Firstborn

“Maybe,” he growled, “I’m just uptight because of the unexpected test you pulled on me.”

Giving him a taut smile, Annie turned and placed her helmet on a hook. She moved around the desk, smoothed her hair with her hands and sat down. The chair creaked.

“You have a right to feel stressed. I would, too.”

Dammit, she wasn’t like male pilots. When Jason challenged them the way he’d challenged her, he blasted them. Yet he didn’t feel an urge to fight back. Instead, he sat down and ran his fingers through his damp hair. “Why’d you do it?”

“Why wouldn’t I?” Annie opened her hands. She saw the confusion in Jason’s eyes. Because she was highly intuitive, she could feel the range of emotions he was experiencing right now. Something told her that he wasn’t as much angry as he was worried that she wouldn’t accept him as a full partner in the cockpit and on the ground. “From where I sit, I’m pleased with how you handled the bird.” She pointed to her clipboard, which held the test scores he’d earned. “I’ll give you a copy of the results and we’ll talk about them. We’ll make strengths of any weaknesses I saw before we leave for Afghanistan. You don’t have the flight hours I feel you need, so we’re going to be doing a lot of flying between now and then to sharpen your reflexes and get more of your skills up to par.”

Jason digested her huskily spoken words. So much of him was drawn to her. What was it about her? He’d never been as fascinated by a woman as he was by Annie Dazen. Maybe it was her slightly tilted eyes that shone like warm, golden sunlight tinged with cinnamon? Or the way her full mouth turned soft with compassion. Or her openness toward him.

“I thought you wanted to get rid of me. That’s what the other pilots did,” he growled. “I thought you were pulling this test to find a reason to write me up and get me out of the squadron.”

Her heart gave a tug. Whether Jason knew it or not, in that moment, he looked like an abandoned little boy, not a twenty-four-year-old man. She had a gift of perception that she’d inherited from her mother. At times she could see beyond the normal range of human comprehension. As she looked across the desk at Jason, any defensiveness she may have felt toward him melted away. It was the look in his eyes; for a second, he seemed like a hunted, haunted animal on the run from…what? Who?

“I hope you don’t paint me with the same brush, Mr. Trayhern. I have no desire to set you up to fail. I want to get to Afghanistan and do a little damage to El Quaida. And whether I like it or not, you’re my new copilot.”

“Who would want me for a copilot with my track record? You probably see me as an instant liability to your hopes for promotion.” He knew a bad junior pilot could drag the best pilot’s career through the mud, and hurt his or her chances for advancement.

Shrugging, Annie sat up, placed her elbows on the desk and looked him squarely in the eyes. “Look, Mr. Trayhern, I have no ax to grind with you. If you do what you say you’ll do, I’ll have no problem with you.”

Blinking, Jason sat there and looked at her sincere, open features. Her hands were clasped in front of her, her voice low and warm. That warmth cascaded through him like heat against a glacier, melting a frozen part of him inside.

“Then…you’re giving me a chance?” A real one? Oh, God, how he wanted that! Wanted to halt the downward spiral of his career. Wanted to try and hold on to something, to pull himself up by his own bootstraps. Studying Annie’s features with something akin to amazement, Jason realized that she was his last hope. If he couldn’t turn his life around with her help, he really was done. And he couldn’t stand the shame that would place on his family, or himself. He’d finally hit bottom.

“You’ll be giving yourself that chance, if you want it,” Annie told him. “I’m going to work your butt off for the next thirty days.”

“That doesn’t bother me.”

“Then what does?”

“That you’ll sandbag me, Ms. Dazen. That you’re waiting in the weeds like those other two pilots I flew with, looking for a chance to nail me.”

“I’m not like that.” She sat up, then leaned back in the chair. “But you’ll find that out sooner or later. Right now, you need a shower and a change of clothes. When you’re done, come back to the office and we’ll discuss your test results.”

Jason stood up. “Okay, fair enough.”

“The showers are just off the locker room. There’re always towels, washcloths and soap available.” She looked at her watch. “Be back here in thirty minutes?”

Moving toward the door, he muttered, “Yeah, I’ll be back.”

Annie watched him pick up his helmet in his long fingers. He had the hands of a pilot, there was no doubt, even though his flight suit was stained with sweat.

When the door closed and she heard him walk away from her office, Annie blew out a long, unsteady breath. Relief washed through her. She didn’t like confrontations like that.

“Some days are more trying than others,” she muttered. “Why am I getting this guy, Shaida?” Shaida was the name of her spirit guide. Every Indian Annie knew of, especially one who came from a medicine family as she did, had a guide. Although Annie couldn’t see hers, she knew she was there. She’d grown up with her. As a child, she had often seen the lithe, two-hundred-fifty-pound black jaguar, who used to sit and watch her with large, golden eyes. Annie had always felt safe as a child when Shaida was with her. And the Great Spirit knew, she’d always been in some kind of trouble, needing protection. Shaida was her guardian angel, there was no doubt.

Annie rubbed her brow now and stood up. She nervously wiped her sweaty palms on the sides of her flight suit and went out into the hangar to talk with her crew. They’d brought the bird inside the hangar already and were working on maintenance. Pride in her crew swelled within her as she walked across the clean and shiny concrete floor. Well, it would be a pleasant half hour before she had to bang heads with Trayhern again.

“So that’s the bottom line on your test results, Mr. Trayhern.” Annie tossed the clipboard back on her desk after giving him a copy of the test and the percentages he’d earned on each of the flight functions she’d assessed. “Overall, not bad. I don’t think you got the air time you needed with the other pilots. I think these grades reflect your lack of flying time. That’s something we can quickly remedy around here.”

Jason took the papers and glanced at them. He felt a lot more comfortable sitting in front of her desk in a clean, dry flight suit. A shower had been just what he’d needed, for many reasons. Water was always soothing to him, a calming balm to any fractious state. It allowed him to relax and let go.

Looking at the test scores and then up at Annie, he said, “No, I didn’t get a lot flight time.” Mainly because he’d been squabbling so much with his copilots that they wanted to avoid him, so his flight hours dipped accordingly.

“Because?” Annie was bound and determined to find out what was eating Trayhern. He’d not only showered, but he’d shaved as well, which pleased her. He didn’t have to. It was near 1700, quitting time. He had taken extra pains, she hoped, to show her that he cared enough to try.

“Because,” Jason growled, “I wasn’t exactly pleasant with my command pilot.”

“Why?”

He eyed her. “You don’t mind asking hard questions, do you?”

Her mouth quirked. “Not when my life depends on it.”

Managing a sour grin, Jason said, “I was in his face because I was constantly questioning why he was doing something.”

“That implies a lack of trust in the command pilot.”

“Yes…I guess it does.” He dropped his head and stared at the test scores. Annie Dazen had given him relatively high marks on most of the flight maneuvers, which surprised him. His other command pilots had consistently rated him at the bottom, just above the seventy-five percentile passing mark. She, on the other hand, had given him scores in the eighties and nineties, which buoyed his sense of confidence in himself—and in her. It looked as if she really wasn’t out to get him.

“Why didn’t you trust your command pilot?”

The words were spoken so softly and gently that Jason felt the doors of his heart fly open. It shocked him. He sat there, staring down at the papers in his hand, as he mulled over his emotional response to her. Finally he forced himself to look up. When he did, he was once again surprised. Annie’s usual poker face was soft and readable. He saw a burning look in her golden eyes, as if she genuinely wanted to know the truth.

Sighing, he whispered, “Look, I’ve never talked about this to anyone before….”

“You have to give me some sign of trust, Jason.” Annie deliberately used his first name, and saw the impact that instantly had on him. There was such struggle evident in his eyes—between shame, anger, hope and something else she couldn’t decipher.

“Yeah…I hear you….” The papers fluttered nervously in his hand. “I expected you to fail me like the others did.”

“You aren’t a failure. You’re just rusty, is all. There’s a huge difference.” Annie’s heart bled for him. For an instant, she thought she’d seen tears in his eyes, but just as quickly, they were gone. His mouth was twisted in a tortured line. Her gut instinct was to get up, walk around the desk and slide her arms around his shoulders as he sat there. Clearly, he was suffering from some terrible past event that haunted his present. She didn’t dare reach out to him that way. But the very idea of doing so was startling to her.

“I can see that….”

“Then help me to help you,” she beseeched softly, leaning forward, her hands opening. “Tell me what’s behind your lack of trust. I need to know.”

Though he wanted to look down at his polished black leather flight boots, Jason forced himself to meet Annie’s gaze. Her expression was so open, so tender. Her lips were slightly parted. Beckoning…Damn, but he wanted to find out if her lips were as soft as he thought they might be.

Giving himself an internal shake, Jason realized that his life as an aviator hung in the balance, depending on whether or not he came clean with Annie. Somehow, in his deeply wounded heart, he knew she would be fair with him—but only if he was honest with her. He saw that in her eyes, in the way they glinted. She had such gentle, yet strong, power. Jason would trust her with his life in that cockpit because she radiated a kind of quiet confidence he’d looked for all his life, and never found—until now.

Clearing his throat, he looked at his watch. “It’s 1700. Quitting time.”

Shrugging, Annie said, “I have all night, if that’s what it takes.”

Relief flowed through him. His stomach muscles unclenched a little. “Yeah, okay…” Frowning, he looked around the office, trying to gather his thoughts. Finally, he looked back at her, after clearing his throat.

“When I was six years old, I was kidnapped by a drug lord. My father, Morgan Trayhern, ran a supersecret organization called Perseus.” Frowning, Jason muttered, “He still does.”

Annie looked at him in surprise. “You were kidnapped?”

Jason studied her face. There was such openness in her expression. It gave him the courage to go on. “Yeah. I was playing in my little sister Katy’s room when the bad guys broke in. They shot my mother and father with darts that knocked them out.”

“That’s terrible!” Annie searched his brooding features. “What did they do to you?”

“I remember them bursting into the room. They were dressed in civilian clothes and looked like anyone you’d see on the street. I remember getting up. I had heard the scuffle out in the front room, where my parents were. I felt scared. I knew the big guy coming toward me was going to hurt me. I was too scared to scream, but that’s what I wanted to do….”

Swallowing hard, Annie held his gaze. “What happened next?”

“The dude put a cloth over my face and I blacked out. I woke up, I don’t know how many hours later, on the island of Maui, Hawaii. I learned later they left Katy behind. They didn’t want her.”

“How awful.”

“Yeah, it was.”

“You have full memory of this?” Annie knew that many times, in trauma, the brain conveniently tucked away details of an experience because it was too terrible for a person to bear.

“Full memory,” Jason said.

“I’m so sorry.” Annie realized that his trust had been broken during that trauma. And she could easily understand that if a child’s trust was not healed, the adult he became would have a hard time trusting anyone. Which was why Jason hadn’t trusted the two other pilots he’d flown with. Maybe. She had to learn more in order to put this puzzle together. “Did both your parents survive the kidnapping?”

“Yeah, eventually.” Jason looked down at the floor. “My mother was drugged and raped repeatedly by a drug lord in the Caribbean. My father was taken to South America and tortured for months. In the end, other members of Perseus, my father’s agency, mounted a rescue effort and several elite mercenary teams found them and brought them home, back to the States.”

“And what about you?”

“They sent a team to find me. And they did.”

“How long were you a captive?”

Shrugging, Jason said, “A month or so…”

She saw the pain in his eyes. “Can you tell me what you remember of you captivity?”

Shifting uncomfortably in the chair, Jason said, “Yeah, I guess…”

Annie waited. She could feel the tension radiating from Jason, saw the way his shoulders hunched, as if to deflect a coming blow. Her questions must be like blows to him. She had so many questions she wanted to ask, but she had to be patient.

“The dude that took me was an old man. He hated my father for disrupting the worldwide drug trade. Every chance he got, he’d make sure I heard how bad my father was.”

“And did you talk back to him? Fight or resist?”

Mouth thinning, Jason said, “Yeah…at first. I used to yell at him that my father was a good man. Every time I did, he’d slap me.”

Wincing inwardly, Annie said, “I’m so sorry….”

Again, her soft words haunted him, touched his aching heart and soothed him in a way no one ever had. Jason stared at her wordless for several seconds before he continued. “I learned real fast not to stand up for my father. And when the old bastard kept brainwashing me on how bad my dad was, I would cry instead. I cried out of anger, because what I wanted to do was punch out the old man’s lights, but I knew he’d kill me if I tried. He always had two goons with guns hanging around the room when I was there. I knew they’d kill me.”

“So you cried? Out of fear and frustration?”

“Yes.”

“What else happened?” Annie dreaded asking this, but she had to in order to understand the man Jason was today.

“I got regular beatings from him when I cried. So I eventually learned to say and do nothing.”

“To swallow all your feelings. To say nothing and stay silent.”

“Exactly.” He gave her a level look. “You understand.”

“Yes…I do. Prisoners of war often experience the same thing you did.”

“I was a prisoner of a war. I learned to trust no one there. I was watched twenty-four–seven, and I got at least one beating a day from the old dude, or from one of my guards. They said it was for being Morgan Trayhern’s son. When they finally rescued me, I was black-and-blue, I had a broken nose—” he touched it with his finger “—and several cracked ribs.”

Closing her eyes, Annie placed her hand across them. Her heart swelled with anguish for Jason. No wonder he didn’t trust! Allowing her hand to fall away, she opened her eyes and stared at him. He sat there tensely, as if expecting a blow. “That’s really terrible. You were badly abused by them.”

He chuckled darkly. “You’ve said a mouthful, Ms. Dazen.”

“Did your parents get you therapy?”

“Oh, yeah…all kinds. The shrinks said I had PTSD, posttraumatic stress disorder.” He flexed his fingers and chuckled again. “No surprise there.”

“And how did you do with the therapists?”

“Not well, I guess. I didn’t trust them.”

“Of course not. They were adults.”

“That’s right,” he said grimly.

“You probably felt abandoned by adults in your time of need. And the adult who held you prisoner hurt you badly.”

“Yep, that about sums it up.”

“And have you had problems trusting adult males since that time?”

“A little,” Jason muttered, looking away. “I’m not on good terms with my father, either.”

She hurt for him, because she saw undisguised pain over that admission not only in his narrowed blue eyes, but in the thinning of his full mouth. “I’m sure your father tried to regain your trust?”

“Oh, yeah. He did….”

“But?”

“It didn’t take. I was—I am—angry at him for what happened. He should have protected us, his family. Instead, he was arrogant and felt we were safe enough in Washington.”

Annie sighed. “What about your mom? How did she get through this mess?”

“She had a lot of years after the kidnapping when she wasn’t really available to us kids. I mean—” he opened his hands “—she was raped. I’m still angry over that. I see what it did to her…and how it’s affected all of us….”

“And now?”

“She’s pretty much worked through the worst of it, although I still see it in her from time to time. I’ve learned what rape does. It’s a terrible thing. It murders part of a person and you never get back that piece again.”

“It sounds like the drug lords got the revenge they wanted.”

“And then some.”

“Your father must have been affected by this, too? You said he was tortured?”

Jason nodded. “Yeah, nonstop. You can see the scars on his arms and legs when he’s in a bathing suit or a short-sleeved shirt.”

“And how has he recovered from the kidnapping?”

“Better than any of us, but then, he’d been wounded in the head during the Vietnam War, and had amnesia for years after that. The U.S. government screwed him, too. He didn’t know who he was, and eventually joined the French Foreign Legion. Several years after that, he suddenly got his memory back and went home to the U.S.

“From there, he met my mother, Laura, and they were finally able to find the men responsible for branding him as a traitor, and to get his named cleared. My dad is a hero to a lot of people.” Jason looked away. “So, my two cents’ worth is that because of his past experience, he was able to roll with the kidnapping better than my mother or myself. He seems the least affected by what happened.”

Annie nodded. “Thank you for telling me this. I promise it will go nowhere, but it helps me to understand you.”

She saw him lift his head and study her, and instantly, her heart flew open. The look in his eyes was one of relief and hope. There was no more anger or distrust there. How badly she wanted to get up and throw her arms around Jason. Annie sensed that being held was exactly what he needed—and that, since the kidnapping, he’d never let anyone beyond those armored walls he’d built up.

Somehow, Annie knew he’d let her in. And that realization was as startling as a lightning bolt.

Chapter 5

“Have you found out anything, Morgan?” Laura asked as she laid out china plates of a colorful floral pattern on the kitchen table. It had been two weeks since she’d talked to Jason, and she hadn’t heard a word from him since. She didn’t know who worried more about their son, her or Morgan.

Wiping her hands on her peach-colored apron, she moved back to the counter. Today, Kamaria was being watched by their baby-sitter, Crystal Harding, a local woman from Phillipsburg who dearly loved the little tyke. Crystal and Kamaria were in the toddler’s bedroom at the other end of the large, two-story home, having Kamaria’s favorite lunch of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches while watching reruns of Mister Rogers on television.

Scowling, Morgan went to the drain board and picked up the bowls of salad Laura had made for them. “I just got off the phone with Red Dugan,” he said as he placed the wooden bowls on the table.

“And?” Laura shot him a questioning look as she placed pink linen napkins and silverware next to the teak bowls. Morgan pulled out her chair and she sat down. One of the many things she loved about her husband was his gallantry. She knew it came from the fact that he’d been a Marine Corps officer, a throwback to another time, but she loved his sensitivity toward her in this way. Smiling to herself, she realized she was most likely a throwback, herself.

Watching as Morgan sat down at her left elbow, she waited impatiently to hear what he had to say about Jason. Because of her husband’s broad intelligence network, which spanned the world, and his contacts with the higher-ups in every military branch, it was easy for him to pick up a phone to check in on Jason or Katy without their knowledge.

Picking up a bottle of light Italian dressing, Laura un-screwed the cap. With the advent of menopause, she found she gained weight quickly, so was dieting to help keep herself in shape. As she squirted some dressing on the colorful salad, she felt a tad guilty about Morgan initiating this behind-the-scenes checking on their children. But in Jason’s case, Laura was glad he had the contacts. Jason usually called weekly, but that was it. He rarely wrote a letter. Then again, she didn’t know many military men who wrote letters to their parents. Phone calls usually had to do. Jason didn’t e-mail her, either….

Katy wrote e-mails all the time from her secret operating base down in Colombia, and Laura was always eager to hear from her. Laura worried about her daughter, who lived in constant peril while flying the Seahawk helicopter and delivering Marine Recon teams to key locations to help Colombian government soldiers fight the rebels. And soon Jason was going to be in Afghanistan. The idea made her stomach knot. She grimaced and passed the bottle to her husband.

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