Midnight Escape (Agents of HIS Romantic Suspense Series Book 2) Read online

  When danger hides in plain sight.

  When Danny turned to Moira in the kitchen after dinner, and she bounced off his chest, this time, he caught her. The heat flying between them had been nearing an inferno. They’d talked and laughed like normal people having dinner, but the looks they’d shared had been so hot, the flames engulfed them.

  He’d known cleaning up the dishes—few as there were since they’d had takeout—would be a good excuse to get close to her, to touch her hand when handing off dishes to dry. And he knew that bumping into her could also be an option. Case in point.

  He held her arms tightly against him. He heard, rather than felt, the hitch in her breathing. It fed his desire to take her to bed. And it was damn time he did that with her.

  “If you don’t want this,” he said in a hoarse voice, “now is the time to speak up.”

  With her adorable Irish accent, she said, “Aye, I want this.”

  Titles by Sheila Kell

  H I S SERIES

  His Desire

  His Choice

  His Return

  His Chance

  His Destiny

  His Family

  His Heart

  His Fantasy

  A Hamilton Christmas

  AGENTS OF H I S

  Evening Shadows

  Midnight Escape

  Copyright © 2020 by Sheila Kell

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the publisher, Cunningham Publishing, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.

  Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  To the extent that the image or images on the cover of this book depict a person or persons, such person or persons are merely models and are not intended to portray any character or characters featured in the book.

  Publisher: Cunningham Publishing

  Editor: Hot Tree Editing

  Cover and Interior Design: RMGraphX

  ISBN 9780999249697 (Electronic copy)

  ISBN 9780578637938 (Paperback copy)

  Printed in the United States of America

  Table of Contents

  When danger hides in plain sight.

  Titles by Sheila Kell

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Epilogue

  A Note From Sheila

  About The Author

  Books by Sheila Kell

  To

  Jamie McDowell Reinhardt—AJ’s biggest fan

  You’re the first reader to have a tattoo of my book. I’ll always remember that.

  Acknowledgments

  I had some unique help while writing Midnight Escape. First, I had to learn how to handle a helicopter emergency. Not personally, but how to describe it for my readers. Thankfully, Wayne Breeden, Chief Pilot at Helicopters, Inc., in Memphis, Tennessee, came to my rescue. His experiences drove my decision on the type of emergency for Danny to handle.

  Second, I had to learn all things Irish. Well, enough for an Irish character in the U.S. Again, someone came to my rescue. Actually, two people. Both Natasha Maher and Maria McHugh helped me understand Irish slang and sayings. Oh, and a bit of Irish Gaelic also. I hope I was able to explain all Irish terms or phrases within the scenes.

  Next is the best cover designer ever. RMGraphX took my ideas and, once again, put together a cover that made me say “Wow.” The cover is Danny’s story in one picture.

  As always, my work cannot be complete without Becky Johnson and her team at Hot Tree Editing. I enjoy the interactions with my post-beta readers: Crystal Earl, Franci Neill, Kim Deister, and Robert Holland. Their commentary and suggestions have me laughing most of the time. Every now and then they give me a thumbs down on something I wrote that I thought was extraordinary. All in all, they are the best next to last step.

  The last step before RMGraphX formatted Midnight Escape, Rebecca of Rebecca’s Fairest Reviews gave the manuscript a tight proofread. She’s a great addition to my group.

  Finally, and several steps above, I have four ladies whom I adore and have done their best to help make sure this is a brilliant story. My pre-beta readers—Linda Dossett, Helen McNabb, Lily Greer, and Jessica Neuhart are amazing. I don’t envy them as they read my story before I send it to the editor. I wouldn’t have made it forward without their input. My deepest appreciation.

  Chapter One

  Baltimore, Maryland

  Danny Franks's calm shattered at an audible pitch that signaled the helicopter rotors slowing while in midair. The Q and A between him and his FAA examiner ended abruptly as Danny’s check ride took a deadly turn.

  Allowing Wayne Singleton, his examiner, to plummet four hundred feet and die in a fiery crash would guarantee a failure of his private pilot license test. Not that he’d need it at that point either.

  As a former DEA agent and current HIS agent—an elite security organization—he’d faced death on more than one occasion, but he’d always had wits and access to a weapon to protect himself, whether it be a rifle, a handgun, a knife, or whatever he could find close at hand—and there was always something or a teammate near. Now, however, he only had his wits and instincts to safely land the 1821-pound aircraft on the outskirts of Baltimore, allowing them to both walk away unscathed.

  Even though hardened to danger, fear jolted his system, his gut clenched, and his heart pounded painfully and with frightening speed, setting his nerves on edge, ensuring he was indeed still alive. He’d been trained to control the impulses in his body and mind enough to act with calm and precision. At the moment, he couldn’t harness that control. With the sick feeling washing through him, he fought the internal battle to clear his mind and hone his senses to the current challenge.

  Slowing rotors was enough trouble, but he knew other
trouble could exist. Wayne surely expected him to handle this and would only assume control if Danny was headed toward death, instead of a safe landing. A nervous Can you really land? slipped into his mind as his conscience rightfully questioned his ability. As a bead of sweat formed on his temple, his first instinct of What the hell did I get myself into? gave way to a Hell, yes, I could land this baby, in his mind’s response.

  With crystal clear focus, Danny immediately recognized the nature of the emergency. Ironically enough, he and Wayne were on their way to the airfield to simulate the autorotation and power failure problems they faced. Whereas, he’d have simulated the power loss and conducted a power recovery at three feet above ground level, without actually landing and not having the engine truly fail, he had to put the bird on the ground and in a hurry.

  “There’s no RTB. Can you handle it?” Wayne asked without any inflection in his voice. Although his need to state the obvious that they couldn’t “return to base” annoyed Danny. Yet he wasn’t a licensed pilot. Wasn’t the man worried? They were awfully close to the ground, with no room for error. Any wrong action meant their death. No pressure.

  The craziness that had immediately happened inside him steadied. Firmly and without hesitation, he responded with “Roger.” The determined side of him vowed he would land this helicopter, without the examiner assuming control.

  In an instant, every action necessary for recovering the aircraft breezed through Danny’s mind. First and foremost, he had to avoid a full rotor stall since there would be no chance of recovering control of the helicopter. He had the training to prevent that deadly situation, and, while he’d never hoped to have the problem outside of simulation, he could manage it. Experience had taught him the next few seconds would move swiftly but feel like a lifetime.

  With the power slowing in the engine—it no longer controlled the rotors—he faced another major challenge. He’d lost all torque. Losing the force that produced, or tended to produce, rotation, reinforced the danger to them.

  After long hours of studying, hours of flights in a simulator and then with an instructor, a grueling oral exam, and required hours of solo time, he knew he could manage this emergency. Heart pumping with adrenaline and a bit of fear, he vowed dying wasn’t in his plans for the day.

  Comfort with the Erstrom 480B allowed him to tackle the task at hand with expert actions. They had probably seven seconds before they would impact with the ground. With no airport in the vicinity, and no tower control, he quickly scanned the area for a safe place to land. They were over a fucking forest. There had to be something, or he may as well just let them drop like a rock as it’d have the same end result.

  From his training manual, the words on the page on this situation flashed in front of him as if he’d had the paper there. “In all cases, correct glide angle has the effect of producing an upward flow or air to spin the main rotor at some optimal rpm—storing kinetic energy in the blades—and slow descent using the stored up kinetic energy in the rotors—if done perfectly, the landing will be quite gentle by executing a flare, pitching the nose up at the right moment…. This will also have the effect of transferring some of that energy from the forward momentum into the main rotor, making it spin faster, which will allow for a smooth landing.”

  All that gibberish had once meant nothing to him, and he knew that to most non-aviation individuals, it probably still did, but after a while, he’d understood, and the knowledge had been ingrained in him, so he would automatically react to save the aircraft and passengers. He had to keep the nose down—enough to keep air flowing to optimize the rotation speed so they’d have a chance to land—but not too much, so he couldn’t recover enough to land on the skids. Softly.

  Okay, he told himself. Time to get this show on the road. Registering the winds about ten knots, he didn’t overly worry about their impact on landing. His white-knuckle grip on the cyclic pitch control, or joystick to video game advocates, that in layman’s terms was his steering stick, gave the appearance his life depended on it. Who was he kidding? It did. With his left hand grasping the collective pitch control, similar to the old emergency brakes where the handle pulled up to lock, he got down to business working the two controls, so the revolutions per minute of the rotors remained fast enough to avoid the deadly stall, plus gave them enough time to land. Softly, he reminded himself. He’d have scoffed if had a second to do so.

  He continued to assess the area, hoping for a clear spot to land. With a shot of relief, he caught sight of a clear area nearby. Mostly clear. Enough that they could land this bird. If he could make it that far.

  The dive he held dropped their altitude rapidly, which limited the distance they could travel. It’d be tough, but he wouldn’t give up. The alternative was to crash into the forest, which dramatically reduced their chances of survival.

  With confidence—and knowing it to be their only option to survive—he moved the cyclic to the right, ultimately turning the helicopter to the right to clear the forest and make for the level ground. His destination would be in the middle of someone’s field, but he didn’t care. With the power continuing to decelerate to nearly nothing, he had no other option than to nose the aircraft down a bit more to slow their glide speed.

  While the ground closed in faster, a bead of sweat slipped down his temple as they approached the landing spot. To his dismay, the power continued to bleed out of the helicopter. He still had the ability to control it, but….

  When his evaluator said, “You’re doing great. Check your glide speed,” Danny nearly jumped out of his harness.

  He’d been so focused he’d forgotten he had a passenger. His mind couldn’t register the fact Wayne not only praised him but hadn’t taken control of the situation. Although, in his peripheral, Danny caught his examiner’s hands hovering over his controls. He did, however, do as Wayne had said. Satisfied things were as they should be—with the exception of the necessary power and full rotor speed—he took a hasty glance at the control panel. They’d just passed below two hundred feet, and he couldn’t fight the pounding of his heart in his chest.

  When a wind gust hit them, giving the aircraft a slight push, an all-encompassing fear nearly took over as he knew he hadn’t calculated for a change in the winds this close to the ground. If the wind kept gusting, it’d impact his split-second landing because he wouldn’t level out in time.

  Refusing to fail himself and his goal, he pushed the fear away and kept his hold on being calmly controlled. He had less than a few seconds before they met the ground. Damn. So little time.

  With an acute sense of survival, he murmured, “Time to land this bird.” The flare-out he needed to execute had to be somewhat dramatic. By bringing the nose up—not just level, but up—it put an immediate halt to his rapid descent before landing. The tricky part—extremely tricky—was making sure the rear of the helicopter didn’t hit the ground before he leveled the helo to land. He’d successfully completed the maneuver several times in training, but he’d always had the knowledge that the power failure was not real and could be increased at any time to prevent a crash.

  With a surprisingly steady hand that had led him this far, he pulled back on the cyclic and held his breath as he performed the flare-out maneuver. His heart lurched, attempting its jailbreak from his chest, that he had the rear of the helicopter closing in on the ground faster than the front. On purpose.

  He half-expected Wayne to grab control from him, but he didn’t. Danny suspected he had the reaction that many did when riding in a car with someone when they are catching up to a car too fast and automatically push on the passenger side floorboard as if engaging the brake. Self-preservation existed in everyone.

  Almost wanting to close his eyes to concentrate even more on the hair’s breadth of altitude left, his mind registered there wasn’t enough clear land surrounding the field, so they’d land in the crop, but there was no other option. Slowly—yet rapidly, time wise�
��he leveled the aircraft and in what seemed like milliseconds, eased it down—foot by agonizing foot—until—with immense relief—the skids safely touched the ground with a small jolt.

  Danny couldn’t relax and expel that breath of relief yet as it wasn’t over. “Go,” he said to Wayne. “I’ve got this.” Unclasping his seat harness with one hand, he fumbled with the controls with the other one, automatically shutting down the powerless engine.

  As he shoved the belts, trapping in his shoulders, aside, he yanked off his headset, noted their location, and took a quick glance to ensure his passenger was exiting the aircraft. Of course, Wayne stayed to watch him perform the proper emergency shutdown procedures. At least he’d already rid himself of the harness. However, as the pilot-in-command, it was Danny’s responsibility to see to his passenger’s safety.

  “Go,” he demanded, as he grasped the door handle and pushed it open with a force that almost sent it crashing back into him. Although probably unnecessary, Danny wanted Wayne to evacuate in case their problem was more severe than thought to be and the bird caught fire.

  He and Wayne hastily exited the aircraft, and meeting a safe distance away, eyed the front of the helo.

  After confirming Wayne didn’t require medical attention, Danny continued following procedure, knowing not only that Wayne still evaluated him, but because his responsibility hadn’t ended. After pulling his phone from his flight-suit pocket, he removed his flight gloves and called base operations. In a few moments, he’d relayed the nature of their emergency, souls on board, and their location via lat/long. After a confirmation of their response, he ended the call and expelled a breath of relief.

  As the tense muscles in his shoulders eased, tremors overtook his body, and he didn’t care what Wayne thought of it. He fought it, but he couldn’t control the delayed terrifying reaction within him. He could’ve died. Strange how he’d never reacted this way when he’d been nearly killed in action with his employer Hamilton Investigation and Security, better known as HIS.

  He hoped he’d be checked off on this procedure and not have to redo the actions in simulation. He never wanted to be a part of this nightmare again with the trapped feeling, knowing life or death settled with him, but he couldn’t fight his way out. There’d been too little time while having too much time to think about life. While his mind had focused on landing the bird safely, in the back of his thoughts was what was important to him. He’d regret not having a family.