AMIDST THE CATS CRADLE - 4

C H A P T E R F O U R - - - - M I T C H

Mitch was having a great time, no doubt about it. Gwen was a breath of fresh air, even if she was a little drugged up and worse for wear, and she got his engine rolling in more ways than one.

He wasn't especially required in the cockpit, yet he lingered for lengthy periods of time, bantering back and forth with the team's unexpected addition and exchanging looks with Jordan that spoke more of astonishment than anything else. Whatever he'd expected from this trip, he hadn't expected to meet a lady like Gwen.

In fact, she was beginning to wonder why she was even on the plane in the first place.

"So, you're telling me that when you were boarding your aircraft, all of a sudden, you were informed that you were diverted to a completely other plane, which ended up being this one? And you hadn't altered your itinerary or anything else? What's going on?" Mitch said as Tim knocked on the door for the hundredth time, yelling at him to return inside and protect them from the hordes of people trying to murder them or pull off their heads.

"He'll be right there," Jordan muttered over his shoulder, pretending to be the second pilot despite the fact that he was as much a pilot as Mitch was a belly dancer.

"He better hurry or I'm cramming everyone we can't tie up in here with you three lovebirds," Tim said as the door slammed shut behind him.

"Does he always seem to be in a great mood?" Gwen inquired, prompting a flurry of nods.

"Anyhow, that's the tale. I was hoping for a smooth ride home and hours and hours of blissful slumber."

“And instead you got to meet us. I think that’s a pretty good trade,” Mitch commented wryly, moving toward the door with heavy steps, a tinge of jealousy burning in him as Jordan got to remain in Gwen’s rather radiant presence.

The hell’s wrong with you, man? She’s hot, sure, and badass, but you’re drooling like a kitten over cream here. Snap out of it.

The one thing that made him settle a bit was that Jordan didn’t seem to be faring much better. Mitch hadn’t seen him discussing anything quite so animatedly since that one time they managed to let out some sort of super virus in Cape Town and everyone was hours from dying. Fun mission. Great paragliding there, too.

“Yeah, well, if I wasn’t going to be stuck in Pennsylvania, I might be more driven to agree with you,” Gwen snorted as static broke in through the comms, signaling another incoming message from the airport they were approaching.

Securing a private runway and the right kind of emergency services to meet them had been a task in itself, requiring some emergency communications with The Firm and its branch offices in the region. The fact that The Firm had a branch in Pennsylvania was another shocker for the day. What ever happened in Pennsylvania, anyway?Mitch stalked out of the cockpit, closing the door behind him softly. He stepped over the body of a man, hogtied and gagged, who seemed to be coming to slowly and looking none too happy about it. His face was red and he was grunting something into the gag that had been stuffed in his mouth, but that might have been on account of his right shoulder being obviously and painfully dislocated.

“Shouldn’t have tried to block Shaun then, man,” Mitch said with a chuckle, recognizing the resident sniper’s handiwork.

The stewardess’s pretty eyes were watering a little and she was breathing heavily in her seat, bound up with duct tape like she was someone’s discount Christmas gift. By the looks of things, the effects of the drug were beginning to wear off and when Mitch made it into the cabin, he saw Jerome taking his mask off after a moment of discussion with Tom. Mitch followed suit.

“Lieutenant, everything okay here?” he hollered, skipping over a duo of struggling defensive linesmen, strewn out in the aisle.

“As good as one can expect,” Jerome said with a shrug. “I think someone needs to go relieve Jordan. Some of the victims need medical assistance before we land.”

“Gwen is about to put the bird down on the ground, though,” Mitch said absently, looking over the outcome of the scuffle.

The white walls and blue seats were dotted with blood, and every single member of Squad Six was a bit tattered at the edges. Someone had tried and almost succeeded in breaking Jerome’s nose and Tim had a very real black eye, swelling as they spoke, and a busted lip. The two football teams’ worth of blocky steroid-pumped man-beasts on the floors and seats were all tied up with rope and gagged, some still passed out, some stirring slowly.

Someone with a sense of humor had made a pile out of The Arctics guys, a stack of six tall. He assumed it had to be either Tim or Shaun and he was somewhat miffed he hadn’t done it himself. Must have been too preoccupied with Gwen for antics.

Damn what a woman, he thought, but caught himself from gushing about her further.

Easier said than done, of course.

“I’ll go get Jordan,” Tom said with a sigh, skipping over some guy who was battling against the knots like a fish out of water.

Tom had a limp. Definitely a hoot of a mission so far.

“Do we think we got all The Arctics?” Mitch asked, checking on a guy who seemed a bit too still, but a quick hand to his neck confirmed he was still breathing. “And the civilians are all fine?”

“We found the source of the gasses and Tim shut it off with half a canister of that purple shit still in it. But I think we got all of operatives, yeah. Shame none of them lived,” Jerome mused lightly, casting a glance at the decorative pile of Aryan race wannabes.

“Real shame that,” Tim snorted.

“My heart bleeds,” Mitch added on.

“You know what I mean. I’m sure The Firm’s going to want to go over everyone involved with a fine-toothed comb too, but I think we’re getting an early night. I understand the last-minute add-on was a pilot?” Jerome asked, turning his attention to Mitch.

The lieutenant’s hard gaze always made Mitch stand up a bit straighter. They were all buddies outside of the missions and Jerome and he sparred a lot together, but during work, the chain of command was clear. It helped that all of them had a lot of respect for Jerome, and for each other.

“Gwen Neeson, aye. United States Marine Corps, flies attack helicopters.”

“The fuck was she doing on a charter plane leased for football teams?” Tim asked, crossing his arms over his chest.

“Your guess is as good as ours is, or hers,” Mitch said, his mood stilling slightly. “She said she got sent back from her gate when she was boarding a commercial flight to Cebu, told to come here. The stewardess walked her in so she was obviously on the manifest, but I don’t know why. When we got the lists, there was no mention of any women, let alone someone in the service.”

The three men exchanged looks as Jordan appeared around the corner, his steps rather light for a man who’d gotten his ass partially handed to him by some enemy operatives. But Mitch did not have to ponder too long to understand his brother’s good mood. It was all Gwen. Apparently she had an effect even on the seemingly constantly grouchy medic.

“Jordan, what do you think of this Gwen Neeson?” Jerome queried as Jordan came to a stop at their side, though his eyes were already tallying up the carnage around them.

“What do you mean?” he asked, echoing the question in Mitch’s mind.

“Well, don’t you think it’s rather peculiar we suddenly found ourselves with a fully combat-trained pilot on board, despite having no inclination that she would be here to begin with? She is not one of our agents and the original assumption was that whatever The Arctics planned on using would not be given to the pilots, which was obviously wrong. And since we got a bit carried away here,” Jerome noted, pointing a thumb at the hill of dead commandos, “we would have been up shit’s creek without a paddle if she hadn’t been here.”

“I’m sure we would have landed the plane fine,” Tim said dismissively, though the tone of his voice told Mitch that he wasn’t entirely sure of that.

“I think she had no idea why she was sent to this flight. If I had to wager a guess, I’d say this has Ace written all over it,” Jordan commented, his expression clouding over slightly.

“Anyone agree with Jordan?” Jerome asked, looking at Mitch and Tim.

“Sounds about right to me,” Tim said, wiping his bloodied knife against the headrest of the chair behind him.

“I can’t argue with that. Either she’s an enemy operative and she didn’t reveal herself or The Firm sent her here. We can’t let her walk out on us without making sure, though,” Mitch said with a heavy heart.

It pained him to think that the spunky, delicious morsel of a woman currently flying them to safety could have anything to do with The Arctics. But on first sight, even he had thought that her blonde hair and blue eyes were too good to be true. His rational side had to consider the possibility, but his emotional side was thoroughly convinced that she had no ties to the werewolf wackjobs that had orchestrated this whole mess. And his cougar agreed. That was all the confirmation Mitch needed.

“It’s settled then. While our happy campers go to medical checks and some conditioning to forget that all of this ever happened, Gwen comes with us. I assume you two want to take up guard duty?” Jerome queried, his gaze flicking between Jordan and Mitch.

“Sir, yes sir,” Mitch said with a smile, earning a chuckle from Jerome.

“Very well then.”

As if on call, Gwen’s soft voice came over the intercom, full of confidence and knowing exactly what she was doing. Mitch wasn’t sure if she could be any sexier if she tried.

“Gentlemen, buckle in. We’re going in for a landing and it might be a rocky one.”

Jordan was already crouching next to a leaner-looking man, possibly one of the teams’ quarterbacks, who looked slightly worse for wear. No wonder, considering a smaller man probably couldn’t have held up very well against all those human mountains that had been swinging their fists around like drunken Irishmen on St Paddy’s Day.

“He’ll be fine, man. Sit down,” Mitch said, finding a seat that seemed more clean than bloody and putting the seatbelt on.

“Duty first,” Jordan grumbled, making sure the man’s airway wasn’t constricted.

It had been a hell of a day. They’d smuggled themselves in on the plane, expecting a small scuffle with a potential Arctics’ drug test, and they’d found themselves in something straight out of some sort of Marvel movie, chemical agents being used to turn common humans into frenzied killing machines. Mitch had to figure that the reason the football teams had been chosen was to see how much damage they could really do with the neurotoxin, while The Arctics kept a watchful eye over all of it.

But as it sometimes happened, The Firm was one step ahead of the baddies and Squad Six got to have some fun. Not that The Firm was particularly squeaky clean or made of angel dust and butterfly wings itself, but as far as Mitch could tell, it was at least more on the side of good than it was on the side of evil. Jordaned, The Arctics weren’t much of a measuring stick to use to confirm that.

Mitch relaxed against the seat with a sigh, feeling the aftereffects of going blow for blow with not only trained Arctics operatives, but some pretty hard-hitting football jocks as well. He was certainly going to feel those bruises. But it didn’t seem to matter that much this time. Usually, Mitch would be somewhat sour at the end of a mission, not at all enthused by the paperwork and reports they had to file on the accounts.

This time, it meant that any minute wasted might mean one moment longer with Gwen. And that was oddly enticing.

“So what do you really think about Gwen?” Mitch asked as Jordan sat down in time for the airplane to let its landing gear down.

“As long as she gets us on the ground in one piece, I have nothing but admiration for her,” Jordan said, giving Mitch a pointed look.

“That’s not what I’m asking, man.”

“I know.”

Jordan smirked and Mitch caught hold of that, shaking his head slightly with a grin of his own. The twins had not really discussed what would happen if they ever found a woman that interested them both. In general, cougars rarely had Alpha twins to begin with, as they were more solitary creatures, but Mitch and Jordan had been the first of their parents’ children and most definitely twins, so that was one convention they’d broken as soon as they could.

It rarely seemed like an option, really, finding one woman that would satisfy them both as well as tie them together more. While they were close, they’d mostly kept their love lives separate because they had vastly different tastes. Mitch liked women with attitude and drive, crazy girls who could start off drinking tequila at the beginning of the night and then lead him to bungee jumping in Brazil by the next morning.

Jordan, on the other hand, appreciated women who could hold a conversation with him and challenge him intellectually. It was a Herculean task finding a woman that would fit those two very different molds.

Yet with Gwen, Mitch got the sneaking suspicion that they might have been getting awfully close.