Private jets, private pilots, and a small airport only the elite flew in and out of made for an easy exit when leaving the United Kingdom.
AJ walked behind Sasha and Claire as they had stepped into the airplane, and suddenly found himself lacking in his financial confidence.
The jet belonged to the same man who owned the manor house they’d just left. Like the home, the plane wasn’t a budget model by any stretch of the imagination. Sasha had told him en route to the airfield that Mr. Harrison and his family traveled back and forth to the UK from California often. In order to avoid having to stop on the East Coast for fuel, they needed a larger plane.
So while AJ stood in the doorway of the aircraft with his mouth half-open at the pure opulence of the jet, Claire flopped into one of the many deluxe recliner chairs and said exactly what AJ was thinking. “This is the shit!”
“You’re not kidding, kid.”
Neil moved AJ aside and stepped into the cockpit to speak with the pilots.
Sasha spoke to the flight attendant while AJ walked through the jet, taking it all in. “I think I need to go back to school and step up my game,” he said to no one in particular.
Claire caught his comment. “What do you do?”
“Nothing that can afford this,” he told her. Not legally, anyway.
“Might I take your bag, sir?” The flight attendant reached for AJ’s duffel.
He handed it over and she gathered Claire’s before disappearing behind a galley wall.
Claire jumped up and moved to a closed door. “What’s in here?” she asked Sasha.
“A bedroom.”
“No way. That’s awesome.” The girl bounced in to check it out.
“You’ve obviously been on this plane before,” AJ said to her.
“A couple of times.”
“Back and forth to Europe?” he asked.
Sasha looked at him as if she wasn’t going to answer.
He shook his head. “Just curious, Stick. You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to.”
“Stick?”
AJ leaned in. “Sex on a Stick might make Claire uncomfortable.”
He could see her pinching her lips together to keep from smiling.
AJ took advantage of the fact that Neil was busy talking with the pilots, the attendant was taking care of their luggage, and Claire had disappeared in the bedroom. His eyes traveled the length of her. Always the same look. Black leggings or spandex . . . or leather-looking pants with a tight cotton top and a black leather jacket to cover her arms in the cold. “I bet even your pajamas are black and clingy.”
This time she whispered, “Who said I wore pajamas?”
Oh, yeah . . . his mind went there, and he once again looked her up and down. “That’s just mean.”
Now she was smiling.
“I never said I was nice.”
His dick twitched in his pants.
Claire walked back into the main cabin. “When are we taking—”
Sasha and AJ took a step apart.
“I can go back in the bedroom if you two need to be alone,” Claire said, grinning.
“We’re good, right?” Sasha asked AJ, her eyes sparkling.
He didn’t trust himself to speak.
Claire chuckled and seated herself in a recliner.
The flight attendant returned. “Would you like something to drink before we take off?”
“Oh, yeah. I want a beer,” Claire said faster than AJ could open his mouth.
He and Sasha looked at the teenage girl.
“What?” Claire asked. “It’s legal in Europe.”
The flight attendant looked to Sasha for approval.
She did with a nod.
Neil walked back into the cabin, placed his bag under one of the seats. “We’ll be in the air in ten minutes.”
The flight attendant handed Claire the beer and replaced Neil’s spot with the pilots.
Once the door to the plane was closed, the pilots put the aircraft in motion.
AJ sat in a rear-facing seat across from Sasha, who didn’t appear to relax until they were in the air and leveling out.
Claire had found a pair of headphones and was watching a movie on the large television on one of the cabin walls.
Sasha unclenched her hands and pulled her stare away from the window. She glanced over at the distracted teen.
“You’ve taken on the role as her protector rather seriously,” he said.
“Until we clear her name and runaway status, she’s going to need it.”
“And how do you plan to do that?”
Sasha turned to him. “Secure location. Have our lawyers find her original birth certificate. Get ahold of Linette and threaten the woman to pull her head out of her ass and stop playing pawn to Pohl.”
“From what I could tell, Linette doesn’t threaten easily.”
“Depends on who she’s scared of. Once I finish our conversation, it will be me.”
Neil made his own observation. “You threaten the head of the school and Pohl pops one off in her head. Who do you think the authorities are going to blame?”
Sasha closed her lips together.
“Hard to frame Sasha for a murder in Europe when she’s in the States,” AJ pointed out.
“You mean if she has an alibi. An eyewitness that would keep her from the scene of whatever crime Pohl is planning on using to try and blackmail her.”
“That, too,” AJ said.
Neil and Sasha exchanged glances.
“You need a shadow, Sasha.” His eyes slid to AJ.
Slowly, she started to shake her head. “No.”
“Yes.”
AJ wasn’t completely sure what the yes and no were about.
“It’s simple. Whatever you plan to do, take AJ with you.”
He looked at Sasha. “What are you planning?”
“Nothing . . . yet.”
Neil leaned forward, rested his arms on his knees. “Sasha won’t sit idle. It’s not in her DNA. As soon as we find anything on Pohl, she’ll be right back out there, working on taking the man down.”
“You’re talking about me as if I’m not sitting right here,” she said with a glare.
“Am I wrong?” Neil asked.
She kept silent.
“Keep AJ by your side or I put a detail on you.”
“I’ll lose your detail within an hour.”
Neil released a rare smile. “If that detail is me?”
“You’re too big to go unnoticed.”
AJ smiled at Neil. “She has a point.”
“You know I’m right on this one.”
She unbuckled her seat belt and stood. “I’m going to get some sleep while I can.” Without another word, she went into the bedroom and closed the door behind her.
“She’s not going to sleep,” AJ said.
“No. She’s pissed. Knows I’m right. I’m not sure if you have any influence over her, but now would be the time to use it. She’d drop my detail in thirty minutes, and they’re all damn good. We need more time to learn who this Pohl is. We need boots on the ground for every possible victim tied to Richter. She’s going to want to be one of them.”
“So we go to DC and investigate my sister.”
Neil shook his head. “You’re too close. I’ll have someone else on your sister.”
“That’s ridiculous. I can be objective.”
He laughed. “No. You can’t. What if my man finds out your sister took a job with Pohl—”
“She would never have . . .”
Neil stopped him with a look.
“You admitted that you and your sister weren’t close. She had a UN job that put her in contact with untold diplomats and lobbyists . . . people in power. No one would suspect your sister was anything but what she said she was. Did she travel for work?”
“Of course. She worked alongside other analysts in foreign countries who had poor water regulations.”
“Did anyone of importance die in those countries when she was there?”
AJ’s jaw clenched. “What the hell are you suggesting?”
Neil looked him dead in the eye. “That you’re not objective.” Neil sat back. “Now, go in there and convince Sasha to keep you by her side. That way I have one less person to worry about.” He glanced at Claire, who was riveted in whatever movie she was watching.
“Sasha is much more qualified to keep herself safe than I am to protect her.” Much as he hated to admit it.
“I’m aware of that. I need her to keep you safe. And if you’re with her, I won’t question if she’s going off playing vigilante. She has no problem putting herself in danger, but I’ve yet to see her put anyone else in the crossfire. The bonus is if Pohl tries to put her in a place and a crime that you can say she wasn’t in . . . even better.”
AJ glanced toward the closed bedroom door. “Vigilante?”
Neil paused. “She’s had a hard life. Now that she’s trying to find her place, someone is trying to take that from her. She won’t go down without a fight.”
“How can you be so sure?”
His eyes glazed over, as if lost in thought. “Because she and I are a lot alike. Now, you take that one, I’ll see this one is taken care of until this is over,” he said, nodding toward the teenager.
AJ blew out a breath, stood. “What makes you think I have any influence over her?”
Was that a laugh? Yeah, Neil just laughed . . . something AJ had yet to see. “You’re here, aren’t you?”
She knew she should have locked the door.
Sasha had kicked her shoes off and lain out on the queen bed. She’d been watching the clouds when they allowed the ocean below them to peek through. Now that they had clustered together, she had closed her eyes to make good on her threat of resting.
Her eyes popped open the second the door opened and AJ snuck inside. Not bothering to move, she closed her eyes again. “What do you want?”
“Wow, this is really nice.”
She peeked long enough to see him walking around the room. A sofa for two sat along the wall dividing the bedroom from the main cabin. And behind the bed was another bathroom, this one equipped with a shower.
“What does your friend Harrison do for a living?”
AJ was not in the room to talk about the plane or the man who owned it. She answered him anyway. “Shipping.”
“What does he ship? Cocaine from Colombia?”
She cracked an eye, saw AJ looking out the window.
Fine, she could play possum. Sasha closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and willed her shoulders to relax.
He was staring. She felt his eyes and heard his breathing change.
Sasha counted her breaths, made it to five before she heard movement and felt a dip on the bed.
AJ had his back to her and he was toeing off his shoes.
“What do you think you’re doing?”
Once the second shoe hit the floor, he spread out next to her, his back resting against the headboard. “Resting. I didn’t think you’d mind.”
“You thought wrong.”
“I had no idea a queen-size bed fit in the back of a plane.”
“Oh, for God’s sake!” Sasha pushed herself upright and stared at him.
Her outburst had him smiling.
That grin irritated the hell out of her. “What’s so funny?”
“You’re so damn adorable.”
“Adorable?” She squeezed her eyes shut, opened them to find him still staring. “No one has ever called me adorable.”
“Well, you are. Probably not very healthy of me to say this, but I like getting you riled up just to see all the adorbs oozing out.”
“Oozing adorbs? Is that even a thing?”
His smile was all teeth. “It is with you.”
The man was pleased with himself.
Sasha started to push herself off the bed. AJ captured her arm. “Okay, I’ll stop teasing. Don’t go.”
“I’m not leaving because you’re teasing, I’m leaving because you’re sucking up all my air.”
He stopped laughing. “Please.” He released her arm and pulled the pillow she’d had her head on up farther on the bed and patted the space beside him. “Let’s talk.”
“If Neil sent you in here to change my mind . . .”
“Oh, he did.”
Of course he did.
“But that’s not what I came in here for.”
Sasha crossed her legs on the bed and leaned against the wall of windows.
“Do you think there is a link between my sister and the people Pohl hires?”
Yes. She kept her answer to herself. “Define link.”
“Maybe someone like Pohl approached her to work for them. Maybe she kept in contact with someone who did work for Pohl.”
“The people Pohl hires are going to be loners. People who don’t have family or friends as connections. Your sister doesn’t fit the profile.” Not at all. She and Claire, on the other hand, fit it perfectly.
“You clearly have friends,” AJ said.
Could she say that about Neil and the rest of the crew? “He obviously didn’t consider him a friend.” It wasn’t like she took Sunday dinners with the man and his family.
“His mistake.”
She agreed. “Your sister didn’t fit Pohl’s agenda with her personal relationships or her physical attributes. She needed help on the obstacle courses and wasn’t known for her hand-to-hand combat or marksmanship.”
“I take it you looked up her grades.”
“I didn’t have to. I told you, I remember Amelia. She was smart, diplomatic, but not the top physical performer. Once the names are crunched, I’m sure we’re going to find students in much better overall performance on Pohl’s list of recruits.”
“What if he didn’t always recruit hired guns? What if he started out in areas of special agents for the various governments? Would she have been a recruit then?” Strain started to show on AJ’s face.
“Why are you going down this road, AJ? Do you think your sister was part of something more than what she told you?”
He glanced at the door. “Neil suggested I wasn’t objective enough to see what’s right in front of me. You’ve known me a little longer, and I want to know your opinion.”
The fact her opinion mattered to him was as foreign as her desire to put him at ease but not bullshit the man. “I think people are capable of doing just about anything to get what they want. Parents are capable of killing to keep their children safe. Men and women alike are willing to lie, cheat, and steal to put food on the table and a roof over their heads. Those examples are the easy ones. Things you and I can nod and agree with. Then there’s the other kind of thieves or murderers. The kind that has no regard for life, their own or anyone else’s. Add drugs to this person, take away anyone who cares about them, and they become desperate.” She placed a hand on AJ’s knee. “My point is, do I think your sister was capable of working for someone like Pohl? The answer is yes. Is it likely . . . no.”
AJ stared absently across the room. She could tell by his expression he was contemplating that reality for the first time.
“AJ?”
He glanced at her.
“I’m seldom wrong about these things.”
He shook his head, as if removing a thought from his brain. “We need to come up with a plan.”
“We will.”
“No, you and I. Neil seemed to think I had some kind of influence over you, so he sent me in here to convince you to keep me with you while you went after Pohl. Obviously he’s mistaken. You’re going to run off as soon as you get information, and I’m heading back to DC to dig into my sister’s life more than I have. We convince Neil that we’re taking off together, and he doesn’t sic his men on you.”
Sasha saw a flash inside her head in the form of an image of AJ rifling through his sister’s home, maybe an office. What if he stumbled on a truth she didn’t foresee? What if his trip to Germany led Amelia’s killer back to him?
That thought didn’t sit well in her gut. Outside of taking orders, she hadn’t seen any evidence that AJ could identify a threat, let alone remove it. If he went off on his own, he could easily become a target if Pohl was connected. It was getting harder to see an endgame where Pohl wasn’t connected.
“Don’t tell me you’re against the idea,” AJ said.
Completely.
“I’m circling back to why Neil thinks you have some kind of pull with me.”
AJ flashed his teeth again. “I know . . . crazy. I guess he sees the spark.”
“The what?” Her thoughts shifted to AJ’s words.
“Spark. That thing you feel when I walk in the room that you’re refusing to acknowledge.”
Her nipples—little shits—perked to attention. “That’s ridiculous.”
He chuckled.
“What?”
“It’s okay. I get it. If you don’t admit it, you can pretend it isn’t there.” AJ took that moment to look at his leg. The leg her hand was resting on.
She rolled her eyes and removed it. “I don’t have to pretend anything. Does my body respond to yours? Yes. It’s chemical. You undress me with your eyes and say things to purposely make me sexually aware you’re here.”
Amusement danced on his face.
“I never play where I eat,” she told him.
He bent his leg, rested one of his arms on his knee. “What is that supposed to mean?”
“It means if you had picked me up in the bar in Germany, we would have fucked and I wouldn’t have seen you again. Instead, you asked for my help and took sex off the table.” Once the words left her lips, she took note of where they were both sitting, in a closed bedroom at thirty-some thousand feet.
Sasha wiggled to the edge of the bed and bent to retrieve her shoes.
“If I knew those were the rules, I would have changed my strategy.”
She hoped he couldn’t see her smile. She pushed her foot into one boot, zipped it up before turning to the next.
“You can’t change what is,” she said, her voice even.
Second boot zipped and she sat up, looked at AJ.
Poor guy looked like he’d just lost his puppy.
“Trust me, AJ. You don’t want this.”
She stood and took one step to the door.
AJ moved faster than she thought anyone could.
He blocked the door with his body and reached for her face with his hands. “Don’t tell me what I don’t want.” And then to prove himself, he kissed her.
Stunned and silent. Two words Sasha never used to define herself when a man was taking what she didn’t approve of first.
Yet there she stood, AJ’s lips moving over hers, coaxing them open while her body tossed imaginary pom-poms in the air.
Push him away.
Yeah, her nipples were like beacons of come and get me. Pushing away wasn’t going to happen.
Just a little friction. A small touch that wasn’t her own.
She opened her mouth and kissed him back. The slide of his tongue along hers was like warm silk on cool skin.
Sasha reached for his waist.
Push him away.
She loved the feel of a man’s waist as it narrowed to his hips. AJ wasn’t a stranger to moving his muscles. Thick. Masculine.
She wanted to purr.
His arms wrapped around her, made her feel small in his embrace. And he kissed her. Assaulted her lips with a fever she was starting to catch.
Hot. So hot . . .
Sasha wanted her clothes off, and that single thought had her opening her mouth to catch her breath, her lips still pressed against his.
This road was dangerous.
Not something she was ready for.
She gripped his hips, hips she’d been fondling, and held him away.
AJ started to say something. She stopped him. “You made your point.”
Their eyes met. His were soft and charged all at the same time.
What did hers look like?
His hands fell to her arms. “You’re wrong.”
She questioned him with a look.
“I do want this.” Without saying anything else, he walked behind her to the private bathroom and closed the door.