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“And what if I did tell Wyatt no?” Willow challenged her, opening her hands. “What if he sends us some other patriarchal male asshole who is truly a pain in our collective asses?”
“What? Is this like the evil you know is better than choosing an evil you don’t know?”
Willow nodded, pursing her full lips. “Yes, that’s how I see it. Shep is a known quantity to me. I know where the potholes are with him and they’re all in the personal playing field, not in my professional life or duties. We’re not coming together as ex-lovers this time. He’s coming here to serve the downtrodden just like we do. There’s mutual agreement on that point.”
“Yeah,” Dev muttered derisively, sipping her coffee, “there’s the monkey wrench in the works. Is Porter really over you? Are you over him? Or are you going to fall to the lowest common denominator with one another and start your cat-and-dog fights all over again after you leave the bedroom?”
“No, I wouldn’t do that. This is strictly professional. There’s no bedroom scene.”
“You might not think that, but he could.”
“That’s the unanswered question, isn’t it?” She compressed her lips and sat up. “I’m going to call Wyatt on the sat phone and talk with him directly. That’s what I’ll hinge my final decision on.”
“Well,” Dev said, “if Porter can’t be mature, keep it on a professional, detached level, then it’s gonna bleed out on everyone, Willow, not just on you two. And that’s a bad outcome. You know that.”
“Yeah, I agree with you and I know that.” replied Willow. “I wouldn’t compromise this assignment and helping those villages like that, Dev.”
“Geez,” Dev muttered, “this sucks. It’s not like we aren’t gonna be pushing balls to the wall on this assignment, Willow. We’re gonna be working overtime all the time. Shield needs to give us a big raise or hire two more pilots to help relieve some of the workload we’ve taken on.”
“According to the schedule Wyatt sent us, that’s not quite true. The buildup to getting everything flown out to the first village will require us to put a lot of extra flight hours in. We’ll max out our flying time and he knows that. The timesheet allows for that. But once we get the supplies, equipment and people flown into a given village, things will slow down for us to a degree.”
“Until we need to move everyone to the next village. This feels like that movie ‘Groundhog Day’.”
Willow smiled a little. “Well? You were bitching a couple of months ago that you were growing bored and that you needed more flight time. Now? You’ll get that time in spades. So? Which do you want worse?”
Dev gave her an evil grin. “I’m a tough one to please, ain’t I?”
Willow wasn’t fooled by her Tennessee drawl. Sometimes, Dev wanted people to think she was slow and stupid, which of course, was the antithesis of her. It was a ploy she’d learned at a very early age and one that had saved her several times. She could hide behind her soft, pleasing southern drawl when she wanted to, like a chameleon deciding who to be for any given person or situation she had to deal with. Did they get the stupid version or the super-intelligent woman that Dev really was? Who knew? Willow had seen all the sides to Dev over the year they’d worked together. “No, you’re really easy to get along with,” Willow said, giving her a warm, sincere look.
Dev was twenty-nine years old, making Willow a year younger than her. But at times, Dev’s life history made her seem decades older than Willow herself. The predatory incest, the sickness and dysfunction of Dev’s poverty-stricken Tennessee household, had matured her in ways Willow could not fathom. But she knew the chinks in Dev’s well-worn armor. Of course, Willow had her own set. And chinks in it, too. All women had them. A lot of them.
“Listen, I need to have the security list of soldiers, their names, and the times they’ll be at the warehouse. Is it ready?”
“Almost.” Dev unwound from her scrunched position on the chair and walked to the opened door. “Make your call to Wyatt,” she said. “And I’ll get the papers together at my condo and bring them over to you in about an hour. By then, you’ll know the outcome of that call, and your decision?”
“Yep,” Willow promised. She watched Dev disappear and heard her condo door open and close. Her throat was tight with tension, and she felt more emotion than she wanted to admit to rising in her chest. Picking up the satellite phone, she dialed in Wyatt’s number. Might as well get this over with. Willow wasn’t sure what she would decide. It all hinged on Wyatt’s talk with Shep earlier. He wanted to come over here. But was she prepared for it at all? She hated indecision, and usually wasn’t one to hesitate in the slightest. As a combat pilot, indecision could get people killed. Feelings stirred deep within her, ones she’d tried for three years to ignore.
“Lockwood here.”
“Wyatt? This is Willow Chamberlin. I wanted to speak to you.”
“Good to hear from you, Willow. You obviously got my file and email?”
“Yep,” she said, resting her arm on the desk.
“Was it a shock to you?”
She smiled a little. “Minor earthquake, Wyatt.”
“Okay, so what’s your down-and-dirty on this situation?”
“You tell me. You talked to Shep. Right?”
“Yes, we had a mission briefing with him yesterday. He knows you’ll be intimately involved in all phases of this assignment as the pilot-in-command.”
“What was his reaction?”
“Surprise. But I don’t feel in a bad way.”
