Lindsay McKenna - Firstborn

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.”