Page 53 of Call Sign: King
Grabbing his briefcase and bag from the back seat, Ryder took off jogging in the direction of the Condor already idling just outside the hangar of the Burlington airport.
Ryder froze the second he walked into the opulent cabin. He’d expected it to be empty.
“What the hell are you doing here?” he spat.
He’d had more than enough of peopling after dealing with the hospital, police, and media frenzy. Ryder’d been holding on by a thread, looking forward to some alone time on the plane to get his head on straight again.
“I came to help,” Doc answered, approaching Ryder. When she rushed into his arms to give him a tight hug, she broke the thin thread holding him together.
His body trembled with the effort it took to keep from crying, and yet he clung to his friend and co-worker, gratefully soaking in her concern and care.
Crash cleared his throat from the cockpit door. “Are we waiting for anyone else, or should we close up the hatch?”
Ryder swallowed the lump in his throat as he pulled out of Gretchen’s supportive embrace.
“Let’s take off. How many hours until we’re in Moscow?” he asked.
“Moscow? I filed a flight plan for Warsaw. Wrath has the team assembling there.”
“They’re taking her to Moscow,” Ryder demanded.
“We don’t know that. All we know for sure is the last ping on the air traffic control system was at the southern tip of Greenland. They could be heading anyplace in Europe… hell even Asia.”
“I saw the plane. They’ll need to land to refuel if they’re going any farther than Russia. Russia is the common denominator for the vast majority of my enemies.”
“You forget I flew you in and out of most of your missions. We spent almost as much time in Belarus, not to mention frequent visits to Turkey, Syria, Poland, and Kazakhstan.”
“None of the organizations outside of Russia are organized or funded enough to pull something like this off.”
Crash held his hands up as if to surrender. “We don’t need to make this decision right now. We’ll have at least six to seven hours in the air before we’ll need to make a final call on where we’re landing.”
“Fine.” Ryder’s empty stomach churned at the thought of being cooped up for hours, completely neutered from taking any meaningful action to get his wife back. That meant he certainly didn’t want to spend another minute on the ground arguing about it.
Taking the seat across from Doc, Ryder buckled up while Crash finalized everything for takeoff.
“How are you doing?” Gretchen asked quietly.
“I’m peachy,” Ryder groused flippantly. He needed to get logged into the company’s network and check in with Axel. He needed to review the security footage to see if he recognized the bastard responsible. He needed to check in with Bing to see if the blood samples they’d collected had made it to D.C. yet.
I need to beat the shit out of something until I feel better.
The plane had just started to taxi when Doc tried again.
“Talk to me.”
The last thing he wanted to do was have a fucking therapy session.
“If you’re planning on psychoanalyzing me maybe I should lay on the couch.”
“I’m not here as a therapist.”
Ryder scoffed. “Bullshit.”
“Ryder… I’m here as your friend. I care about you. I care about Khloe and the entire team.”
“You should have gone to the hospital then. There are four men there who really need your help — at least I hope so. For all I know, Trevor and Patrick could already be dead.” The words were sour in his mouth.
“I talked to Hawkeye. They are both hanging on. They’re out of surgery and headed to the ICU. They may be in critical condition, but they are surrounded by professionals and have Jacob there with them. There is nothing more I can do for them.”
