Operation: Endurance (When the Mission Ends) (26 page)

Last night she’d said they weren’t through. He wanted that to be the case, but worse than never having her, would be only having her because she felt sorry for him. That, he couldn’t deal with.

Finally, he’d done all he could do to waste time in the office. It was time to man-up and go home.

He shut off all the lights in the building, double-checking the locks on the various doors. As he stepped outside the hangar, he was surprised that the exterior light was out. He’d have to fix that tomorrow. He could see the faint trace of moonlight reflecting off the black of his truck and headed toward it.

Suddenly the skin on the back of his neck prickled and he turned around, searching the darkened shadows around the building. A lighter flared to life and he spotted five guys ambling casually toward him. This wasn’t good. Chris searched the empty parking lot, but his was the only car left.

The guys ranged in height, but all of them moved like they spent time with weights regularly. He’d grown up with Colton and Jake, so he knew how to fight, but these odds didn’t look good for him. He tried to look casual and easy-going. Maybe they weren’t here to cause any problems. Yeah right, and he was about to turn into the Easter Bunny. From the looks of it, a bruised and battered one.

“Hey boys,” he gave them a friendly smile, “it’s a little late to be hanging out at the airfield isn’t it?”

The guys exchanged smirks as they eyed him. They approached steadily toward him and now only stood about six feet away as they quickly surrounded him.

The guy in the center shot him an evil grin. “Man, you have fucked up somewhere. Someone wants you out of the way and the job has fallen to me and my boys.” He spread his hands out to encompass his friends.

“Really? I can’t imagine someone having a problem with me. I’m a really nice guy. You must have gotten the wrong person. Who are you after?”

“That would be you, Chris
Roberston.”

Damn, it would have been so nice if it had just been a matter of mistaken identity, but he couldn’t be that lucky, could he? Guess he should have taken the attacks before now more seriously. Stupid, and now he would pay for it. He shook his head. “Honestly, I have no idea what I’ve done to tick someone off. Maybe you could share with the class who your boss is. Then I could work on fixing whatever I did to hurt his feelings.”

“Now friend, you don’t seem to understand. You don’t have to fix your ways. We’re here to fix them for you.”

“Aw, I see, y’all are giving that way aren’t you?” Maybe if he could keep them talking, he could figure a way out of this mess. He fingered his cell phone in his pocket, but
dammit, he’d let the battery die while on their flight and hadn’t charged it when he got back to the office.

“Unfortunately for you, we’re not that giving.” The leader instructed, “Get him.”

Chris started swinging as soon as they began to rush him. He managed a couple of good punches, with gratifying accompanying grunts from his targets before the sheer number of them overtook him. Fists seemed to land everywhere on him and the pain was immediate under the sheer force of the blows. So far, he’d managed to stay on his feet, but when he heard a growled, “Take out his knee,” he knew that wasn’t going to last long.

He heard a crack and howled as he went crashing to the ground. Blinding spasms of pain ricocheted up from his knee to his thigh and groin as the brutal kick of the steel-toed boots hit their mark on his poor battered knee.

“Finish him,” the dark voice instructed and a flash of silver gleamed in the moonlight. Aw, damn, these guys weren’t playing around. They honestly planned to kill him here.

As the throbbing pulsed through him, he suddenly wondered why he’d been so picky about why Julie wanted to sleep with him. At least then, he could have died with final thoughts of her loving his body. He tensed for one final desperate fight as the guy came at him with the blade, when a flash of light made him wonder if he’d begun hallucinating.

But suddenly the pack stood up and backed up from him, squinting into the oncoming light. They took off running and Chris tried to figure out what was happening when a motorcycle came to a sliding stop beside him.

Colton jumped off his motorcycle, ripping off his helmet as he ran to Chris’s side.

Chris lay there panting, thanking God that once again he’d cheated death.

“Chris, are you okay? Fuck, what the hell happened?” Chris could see the blurry outline of Colton’s worried face, but his eyes weren’t able to focus well enough to tell more than that.

He groaned. “I think I ticked someone off,” came out with a cough as his battered ribs objected to the harsh treatment they’d just received.

Colton ran his hands up and down Chris’s arms and torso. “Does it feel like anything’s broken?”

Chris took a breath and tried to focus on the individual pains rather than on the whole, ‘oh fuck, everything hurts.’

He levered himself up so he was sitting with Colton’s assistance. He wiped the blood dripping into his right eye. “Damn, I’m really glad to see you,” he rasped out.

“You’re lucky I came back.” Colton glanced warily around the now empty parking lot. “Let’s get you inside and call the cops. Do you think you can move?”

“I think so, but they took a pretty good kick at the knee so let’s see how good all those bionic parts really are.”

As Colton pulled Chris up, he couldn’t stifle the groan. Damn, this was going to hurt tomorrow. Fuck, it actually really hurt right now. With Colton’s aid, he managed to hobble to the door of the hangar. The offices were along the side of the building, but it was too far of a walk for him right now. He sank to the floor with a wave to Colton. “I’ll just wait here for you, if that’s okay?”

Colton ran a jerky hand through his hair while he dialed on his cell phone. Chris closed his eyes. Who had he ticked off enough lately that they’d order a hit on him? He took a shallow
breath and felt along his ribs to make sure none were cracked. One thing about his days of torture, he could self-diagnose with the best of them. It seemed like his stitches had held, too.

The sound of metal on the concrete floor startled him out of his internal wound exploration. He cracked his eyes open to see that Colton had set a chair down in front of him.

“It will feel better than the cold, hard floor.”

Chris was sure that was true, but wasn’t quite sure that his legs would cooperate with getting him there yet.

He really didn’t want to move his battered body, but he probably didn’t want Colton to know how much pain he was in or else he’d be insisting on a trip to the ER tonight. Chris wasn’t going to agree to that. He needed to get home to Julie and he couldn’t watch over her from the hospital.

Accepting Colton’s assistance, he managed to get seated into the chair without too much additional pain. Now if the black spots would stop flashing in his vision, things would be great. He closed his eyes, hoping that would help, but all that did was give him a good case of vertigo. As he tilted to the side, Colton steadied him.

“Chris, what happened?”

“Um, I was jumped.”

“Yeah,” Colton said dryly. “I saw that much. Who were they and why did they jump you?”

“Who? I have no idea. Why? Someone hired them.”

“You specifically?”

“Yep, that’s what they said.”

“But they didn’t say why?”

“Nope.” Chris rubbed at his temples, trying to straighten out his vision. He probably should come clean with the other two events. Colton wasn’t going to be happy he hadn’t mentioned it before now.

“Okay, well, Brian’s on his way. Maybe he can figure it out.”

“We can hope. Hey, what are you doing back here? Not that I’m complaining, but I honestly thought I was a dead man.”

Colton shrugged, but wouldn’t meet Chris’s eyes. “Penelope went right to bed and I figured I would come by and check to make sure that everything was okay on the flight logs.”

Chris squinted at him. “Honestly? You were coming by to check up on my work?”

“Yeah, sorry, but you were really tired. I just wanted to make sure everything was filed correctly before morning.”

Chris shook his head. He should be angry with Colton except that his controlling issues had probably saved Chris’s life tonight. “
S’okay. I’m just really glad you came back when you did.”

Colton’s forehead wrinkled. “You’re a mess and in more pain than I thought if you’re not going to give me hell for checking up on your work. I’m
gonna go find some wet rags to see if we can clean some of that blood up and see how serious those gashes are. Then we’ll decide if we need to take a side trip to the ER. The way you keep blinking, I’m guessing at the bare minimum, you’ve had your bell rung and have a concussion. How’s the knee?” He looked down at it, but it was covered by Chris’s jeans.

Chris could tell by the way that it felt that he was probably lucky Colton couldn’t see it. He had a feeling it was looking pretty rough and swelling rapidly. He’d make an appointment with his orthopedic doctor tomorrow to have it checked over to make sure that none of the components of it had been damaged.

“It’s okay.” Chris flexed it to show his big brother that it was still working. He really didn’t want to go to the hospital tonight. “Can I borrow your cell phone? Mine is dead and I need to text Julie that I’m going to be late, just in case she’s still awake and worried.” They still had to do the police report with Brian. It was liable to be a few hours before he got to head home. Weariness pulled on him at the thought.

* * *

Two and a half hours later and Chris finally managed to drag his sore body inside the door of Julie’s house and dragging was the only word for it. He was bone-tired exhausted, even his fingernails hurt.

Julie had obviously been waiting up for him because when he opened the door, she popped off the couch with a gasp and rushed to his side. She was dressed for bed in a small t-shirt and sleep shorts, although he couldn’t see any signs that she’d slept at all yet.

“Oh my God. Are you okay?” she asked him but looked to Colton, who walked closely beside him so that he didn’t do something girly like faint to the ground. Not that that would happen. Probably.

“I’m fine. I’m sure it looks much worse than it feels.”
Lie.
It felt like hell spawn had beat on him tonight, but he didn’t want her to worry. As it was, he felt bad enough that she was still awake. She was recovering from a serious illness. He was supposed to be taking care of her, not the other way around.

Colton pushed him toward the couch, but addressed Julie. “He refuses to go to the ER. I think he’s okay. Maybe a mild concussion and he took a pretty good kick to the knee. I figure you’re as qualified as anyone to know when that needs attention.” Colton waved his hand toward Chris’s knee.

She nodded and frowned, her eyes widening when she looked down. His battered knee pressed against his jeans where it swelled.

She raised an eyebrow at him. “Yeah, it looks like it probably needs some attention. Thanks Colton. I’ll take care of him. Get home to Penelope.”

“Okay, call me if you need anything,” he told Chris. “I have your truck since we left my motorcycle inside the hangar, not that you’ll need it tomorrow. You officially have the day off.”

“Thanks Colton.” Chris leaned his head back against the soft couch cushions and shut his eyes as the door clicked shut.

Suddenly he became aware of tugging at his feet. Cracking his eyes open, he looked down at Julie. “What are you doing?”

“Taking off your boots.” She finished tugging, taking extra care with the removal of the left one. She rested her warm hand on his right thigh and immediately a spasm of arousal shot directly to his groin. “Okay, now off with the jeans.”

“I don’t think—”

She plucked at the fabric tightening around his knee and he hissed in response. “Yep, that’s what I thought. In about another five minutes, we’re going to have to cut these off of you, so either take them off now, or I will be cutting them off of you then.”

He frowned at her. “Did anyone ever tell you that you’re bossy?”

“Yep, and stubborn, so you might as well give in now.”

He shook his head at her. She wouldn’t be so cocky when she caught sight of his erection, although when he thought about how painful just removing his jeans was going to be, it flagged quite a bit. Damn, this wasn’t going to be fun.

He took a deep breath—well as deep as he could after having his ribs pounded on for a while—and pushed himself up off the couch, putting most of his weight on his right leg. As he unbuttoned his jeans, he watched Julie.

Her pupils dilated and she subconsciously licked her lip.

Immediately his arousal came slamming back. This was going to be bad. “Um, maybe you should turn around?”

Her narrowed eyes flew to his. “Seriously? I’m a professional.”

“Well, you’re not looking at me like a professional.”

Blood suffused her face and he spun his hand in the air in a turn around gesture. She huffed out a frustrated sigh, but complied.

As he eased his jeans down the swollen knee, he gritted his teeth. He avoided looking at it, knowing it wasn’t going to be pretty. He sat back down on the couch and pulled the jeans off his feet, then resettled back against the cushions with a pillow drawn over his pulsing cock. Even with all this pain, the knowledge that Julie was about to touch him had his member throbbing and engorged. Who would have guessed a week ago that he’d be wishing he could get rid of an erection?