Jonas, page 11
“Hey,” he said softly. “I’m okay. You’re okay. We’re fine.”
She just kept holding on.
And yes, he got it. Especially in view of the story she’d told him about Rokko.
So he just held her, put his head down against hers, feeling himself start to breathe again also.
She finally let go.
He released her. Met her eyes. They were reddened, as if she might have been fighting tears. But for the first time, he got a good look at them—golden brown, with variations of green woven in, and gold in the middle. Intriguing. Beautiful.
“Thank you for not dying,” she said softly.
“Anytime.” Then he winked, and she smiled and pushed away from him. Turned to her grandfather and shouted something.
The group had begun to move along the path, and she waited until most of them had gone before she moved onto the trail.
He stayed with her.
She reached out then and took his hand.
Maybe so he wouldn’t walk into danger again, but he held on, just for a while.
She dropped his grip as they came out of the forest, near the farm, and then she ran ahead to her grandfather and pulled out her cell phone.
Her grandfather herded everyone into the farm’s barn, and then they waited until some vans and a truck pulled up.
Slovenian police, by their uniforms, and Sibba and Henry stood talking for a long time to what seemed the man in charge, while Jonas helped people into the vehicles. He finally joined them.
“Jonas, this is the director general of the Hazardous Device Unit out of Ljubljana, Director Vlasic,” Sibba said.
A big man, solemn demeanor, he reached out his hand, and Jonas shook it, introducing himself. To his surprise, the man spoke English.
“Thank you for your help here. We’ll need a statement of what you saw at the Kovac farm when we get to the hospital.”
“Of course,” Jonas said.
But what he really wanted was to get the black box to his lab.
No, what he wanted was to find out if he might be radioactive, his insides melting. Then, to his lab.
And after that, maybe figure out what that embrace had been about.
Probably relief. Nothing more.
And probably that was for the best. Because he’d never felt quite so undone as when he’d watched Sibba work her way across the minefield. “EOD and a happy ending are mutually exclusive.”
Yes, yes they were.
He needed his car, left back at the farmhouse by Poče, so he mentioned this to Vlasic, who instructed one of his men to fetch it. “We need you at the hospital.”
Right. Jonas tossed over the keys, then found himself in the car with Sibba, following the caravan to Ljubljana.
The beautiful capital city was located in a massive valley under the shadow of foothills and mountains to the north and west, and under the purview of a twelfth century castle perched on a cliff. He’d been utterly charmed by the cobblestone streets, the bridges over the Ljubljana River, the beautiful churches, the Baroque cathedral in the middle of the city, the massive pink Church of the Annunciation, the open kitchen food market.
A treasure, tucked away in a country most people didn’t know existed.
“Where are we going?” he asked Sibba as they wove their way into the city, heading for downtown.
“The University Medical Center. They will know what to do.”
“Does this happen a lot?”
“Dirty bombs deployed in our country? No. But they’re familiar with the fallout of unexploded ordnances, and we share a nuclear power reactor with Croatia, so there are protocols in place for disasters.” She glanced at him. “I’m pretty sure you’re not melting from the inside.”
“There you go again, trying to be funny.”
“I’m hilarious.” She grinned, and he couldn’t help but grin back. Maybe her approach wasn’t terrible—moments of stress softened by bad humor.
He could get used to it.
They parked with the others and were met by a team who’d been briefed and set up tents in the parking lot. Garbed in protective gear, the staff met the group, ushered them into privacy to disrobe, sent them to showers, then provided clean attire in the form of cotton scrubs.
Two hours later, Jonas sat in a sterile room, waiting on his blood test, having been administered a dose of Prussian blue with crackers. Sibba sat with him, her hair down and drying, wearing the same green scrubs, translating as one of Director Vlasic’s men took his statement.
They’d already verified his identity via a call to the lab—thank you, Tarek—and his passport from his backpack when Vlasic’s courier retrieved his rental car.
The call to his lab also confirmed his authority to dispatch the dirigibles, two of which were still in the air, according to his last check-in.
But he was getting worried, because if the Russians—or whoever—had grabbed Frannie from the sky, they could get their hands on Farah and Sally.
Five and six.
Vlasic and his team asked him about the men he’d seen chasing Sibba and then tussled with at her cabin, and the make of the transportation. Trucks weren’t common in Europe like they were in America, so that worked in their favor.
Then they quizzed him about the blue substance.
Or rather, the caesium-137, identified in the radiology lab at the university.
“I don’t know how I picked it up. Mostly it was on the dog, but also my boots, so probably in the field…”
A fist had formed in his gut the moment they identified the substance. But the doctor confirmed that his dose had been low—at acceptable levels.
Although, to Jonas’s mind, when was it ever acceptable to be radioactive?
Sibba had jumped in then, in Slovenian, and a long discussion had ensued, with hand gestures and looks of incredulity, and he would have liked to have added his own voice to the discussions of how, when, and why.
About then, the doctor buzzed in and confirmed that his blood test was clear.
Finally, they finished, and Sibba translated the conversation.
“Mostly, they want to know why Jaka and Lan have higher levels of contamination. They think it’s because they were in town when the bomb deployed.”
He’d gotten up and now headed toward the door. “Will they be okay?”
“Yes. They are on a schedule of Prussian blue, and no one else was significantly affected. They think the nausea might have been from the soup they made to feed everyone—although, in my mind, it might be fear.”
She held open the door and walked out into the hallway with him. “That’s the purpose of a dirty bomb—yes, it’s harmful, but often the radioactive particles are washed away or caught by the wind and disseminated so that they aren’t as potent.” She carried her mask, which she’d taken off during the interrogation, after the doctor had reported back her blood test findings. “Although, it’s different after a nuclear meltdown. Then the radioactive waste is so potent you can get readings across an entire country.”
“So the storm saved the city,” Jonas said.
“Maybe. Depends on how much caesium-137 they dropped. But yes, it looks like it.”
They were standing near the doorway now, him carrying the backpack they’d already checked and returned to him. He pulled the strap onto one shoulder.
She smiled at him. Her hair had dried, mostly, into tawny waves around her shoulders, and he had the crazy urge to reach out, let the silk fall between his fingers. And then that felt creepy, so he shoved his hand into his pocket.
Silence fell between them.
“I need to get to my lab,” he said finally.
“And I need to check in on my grandfather.” She met his eyes, her lip caught in her teeth.
“Then…I guess—”
And then she took a step up to him, lifted herself on her toes, and kissed him.
He froze, not sure exactly—then, okay, he was a go. Slipping his hand behind her neck, he held her to him, kissing her back. Nothing crazy, just a sweet kiss, but it held heat and longing and the taste of what-ifs.
Ten seconds longer and he might have dropped his backpack, added his arm around her waist, pulled her to himself, maybe even backed her against the brick wall for something…more.
In fact, the old words stirred inside him. Maybe, if you were honest, you want more.
Yes, yes he did.
He wanted Sibba.
The smell of her—cotton and the lavender scrub of the hospital soap—circled up around him and—
She let him go, stepping away. Met his eyes. Then, slowly, she smiled. “Take care of yourself, Weatherman.”
He stood there, numbly nodding as she turned and walked down the hall.
Twenty-four hour pass, and Ned had already spent six of it getting to Geneva.
A train to Ljubljana, a flight to Innsbruck, and then another hopper to Geneva, then a commuter train to Lausanne, and all the time, not an answer from Shae’s phone.
And now he stood in the lobby of the Alpine Hotel, trying not to raise his voice. But—
“I rented that room for two weeks. I have four days left on my rental.” He knew he sounded tired, but after being poked and examined for the past twenty-four hours, and later determined that no, he wasn’t going to die of imminent cancer or his bones dissolving, he’d been given the all-clear and hurry back by Trini to track down Shae.
To tell her that maybe she shouldn’t stick around and wait for him to return from what he’d hoped was a brief spin-up.
With nuclear waste caesium-137 on the loose, their team had been among the spec op groups tagged to track it down and put jack back in the box. Hopefully before the Petrov group could unleash another brand of terrorism into the world.
Ned had been read into the event this summer attached to the same group—one where they not only tried to EMP-bomb Air Force One and take out President Isaac White—again—but tried to unleash a biological weapon into the happiest place on earth.
He wondered if his brother Fraser had been on that op, mostly because he’d heard that Jones, Inc. had been a player in that takedown. But Ned hadn’t talked to his brother for the better part of six months, and last he’d heard, from his dad just two weeks ago in Geneva, Fraser was back in Minnesota, holding down the family winery.
Been there, done that, and Ned was in no hurry to return to the daily chore of farming, cleaning out barrels and fermenters, bottling wine, and occasionally acting like a tourist guide around the vineyard.
Good luck, Fraser.
Poor guy had left the teams about two years ago—hadn’t really explained why. And he didn’t exactly have a girl to tug him away either.
“Sorry, sir,” the desk manager said now, a thin man with a pressed dress shirt and a fade haircut. Very European, with a touch of French. “We had to release your room to the local police for investigation.”
“What?” Ned said.
“Yes. We had a break-in, and the guests were attacked.”
Ned stilled. Last he knew, his brother Creed had taken the room. “Was anyone hurt?”
“I don’t know.”
“I need to talk to someone who does know.” Ned gave the man a look that suggested it wasn’t a request.
“I’ll get my manager.” The clerk vanished through the door to the back.
Great. Ned had left his suitcase in Shae’s room, however, so hopefully she still had his hiking gear, his other civvies.
He’d like to change out of his cargo pants and T-shirt, get in a shower, and then maybe take Shae to dinner before he had to catch his midnight flight back to Slovenia.
If he could find her.
The manager appeared through the door, an older man in a suit, dark complexion, his hair graying on the sides. Seemed an older version of the desk clerk. “Can I help you, sir?” Same French accent too.
“I wanted to know what happened in the room I rented.”
“I’m sorry, sir, but that is a police matter—”
“My brother was in that room.”
The man stopped, took a breath. “As far as I know, your brother and Princess Imani escaped without harm.”
Ned blinked at him. “Princess—who?”
“Her Royal Highness Princess Imani of Lauchtenland was one of the guests. Unfortunately, we did not find this out until after the incident.”
“Please elaborate.”
“All we know is that someone broke into the room. They escaped over the balcony.”
He took that in, let a beat pass. “Was anyone hurt?”
“Yes. But…we don’t believe it was our guests.”
Interesting. So the woman Creed had been with was a princess.
That dog.
“We refunded your room to your card, sir.”
“How about my other room—the one under Shae Johnson’s name?”
“I’m afraid that is private information, sir.”
Ned leaned into the desk. “It’s being charged to my card. All I want to know is if it is still being rented.”
The man considered him a moment, maybe taking in the two-day beard growth—he’d planned on shaving after he’d gotten into his room—and the not-so-hidden fatigue on his face, along with the tightening of Ned’s jaw, and maybe decided on compassion.
Or fear.
Whatever worked. But the man pulled up the reservation on his computer. “According to our records, that room is still being rented.”
The words released a knot in his gut.
“Perfect.” He shouldered his pack and headed up the stairs.
He’d rented the Alpine Hotel because it was quaint. Small, with only three stories, the place had once been an old apartment house, the rooms renovated but still historical. Shae’s had a fireplace in it, a small sitting area that overlooked a dining courtyard, and a partial view of Lake Geneva.
The getaway had been a last-minute grab of time away from the teams and a chance to connect with his family. Creed had run in some international track meet. He didn’t win, but it gave Ned a chance to catch up with his family. His sister Iris had even been there, and he hadn’t seen her in over a year, what with her busy reffing schedule.
He’d finally decided it was time to formally pop the question to Shae. She’d been incredibly patient as he went to BUD/s, then the year of SQTs, another year of first-year training, and then he’d been selected to join Team 3, which had shipped him to San Diego, and he’d spent a year just getting used to the team, cementing his skill set.
The fact that she’d followed him first to San Diego, then to Pensacola, then back to San Diego—yeah, he didn’t deserve her, and he knew it.
But now was their time. And for the next eight hours, he was going to make the most of it.
He headed down the hallway and found her room, the corner suite, and knocked on the door.
Stood, listening to the quiet, the thump of his heartbeat.
No footsteps to the door, no turning off of a shower or opening of a balcony door. He knocked again, waited.
Still, no answer.
He headed back downstairs.
“Are you sure she hasn’t checked out?” This he addressed to the manager, who still stood at the desk, scanning the computer.
The man looked up. “Like I said, the room is still rented. As to the occupant’s whereabouts, I’m afraid we don’t monitor our guests’ activities.”
Right.
He walked over to the lobby sofa, an art-deco affair with rounded arms in royal blue velvet, and sat down. Refused the urge to lean over, put his feet up.
But wow, he was tired. And maybe the kind of tired that meant he needed the sunshine of his fiancée’s smile, something to remind himself why he did what he did.
“You’re clean.” Trini’s voice whispered into his head. Maybe, but his life felt cluttered and busy and complicated, and the only thing that wasn’t was—
Laughter, and he would have recognized it anywhere. He sat up, looked toward the door…
She came in with the sunshine, her hair pulled back, the gold in it bright against the light browns. She wore a fleece, a pair of jeans and tennis shoes, a backpack over one shoulder, and held the door open for someone behind her.
A man. Tall and lean, with a dark blond ponytail and red whiskers, hiking boots, a vest, and a silly-looking stocking cap. He wore a satchel and laughed in response to something she said. “You can’t be serious—”
“Ned?” Shae stopped, standing in the lobby, and Ned rose, his heart a fist in his chest.
He looked at her, then at the man and then—
“Ned!” Shae dropped her pack and ran, slamming into him so hard he almost didn’t catch her. She wrapped her arms around him, her face in his neck. “Oh my gosh—what a surprise!”
He embraced her, his gaze on the man by the door. The man smiled, but it seemed forced to Ned.
Or maybe he was just attributing that to his own smile.
Then Shae leaned back, took his face in her hands, and kissed him. Not a chaste kiss, but not too intimate either, something that shook him out of the crazy head-space he’d briefly landed in and made him focus.
Shae. He kissed her back, his arms around her, molding her to himself. He’d missed her.
She tasted of coffee and chocolate and new mornings and everything he’d jumped on a plane for. So maybe he’d overreacted there, because a big part of him—probably fatigue and stress—wanted to walk over and get serious with this yahoo who was so friendly with his, um, future wife, that he might be laughing at one of her jokes.
Teasing her.
She leaned away, and moisture glistened in her eyes. “I was worried. I hadn’t heard from you.”
He blinked. “Honey. I’ve called you every single day since I left.”
Her mouth opened, then closed. “Right. Oh yeah. I was getting charged crazy data fees and not even getting service, so Dana here told me to switch out my sim card on my phone for something local. I’ll bet it didn’t keep my number.”
Dana, huh?
At the mention of his name, said Dana came forward, his hand, out. “Dana Munson. Fellow traveler.”
He had an accent. Swedish, maybe.
Ned met his grip. It was a little roughened, so not a complete pansy, despite the satchel and ponytail.
