Page 24 of Keeping a Warrior

Rhys shuddered. The moon was bright—almost ninety percent illume—and the light tricked his eyes into thinking there were silhouettes in the windows. Ghostly passengers in a ghost plane.

“It’s just so sad and majestic,” Devon murmured. “Park here and let’s look at it, okay?”

Ugh.

Rhys shoved his childish revulsion away and turned the truck so the bed was facing the derelict. Devon climbed out and pulled the tailgate down before jumping up to perch on the end of it. She swung her legs and leaned back on her hands, staring up at the plane.

“I wish we could get inside.”

Of course the doors were way too high up for them to reach. Rhys grunted. “Not sad about it.”

Devon nudged him with her foot. “Scared?”

“It’s creepy as fuck, Devon.”

She laughed. “It is, a little. But there’s just something about it...”

When she didn’t say anything else, Rhys went to rummage in the truck bed. He found a few thick sleeping bags, and he folded one up and offered it to her to sit on. She took it with a grateful smile and wedged it underneath herself.

“Ah, much better.”

He investigated the cooler. “You want a beer?”

“No, thanks.”

He started to pull one out for himself, then paused. “Mind if I have one?”

She didn’t answer for a moment, her fingers drifting over one of her shorts pockets. A knife? Finally she nodded. “Go ahead.”

Rhys twisted the top off the beer, made a sitting pad and settled on the tailgate next to her. For long minutes, the only sound was of the wind whistling and the beer in the bottle gurgling as Rhys sipped it.

“Where are you from?” Rhys finally asked her, unable to suppress his curiosity any longer.

“Well, I was born in Florida, but my dad was Air Force so we lived all over.”

“Whoa. You’re an Air Force brat?”

“Yep. He’s a retired B-52 bomber pilot. Gulf War.”

“What made you go Army?”

“I had my sights set on aviation, too, but when I heard about the CST program, I couldn’t pass up the challenge.”

“Well, you’ve more than risen to meet that challenge.” Rhys toasted her with his beer.

Devon shook her head and drew her legs up to wrap her arms around them. She rested her chin on her knees. “Where are you from?”

Rhys took another swallow of beer, accepting the change of subject. “Evansville, Indiana.”

“How’d you end up in the Air Force?”

“Well, there aren’t a whole lot of prospects in Evansville.” Understatement of the year. “It was a way out, a way to provide for me and Lani. I enlisted right out of high school with the same goal as every other dumb kid—serve a tour or two, get some money for college, get out and have a life.”

“Yet here you are.”

“Yeah.” Rhys finished his beer and stowed the empty bottle back in the cooler. “I was working in Germany as a flight mechanic when a couple of PJs came through the shop on their way to Iraq. We got to talking, and I decided to apply.”

“And the rest is history.”