Heart Strike Read Online Free Page B

that Mutt and Jeff did.
    She’d left behind Charli from her middle name Charlene, because that had been her brother’s nickname for her. The name had died with him. Her middle initial was turned into “Cat” because she could sneak up on anyone, except Gibson. And just as cats sometimes had too many toes, she had too few. She’d lost two toes and her brother to an ice storm during a winter climb up Washington State’s Mount Rainier. Shut it out. Shut it out. Even after five years, the memory still hurt like a knife.
    â€œMutt and Jeff.”
    Melissa The Cat wanted to purr when Gibson called them that.
    â€œWe need you on fireteams based out of Saudi Arabia. Are you ready for that?”
    â€œSure,” they chimed in together. They were always doing that, which is why her tag for them had stuck so well.
    She’d be up for that too. Her Arabic was poor—okay, dismal—but she knew from experience just how fast she could fix that. There wasn’t anyone in The Unit with less than three languages fluent and several more at least serviceable.
    â€œGood.” Gibson nodded. “Your flight leaves in forty-five minutes. You have time to shower, pack your gear, and get to Hangar Seventeen. Go.”
    There was a stunned second or two as they realized that they wouldn’t all be deploying together. They’d known that was unlikely of course, had talked about it, but it was still a shock. For six months of OTC plus the additional month of Delta Selection with Jeff, the three of them had rarely been apart. They’d become her friends. Her team. They had, as the saying went, gone through hell and hell together.
    There wasn’t a third second of hesitation—The Unit’s operators were trained to adapt rapidly.
    Maxwell and Jaffe offered her high fives; instead she gave each of them a hug.
    â€œNow she lays some flesh on us,” Mutt quipped. Jeff was quiet as usual, but gave her a good hug and a high five. Then he whispered quietly to her, “Kick ass, sister.”
    Not trusting herself to speak, she nodded and they were gone.
    The shock of their departure left her in the lurch, like she’d leaned up against a wall that had always been there and suddenly it wasn’t.
    Colonel Gibson was silent, waiting patiently in his helmsman’s chair.
    She did her best to school her nerves into a calm state—wasn’t working, so she shot for a calm er state and made it only partway there—before sitting down. Not quite sure how, she’d landed in the captain’s seat. Now that she was in it, the chair felt odd, wrong, too big and too important. Hell, she’d only graduated OTC a dozen minutes ago and already her two closest friends were up and gone out of her life. The military was like that, but it didn’t make it any easier.
    Melissa forced her attention back to Gibson and shot for casual to hide the lack of calm. “So, what’s the deal, Boss?”
    He glanced at his watch uncertainly.
    Nervous? The most highly trained soldier in any military in any country was nervous? Oh man, this was going to be so bad.
    â€œI have—” He cleared his throat and started again. “You are fluent in Spanish?”
    He must know that she was from her file. “ Ja, ich spreche Spanisch. Auch, Italienisch und Französisch ,” she answered in flawless German.
    No smile. Not even a hint that he could. He had actually laughed with her not a moment before; Melissa was sure he had…fairly sure. She knew he wasn’t about to confess to being her father, because Mom and Dad were living happily on their houseboat in Victoria Harbour on Vancouver Island in Canada.
    â€œAnd you can fly planes.”
    â€œSmall ones, sure. I can even take off a helicopter without crashing, if I have an instructor beside me.” Melissa and her brother had gotten their private pilot licenses together, and she’d had a few rotorcraft lessons