Home > Immortal Nights (Argeneau #24)(3)

Immortal Nights (Argeneau #24)(3)
Author: Lynsay Sands

“I didn’t,” Jet admitted and when her expression turned alarmed, he laughed and said, “I thought you could come to work with me.”

“You’re a cargo pilot,” she pointed out. “How can I come to work with you?”

“Cargo planes have seats in the front, you know. You can ride with me and we can day trip around the exciting and exotic places I fly to.”

That didn’t sound too bad, she thought, and asked, “And your boss would be all right with that?”

“I don’t know if he’d care or not, but I wasn’t planning on telling him,” Jet said with a shrug, and then pointed out, “He’s not in the plane with me so how would he know?”

“Hmm,” Abigail murmured. She didn’t want to get him in trouble. On the other hand, she didn’t want to sit around in his apartment worrying about her future for the next week either.

“What exciting and exotic places do you fly to?” she asked with interest now.

“Well, I’m free tomorrow, but then I’m booked for a shipment to Quebec the day after that.”

“Canada?” she asked with disgust. “You consider that exotic?”

“It’s a foreign country,” he pointed out defensively.

“Barely,” she said, her voice dry.

“They speak French,” he argued.

“Barely,” she said again. “And it’s wintertime. It will be cold as hell up there.”

“Come on, it’ll be fun,” he assured her. “We’ve never been there and it must have something interesting to offer. Besides, we only have to kill a day there, then I load up again and fly to Chicago.”

“Better and better,” she said on a groan.

Jet laughed at her dismay and leaned sideways to nudge her with his shoulder. “We’ll have fun, I promise. You and me in the cockpit, yapping and laughing . . . it’ll be like old times.”

“Yeah,” she said with a slow smile. She’d missed yapping and laughing with Jet. He’d been a sort of stand-in girlfriend/adopted brother through high school and the first four years of college. Hard to believe when she looked at him now. No one would mistake him for a stand-in for a girlfriend. Jet was definitely all man. If he wasn’t so much like a brother to her, she might even be at risk of falling for him herself. The thought made her smile faintly as she asked, “So what exotic locale follows Chicago?”

“After Chicago, it’s—” He paused midsentence and dug in his pocket as the sound of a guitar strumming reached their ears. Pulling out a phone, he peered at the display, his eyebrows rising. “My boss. Gotta take this.”

Abigail nodded in understanding and watched as he hit the answer button, placed the phone to his ear and stood to move a few steps away, saying, “Hey, Bob, what’s up?”

“Can I get you another?” the blonde barmaid asked, suddenly appearing on the other side of the bar again. Abigail turned to glance at the woman, noting that she was eyeballing Jet as she asked the question. That being the case, she wasn’t terribly surprised when the woman didn’t give her a chance to respond before asking what she really wanted to know. “So, is your friend available?”

Abigail supposed it was insulting that the woman didn’t even imagine for a minute that she might be Jet’s girlfriend, but let it slide and merely admitted, “As far as I know he’s not dating anyone.”

“Yeah?” The blonde beamed at her. “Do you think—?”

“Abs, we gotta go.”

Abigail and the bartender both turned with surprise at that announcement when Jet suddenly returned.

“We do?” she asked with a frown as he bent to scoop up her backpack.

“Yeah.” Straightening, he urged her off the stool, then began walking her quickly toward the exit.

“Why?” she asked with bewilderment, jogging to keep up with his long steps. She’d always had to jog to keep up with Jet. His legs were nearly twice the length of her stubby little ones and she had to take two steps for every one of his.

“Got a job,” he announced with a grin.

“Now?” she asked with amazement. “But I just got here. I haven’t even seen your apartment yet.”

“I know, and I almost refused because of that, but then Bob said where the shipment was going and I decided we should go.”

“Where?” she asked at once. He was beaming so brightly, she knew this had to be good, certainly better than cold Canada, or Chicago.

“How do you feel about a couple of days on a beach in Caracas?”

“Venezuela?” she squawked with dismay.

He paused at the exit to peer at her uncertainly. “What’s wrong with Venezuela?”

“I read an article just last week that claims Venezuela is the kidnap capital of the world or something.”

“Oh, pffft,” he responded, tugging the door open and ushering her out of the bar. “You’ll be with me. I’ll keep you safe. And Bob was so desperate to find a pilot for this flight that he agreed to let me out of the Quebec flight. We can spend a couple days there. That gives us time to kick around, hit the beach, see the sights.” Stopping suddenly, he turned her away from him and helped her get the backpack on again. “It’s definitely more exotic than Quebec, right?”

“Right,” she agreed wryly, and supposed kicking around and seeing the sights didn’t sound bad. She wasn’t too keen on the beach part though. Not in the shape she was in. Still, it could be fun.

“You have a passport, don’t you?” he asked suddenly. “Please have a passport.”

“Yeah. I even brought it with me,” she assured him. Abigail hadn’t thought she’d need it, but it had seemed smarter than leaving it in storage.

“Good, good, we’re all set then,” he said happily, finishing with her backpack. “Put this on.”

Abigail turned and stared at the helmet he was holding out. Her gaze then slid to the motorcycle behind him and her eyes widened incredulously. “You expect me to ride on that?”

She’d expected a car, maybe even a pickup, but a motorcycle? Where had her old, slightly goofy, geek of a friend Jethro gone? Apparently, he’d grown up and morphed into Jet the adventurer.

“You’ll love it,” Jet assured her, settling the helmet on her head and strapping it on. Once done with that, he quickly donned his own helmet, then swung a leg over his bike and glanced over his shoulder at her. “Come on. This is an emergency flight. We have to get to the hangar ASAP.”

“What kind of emergency?” Abigail asked, climbing gingerly onto the seat behind him. He flew a cargo plane, for heaven’s sake. What kind of emergency flight could there be for a cargo plane?

“I don’t know,” Jet admitted, starting the motorcycle. Raising his voice to be heard over the engine, he then added, “I guess it’s a time-sensitive shipment. The client has their own plane, but it broke down and they need to get their cargo to Caracas ASAP so called us. That’s the only reason I’m getting the flight. Normally guys with more seniority get the exotic locales, but I was the only one available last-minute.”

“Oh,” Abigail murmured and then repeated it more loudly when she realized he’d never hear her over the roar of the motorcycle engine.

“Put your arms around me and hold on tight,” Jet instructed, glancing around. Catching her worried expression, he grinned and added, “Relax, Abs. It’ll be an adventure.”

Two

“Relax, Abs, it’ll be an adventure,” Abigail muttered under her breath as she felt around in the dark, trying to find the jump seat Jet had told her to use. He hadn’t warned her how dark it would be back here. But then perhaps he hadn’t thought about that in his panic. If he had, he surely would have offered her a flashlight or something. Instead, she was feeling her way blindly down the side of the cargo hold of the airplane, trying to find a seat that apparently folded down from the wall and had straps she could belt herself in with for takeoff.

Abigail shook her head. This adventure was not going according to plan at all. They’d moved through the San Antonio traffic quickly on the motorcycle and arrived at the airport before the clients had arrived. While Jet dealt with flight plans and other paperwork, Abigail had mostly stayed out of the way, merely handing her passport over to some official type dude who’d asked for it. They’d then headed straight to the hangar where his cargo plane waited. She’d joined Jet in the cockpit while he went through what he called a preflight checklist and had settled comfortably in the big cushy front passenger seat, thinking this would be fun after all. But then the client had arrived.

   
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