Page 56 of Running Scared
Two bulletsthunked into the rear tail section as the plane lifted, but they didn’t penetrate the hull, and Dean and Marcus—who hadn’t had time to belt yet—quickly latched themselves in as the bumps under the wheels leveled out and Birdie hauled up on the throttle to get the plane to clear the compound walls.
Dean started calculating vectors in his head, about how fast they had to go, how much lift they had to have for the plane to get X number of feet off the ground with Y being the distance of the runway and—
“Stop that!”Marcus shouted.“I don’t want the last words I hear to be ‘The math doesn’t math!’”
Dean nodded and kept his mouth shut after that, but inside he was doing a little happy dance, because the mathdidmath, and barring any giant gusts of wind, they might just… might just….
He craned his neck and shifted his shoulders so he could look out the tiny portal, and his blood froze in his veins.
“Bird!”he croaked.“Do you see what I see?”
“Fucking Russians!”Birdie snarled.“Right underneath us!”
Oh God.Oh God.Could they overtake the Russians before the—
Behind them, he saw a flash of light and two projectiles… up, up… out of his vision… but he could see their arcs… up, up, up, up….
Birdie hit epic airspeed and sliced the plane to the right so only one of the rounds from the antiaircraft guns pierced their tail gear.
The whole plane shuddered, the airspeed radically decreasing as Birdie tried for control.Dean was twisted fully around now, and in the distance he could see the explosion that took out the antiaircraft gun, while below them the smoldering hull of the Jeep was cartwheeling freely through the desert.
And Birdie fought valiantly to keep their plane from joining it.
“Dean?”Marcus called a little desperately.
“Marcus?”
“I meant it.”
“Meant what?”But Dean knew.
“I’d follow you into hell.”
“Same.But don’t pack for the trip yet.”
“Doing math?”Marcus asked as the plane began to descend rapidly.
“Nope,” Dean said frankly.“Praying.”
“Same.”
They gave each other a tight grin.There were no parachutes on this plane—Dean had seen that when they’d loaded on.There were no towns.There were two hundred miles of desert between where this plane would land and where they could find water… or food… or medical aid.
Bailey, I really love you.
Dean and Marcus bent double, laced their hands over the backs of their necks, and prepared for a crash landing.
And prayed.
When Things Fail
BAILEY HADspent five years trying to remember the last time he and Emmett had so much as kissed.
It wasn’t that they hadn’t loved each other.They’d loved each other very much; he knew that was true.But they’d been exhausted, physically and mentally, and both of them had been coming off of their own bouts with COVID.A brush of hands, a rub of two cheeks together, a lingering glance or, hell, so much as a wink was practically porn for them by the time Emmett had gone to work, collapsed, and died.
But Emmett had known Bailey loved him.Of that, Bailey had zero doubts.
But Dean had kissed him, then given him to Marcus, who had shoved him out of the airplane, and that had been that.
