Cora Carmack: Seeking Her

I didn’t answer, pretending to fall back into sleep.

I made sure to keep my limbs out of the aisle and my head down. A few minutes later, I recognized the strappy sandals on her feet as she shuffled back toward the front of the plane.

I glanced up, careful to keep my hat down. The old woman sitting next to her had taken advantage of Kelsey’s absence to get something out of her bag, and was now struggling to return the bag to the overhead bin above her.

Normally, I would have stood up to help, but I couldn’t risk drawing any more attention to myself. I was banking on the darkness of the plane and Kelsey’s obvious sleepiness to negate our earlier interaction.

Instead, I watched as Kelsey took the bag from the woman and lifted it up above her head. Her shirt rode up again, and this time my eyes didn’t hesitate to search out the smooth skin of her waist.

Damn. I needed to reel that in ASAP.

I leaned my elbows on my knees and pressed my forehead into my knuckles. This didn’t bode well for my self-­control on this trip. It had never exactly been my strong suit. The Marines had helped with that, but I still had my weak points.

And a pretty blonde was definitely one of them.

Lust made men do stupid things.

Okay, me. Lust made me do stupid things.

­People tend to notice when you openly stare at them. That particular stupid thing could send me packing on the first flight back to Houston in no time.

My father had already threatened me with a job at his company if I didn’t shape up and stick with something, and that was something I’d never had any desire to do. Sooner or later, I would run out of jobs willing to take a chance on someone with my track record, and I’d be forced to accept it. Then I’d be right back on the track that had sent me off the deep end nearly a decade ago. But this time, I wouldn’t have the Marines to pull me out of it.

I turned up my music as loud as I could stand it and settled back in my seat, determined to get some sleep.

This was a job. Plain and simple. I had to think of it that way. And since it would be easy for the next ten hours or so, I should rest now while I could. The real job would begin when we landed in the Ukraine.

I closed my eyes, glad at least that the Marines had taught me how to sleep just about anywhere. This was a mission. Just like all the rest. And it was a hell of a lot easier than any of the others I’d had over the years.

IT DIDN’T TAKE long after landing for me to realize that this job wouldn’t be nearly as easy as I had anticipated.

I’d thought it was kind of ridiculous when Mr. Summers gave me a phone with a GPS tracker linked to Kelsey’s. I had assumed I’d just get up early, watch for her to leave, and then follow. She’d go back to her hotel. I’d wait for her to go to sleep, then snag some rest of my own.

Oh, how very wrong I’d been.

I checked into an inn across the street from her hostel in Kiev, specifically requesting a room that faced the street and would give me a good view of her coming and going.

I got my key and climbed the narrow stairs to the room, pulling my phone out of my pocket on the way. I dialed the number Kelsey’s father had given me, and a woman answered.

“Mr. Summer’s office.”

I cleared my throat. “Yes, um, this is Jackson Hunt.” I wasn’t sure how much further to identify myself. Daughter Stalker wasn’t exactly a title I was ready to throw around in public.

“Yes, Mr. Hunt. Mr. Summers is in a meeting, but he was expecting your call. You arrived safely?”

“Yes, we both did.”

“Excellent. He’ll be in touch.”

The line went dead. I stood still in front of my door for a few moments.

That was somehow less . . . dramatic than I thought it would be. I was glad I wasn’t the only one handling this matter-­of-­factly.

I fit the old-­fashioned key into the lock and entered the room. I deposited my stuff on a simple bed with spindly legs and a thin mattress, then glanced out the window—­just in time to glimpse Kelsey fleeing the hostel on the back of some guy’s moped.

“Oh, fuck me.”

I grabbed a few key items and powered up the app that linked me to her phone. Cursing, I took the stairs two at a time, as fast I could, down to the lobby. I ran out into the street, but she was long gone.

“Goddamn it.”

A tourist ­couple with fanny packs (yes, actual fanny packs) jumped in response to my swear.

Easy, Hunt. Blend in.

That’s what this mission required. I needed to get good at it, and fast. My heart beat loudly in my ears as I waited for the app to finish loading. I was trained to operate under pressure. Panic should not have been a problem, but this was different.

First, it’s a lot easier to fight a person than to protect one. And when I did protect someone, it was usually a guy in combat gear who had a gun of his own. And I knew those guys. I knew their tendencies, their strengths, and their weaknesses.

I was beginning to realize just how little I knew about Kelsey Summers.

The phone pinged, and I watched a moving blue dot that I guessed was her. She was already a ­couple miles away. I jogged down to a busier corner and flagged down a taxi. It wasn’t until I slid across the cracked leather seat that I realized I couldn’t tell him where I was going because I had no fucking clue.

His dark eyes met mine expectantly through the rearview mirror, and I held up a finger to buy some time. I’d bought a Ukrainian phrasebook in the airport on a whim while Kelsey was in the bathroom. I felt a trickle of sweat run down the back of my neck as I dug it out of my bag and flipped through the first few pages frantically.

One look at the letters that I didn’t recognize (or have any idea how to pronounce), and I knew the phrasebook was going to do jack shit for me.

“English?” I asked the driver.

He didn’t need to reply. I got the giant, resounding no just from the slant of his thick eyebrows.

I tried showing him the app, hoping maybe he would recognize the interface of a GPS or be able to recognize what part of the city that blue dot was currently moving through, but his eyebrows only furrowed further.

Defeated, I smiled, threw him a ­couple coins for his trouble, and then climbed out of the cab, now even farther away from Kelsey and with no idea how I was going to get to her.

It took me exactly ten minutes to figure out that my Ukrainian phrasebook was largely useless (not just because I was useless when it came to using it, but because most of the ­people I ran across spoke Russian instead).

Did Kelsey speak Russian? I may not have gone to college, but I didn’t think the average rich girl from Texas would be fluent in the language. Then again, given the chance to go to Europe, the average girl would have probably chosen London or Paris or Rome.

Maybe she knew that guy on the moped. Except, her father didn’t mention anything about Kelsey visiting friends (or a boyfriend) overseas. But then again, he ran in the same circles as my father, who made it a point to be as oblivious as possible, so perhaps he just didn’t know.

Or maybe that boyfriend was why he sent me. Maybe he was dangerous.

Frustrated, I rubbed my hand across the top of my shorn head, not for the first time, missing the longer hair I’d had before enlisting. You’d think after two tours, I would be used to it, but I wasn’t. Groaning, I decided that I wasn’t getting any closer to her by standing around. And the idea of her being God-­knows-­where with that guy had my insides clenching uncomfortably.

I set off on foot, too annoyed and worried to actually look around me at the city. I could only stare at that dot and know that I was fucking this up as badly as everything else in my life.