Page 24 of Running Scared
“Hello,FBI!”Dean grinned and texted deftly on his phone.“There.I just sent you the basics for the jump you’re going to make.You don’t get carsick reading, do you?”
Bailey shook his head, feeling dumb from being caught in the hurricane.
“Good.You ponder that for an hour, and then we’ll be at the airport.I’ve got some more prep work to—Oh, wait, how’s your phone battery?”
Bailey pulled the thing out of his pocket and shrugged.“Fifty percent.Oh—”
Dean shoved a battery pack at him, complete with charging cord.
“Where did you keep that—”
“Don’t ask,” Marcus said.“He keeps them stashed around his person and produces them like magic tricks.Just charge your phone, read your briefing, and let him work.He’s makingmenervous too.”
Dean sent his partner an evil glare.“Killjoy,” he muttered, then turned back to Bailey.“But he’s right.Read the briefing.I’m not dropping you out of the sky like a rock out of a boat, Bailey.We’re doing all this because we want you tolive—”
“We?”Bailey asked, suddenly feeling manhandled by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
“Well—” And Dean’s entire fireball demeanor sort of… softened.He gazed down at the seat rest then, the dearest smile Bailey had ever seen crossing his lean mouth.“—Idefinitely want you to live,” he said.“You matter an awful lot to me, Bailey.I know we’re just beginning, but….”He scowled and cast a sideways glance at Marcus, and Bailey took pity on him.
“I’ll see you when all this is over, right?”Bailey asked, reaching forward to brush Dean’s fingers with his own.
Dean glanced up, that manic grin back in place.“Oh yeah.You’re not getting away from methateasy.So study up on the skydiving brief.And remember, when you land somebody will be there to meet you.”
“Who—”
But Dean was already on his phone again, turning around and belting up as he went, and Bailey decided that if he didn’t want to get caught flat-footed as he jumped out of the plane, he should probably do what he was told.
TWO HOURSlater he was in a small plane, wishing he knew enough about planes to know if it was the safe kind or not.He had a semi-eidetic memory, so he had skydiving procedures clicking behind his eyes like a slideshow, and Dean was repeating last-minute instructions in his face as Marcus opened the hatch and wind and engine noise roared around them, filling his senses with a bone-jarring, brain-melting distraction.
Dean paused for breath, and Bailey’s gaze went to what looked like a small wagon filled with Mr.Bumble’s cat carrier and lots of water and supplies, and boxed in a crate with a hinge and a catch so it would be easy to access once the thing landed.
“My cat—” he whimpered, completely bypassing what Dean was saying.He knew it already.Hit the timer on his eWatch as he jumped.At one minute, pull the chute.Grab the handles, steer gently, try not to land in any cacti, and run in the air before his feet touched the ground.Woohoo!The jump should take about six minutes, plus or minus some wind currents, and Marcus would be steering the other chute via remote control.Once Bailey touched down, he was to release the chute, gather it up, and stuff it back in the bag, then do the same for the chute attached to the box.The bags would fit in the wagon, which was exactly as big as the ubiquitous crap-wagon used by soccer coaches and overwhelmed moms everywhere, and as soon as Bailey had disassembled the crate, he was to grab the wagon handle and walk toward the mountain range in the north.Somebody, Dean promised, would be along shortly—half an hour maximum—to get him.In the meantime, Mr.Bumble had a mini cooling system in his carrier, and Bailey had one in his flight suit.If the cooling systems died before help came, he was to make a canopy with one of the parachutes, find a place to hold down and stay cool, and wait it out.
Helpwouldcome.
A part of Bailey was skeptical, to say the least.That long, terrible year and a half, part of it without PPE, part of it just… just overwhelmed.He remembered that feeling—the grownups were going to figure this out, right?Somebody would realize that a hospital couldn’t function when its personnel kept dropping dead.Right?Right?
And help never came.And Emmett had dropped dead, right in the middle of a shift.
And in the end, it had been Bailey and Sarree and the rest of their friends, battling it out because nobody else would.Theywere the grownups.Theywere the last stand between order and chaos.They would die fighting, because that’s the only end they could see.
And just when they could all see daylight, the Dobbs decision had come through, and they were fighting a whole other battle.
Bailey had lived so long in a world wherehewas the cavalry, he could not imagine a world where some mysterious force came through and rescued him from the desert.
But he’d spent three months knowing Dean Royal, and he couldn’tconceiveof a world in which Dean didn’t do exactly what he promised and keep Bailey out of the fire.
“Bailey!”Dean snapped.“Bailey, did you hear me?”
Bailey gave him a distracted smile.“Yes,” he yelled back, over the noise of the wind and the roar of the engine.“I’m going to trust my entire existence to a man I’ve known for weeks, and a mysterious stranger is going to roar through the desert and pluck me from perdition.”
Dean scowled.“He’s not that mysterious,” he said.“It’s my brother, not James Bond!”
Bailey stared at him in absolute surprise, and before he could ask what in the hell Dean’s brother was doing roaring through the desert to save Bailey’s ass, Dean’s mouth was on his, hot and needy and demanding, and Bailey was suddenly very much in the moment, very much in the kiss, very much in that morning when Dean had possessed his body thoroughly and had, it seemed, grabbed hold of his soul as well.
Dean pulled back, leaving Bailey breathless and rattled.Very gently Dean fastened his helmet and double-checked the timer on Bailey’s watch.
“You can do this,” he said soberly.“And we’ve got you.Remember the basics?”
