Page 9 of Fatal Love
“Bullshit!” She snatched a bulletproof vest from the wall and shoved her arms through the holes. “You have no idea what you’re walking into. This is Beatrice we’re talking about!”
He slammed the cage shut on the submachine gun selection and locked it. “I’ll handle it, whatever it is.”
“Look,” she said, grabbing his arm. “I know I was just a chopper pilot and I never saw action like you did when I was in the Navy, but I know how to handle a gun. At least let me fly you to their house and set up a stakeout. I can have you there in fifteen. It will take you at least thirty by car.”
Fly? “Unless you have a magic carpet hiding under your lab coat, how are you going to fly me anywhere?”
Sabrina grinned, shrugging out of the lab coat and putting on the vest. “You know the helo pad on the U-Comm building at the end of the block? There’s an EC 145 that can cruise at 150 miles per hour easy. I happen to know the owner and we can use it, no questions asked.”
This woman in red was a mystery, but then, so were many of the people that worked for SFI. “You’re friends with the owner of one of the most expensive luxury helicopters available in the marketplace today?”
She grinned again. “More than friends, actually.”
Connor’s hard-on softened. “I don’t think your boyfriend will appreciate you taking his helo on a rescue mission.”
And if your boyfriend is a millionaire, why are you here working tonight?
“He’s not my boyfriend,” Sabrina said, grabbing a .38 mil from the handguns. “He’s my dad.”
THEY WERE INthe air, the Mercedes Benz EC 145 cruising like the high-end, beautiful helicopter it was. The night was dark, the city’s lights below them fading into the distance.
Sabrina Merinos was in heaven.
“You never answered me about calling the police,” she said into her headset. “If something’s happened to B, why aren’t we getting them involved?”
Connor rode shotgun, dressed from head to toe in black, his fingers fidgeting with his phone. He’d pulled up satellite imagery on his phone’s optimized mapping program and adjusted his mic. “The locals mean well, but they aren’t trained for Special Ops or the kind of fieldwork we do. They’re likely to end up hurt. Or worse. If Cal had wanted police involvement, he would have told me so.”
“Are you sure?”
His eyes slid over to her, then nervously back to the windshield, but it wasn’t annoyance she saw in them.
It was doubt.
His fist clenched on his thigh. “I’m sure,” he said. “Where are you putting the bird down?”
Sabrina loved flying at night. Loved flying, period. It had been too long and she hadn’t felt this type of freedom since her last flight before she’d been discharged and shipped back to the States. “There’s an open field approximately a thousand meters north of their place. I’ll set her down there and we can hike back.”
He went back to scanning his phone. “Iwill hike to Cal and Beatrice’s. You’ll stay with the helicopter.”
Whatever. There was no way she was letting him leave her behind. “Did you try calling Cal back?”
“He’s not answering.”
Stupid question. Of course, Connor had already tried that.
A no-answer could mean Cal was in hiding or it could mean something worse—like he couldn’t answer his phone, either because whoever was after Beatrice had caught or killed him.
And that meant they had Beatrice and the unborn baby.
Which meant…
Best not to go there.
Sabrina closed her eyes for half a second and focused on clearing the dark, horrible thoughts from her head. She had a tendency to do that—let herself get sucked into sticky, ugly muck that amped up her already too-high levels of anxiety. Next stop, panic attack.
Panic attacks and flying did not go well together.
Hence her discharge.
