Page 88 of Acting on Instinct
They were not to flatline anyone.
T-Rex shook hands with the CNI and told him they would function professionally throughout the intervention in accordance with the rules given to them.
And then they waited.
Finally, Ty spotted the Davidson jet floating down from the sky.
“Bigger than yours, White,” Nitro said over the comms.
“Huh,” White replied, “and here I was always told it wasn’t the size of the boat but the motion of the ocean.”
Ty watched a grin spread over Havoc’s face as he listened to White’s banter.
Ty, himself, was struggling.
Had he been in this position before with a big-assed emotional component, saving his brothers and sisters from the dangers they faced together? Absolutely.
But Kira was something wholly different from his brotherhood; she was his breath, his soul.
She’d been in danger before, but Kira had been beside him. He could see with his own eyes that she was fine. He was able to move her out of the dangers.
This time, she drank the unknown liquid, and now, the best guess was that she was on this jet with the bad guys.
Since she wasn’t on the manifest, that meant she wasn’t visible to the customs agent at takeoff.
Tied and gagged and stuck in a cubby?
That seemed like best case.
Yeah, he was struggling with the images of her, drawn in vivid detail, in his imagination.
White was in his ear, “Okay, the tower instructed them onto their landing strip. Get ready to look professional. Echo Two, you hanging in?”
“Echo Two, standing by for the signal, hopefully it comes soon. Rory’s got a bad case of gas, and it’s hard to breathe in the cab.” Light. Professional. Muscle memory. Ty couldn’t let his emotions jam him up.
But it was harder every second once the tires chirped, trying to gain traction, and the pilot eased the jet around to where T-Rex signaled him in with a practiced flourish of the orange wands.
Havoc placed the chocks.
Ty lowered his window to hear.
The engine wound down, and through the windshield, Ty watched the pilots remove their headsets.
Nitro and Jeopardy walked toward the jet door as it opened, and the co-pilot lowered the steps.
Nitro signaled the man down and called for the pilot to bring their logbooks and documentation. The co-pilot blinked. Nitro gave the same instructions in English with an impressively heavy boot on the accent pedal.
The co-pilot asked if all the passengers should do the same, and Nitro batted the question away with the flick of his hand.
As soon as the pilot moved to the tarmac, Nitro asked them to show him what was in their hold.
Ty stopped breathing. He was terrified that, when they opened it up, Kira would be rolled in a rug, like the team had just done to the Paris cell.
There was the green puff that Kira tied to her suitcase, and her backpack with the bright pink “peonies—not roses, Ty.” Stacked neatly in a row, six other carry-on-sized bags—two pilots, four names on the manifest, that seemed right.
Next, there were a couple of heavy-duty totes, the kind that operators used for their gear.
Nitro would maintain control of the pilots.
