Ghostrider - M. L. Buchman Page 0,48

a rolling gurney.

“Need a lift.” Maybe the answer he was looking for was at the crash.

“Not a taxicab.”

He’d pulled his ID. “Master Sergeant Jones. I was on that plane until I had to bail out. Need to get back out there.”

“Still not a taxi.” But then she’d focused on his face.

He didn’t know what he looked like. He’d bet it was about right for having just reached Hell’s intake and registration desk. Apparently the crew chief thought the same.

“Shit!” She’d waved him aboard, then yelled forward to the pilots. “We got a hitchhiker. Crash investigation.”

Which wasn’t quite accurate, but he’d take it.

He sat in the corner of the Jayhawk’s cargo bay and did his best to stay out of the way as the crew re-stowed their medical gear during the short flight and prepared for the next load of victims.

They stopped at the top of the island and picked up a small brunette and a shining blonde.

“Still not a fucking taxi service,” the crew chief muttered to him as the bird lifted again.

He nodded his agreement. Not that it mattered.

The thing that Pierre couldn’t imagine was how to explain what he now knew. And by his silence, he too was complicit as sin. He still wasn’t clear why he’d kept his mouth shut when he shouldn’t have.

The investigators had asked the key question, Do you have anything else to add that might be relevant to this crash investigation?

He’d evaded with, Not at this time. But no way was that going to save his ass if there was a court-martial.

And there was a three-star general in the middle of the mess? That was way above his pay grade. He was just a master sergeant and had never actually met a three-star.

His aunt always said that he was damned because he hadn’t been to church since his own baptism—usually accompanied with another of her braying laughs. But this time?

“I really am going to hell.”

The blonde passenger was close enough to overhear and grinned at him. “Not as fast as the poor bastards who were on that plane.” Her accent was smoothly Australian—which was almost as sexy as Rosa’s soft Spanish.

“Perfect. Just perfect. Means I get an express nonstop flight. I was last one off the damned bird.” Maybe that was the problem. Had he actually gone down with the plane and this really was hell?

The blonde studied him for a long moment, then turned to her small companion. “We got a live one, Miranda.”

Turning back, the blonde stuck out a hand. He shook it because he didn’t know what else to do.

“Holly Harper. National Transportation Safety Board. Pleased as two peas in a pod to meet’cha.”

32

“Hi, Lizzy.”

General Elizabeth Gray was Lizzy to very few people other than herself. Miranda Chase was one of them. She had been from the very first moment they’d stumbled into each other the same night she’d met Drake.

It hadn’t hurt, much, when Miranda had proven her ability to analyze crash images even better than she could herself.

And Miranda’s abilities as a pilot—no textbook written said she should have survived that emergency landing on the National Mall when her plane was sabotaged. Lizzy had studied the flight. Ten degrees more bank, five degrees less flare, even a half second of hesitation and she’d have been dead. But Miranda had done it perfectly. The former combat pilot in her couldn’t help but respect the woman.

But what she’d liked most was Miranda’s unflappable focus. She’d faced down Drake, the President, and even the CIA director in the time Lizzy had known her. Her friend’s self-confidence had helped Lizzy bolster her own in her new role as the NRO’s director. And she loved managing the National Reconnaissance Office; from satellite launches to global image analysis, every part of it was a joy and a challenge.

But the members of Miranda’s team calling her Lizzy? Barely maybe. And definitely not in her outer office in front of her chief aide, Captain Thorsen.

“Hello, Michael. Jeremy. Jonathon.” All three men had intensely bright hats dangling behind their shoulders from loose chin straps around their necks.

“Wow, that’s a hell of a sparkler, Lizzy,” Mike persisted in being cheery. “Matches your eyes.” He laughed at his own joke.

She didn’t. Her eyes were Eurasian dark and her engagement ring shone brilliant blue.

Thorsen twisted around to look at her hand, then looked up at her with surprise. Of course he hadn’t noticed; he was a male. But Mike had, and now announced it to the world. It would rip