the narrow aisle. Woman had the longest legs on the planet, a feature he’d had plenty of opportunity to appreciate over these last years.

And a sure bet, Tad Jobson had noticed them as well. Every time he’d turned around, they were glued together. Even last night by the corpses, Jobson hovered at her side. Though Tad tried to hide it, it looked to be a close thing that he hadn’t puked on the corpse.

There’d been a dark rage that had flashed over Holly’s face when Mike told her that Sweden’s Minister of Defence had died aboard. It had made no sense. Was it that he’d spoken at all?

He hadn’t heard Holly’s arrival at breakfast. Hadn’t even been aware of her until the loud crash of her chair being kicked aside. He’d twisted around in time to hear the Air Force major’s yelp of surprise as he stared bug-eyed at the lethal apparition crouched by his feet on the restaurant’s worn carpet.

When Mike had glanced back to see if she was okay after she returned to her seat, she’d given him the finger.

For locking her out last night? She’d sure as hell deserved it. Not just for how she was so buying what Tad Jobson was selling, but for treating him as if he was a preschool idiot in front of Tad. He’d worked just as hard as she had since joining Miranda’s team and for that his reward was being called stupid? It royally pissed him off.

He supposed that the morning’s only surprise was that she wasn’t in Jobson’s bed. Still might have ended up there with the way they were both leaning toward each other over the table this morning. And practically embracing her as she rose from the table.

She’d shown no interest in Mike last night, on the snowy slopes of the aircraft investigation—other than trying to kick in the hotel door afterward. Thank God that the Swedes built to last. It had only been one kick, but it had resounded in the small hotel room. This morning he’d also discovered that it had bent the lock enough to have him consider making his exit through the window before he managed to free the bolt.

He’d never had this kind of trouble with a woman before.

Though, if not for his FBI handler pulling him out against orders, Violetta Celeste Giovanni would have gotten him killed—twice. And there’d been that lovely lay sister at the orphanage. She’d done so many things right but Father Stevens hadn’t taken well to Mike, beating Mike unconscious with a Bible. Apparently God had marked the sister exclusively for the Father’s dalliance. Or there was—

Okay, his past track record with women couldn’t be viewed as wholly hazard free. Time for Holly to be added to that list of unmitigated disasters?

He half wished that the lovely Klara Dahlberg had joined them rather than staying at the ISASI conference. That would show Holly that he still knew how to treat a woman—at least a normal woman—right.

Except somehow Klara wasn’t the right woman. Had Holly psychologically neutered him using some top-secret SASR voodoo? He wouldn’t put it past her.

He glanced once more down the plane’s aisle, beyond Holly’s boots to Tad’s shoulder sticking out into the aisle.

Whatever Mike himself was, apparently that wasn’t enough.

He turned his attention back to the flight, they were fast approaching Uppsala Air Base. From now on, that’s what he’d do: focus on the job and the female companionship. He didn’t need to be The Guy for any one woman.

23

Jeremy had spent the short flight texting back and forth with Taz. Tad chatted with the Swedish Air Force major who’d come to fetch Kurt, the head of the SHK investigation team, about a lost Gripen fighter jet. In turn, Kurt had asked Miranda’s team to accompany him.

We cracked the first one, he texted Taz. Sleeper-agent-copilot crashed a full 737—probably to kill Swedish Minister of Defence. Heidi and Harry are trying to trace his real identity. But now their Air Force lost a plane and they want us to look into it. Okay?

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