Immortal Nights

Chapter 1 "Abs!" Abigail Forsythe had just stepped inside the country-and-western-themed bar when she heard that shout. Finding the owner of the deep baritone wasn't hard. Jet was six foot six when barefoot. In his cowboy boots he stood more than a head taller than pretty much every other person in the bar. Hell, he was a head taller than most of the people everywhere, she thought. Spotting her dark-haired friend standing by two empty stools at the end of the bar, Abigail found a real honest-to-God smile tipping her lips. It was the first time that had happened in at least three months, and she immediately headed in Jet's direction, suddenly eager for the affectionate hug that she knew awaited her. "Ahhhh, baby girl," Jet groaned, bending to wrap his arms around her the moment she reached him. It was all he said, but a lump was suddenly lodged in her throat and Abigail couldn't speak, so she merely hugged him back silently. As usual, the hug went on longer than was perhaps normal between friends, but Abigail didn't mind. She simply rested her head on his chest and released a long drawn-out sigh. "Let me look at you," Jet said after a moment, and grasped her upper arms to move her back a step. Abigail tilted her head up to peer at him. Her eyes traced the fine lines of his familiar face with affection. He looked older. But then they both were. Although they'd written each other faithfully each week, she hadn't seen Jet in three years now. He'd been off in foreign lands, flying fighter jets for the navy, while she'd been here in Texas, nursing her mother to the grave. "I was so sorry to hear about your mom, Abs," Jet said suddenly, as if his thoughts ran along the same lines as her own. "She was always good to me. I thought the world of her. You know that." Abigail nodded. "I'd have been right there at your side for her funeral if I hadn't been overseas, but I was only released from the navy and got home the week after," he said with regret. "I know," she assured him, managing a smile. "She was the best, Abs." "Yeah, she was," Abigail agreed, her voice going husky and tears glazing her eyes. Afraid that if they didn't soon change the subject she'd be bawling like a baby, she glanced to the bar and forced another smile. "I need a drink." She glanced back to find Jet watching her. There was concern in the depths of his eyes and she turned away with discomfort, knowing exactly what he saw. Her skin was pale and blotchy, her eyes bloodshot with dark circles under them, and she was carrying a lot of extra weight that hadn't been there the last time they'd seen each other. All were the result of spending the last year inside, doing little but watch over her mother as she faded away under the ravages of cancer. Abigail had always carried around an extra ten or twenty pounds. She'd been more round than society liked, but the three years since her mother had been diagnosed with breast cancer had done her few favors in that department. Others might have wasted away under the strain, but Abigail had gained a good thirty pounds, going from rounded to just plain round. She was terribly self-conscious about it at the best of times, but with Jethro Lassiter looking her over and taking it in, Abigail was painfully aware of just how bad she must look. "A drink it is," he said suddenly. "Here, take a load off." Abigail's eyes widened and she bit off a startled squeal as the man caught her under the arms and lifted her onto the bar stool. He'd picked her up as if she weighed little more than a feather, but she knew that wasn't the case and wrinkled her nose at him as he claimed the empty bar stool next to hers. "Keep that up and you'll pull something," she said dryly, swinging to prop her elbows on the bar. "Then you'll have to take time off and lose that new job you just started." Jet merely snorted at the claim and tugged at the backpack still strapped to her back. "Take this off. We'll set it on the floor between us." Abigail shifted the straps off her shoulder and allowed him to pull the pack away. She watched him set it on the floor between the stools, and then glanced around as a cheerful voice asked, "What'll it be?" A pretty young blonde in a tight T-shirt with the bar's logo on it now stood on the other side of the bar. She smiled at them engagingly, or smiled at Jet really, Abigail thought as she noted that the woman's bright blue eyes and generous breasts were pointed exclusively at him. Jet smiled faintly at the woman, but then turned to Abigail. "Long Island Iced Tea?" Abigail snorted. That had been their drink of choice three years ago for his send-off party when he'd left to become a navy pilot. They'd sucked back the drinks well into the early hours of dawn, long after everyone else had left the party. Abigail had paid for it the next day, waking with a killer hangover. That night was a fond memory. The following day—which she'd spent hanging over the toilet—was not. "Come on," he urged. "I think you're in serious need of letting loose a little. One Long Island Iced Tea and then we'll switch to something less deadly." Abigail smiled faintly at his wheedling tone, but then shrugged. "What the hell." "What the hell," he agreed with a grin and turned back to the barmaid. "A Long Island Iced Tea for the lady, and a draft for me please, ma'am." "Hey!" Abigail protested. "I'm driving," Jet explained, then grinned and added, "Besides, iced teas are sissy drinks." Abigail scowled at the claim. "As I recall, that sissy drink kicked your ass the last time we had them." "Yeah," he laughed. "Boy, was I sorry the next day. The first day in boot camp is not a good day to be suffering a hangover." Abigail smiled faintly. "I can imagine." "No. I'm quite sure you can't," he assured her with a grimace. "Well, your letters were pretty descriptive," she said with amusement. "Hard, huh?" "Hard doesn't begin to describe it," Jet said, but didn't expand on it, and turned to smile at the barmaid and thank her for their drinks when she set them down. Abigail looked Jet over curiously as he paid for their drinks. His tour in the navy had changed him. He'd been tall but too thin, and lacking in muscle when she last saw him. He'd been all arms and legs then as she recalled, but not any longer. He'd filled out and grown into his height. Her best bud was now a strong, handsome guy with confidence and even swagger. The navy had done wonders for him, and she actually envied him for it. Her mother's illness and death had done the exact opposite for her, taking away what looks and confidence she'd had and leaving her feeling like a lump. A depressed sigh slipping from her lips, Abigail drew her drink closer and sipped at it as she asked herself what the hell she was doing here. It had seemed like a good idea when Jet had written and said his time in the navy was done and he was taking a job offer in San Antonio and she should come visit. They'd written a lot of letters back and forth over the last three years since he'd finished college and joined the navy, but had never seemed to be able to actually get together for a face-to-face visit. Their schedules had just never allowed for it. Abigail's choosing a medical school on the other side of the country had hindered them at first. She might have got a chance to see him while he was home on furlough after dropping out of school to move home to nurse her mother, but by then, her mother had given up their home in their small town and moved to Austin to be closer to the hospital where she got her chemo treatments. Jet's furloughs hadn't been long enough for him to visit their small town and the city too. Not that there would have been room for him in the tiny, one-bedroom apartment her mother had settled on when she moved. Abigail had already been occupying the couch. Jet would have had to sleep on the floor. Glancing up, she caught her reflection in the mirror behind the bar and grimaced. The truth is, Jet would have visited anyway. He would even have been fine with a sleeping bag on the floor. She was the one who had made excuses for why he shouldn't. She hadn't wanted to see him, or more to the point, she hadn't wanted him to see her and how much she'd changed. The only reason Abigail was seeing him now was…well, she had nowhere else to go really. Her mother, the only family she had, was dead and buried, and Abigail had spent the last month since then settling the estate. This translated to paying off the medical bills, which had eaten up all of her mother's life insurance, plus most of the college fund they had painstakingly built up for her over the years before she'd got ill. Abigail had been left with an apartment full of mementos and furniture and very little money. She intended on spending this week figuring out what the hell to do with the rest of her life. Finishing medical school was obviously out of the question. That took money. But she had no idea what kind of job a medical school dropout could get. Or where she would live. Her life, at the moment, was a complete and utter mess. "So," Jet said purposefully as the barmaid slipped away to attend to other customers. Abigail tore her eyes away from her less-than-attractive reflection and glanced warily to her friend. "How bad is it?" he asked seriously. Her mouth tightened and she turned back to her drink with a shrug. "I'll survive." "You were worried about the medical expenses in the last letter. Did your mom's insurance cover them?" he asked. "Mostly," she muttered. "And the rest?" he asked. "How much is still owing?" "Nothing," she assured him, sitting up a little straighter. That was something at least. She wasn't drowning under a sea of debt. "Hmm," Jet murmured and she glanced his way to see that his eyes were narrowed. She wasn't surprised when he asked, "How?" Abigail scowled and looked away, but after a moment admitted, "My college fund." "Ah, hell, Abs," Jet muttered. "Your mother would be pissed to know that all that money she socked away for so many years was even touched by this." "Yeah, good thing she's not alive to see it, huh?" she joked lamely, and wasn't terribly surprised when Jet didn't laugh. It really hadn't been much of a joke, and truth be told, she'd give anything to have her mother back whether she'd be pissed or not. She'd give everything she owned, including her body and soul. God, she missed that woman so much. It just wasn't fair. "How much is left?" Jet asked grimly, interrupting her thoughts before she could begin sobbing there at the bar. Abigail hesitated, then reached into her pocket and pulled out a wad of bills. There were eleven twenties, a ten, and some change. She knew. She'd counted them several times, hoping against hope that they'd somehow double like horny bunnies if left alone in her pocket. "That's it?" Jet asked with real concern, scooping up the bills and quickly counting them. "Hey, at least I'm not in debt up to my eyeballs and having to pay off the useless bastards who killed my mother," she pointed out with feigned good humor. When his gaze shot to hers, Abigail shrugged and added bitterly, "It wasn't the cancer that killed her in the end so much as that stupid expensive chemo. Every time they gave it to her, the pleura around her lungs filled with liquid, compressing the lungs. In the end, she basically suffocated to death after a chemo treatment." "Ah, honey." Jet pulled her into a hug that nearly dragged her off her stool and onto his lap. "I'm so sorry." Abigail struggled with her emotions, fighting back the tears that wanted to escape. Once she thought she had control of them, she eased back and managed a crooked smile. "Like I said. At least I'm debt free." "Yeah, there is that," he murmured, but sounded no happier than she did. They fell silent for a moment, each of them picking up their drinks and sipping at them. After a moment though, Jet set his beer back on the bar and asked, "How are you going to finish school? Sell your mom's apartment and—" "Mom didn't buy the apartment. She just rented it after she sold the house," Abigail interrupted. "She used the money from the sale of the house to help pay expenses. That's the only reason I'm debt free." Jet muttered a curse he must have learned in the navy. He'd never cursed that vilely before that she recalled. His mother would have washed his mouth out with soap. So would her mother. Marge Forsythe had always looked on Jet as the son she'd never had. Abigail watched him tip the beer to his mouth and guzzle down a good quantity. He then set it carefully back on the bar and asked, "Okay, so what are you going to do about her apartment and all her things?" "Already taken care of," she assured him. "I packed everything and moved it all into a storage unit. And I paid the rent for the storage unit for the next six months in advance." "Was that smart?" he asked with concern. "You could have paid monthly and used the money yourself." "It wasn't that much. Wouldn't even have covered more than a month's rent in a dive," she assured him, and then shrugged and added, "Besides, I didn't want to take the chance of losing everything if I missed a payment. I'm hoping that by the time six months have come and gone I can afford the added expense. Or that I'll have a place I can move her stuff to." "Right," he said quietly and took another drink. This time when he set the mug down, he announced, "Well, you can stay with me until you're back on your feet." Abigail stilled. It was such a generous offer, and so sweet, but she had no intention of sponging off her friend. She would visit for a week, but then she was leaving whether she'd sorted out what she was going to do next or not. Before Abigail could say as much, though, Jet added, "We have to figure a way for you to go back to school. You have to finish your degree and become the doctor you were meant to be." Abigail scowled and admitted, "I'm not sure I want to be a doctor anymore." "What?" he cried, askance. "You've wanted to be a doctor since we were in grade school. You talked about it nonstop." "Yeah, well that was before I realized that doctors are pretty much useless," she said angrily. "Abs," Jet said sadly. "It's true," she snapped. "They couldn't do a damned thing for Mom. They couldn't even prevent her suffering. Their stupid drugs took the edge off, maybe, but she was still in agony all the time." "That doesn't mean you couldn't still help people as a doctor," he protested. "Just don't go into oncology or whatever it's called." When she merely scowled down at her drink, he added, "Abs, you only have one year left of medical school—" "Two," she corrected. "I dropped out not quite halfway through the third year. I'd have to do the whole year again…if they even let me back in. So it would be two years of medical school." "Fine, two years left of school and you could be a doctor." "Not quite," she said unhappily. "It would take two years of school and then at least a three-year residency before I could get my license and call myself a doctor." "Abs," Jet said solemnly. "You can't throw away six years of schooling. You have to finish this and get your doctorate. It's what your mom would have wanted." Abigail winced and took another drink. Setting the glass back she said, "Pulling the mom card? That's not fair." "Life's not fair, babe," he said gravely. "If it was, your mom would be sitting here bitching you out for even considering not completing your degree." Abigail lowered her head and stared blindly at her drink. He was right. Her mother had always been proud of her determination to be a doctor. She'd been terribly upset when Abigail had insisted on "taking time off" from school to nurse her. Only promising that she would finish later had eased her mind at all. "Okay," Jet said suddenly. "Enough of that now. You've had a rough couple years and I shouldn't be making it tougher. Let's make a deal." Abigail glanced at him in question. "For the next week, you're going to just chill with me. We'll sort out how to get you back into medical school after that, but for now you need some downtime and fun. Deal?" "Deal," she agreed with relief. "Good." He held up his beer and she raised her own glass to clink his, then they both drank. "So, what's the plan for the week?" she asked as they set their drinks down. "By the way, how did you convince them to give you time off work when you've just started?" "I didn't," Jet admitted and when her expression turned alarmed, he laughed and said, "I thought you could come to work with me." "You're a cargo pilot," she pointed out. "How can I come to work with you?" "Cargo planes have seats in the front, you know. You can ride with me and we can day trip around the exciting and exotic places I fly to." That didn't sound too bad, she thought, and asked, "And your boss would be all right with that?" "I don't know if he'd care or not, but I wasn't planning on telling him," Jet said with a shrug, and then pointed out, "He's not in the plane with me so how would he know?" "Hmm," Abigail murmured. She didn't want to get him in trouble. On the other hand, she didn't want to sit around in his apartment worrying about her future for the next week either. "What exciting and exotic places do you fly to?" she asked with interest now. "Well, I'm free tomorrow, but then I'm booked for a shipment to Quebec the day after that." "Canada?" she asked with disgust. "You consider that exotic?" "It's a foreign country," he pointed out defensively. "Barely," she said, her voice dry. "They speak French," he argued. "Barely," she said again. "And it's wintertime. It will be cold as hell up there." "Come on, it'll be fun," he assured her. "We've never been there and it must have something interesting to offer. Besides, we only have to kill a day there, then I load up again and fly to Chicago." "Better and better," she said on a groan. Jet laughed at her dismay and leaned sideways to nudge her with his shoulder. "We'll have fun, I promise. You and me in the cockpit, yapping and laughing…it'll be like old times." "Yeah," she said with a slow smile. She'd missed yapping and laughing with Jet. He'd been a sort of stand-in girlfriend/adopted brother through high school and the first four years of college. Hard to believe when she looked at him now. No one would mistake him for a stand-in for a girlfriend. Jet was definitely all man. If he wasn't so much like a brother to her, she might even be at risk of falling for him herself. The thought made her smile faintly as she asked, "So what exotic locale follows Chicago?" "After Chicago, it's—" He paused midsentence and dug in his pocket as the sound of a guitar strumming reached their ears. Pulling out a phone, he peered at the display, his eyebrows rising. "My boss. Gotta take this." Abigail nodded in understanding and watched as he hit the answer button, placed the phone to his ear and stood to move a few steps away, saying, "Hey, Bob, what's up?" "Can I get you another?" the blonde barmaid asked, suddenly appearing on the other side of the bar again. Abigail turned to glance at the woman, noting that she was eyeballing Jet as she asked the question. That being the case, she wasn't terribly surprised when the woman didn't give her a chance to respond before asking what she really wanted to know. "So, is your friend available?" Abigail supposed it was insulting that the woman didn't even imagine for a minute that she might be Jet's girlfriend, but let it slide and merely admitted, "As far as I know he's not dating anyone." "Yeah?" The blonde beamed at her. "Do you think—?" "Abs, we gotta go." Abigail and the bartender both turned with surprise at that announcement when Jet suddenly returned. "We do?" she asked with a frown as he bent to scoop up her backpack. "Yeah." Straightening, he urged her off the stool, then began walking her quickly toward the exit. "Why?" she asked with bewilderment, jogging to keep up with his long steps. She'd always had to jog to keep up with Jet. His legs were nearly twice the length of her stubby little ones and she had to take two steps for every one of his. "Got a job," he announced with a grin. "Now?" she asked with amazement. "But I just got here. I haven't even seen your apartment yet." "I know, and I almost refused because of that, but then Bob said where the shipment was going and I decided we should go." "Where?" she asked at once. He was beaming so brightly, she knew this had to be good, certainly better than cold Canada, or Chicago. "How do you feel about a couple of days on a beach in Caracas?" "Venezuela?" she squawked with dismay. He paused at the exit to peer at her uncertainly. "What's wrong with Venezuela?" "I read an article just last week that claims Venezuela is the kidnap capital of the world or something." "Oh, pffft," he responded, tugging the door open and ushering her out of the bar. "You'll be with me. I'll keep you safe. And Bob was so desperate to find a pilot for this flight that he agreed to let me out of the Quebec flight. We can spend a couple days there. That gives us time to kick around, hit the beach, see the sights." Stopping suddenly, he turned her away from him and helped her get the backpack on again. "It's definitely more exotic than Quebec, right?" "Right," she agreed wryly, and supposed kicking around and seeing the sights didn't sound bad. She wasn't too keen on the beach part though. Not in the shape she was in. Still, it could be fun. "You have a passport, don't you?" he asked suddenly. "Please have a passport." "Yeah. I even brought it with me," she assured him. Abigail hadn't thought she'd need it, but it had seemed smarter than leaving it in storage. "Good, good, we're all set then," he said happily, finishing with her backpack. "Put this on." Abigail turned and stared at the helmet he was holding out. Her gaze then slid to the motorcycle behind him and her eyes widened incredulously. "You expect me to ride on that?" She'd expected a car, maybe even a pickup, but a motorcycle? Where had her old, slightly goofy, geek of a friend Jethro gone? Apparently, he'd grown up and morphed into Jet the adventurer. "You'll love it," Jet assured her, settling the helmet on her head and strapping it on. Once done with that, he quickly donned his own helmet, then swung a leg over his bike and glanced over his shoulder at her. "Come on. This is an emergency flight. We have to get to the hangar ASAP." "What kind of emergency?" Abigail asked, climbing gingerly onto the seat behind him. He flew a cargo plane, for heaven's sake. What kind of emergency flight could there be for a cargo plane? "I don't know," Jet admitted, starting the motorcycle. Raising his voice to be heard over the engine, he then added, "I guess it's a time-sensitive shipment. The client has their own plane, but it broke down and they need to get their cargo to Caracas ASAP so called us. That's the only reason I'm getting the flight. Normally guys with more seniority get the exotic locales, but I was the only one available last-minute." "Oh," Abigail murmured and then repeated it more loudly when she realized he'd never hear her over the roar of the motorcycle engine. "Put your arms around me and hold on tight," Jet instructed, glancing around. Catching her worried expression, he grinned and added, "Relax, Abs. It'll be an adventure."