Taking Flight (A Devereux Novel) (23 page)

The city swam away beneath
her, and it made her nauseous with the intensity and sheer height she hung
above, at the mercy of the jostling of the helicopter.

Chad left the railing and
entered the cabin, out of Sara’s sight. The jerking and twirling of the vehicle
was the only hint of what happened inside, and it didn’t bode well for her. Her
fingers were already exhausted and in danger of slipping, and if there were any
wild
maneuvers
then she was a goner, set to fall to
the city streets below as she had imagined from the safety of the tower
earlier.

I can’t die like this.

It was a silly way to go.
Falling from a helicopter.

Come on, Sara. You can do this. Sure, gym class was a long time ago,
but you’re in decent shape.

Two years of moping around
after Michael’s death had slimmed down her muscles, but she also didn’t have
much fat and had little mass to lift. She heaved on the bar, pulling it toward
her with the strength of desperation.

The helicopter flailed
through the air as though piloted by a drunk, and Sara lost all the ground she
had made and almost her grip as well, down to her fingertips as she gritted her
teeth and prayed that the
spiraling
would end soon.

Just when she thought she
would have no choice but to let go and plummet to her death, the spin calmed
and she reclaimed her grip through an effort of sheer will. This time she
pulled her chest all the way up to the bar and rolled her shoulder over it so
her weight worked to her advantage.

It became easier to hold on,
and then she pulled herself up even further. With trembling hands, she reached
for the helicopter door and the relative safety of the cabin.

With her head above the
floor of the cabin, Sara could see the epic fight inside. Chad was behind
Derek, locking the billionaire’s head into a tight grip and pulling tight. The
controls dropped from nerveless fingers, and Derek’s eyelids drooped.

“No!”

Sara planted her knees on
the cabin floor and pushed herself at Chad, no longer concerned with keeping
herself in the cabin. She only cared about removing Chad’s arms from her
lover’s neck.

They collided harder than
she expected, and she used her arms to shove the big man’s body as hard as she
could. His mouth formed a round “O” and he let go of Derek to windmill and
grasp for something solid as he teetered backward.

His hands found no purchase,
but grasping mechanical fingers clutched at Sara’s arm and she screamed in pain
as Chad dug into her flesh with superhuman strength. Sara’s body jerked toward
the open door, and she caught the back of Derek’s
chair
as she was about to fall out.

“Sara!” Derek had recovered
enough from the
choke hold
to see her plight. He
locked his hands onto her forearm just as her grip slipped on the seat. “Don’t
you dare let
go!
I love you!”

His eyes were beautifully
dark and blazing with passion as he fought to hold her. If she had to see
anything for the last time, she was glad it was
him
.

“I love you, too,” she said,
and the words filled her with deadly purpose.

The flesh and bone of her
arm was no match for the cybernetic hand. The pain was
incredible
as her limb grew more mangled by the second. Only the adrenaline of the
situation kept her from passing out. Chad swung below her, dragged backward by
the wind and hitting the side of the chopper.

Sara had played a lot of
soccer growing up, a skill she never thought would be useful again. However at
that moment she grew thankful of the long hours and buckets of sweat poured out
onto the field.

With as big of a wind up as
she had room for, Sara drew back her right foot and sent it flying into Chad’s
groin. The pressure on her arm lessened, and the growl of anguish was loud
enough to hear over the howling wind.

One more time she pulled
back and then let loose as hard as she could.

Chad looked up as he let go,
eyes shining with unshed tears as his hands, both human and mechanical, let go,
unable to maintain their grip under the onslaught of pain Sara had unleashed.
He hung there for a second, and Sara expected a scream that never came, the
intensity fading from his face as he accepted his fate.

The man who had terrorized
her over the course of the previous week dropped away, the silent fall
anticlimactic after the terror of the day. One second he was there, pulling her
out of the aircraft to her doom, and the next he wasn’t, little more than a
speck against the backdrop of the city, fading to nothing.

Once he disappeared from
view, the enormity of the earth below rushed into Sara’s mind, and she froze.
If it weren’t for Derek pulling her back into the cabin, she would have
followed Chad from a sheer lack of ability to move her muscles.

Then she was in Derek’s
arms, looking up into his face.
His rugged, handsome face.

“I love you!” she shouted
again, delighting in the ability to say what her heart demanded.

He put his hand against her
cheek. It was warm, but the way his eyes softened warmed her even more. “I
know.”

He captured her mouth with
his—a hard, fierce kiss necessary after nearly dying.

“I love you, too.”

“What is going on here?” Sara asked.

Derek chuckled. He was glad
he wasn’t the only one to have that reaction upon seeing the state of his
living room. He hadn’t counted on a textile mill springing up in his
favorite
space.

“Wait, let me guess. This is
Becky’s doing, isn’t it?”

He loved her silvery laugh
and how it made him feel. It was like a sip of champagne on a sunny morning.

“What else?” he agreed. He
reached down for her hand, but found a cast instead. Chad’s final
grab for survival had severely damaged her arm, and the doctors had
put a cast on to protect
it. His hand found her lower back instead and
pulled her to him.

“Oh, hello,” she said,
smiling up at him. Their bodies fit together like they were made for one
another. A soft kiss sealed the perfection of their embrace.

“Now, where are those kids?”
Derek asked. “We need to figure out where we go from here.”

“Kids?” A deeper version of
Derek’s voice boomed from around the corner. “If I’m a kid, then what does that
make the rest of you?”

“Evan, I’m glad to see
you’ve joined the party,” Derek said. “I’m afraid you’ve missed most of the
fun.”

They clasped hands, and
Derek looked deep into his brother’s eyes. He saw only gentle concern there.
The look deepened when Evan’s eyes turned to Sara. She looked worse than she
was, but that didn’t stop Derek from assuming the same expression every time he
saw his beloved.

“And you must be Sara,” Evan
said as he took her hand. “Gary’s told me about you. I’m impressed you’ve tamed
this wild one the way you have. You must be a special lady, and I’m looking
forward to getting to know you and welcoming you into the family.”

If it weren’t for the
harrowing life and death situation they’d just overcome together, Evan’s words
would have been outrageously serious for a woman he had dated for a week. After
their
past couple days, however, it made him laugh.

“Come on, Evan, give her
space to breathe first, at least. We just got back from the hospital, and I’m
starving!”

“No, it’s okay, Derek. I’m
glad to meet your brother. We’ll have a lot to talk about.” Sara’s stomach
rumbled. “Then again, you may have a point about the food.”

Gary and Becky joined from
the patio, and they weren’t alone.

“Stephen! Liberty! It’s so
good to see you.” Derek hugged his brother and gave his sister-in-law a kiss on
the cheek. “I thought you were in the middle of a tropical ocean somewhere on
vacation.”

“We were,”
Stephen
said, an easy arm around his wife. They made a
stunning couple. “It was time for us to come home, though. I didn’t want to
keep Liberty away from easy access to doctors.”

The willowy model glowed
red. “Stephen! You’re making it sound like I’m diseased.”

Stephen chuckled. “It’s just
a little parasite, nothing to be ashamed of.”

Evan choked back a laugh and
turned away. Sara watched the two strangers, uncertain smile on her face.

“Stephen Devereux! You did
not
just call our baby a parasite!”

“Well…”

“Hold on,” Derek
interjected. “Liberty’s pregnant?”

“Surprise,” Stephen said
with a grin. “Thought we’d tell you in person.”

“We wanted the family to
know as soon as possible,” Liberty added.

“I’m so happy for you,”
Derek said as he swept them into even bigger embraces than before.

With all four brothers in
the same place, serious talk was put off by unspoken agreement while they
caught up. As they spoke, they rooted around in Derek’s fridge and pantry for
dinner. Enough food remained from Gary’s earlier shopping trips to put together
an impressive spread.

After so much time spent in
solitude in his massive house and barely using the kitchen on his own, Derek
paused in the middle just to watch the bustle and let contentment grow deep in
his chest. Sara couldn’t do as much as she wanted because of the cast on her
arm, so she compromised by guiding the efforts of the others. She got along
famously with the new additions, unafraid to tease
them
as they deserved while everyone worked together to bring the meal to fruition.

A spinach, bacon, and cream
pasta joined a loaf of garlic bread and a vegetable platter on the dining room
table. Derek dug around in his wine cellar until he found something
appropriate: a chardonnay recommended by Chef Aiken.

It was a family dinner unlike
any they had when they were kids. The rare time their father sat with them for
a meal it was a stilted affair full of awkward silence and stiff, impeccable
table manners. In Derek’s home no one stood on ceremony, as Evan asked for a
piece of garlic bread and Gary chucked it at his head, laughing when it struck
his brother across the forehead and left a smear of grease.

The girls laughed until
tears streamed down their faces as Evan got up and chased Gary around the room,
not stopping until he had cornered his little brother and given him a proper
noogie
.

A veritable mountain of food
and several bottles of wine disappeared by the time the
sun
set
. They took longer about the meal than necessary, stretching it out
because afterward they would have to discuss the Onyx company and what the
events of the week meant for their future and safety.

Everyone pitched in to ferry
dishes back to the kitchen and load the dishwasher and scrub the pots by hand.
Once everything was spotless the inevitable could be put off no longer.

Evan pulled his brother to
the side and spoke in a low voice. “Derek, it’s time we talked. Where is a good
place to excuse ourselves from the others while we hash this out?”

Derek didn’t bother to hide
his response. “That’s not necessary, Evan. Gary had his own encounter with the
danger that faces our family, and Sara was directly involved. Becky, too, has
earned a spot in this discussion. I’m sure they’ve told you the story of how
Chad destroyed all their belongings in an attack on their apartment. It would
be underhanded to talk behind their back as if they don’t have a stake in it.”

“Yeah,
Ev
.
Did you already forget about my broken leg?” Gary asked. “I know I said it was
an accident, but after talking with Derek, I’m not sure anymore. It would have
been too easy for someone with access to the company’s resources to cause
something like that.”

“And I am not going to go
away while you two talk things over,” Sara said. “I have more and different
information than Derek, thanks to my sources. You would miss a huge chunk of
the puzzle if I
wasn’t
there. Not to mention how I
almost lost my life multiple times this week because of this whole mess. It’s
not something I’m willing to walk away from with no further explanation.”

Evan heaved a gusty sigh. “I
guess not. Let’s get to it, then.”

The
Devereux clan and settled into Derek’s spacious living room.
Stephen claimed the love
seat and his gorgeous wife curled up next to him and
lay
her head on his shoulder. Evan took a high-backed leather chair reminiscent of
a throne. Derek pulled Sara down next to him on a couch and Becky sat with them
while Gary took up residence on the recliner that best accommodated his cast.

Derek began the discussions,
giving the story of the previous week and all the events so they could all work
from the same base of knowledge. It took a long time to get through, and the
newcomers, especially Stephen and Liberty, had many questions along the way.

“Why are there so many awful
people in the world?” Liberty asked softly. Her face was
somber
—she
still carried the dreadful memories of the kidnapping she’d survived when she
and Stephen first got together. Her hand curled around her belly, maternal
instincts already engaged. “This is madness.”

Silence met her rhetorical
question as they digested the information. Derek only had eyes for Evan. His
older brother was their leader, and the one with the most knowledge of the
company.

“So, Evan, does this mean
the company is our enemy? Has it turned against its owners like some
Frankenstein’s monster? What can we do here?”

Evan sat with his chin in
his hand as though he were the statue of a long-dead philosopher.

“The executive board hasn’t
told me anything useful since the incidents first began,” he said. “The only
things I have to go on are
rumors
whispered around
the company. They say there is a rogue director who has been usurping company
resources and using them to further his own agenda. It would explain the
tightness I’ve sensed at board meetings—if one of their number secretly
plotted against the company, they wouldn’t want us to know they’ve lost control
of things.”

Sara leaned forward, her
eyes bright. Derek loved the way her mind constantly analyzed information and
looked for connections—she would not stop working at a problem until she
solved it. “This is fascinating. It sounds like a civil war within the company.
At a normal corporation that could be disruptive enough, but Onyx is an
enormous, shadowy organization that exists outside of the law in a lot of ways.
If someone evil gained control of those resources, it could be disastrous for
the entire country. You think this Mr. Knight that Chad spoke of is the rogue
director?”

He nodded. “It would make
sense. I’ve never heard of Knight before—no one on the executive board
has that name. If I was recruiting employees and stealing company resources to
stage a coup, I wouldn’t use my real name.”

“I’d seen Chad once before,
when I went to the offices to get answers about the attacks.” Derek said. “He
was in the room with the Los Angeles director. And that’s where Sara was taken
captive. Does that mean George Carter is Mr. Knight? Or was he duped as well?
We don’t know enough about the company’s operations or
who
we can trust. Evan, we need more information to figure out what we should be
doing. We’re blind right now.”

“I know. I’m doing
everything I can through official company avenues and the government. I even met
with the president two weeks ago and got nothing useful out of it.”

“The president?” Liberty
asked. “You mean, the President of the United States?”

“Father was a huge campaign
donor for him in his last election,” Evan replied. “And he knows about Onyx, but
I got the impression he had no specifics. I doubt he even knows how much of the
budget comes our way.”

“Evan, what does the company
actually do?” Sara asked. “What do they make? Chad had a bionic arm, but that’s
the only tangible thing I’ve seen with my own eyes, and everything else I’ve
been able to dig up on the company was heavily redacted.”

“Military and defense
contracting, space and satellite systems, computer and technological research.
Those are the main buckets, but Onyx has its fingers in just about every pot
imaginable.”

“Why all the secrecy?” she
pressed. “There are other defense contractors—Lockheed Martin, Northrop
Grumman—and they are all publicly listed companies with clearly detailed
government contracts. What’s so special about Onyx?”