Jonas, page 4
He watched her until she became a speck against the blue, and Nixon emerged from the hut to join him.
“Looks like fun.”
“Looks like a good way to die.”
“Better than most,” Nixon had said, said glancing at him.
Jonas gave him a look. Offered a wry smile.
“C’mon, boss, let’s go.”
He’d followed Nixon down the mountain, but by the time they reached the bottom, Ina had been delivered over to medical help.
And Sibba had gone with her.
Still, she’d left an imprint in his mind. Her, huddled on a cliff with her friend one moment, jumping off a mountain the next.
Calling him Spidey. He remembered that way too much, really.
Maybe that’s why he’d told Fraser that he wanted more, back in Lake Como.
Now Jonas climbed over a squat, wooden fence and into the hayfield, past rolled bundles of drying hay, scanning for Frannie, her shiny silver body, or any sign of her.
There. Half buried in the ground, a curved metal spine. Jonas ran over and, as he got closer, spotted the metal nose cone. The back propeller.
More debris cluttered the field, and maybe two hundred yards away, he found the ribbed carcass that had connected to the black box, now twisted and torn, driven into the dirt.
But no black box.
Instead, mounted on the bottom of the carcass, where the black box might have been, hung the remains of a cylinder, burnt and dusty.
He stared at it a long moment, then pulled out his phone and took a few pictures. The silence in the wind combing the field pooled in his ears, running a cold finger down his spine as he processed what he was seeing.
Sometime in the past four days, someone had altered Frannie, attached a device onto her, and from what he could surmise, had detonated said device.
Maybe the storm hadn’t been Frannie’s demise.
He wanted to detach the device, haul it away, but dirt cemented the ribs of the dirigible into the ground, and he’d need a hacksaw, or even a blowtorch, to remove it.
Better to find the black box and analyze the flight data.
He walked around the field, scanning the wreckage, digging up fragments of the frame.
No box.
But according to his GPS data, the box had splashed down here.
He turned and looked at the farmhouse, just beyond a far drive. Maybe the owner had found the box…
A rusty red Allgaier tractor was parked near an old wooden barn. The wind had wrecked a hay bale behind the house, and although it didn’t seem the farm had sustained much damage, the barn doors hung open. A goat stood in the opening, stared at him, then spooked. In a yard near the barn, chickens waddled, pecking.
The rest of the barn, a rough-hewn structure with open stalls, stood vacant.
Across the dirt drive, a whitewashed stone house with a thatched roof seemed abandoned, but he went to the door and knocked.
Nothing. Not a squeaky board, not the swish of curtains at the window, not a breath of life.
He made to move the door handle when, behind him, rumbling thundered from the road, a stir of dust in its wake. Cupping his hand over his face, he spotted two green canvas-covered troop transports headed down the road.
The trucks rumbled past his little rental Panda and down the hill to Poče.
Maybe it was the Slovenian government, tracking the damage.
He watched them disappear down the hill and was turning to leave when, suddenly, behind him, the door opened.
He turned. Stared at the person standing in the door.
Then, on a wisp of breath… “Sibba?”
Three
“What are you doing here?”
She asked it in English, and no, it wasn’t the welcome her grandmother would have given to a stranger on her doorstep, but Sibba simply had nothing else at the sight of… “Jonas, right?”
Like she’d forget his name. Or how good he looked. Just as good as when she’d left him behind on a mountain a month ago. He wore a pair of brown cargo pants, boots, a puffy lightweight black jacket open over a denim shirt. A thousand percent American with his short brown hair and scruff of dark whiskers, like he’d walked out of an L.L.Bean clothing catalog.
Now he also wore a frown, as if trying to unknot her question. “Yes. Jonas Marshall. Hello Sibba.”
He remembered her name. She folded her arms over herself and nodded, her glance going toward Poče. How was it that he’d shown up just as the Slovenian military drove into Poče?
“What are you doing here?” Jonas asked.
“I asked you first.”
He shook his head, stuck his hands into his pockets. “You own this farm?”
“My grandfather does.”
“Sorry about your field. The wreckage belongs to one of my weather dirigibles.”
She just blinked at him. “What wreckage?”
He pointed to a piece of metal—looked like a carcass of some ancient animal—protruding from the field. “It went down in the derecho.”
Oh. That still didn’t explain the military’s arrival. Except—“Are you working with the Slovenian military?”
“No. I’m here on a grant, working out of Ljubljana with the University, studying storms and, primarily, lightning.”
She had nothing for that.
“So, this is your grandfather’s place? Is he here? Can I talk to him?”
Probably he was telling the truth, but it felt terribly coincidental that he’d landed in her life, twice, by happenstance, and the second time was on her grandfather’s doorstep.
Her American grandfather’s doorstep. And all his warnings, his secrets, his fears simply rose inside her, took hold.
Who was this guy? “No. He’s not here.” She stepped back, making to shut the door, but he stuck his foot into the space. “What?”
He frowned at her. “Are you okay?”
She raised an eyebrow. “You’re trespassing.”
He held up his hands. “Sorry. Wow. Okay. I just…nice to see you too.”
Oh, and now she was a jerk. After all, she’d been the one to…obviously she hadn’t been thinking clearly back on the mountain.
But all she knew now was that her grandfather was missing. And the warnings of the past had suddenly risen with painful acridity. “Why do you want to talk to my grandfather?”
He blinked at her. Frowned. “I wanted to apologize and ask him if he saw the dirigible go down. There’s this strange…” He then shut his mouth and shook his head. “Never mind.” He raised his hand and stepped back. “Glad you made it back to terra firma.”
And then he smiled. The sense of it rocked her back, the warmth in his eyes, the genuineness of his expression, the way that he just sort of reached out without guile. And once again, the knot in her chest unraveled and left her weirdly undone.
He turned and walked off the porch and back across the field.
Maybe she should call after him, but…
Her grandfather had vanished for a reason. And until she found out why, she wasn’t trusting anyone with an American passport.
Sibba shut the door and watched out the window as he tromped across her field. He stopped at the carcass in the dirt, crouching. Interesting.
She headed to the back room, where her grandfather kept his pack, his boots.
Gone, as she’d suspected.
She pulled off her shoes and grabbed her own hiking boots from under the bench. Grabbed her canvas jacket, the flannel-lined one she used for chores, and a hat.
First, she’d go to town, just to make sure that Dedi wasn’t in some crazy showdown with the Slovenian government.
And yes, her imagination had taken over, spun out scenarios that had her grandfather cornered, guns pointed at him, or worse, standing in front of a firing squad.
Blimey. She could thank her grandfather for those deep-seated nightmares, the fodder for a promise to never give away his identity during her travels abroad, especially if she landed in the US. Because, according to Hank Kovac, aka Henry Benson, Corpsman Second Class, US Navy, there was no statute of limitations on desertion.
Apparently, it wasn’t unheard of for US agents to appear at the doors of aging soldiers secreted away in places like Sweden or South America and haul them back to the States for court martial.
So no, Jonas wasn’t getting anywhere near Dedi.
She slipped out the back of the house and followed the trail through the forest, now partially overgrown, around their farmland and through the foothills into town. Less than a kilometer, but the sun had begun to slide beyond the Julian Alps, a simmer of fire along the jagged white peaks. Shadows filled the tangle of streets, haphazard and turning in on each other. Poče was little more than a village with cozy lanes and pristine avenues. But she loved the cluster of homes, fitted together like puzzle pieces all around a main square. She passed two-story, whitewashed homes, their second-story windows and inset balconies filled with flower boxes spilling late-season geraniums. A few cars were parked in carports, and a tabby ran across her path, but the town felt eerily empty as she made her way to the square.
Ina’s childhood home over the Poče bakery was dark and the shop shuttered. And next to that, the café, with the chairs set outside on the cobblestones, had its awning drawn in, the chairs stacked inside.
Probably to protect from the storm. Still, even the wind seemed voiceless here.
No sign of the military trucks parked in front of the ancient, orange-washed administrative building. And the water for the fountain in the middle of the square had been turned off, although with the oncoming cold weather, that wasn’t a surprise.
No bicycles were propped up along the fence in front of the Hotel Poče, a two-story B&B and restaurant. She half expected the clock tower to be silent too, but the giant minute hand clicked while she stood there in silence.
She headed for the Poče pub, located in the basement of the hotel via a side entrance.
If her grandfather was anywhere in Poče, it would be at one of the worn wooden tables, nursing a homebrewed lager and bowl of bograč soup, a crusty slice of pogača. Maybe laughing to a story told by Ciril Golab, Ina’s grandfather. Or maybe the barkeep, the burly son of the hotel owner.
But the door at the bottom of the steps was closed. She descended anyway and found it unlocked.
Pushed it open.
Inside, the space smelled of ale and onions, the chairs up on the tables, the long wooden bar empty.
A hollowness swept over her, turning her fragile, shaken.
The town had been abandoned.
A rumble sounded outside on the square, and she turned and headed up the stairs as the military truck now growled to a stop in front of the administrative building. Two men climbed out of the cab, and she expected more from the back, but no one emerged.
They weren’t wearing the green-gray BDUs of the Slovenian military. Just work jackets, jeans, and most importantly, they held handguns, loosely, as they looked around the square.
She sank back down into the stairwell.
Voices lifted, the language foreign but—shoot, she could recognize a variation of Slavic. Ukrainian, or maybe Hungarian. Even…Russian?
One of the men pointed to the administrative building, and the other ran inside, breaking the glass door to get in.
The first rounded the vehicle and stood in the square, looking at the vacated houses.
She sank back against the wall, her heart hammering. Closed her eyes.
What was going on?
A moment later, a shout from the administrative building made her look. The man had emerged and now descended the steps.
The first man turned and walked back to the truck.
She held her breath.
Just as he made to mount the truck’s footstep, a bark sounded from behind her.
She stilled.
Another bark, high and sharp. No—she groaned as she turned.
Behind her, on the street overlooking the stairs, stood Lenard, his squatty, bulldog body taut as he barked down at her.
As if trying to get her attention.
“Shh. Lenard. Stop—”
She glanced back and, oh no, the man had turned, started heading her direction. Maybe he hadn’t seen her yet, maybe she could just hide—
Scampering down the stairs, she closed the door to the bar behind her and fled behind the bar. Sank down into the darkness.
Shouting, probably at Lenard—oh, she hoped—and then, oh! Whining as maybe the man shooed Len away. Please, let him not have hurt him—
The door creaked open.
She closed her eyes, held her breath.
Footsteps scuffed across the cement floor of the pub. They stopped, maybe five feet away, just the pub bar between her and—she didn’t exactly know, and maybe they weren’t even villains. Maybe her own imagination, and even her grandfather’s fears, had stirred up a sinister hue to the entire situation.
Except, hello, guns. And then a shout, again in, um, Russian?
She knew enough about the current political landscape to know that Slovenia and Russia weren’t in cahoots, despite their former affiliations.
So, nope. Not moving.
Except, his shout had brought more footsteps and another voice.
She made herself very small.
Please, please.
“Vot!”
She opened her eyes. A man stood at the end of the bar, pushing open the swinging door—
She took off. Running toward the other end of the bar, headed for the door, and daylight and away from whoever—
A hand grabbed her arm, whipped her around. “Stop!”
Not. On her. Life!
She hadn’t been in the Slovenian military for nothing. She stomped on the man’s instep and shot her fist into his throat, breaking his hold on her jacket.
Then she rounded and pushed through the door.
She made it halfway up the steps before someone grabbed her feet. She landed hard, banged her chin, and screamed.
But she turned as she landed and sent her foot into her attacker’s face.
She scrambled up the stairs backward, turned, and ran.
Her assailants were untangling themselves at the bottom of the stairs, and shoot, Len had rounded and was now barking, running after her. She sprinted down the street, cut into another one, and then scrambled down a set of stairs, through a neighbor’s yard. Emerged out onto another street.
Shouting lifted behind her—aw, she’d always thought herself faster than this.
She took off down the road, out of town, sprinting with everything inside her.
Behind her, a car engine revved, and she glanced behind her, quick.
Oh—what?
A Fiat Panda screamed down the road beside her. It slowed and beeped, and she glanced at the driver.
Nearly tripped.
Jonas.
“Get in! Get in!” He’d reached over and pushed open the passenger door, still motoring down the street, although slower.
She glanced behind her and spotted the truck, now lumbering out of the village.
“I promise—I’m on your side!”
She didn’t know she had a side. But maybe, yes. She lunged toward the door, grabbed it and flung herself inside.
Shut the door and turned in her seat, glancing behind her.
“What’s going on?”
“I have no idea. But until I do, I’m not interested in being abducted by a couple Russian thugs.”
“Me either. Belt in.”
She pulled off her backpack and threw it into the back seat. Then she grabbed her belt. Clicked it, even as he pushed the Panda into fifth gear.
Her laughter sounded almost hysterical as she stared at him, shook her head. “They’re going to mow us down in this thing.”
“Not the way I drive.”
Then he shot her a smile. And again, the sense of something whooshing out of her—fear, maybe—swept through her.
All she could do was hold on as he floored it.
Jonas hadn’t a clue why Sibba had been running down the road as if she might be on fire, but he guessed it had something to do with the truck bearing down on them.
And from the way she kept looking back, maybe Jonas should get out and push.
Naw, this little rental Panda might be lightweight and might only have 900 ccs under its skinny hood, but it was zippy and, frankly, the behemoth behind them had to crank down to low gear every time they hit a hill, so—yeah.
Buh-bye.
It helped that before he’d hired Geena to drive for Vortex.com and chase storms around the upper Midwest, he’d done the driving himself. He knew how to think fast, take turns on two wheels, and lose himself into no-man’s-land.
“Where are we going?”
“Anywhere. I don’t know.” It helped that he’d spent the better part of the past three days driving these back roads, searching for his downed weather dirigibles.
They cut sharply and wound around dirt roads that rose and fell over foothills, channeled through thick forests, and spidered off into dirt driveways and rutted two-wheel roads.
“They’re determined, that’s for sure. You must have really made them mad.”
He glanced in the rearview mirror. The truck had turned on its headlights with the fading light, but they were so far behind him—
He turned onto another road, then shut his lights off.
“What are you doing?”
“Hiding.”
There. A farmhouse, its lights off. And next to it, a massive white barn.
He pulled into a long driveway, then back behind the bar. Turned off the car completely, then jumped out and pulled hay over the car from a nearby mound.
Sibba had joined him, also cascading hay down from the mound until the car was its own mound of hay.
The sound of the truck rumbled closer, so he grabbed her and pulled her against him, alongside the barn.
Ridiculously, he held his breath.
The truck motored past, up the hill.
She stayed motionless a moment, then shucked his arms off her and rounded on him. He could barely see her in the fading darkness, but he had no problem remembering her face.
Those golden-brown eyes. “Just…what—how—” Her mouth closed, then opened again. “Who are you?”
“Looks like fun.”
“Looks like a good way to die.”
“Better than most,” Nixon had said, said glancing at him.
Jonas gave him a look. Offered a wry smile.
“C’mon, boss, let’s go.”
He’d followed Nixon down the mountain, but by the time they reached the bottom, Ina had been delivered over to medical help.
And Sibba had gone with her.
Still, she’d left an imprint in his mind. Her, huddled on a cliff with her friend one moment, jumping off a mountain the next.
Calling him Spidey. He remembered that way too much, really.
Maybe that’s why he’d told Fraser that he wanted more, back in Lake Como.
Now Jonas climbed over a squat, wooden fence and into the hayfield, past rolled bundles of drying hay, scanning for Frannie, her shiny silver body, or any sign of her.
There. Half buried in the ground, a curved metal spine. Jonas ran over and, as he got closer, spotted the metal nose cone. The back propeller.
More debris cluttered the field, and maybe two hundred yards away, he found the ribbed carcass that had connected to the black box, now twisted and torn, driven into the dirt.
But no black box.
Instead, mounted on the bottom of the carcass, where the black box might have been, hung the remains of a cylinder, burnt and dusty.
He stared at it a long moment, then pulled out his phone and took a few pictures. The silence in the wind combing the field pooled in his ears, running a cold finger down his spine as he processed what he was seeing.
Sometime in the past four days, someone had altered Frannie, attached a device onto her, and from what he could surmise, had detonated said device.
Maybe the storm hadn’t been Frannie’s demise.
He wanted to detach the device, haul it away, but dirt cemented the ribs of the dirigible into the ground, and he’d need a hacksaw, or even a blowtorch, to remove it.
Better to find the black box and analyze the flight data.
He walked around the field, scanning the wreckage, digging up fragments of the frame.
No box.
But according to his GPS data, the box had splashed down here.
He turned and looked at the farmhouse, just beyond a far drive. Maybe the owner had found the box…
A rusty red Allgaier tractor was parked near an old wooden barn. The wind had wrecked a hay bale behind the house, and although it didn’t seem the farm had sustained much damage, the barn doors hung open. A goat stood in the opening, stared at him, then spooked. In a yard near the barn, chickens waddled, pecking.
The rest of the barn, a rough-hewn structure with open stalls, stood vacant.
Across the dirt drive, a whitewashed stone house with a thatched roof seemed abandoned, but he went to the door and knocked.
Nothing. Not a squeaky board, not the swish of curtains at the window, not a breath of life.
He made to move the door handle when, behind him, rumbling thundered from the road, a stir of dust in its wake. Cupping his hand over his face, he spotted two green canvas-covered troop transports headed down the road.
The trucks rumbled past his little rental Panda and down the hill to Poče.
Maybe it was the Slovenian government, tracking the damage.
He watched them disappear down the hill and was turning to leave when, suddenly, behind him, the door opened.
He turned. Stared at the person standing in the door.
Then, on a wisp of breath… “Sibba?”
Three
“What are you doing here?”
She asked it in English, and no, it wasn’t the welcome her grandmother would have given to a stranger on her doorstep, but Sibba simply had nothing else at the sight of… “Jonas, right?”
Like she’d forget his name. Or how good he looked. Just as good as when she’d left him behind on a mountain a month ago. He wore a pair of brown cargo pants, boots, a puffy lightweight black jacket open over a denim shirt. A thousand percent American with his short brown hair and scruff of dark whiskers, like he’d walked out of an L.L.Bean clothing catalog.
Now he also wore a frown, as if trying to unknot her question. “Yes. Jonas Marshall. Hello Sibba.”
He remembered her name. She folded her arms over herself and nodded, her glance going toward Poče. How was it that he’d shown up just as the Slovenian military drove into Poče?
“What are you doing here?” Jonas asked.
“I asked you first.”
He shook his head, stuck his hands into his pockets. “You own this farm?”
“My grandfather does.”
“Sorry about your field. The wreckage belongs to one of my weather dirigibles.”
She just blinked at him. “What wreckage?”
He pointed to a piece of metal—looked like a carcass of some ancient animal—protruding from the field. “It went down in the derecho.”
Oh. That still didn’t explain the military’s arrival. Except—“Are you working with the Slovenian military?”
“No. I’m here on a grant, working out of Ljubljana with the University, studying storms and, primarily, lightning.”
She had nothing for that.
“So, this is your grandfather’s place? Is he here? Can I talk to him?”
Probably he was telling the truth, but it felt terribly coincidental that he’d landed in her life, twice, by happenstance, and the second time was on her grandfather’s doorstep.
Her American grandfather’s doorstep. And all his warnings, his secrets, his fears simply rose inside her, took hold.
Who was this guy? “No. He’s not here.” She stepped back, making to shut the door, but he stuck his foot into the space. “What?”
He frowned at her. “Are you okay?”
She raised an eyebrow. “You’re trespassing.”
He held up his hands. “Sorry. Wow. Okay. I just…nice to see you too.”
Oh, and now she was a jerk. After all, she’d been the one to…obviously she hadn’t been thinking clearly back on the mountain.
But all she knew now was that her grandfather was missing. And the warnings of the past had suddenly risen with painful acridity. “Why do you want to talk to my grandfather?”
He blinked at her. Frowned. “I wanted to apologize and ask him if he saw the dirigible go down. There’s this strange…” He then shut his mouth and shook his head. “Never mind.” He raised his hand and stepped back. “Glad you made it back to terra firma.”
And then he smiled. The sense of it rocked her back, the warmth in his eyes, the genuineness of his expression, the way that he just sort of reached out without guile. And once again, the knot in her chest unraveled and left her weirdly undone.
He turned and walked off the porch and back across the field.
Maybe she should call after him, but…
Her grandfather had vanished for a reason. And until she found out why, she wasn’t trusting anyone with an American passport.
Sibba shut the door and watched out the window as he tromped across her field. He stopped at the carcass in the dirt, crouching. Interesting.
She headed to the back room, where her grandfather kept his pack, his boots.
Gone, as she’d suspected.
She pulled off her shoes and grabbed her own hiking boots from under the bench. Grabbed her canvas jacket, the flannel-lined one she used for chores, and a hat.
First, she’d go to town, just to make sure that Dedi wasn’t in some crazy showdown with the Slovenian government.
And yes, her imagination had taken over, spun out scenarios that had her grandfather cornered, guns pointed at him, or worse, standing in front of a firing squad.
Blimey. She could thank her grandfather for those deep-seated nightmares, the fodder for a promise to never give away his identity during her travels abroad, especially if she landed in the US. Because, according to Hank Kovac, aka Henry Benson, Corpsman Second Class, US Navy, there was no statute of limitations on desertion.
Apparently, it wasn’t unheard of for US agents to appear at the doors of aging soldiers secreted away in places like Sweden or South America and haul them back to the States for court martial.
So no, Jonas wasn’t getting anywhere near Dedi.
She slipped out the back of the house and followed the trail through the forest, now partially overgrown, around their farmland and through the foothills into town. Less than a kilometer, but the sun had begun to slide beyond the Julian Alps, a simmer of fire along the jagged white peaks. Shadows filled the tangle of streets, haphazard and turning in on each other. Poče was little more than a village with cozy lanes and pristine avenues. But she loved the cluster of homes, fitted together like puzzle pieces all around a main square. She passed two-story, whitewashed homes, their second-story windows and inset balconies filled with flower boxes spilling late-season geraniums. A few cars were parked in carports, and a tabby ran across her path, but the town felt eerily empty as she made her way to the square.
Ina’s childhood home over the Poče bakery was dark and the shop shuttered. And next to that, the café, with the chairs set outside on the cobblestones, had its awning drawn in, the chairs stacked inside.
Probably to protect from the storm. Still, even the wind seemed voiceless here.
No sign of the military trucks parked in front of the ancient, orange-washed administrative building. And the water for the fountain in the middle of the square had been turned off, although with the oncoming cold weather, that wasn’t a surprise.
No bicycles were propped up along the fence in front of the Hotel Poče, a two-story B&B and restaurant. She half expected the clock tower to be silent too, but the giant minute hand clicked while she stood there in silence.
She headed for the Poče pub, located in the basement of the hotel via a side entrance.
If her grandfather was anywhere in Poče, it would be at one of the worn wooden tables, nursing a homebrewed lager and bowl of bograč soup, a crusty slice of pogača. Maybe laughing to a story told by Ciril Golab, Ina’s grandfather. Or maybe the barkeep, the burly son of the hotel owner.
But the door at the bottom of the steps was closed. She descended anyway and found it unlocked.
Pushed it open.
Inside, the space smelled of ale and onions, the chairs up on the tables, the long wooden bar empty.
A hollowness swept over her, turning her fragile, shaken.
The town had been abandoned.
A rumble sounded outside on the square, and she turned and headed up the stairs as the military truck now growled to a stop in front of the administrative building. Two men climbed out of the cab, and she expected more from the back, but no one emerged.
They weren’t wearing the green-gray BDUs of the Slovenian military. Just work jackets, jeans, and most importantly, they held handguns, loosely, as they looked around the square.
She sank back down into the stairwell.
Voices lifted, the language foreign but—shoot, she could recognize a variation of Slavic. Ukrainian, or maybe Hungarian. Even…Russian?
One of the men pointed to the administrative building, and the other ran inside, breaking the glass door to get in.
The first rounded the vehicle and stood in the square, looking at the vacated houses.
She sank back against the wall, her heart hammering. Closed her eyes.
What was going on?
A moment later, a shout from the administrative building made her look. The man had emerged and now descended the steps.
The first man turned and walked back to the truck.
She held her breath.
Just as he made to mount the truck’s footstep, a bark sounded from behind her.
She stilled.
Another bark, high and sharp. No—she groaned as she turned.
Behind her, on the street overlooking the stairs, stood Lenard, his squatty, bulldog body taut as he barked down at her.
As if trying to get her attention.
“Shh. Lenard. Stop—”
She glanced back and, oh no, the man had turned, started heading her direction. Maybe he hadn’t seen her yet, maybe she could just hide—
Scampering down the stairs, she closed the door to the bar behind her and fled behind the bar. Sank down into the darkness.
Shouting, probably at Lenard—oh, she hoped—and then, oh! Whining as maybe the man shooed Len away. Please, let him not have hurt him—
The door creaked open.
She closed her eyes, held her breath.
Footsteps scuffed across the cement floor of the pub. They stopped, maybe five feet away, just the pub bar between her and—she didn’t exactly know, and maybe they weren’t even villains. Maybe her own imagination, and even her grandfather’s fears, had stirred up a sinister hue to the entire situation.
Except, hello, guns. And then a shout, again in, um, Russian?
She knew enough about the current political landscape to know that Slovenia and Russia weren’t in cahoots, despite their former affiliations.
So, nope. Not moving.
Except, his shout had brought more footsteps and another voice.
She made herself very small.
Please, please.
“Vot!”
She opened her eyes. A man stood at the end of the bar, pushing open the swinging door—
She took off. Running toward the other end of the bar, headed for the door, and daylight and away from whoever—
A hand grabbed her arm, whipped her around. “Stop!”
Not. On her. Life!
She hadn’t been in the Slovenian military for nothing. She stomped on the man’s instep and shot her fist into his throat, breaking his hold on her jacket.
Then she rounded and pushed through the door.
She made it halfway up the steps before someone grabbed her feet. She landed hard, banged her chin, and screamed.
But she turned as she landed and sent her foot into her attacker’s face.
She scrambled up the stairs backward, turned, and ran.
Her assailants were untangling themselves at the bottom of the stairs, and shoot, Len had rounded and was now barking, running after her. She sprinted down the street, cut into another one, and then scrambled down a set of stairs, through a neighbor’s yard. Emerged out onto another street.
Shouting lifted behind her—aw, she’d always thought herself faster than this.
She took off down the road, out of town, sprinting with everything inside her.
Behind her, a car engine revved, and she glanced behind her, quick.
Oh—what?
A Fiat Panda screamed down the road beside her. It slowed and beeped, and she glanced at the driver.
Nearly tripped.
Jonas.
“Get in! Get in!” He’d reached over and pushed open the passenger door, still motoring down the street, although slower.
She glanced behind her and spotted the truck, now lumbering out of the village.
“I promise—I’m on your side!”
She didn’t know she had a side. But maybe, yes. She lunged toward the door, grabbed it and flung herself inside.
Shut the door and turned in her seat, glancing behind her.
“What’s going on?”
“I have no idea. But until I do, I’m not interested in being abducted by a couple Russian thugs.”
“Me either. Belt in.”
She pulled off her backpack and threw it into the back seat. Then she grabbed her belt. Clicked it, even as he pushed the Panda into fifth gear.
Her laughter sounded almost hysterical as she stared at him, shook her head. “They’re going to mow us down in this thing.”
“Not the way I drive.”
Then he shot her a smile. And again, the sense of something whooshing out of her—fear, maybe—swept through her.
All she could do was hold on as he floored it.
Jonas hadn’t a clue why Sibba had been running down the road as if she might be on fire, but he guessed it had something to do with the truck bearing down on them.
And from the way she kept looking back, maybe Jonas should get out and push.
Naw, this little rental Panda might be lightweight and might only have 900 ccs under its skinny hood, but it was zippy and, frankly, the behemoth behind them had to crank down to low gear every time they hit a hill, so—yeah.
Buh-bye.
It helped that before he’d hired Geena to drive for Vortex.com and chase storms around the upper Midwest, he’d done the driving himself. He knew how to think fast, take turns on two wheels, and lose himself into no-man’s-land.
“Where are we going?”
“Anywhere. I don’t know.” It helped that he’d spent the better part of the past three days driving these back roads, searching for his downed weather dirigibles.
They cut sharply and wound around dirt roads that rose and fell over foothills, channeled through thick forests, and spidered off into dirt driveways and rutted two-wheel roads.
“They’re determined, that’s for sure. You must have really made them mad.”
He glanced in the rearview mirror. The truck had turned on its headlights with the fading light, but they were so far behind him—
He turned onto another road, then shut his lights off.
“What are you doing?”
“Hiding.”
There. A farmhouse, its lights off. And next to it, a massive white barn.
He pulled into a long driveway, then back behind the bar. Turned off the car completely, then jumped out and pulled hay over the car from a nearby mound.
Sibba had joined him, also cascading hay down from the mound until the car was its own mound of hay.
The sound of the truck rumbled closer, so he grabbed her and pulled her against him, alongside the barn.
Ridiculously, he held his breath.
The truck motored past, up the hill.
She stayed motionless a moment, then shucked his arms off her and rounded on him. He could barely see her in the fading darkness, but he had no problem remembering her face.
Those golden-brown eyes. “Just…what—how—” Her mouth closed, then opened again. “Who are you?”
