Wait Until Dark (The Night Stalkers) by M. L. Buchman Read Free Book Online Page B

now, he didn’t seem so overwhelming. Big and powerful, but with a kindness inside that his exterior did little to reveal. Even when he was exhausted and cold and viewed in profile, you could see his irrepressible merriness. Nothing like her father who had been quiet, thoughtful, guarded. Never speaking without thinking. She’d done her best to emulate him.
    But perhaps she was missing something.
    John made her feel… Connie wasn’t sure. She’d never been good at placing words on her emotions, when she even allowed herself to consider them. Pain she knew. The pain that wrapped around her heart every time she thought of her father’s death in an unnamed helicopter in an unmentionable place.
    Around John, that constant pain eased. The tight squeeze that often made it hard to breathe let go just a tiny bit, and the sensation was quite heady.
    A part of her heard John teasing his buddy Crazy Tim. A part of her heard the deep friendship that lay between them. But the words garbled and were washed away by the solid thud of her own heart.
    Standing next to John, she felt that weightless moment she’d missed when jumping out of the back of the C-17 Globemaster III.
    That incredible sense of flying.

Chapter 10
    Twelve hours.
    Pure luxury. Twelve hours out cold with a hot meal and a hot shower on each end.
    John had not one complaint. Well, not much of a complaint, though he could certainly think of one fine enhancement. And his opportunities were much better here. Not a lot of available women in Bati, Pakistan, especially ones not likely to knife him while he slept. There had only been four American women at the base—the Major, Kee the gunner, a day staffer, and Connie.
    While Fort Campbell wasn’t what you’d called a target-rich environment, in comparison it wasn’t so bad at all.
    He mounded up a short stack of pancakes, a couple eggs, bacon and sausage, English muffin, hash browns, and a coffee mug the size of his fist. A damn cute mess-hall orderly, with skin hued nearly the same color as the dark roast she poured, offered to refill his mug almost every time he set it back down.
    They really knew how to live back here at the SOAR regimental headquarters. Instead of in a chow tent huddled at one end of a scorched and abandoned soccer stadium dotted with plywood tables, they were in Grimm Hall. He hadn’t seen this many Americans at once in over six months. He’d seen bigger crowds in the Afghan and Pakistani markets, pressing, pushing, crowded mayhem, but that was different and dangerous as well. Here, with the SOAR training battalion and the first two fighting battalions, Fort Campbell felt like New York in comparison, all energy and purpose.
    It didn’t feel as if they were tucked away in the westernmost corner of Kentucky, just a couple of states over from his family. Maybe he could get some time to see them; it had been too long.
    The orderly came around again to flirt a bit more. She was long, lean, and Army fit. A very nice combination. He wouldn’t mind a little companionship. Wouldn’t mind it a bit. Out of the corner of his eye he spotted Connie coming off the chow line. Without thinking, he raised a hand high to get her attention.
    Even at the distance, he noted her eyes going a bit wide.
    He waved for her to join him.
    She started in his direction, looking as if she were grinding gears and couldn’t quite engage her transmission.
    “You could have said.”
    “Hunh?” By the time he looked in the orderly’s direction, she was striding off without even the nice sashay of those splendid hips she’d offered the first few times around. What? Connie was just one of his crewmates. That didn’t mean he didn’t want to see the orderly. Connie was just…
    He watched her as she approached. She was just… Something about her snagged his full attention. His world went quiet around her. Not as if he didn’t want to speak, but as if he didn’t need to.
    “You sure?” She stood half a step from the other