Snorting, Tal gestured to the chair in front of her desk. “Have a seat. I can’t argue with you on that one. I haven’t seen your report on that mission yet. What’s the bottom line?” Tal sat down, picking up a thumb drive and placing it next to her laptop.
Sloan took the thumb drive, pulled the laptop off the desk and settled it into her lap. “Somalia is a tough place,” she muttered, shaking her head. She inserted the drive and opened the laptop lid. “Bottom line is that our Delos medical team got in there, did their job, and we got them out. It was dicey. The local warlord wanted to attack us, but he needed the village chieftain’s loyalty, so he backed off. We worked seven days rendering medical, dental, and optometry care to a thousand villagers.”
“Did you get any sleep?”
She grinned crookedly. Lifting her head, she devoted her attention to Tal. They had been good friends since they’d met in Bagram six years earlier. “Not much. I took care of the little girls, women, and all the babies. The rest of my medical team, all guys, took care of the men and boys.”
Tal leaned back, assessing her employee. Sloan Kennedy was five feet ten inches tall. Tal was six feet tall. That was what originally drew them to one another—their height. When they met at the canteen on base, they immediately gravitated to one another, trading sour stories about how their height wasn’t an advantage at all on an Army base that was ninety-percent men. They stood a head taller than most women, and therefore, were the first to be spotted in a crowd and the first to get hit on.
“The village chieftain is a good man,” Sloan said. “In fact, he asked Delos to send in a team every three months to his village.”
Grimacing, Tal muttered, “That is dicey. Those Somalian warlords know that our volunteers come out of Europe and North America—and they hate us for a variety of reasons.”
Rubbing her chin, Tal assessed her friend. She had shoulder-length straight brown hair with gold highlights among the strands. Sloan wore a set of old, whitewashed jeans, and a gray crewneck sweater that brought out the color of her large, intelligent eyes. She rarely saw her wearing earrings, but today she had on a set of small silver ones. Hiking boots were something she was used to when she was slotted into Special Forces A teams for nearly six years. Still, she looked feminine, if thin.
“Before we go into the mission room, I need to talk to you personally about something that has to do with this next assignment,” Tal said, seriously.
Frowning, Sloan looked up, hearing the concern in her friend’s alto voice. “What’s wrong?”
“Maybe nothing,” Tal said, shrugging. “But maybe something. Wyatt chose another operator for this op, but I told him I wanted to insert you, instead.”
“Oh?” Sloan said, raising her brows. “Wyatt’s pretty good with assigning people and matching them up with a mission.”
“Well,” Tal hedged, giving her a concerned look, “this is personal…and truthfully? You may not want this upcoming task, Sloan. You need to know right now that if this is asking too much of you, you can turn it down right here and now after you hear me out. Okay?”
Intrigued, Sloan sat back, closing the lid of the laptop, her spare hand across it. “Now you got my curiosity up. What’s going on?”
Tal picked up a folder beneath her hand and opened it. “You know that part of the report you send to Delos is a bottom line assessment.”
“Right.” Sloan could see the turmoil in Tal’s green eyes. She had been her friend for a long time—and she wasn’t one to miss important details. Sloan had her own psychic sense of things, and she felt as if Tal was really bothered by something in whoever’s report she had in hand.
“This report came from the Canadian Doctor’s Mission in Sudan three months ago. The head of the team, Dr. Lacey Reeves, was the one who wrote it up. We use a medical, dental or optometry team’s report and compare it to the report by our operator who was with the group. In this case, the operator was a helicopter pilot out of Port Sudan. It reads well and is thorough as we expect them to be.” She held up a hard copy of the doctor’s report. “But on this one? It shifts, and that’s what has me concerned. In her report, Dr. Reeves noted that the Delos helicopter pilot who ferried them to and from this village had the smell of beer on his breath one of the five days that he was with them in that village.”
“Drinking isn’t allowed in that country for starters,” Sloan said.
“But it’s also against Delos’ flight rules. When one of our operators, pilots or anyone employed by us, drinks on the job, that’s grounds for dismissal.”
“Why are you telling me this? Why aren’t you processing this through Human Resources?” Sloan asked, stymied.
Tal dropped the report on the desk, leaning back in her chair, and studying her. “Because it involves someone we both know,” she murmured. “Ordinarily, I’d send an HR representative to give this individual a chance to tell their side of the story. But I know more about this pilot than some of the other employees whom we hired.” Her lips quirked. “And, Sloan, on top of that, it gets even more personal. It involves you. The pilot in question is Dan Malloy.”
Sloan’s mouth dropped open. Her eyes widened. “Dan? Does Dan work for Delos?
“Yes,” Tal said gruffly. “Since I run the security side of this company, I’m not always aware of all the people that HR has hired. The potential employees go through different channels here, and in this case, Dan is a helicopter pilot, so his potential employment goes to the air wing division here at our company. I wouldn’t necessarily know anything about it. And,” she sighed, “I didn’t.” She flicked her hand toward the file. “Dr. Reeves’ report came in, and Wyatt gave it to me to read. He knew that we hired him, and Wyatt approved giving Dan the pilot position at Port Sudan. There, Dan is to fly volunteer medical teams in and out of Sudanese villages that are Delos Charities’ responsibility. He’s been doing this for two years. Now, this.”
Shock thundered through Sloan. “I-I lost track of Dan when he walked out of my life at Bagram.”
“Yeah,” Tal said, sympathetically, “I remember that—clearly. You two had been going together a good year and a half before that crash where he got wounded. You were the one that saved his life.”
Rubbing her brow, an avalanche of different emotions plowed through Sloan. Her voice became strangled. “I lost track of him after he left me, Tal.”
“I remember how hurt you were. Holding you while you cried. It took you nearly six months to get over him walking out on you without any explanation. Lame, if you ask me.”
Her heart remembered, and unconsciously, Sloan rubbed that area beneath her gray sweater. Even now, years later, she could still feel Dan’s mouth hotly against her own, remember how he brought her intense, pleasurable orgasms, the laughter she shared with him afterward, lying in his arms, feeling safe—loved. Swallowing against a forming lump, Sloan worked to put all those treasured memories and emotions back into that box deep in her heart once more. Mouth dry, she whispered, “Yeah, it was a pretty intense time. I’m glad you were there. You understood.”
“It was a hard time for you,” Tal agreed, her voice low with feeling. “Do you ever remember Dan drinking beer before or after a Night Stalker flight?”
“No…never. Like me, he enjoyed a beer over at the canteen, Tal, but he was careful, and he never did it within twenty-four hours of a flight.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“He knew his flight schedule. He knew when he was on duty. There’s a strict rule no pilot can drink alcohol twenty-four hours before a flight, and he adhered to that. I never once smelled beer on his breath.” Her arched brows dipped. “That doesn’t sound like Dan at all.”
“Based on what you’re saying, you’re right,” Tal said, seeing the worry in Sloan’s narrowed gray eyes. “I’m having HR look into his personnel record. I’ve asked for them to inform me if alcoholism runs in his family.”
“I don’t think so,” Sloan said, searching her memory. “His dad, Allan, is a truck driver for a meat-packing company in San Diego.”