“What about his mother?”
“She left her husband and Dan when he was nine years old. She said she couldn’t take it anymore. I don’t know what that meant. Dan just seemed bummed out by it, but he wasn’t willing to say anything more. I’m not a shrink, but I think he felt abandoned by her.”
“Was she an alcoholic?”
“He didn’t say. He mentioned that his mother was very up and down emotionally. One minute she was crying, the next, super busy, rushing around and wearing herself out.”
“Bipolar?”
“Could be,” Sloan agreed. With her deep medical background, she was well aware of the symptoms for such a diagnosis. “Dan refused to say any more to me about her, but I could feel the hurt around him.”
“Well,” Tal sighed, “I’m not sure I’d ever get over that, either.”
“Right,” Sloan murmured. “In Dr. Reeves’ report, did she say whether Dan was flying and drinking?”
“No, what happened is he ferried in a volunteer Canadian medical team to a Sudanese village. They stayed there five days. Dan was with them all the time because he has passable Arabic and would often act as interpreter when they needed one. Very few people speak English out in these villages.”
“Yes, that’s for sure. So, Dan was drinking while there in the village then?”
Tal handed her the report. “Read it?”
Sloan leaned across the desk, took the report, and focused on the paragraph Dr. Reeves had written:
“Mr. Malloy woke people in the nearby huts one night with shouts and screaming. He emerged in the morning with bloodshot eyes, looked sleep-deprived, and was not in the best of moods. That same day, we smelled beer on his breath, although he never acted drunk. He continued to help us, continued to translate and do his job well. When I asked him if everything was all right, he got irritable and said he was fine. On the fifth day, he seemed more like himself once more. Other than the one morning, we never smelled alcohol on his breath again. He flew us back to Port Sudan without any incident or issues. It was a safe, quiet flight.”
“I don’t know what to make of this,” Sloan murmured.
“Did Dan ever drink when under stress or pressure?”
She snorted. “Hell, Tal, being a Night Stalker pilot was big-time stress all the time. You know that.”
“Yeah,” she grumped, “but I just wanted to hear it from you.” She shook her head. “I don’t question Dr. Reeves’ report at all. Ordinarily, HR would send out a rep to get Dan’s side of the story. But I knew you were coming in off this Somalia mission, and I wanted to give him a fair shake in this. The only fly in that ointment is that you may not want to be around him again because he walked out on you.”
Sloan shook her head, sadness threading through her. “I lost track of him, Tal. I had no idea where he was in the world. He never contacted me again after he left me.” She swallowed hard.
Tal sat up, resting her elbows on her desk, holding Sloan’s troubled gaze. “That’s why I wanted you on this mission. He’s a known quantity to you. And while you’re on the mission, maybe you can find out what’s going on with him? Find out why he drank beer in that village? Because Wyatt’s gone through all the other medical reports by other volunteers he ferried monthly, and there’s never been a mention of that kind of behavior by him in any of them.”
Sloan couldn’t stop her heart from leaping into the mix. There was no one else like Dan Malloy. That time they’d spent together had been the happiest of her life. And as high as they had flown with one another, after that crash on the mountain, everything changed with her and Dan. He became a shadow in her life. Three months after that, he told her that he couldn’t see her again and that it was over. No explanation. Could her heart stand a second round with this man?
“I worry that he won’t want me around,” Sloan slowly admitted. Rejection was a bitch, and she still wasn’t completely over it to this day. She had fallen in love with Dan even though she’d never said those words to him. Maybe, because he hadn’t known the depth of her feelings for him, it had been easier for him to walk away.
Sloan looked up. “Okay, I’ll take the mission, Tal. Dan’s a good person, a hero in my eyes. He deserves a fair judgment call on this. If I’m on the mission, it will give me ample time to observe him. When you’re around someone 24/7, sooner or later, their spots show.”
“It’s going to be hard on you,” Tal warned. “That concerns me a lot. I don’t want you to be his punching bag in any way. I’m not asking that of you.”
“Oh,” Sloan said wryly, one corner of her mouth hooking upward “I don’t allow anyone to abuse me in any way. Besides, Dan was never that way with me. Was he closed up tighter than Fort Knox? Yes. But most men are.”
“Hmm,” Tal agreed, “Wyatt and I have had a lot of passionate talks about this topic. These guys think they have to stuff down their feelings all the time—and they don’t.”
“It’s about trust,” Sloan said quietly. “As Dan began to trust me, he opened up. That’s how I found out about his mother leaving.”
“Then, there’s hope,” Tal said. “Even if you aren’t lovers any longer, I’m hoping there will be a friendship there to replace it. It’s a bridge to build on. Maybe, as you work with him, you can find out what’s going on inside his head—or at least what happened that one time.”
Sloan knew they couldn’t have a drunk pilot flying a Delos aircraft of any kind, and Tal had a right to be worried about that report by Dr. Reeves. “Can you give me the rest of the mission info?”
“Yes. Come with me. I’ll get a hold of Wyatt, and we’ll go to one of the mission planning rooms and walk you through it. I just needed to know if you even wanted the op in the first place.”
As Sloan followed Tal down the hallway, she felt so many emotions that it nearly overwhelmed her. A part of her heart shrieked with joy to see Dan again. The unhealed part told her not to take the mission. A third part was saying: be careful what you wish for.
Wyatt gave Sloan a big, welcoming smile, a kiss on the cheek, and a bear hug. The three of them sat down in one of the mission planning rooms, with Wyatt at one end of the table, laptop open.
“Now,” Wyatt began, “this is a continuation of what’s going on presently in Sudan between Delos and one of our arch enemies, Zakir Sharan. He’s that billionaire out of Punjab, Pakistan. Tal and Matt, in two different missions in Afghanistan, killed his two sons, Sidiq and Rastagar. Neither son was worth a hoot. One was in the opium trade, and the other was in the kidnapping and sex-trafficking trade. Good riddance to both, but the flip side is that Sharan swore lifelong blood vengeance against Delos. He intends to attack our charities everywhere in the world, Sloan. I know you didn’t know this before, but he’s a serious player and means what he says. He just sent an Al-Qaeda captain against Kitra, a Delos charity, in Sudan. Luckily, we had a security force within the walls of Kitra and also had a security operator, Nolan Steele, assigned there, to protect the only American at that charity, Teren Lambert. Things turned bad, but the officer that Sharan had sent to kill her, was killed, instead.”
“So?” Sloan murmured “Sharan is trying again? Targeting another Delos charity in Sudan?”
Beaming, Wyatt drawled, “Your mama didn’t raise any dummies, did she?”
Chuckling, Sloan shook her head. “No, indeed, she did not, Wyatt.”
“Well, this is a Class-A assignment.” He drilled a look into her eyes, gauging her response. A Class-A assignment meant it was a life-and-death mission. It meant she could die. “That’s the first thing you need to know about it.”