And We All Fall (Book 1) Read online

  He kissed her neck softly with his hand under her chin as the alarm in her phone rang. Her body hunched in ecstasy as she moaned, feeling him behind her, still trying to awaken from deep sleep.

  She struggled to turn off the alarm, knocking things off the bedside table, and then turned over to face him, growing wildly excited as his knee came to a rest as high as it could go between her legs.

  He caressed her soft cheeks as he repeatedly pushed his knee against the throbbing between her thighs to make her feel good, but also to torment her.

  She moaned louder with her pretty blue eyes now wide open, feeling herself wet and aching for him in every way.

  She grabbed his hand and pulled it to her mouth to suck on his fingers, one at a time.

  “Good morning, beautiful,” he said with a grin, enjoying the wetness of her mouth on his fingers.

  Just as was now, she always got lost in her husband’s green eyes, which were like “glowing emeralds” she said the first time she met him at Disco Pacifica in San Diego.

  Hers were “like the ocean” he’d said to her that same night as they stood talking at the curb outside the nightclub, trying to stay dry under the too small overhang as rain flooded the street. He told her he could see forever in them, but she has always joked that was just a line to get in her pants. They were, in truth, the most beautiful shade of blue Jackson had ever seen. He even told that to his fellow Marines at Camp Pendleton. He took a lot of ribbing for it, but he didn’t care.

  They fell in love that stormy California night, and he had something to tease her about forever after a rat scurried down the submerged street, the sewers unable to keep up with the weather. She had screamed and jumped into his arms.

  “I got you,” Jackson had said with a smile. “Gone now,” he continued as her feet once again touched the wet pavement.

  “You feel good,” he said to her now as he stared into his favorite shade of blue in their comfy bed. “It’s been too long.”

  “You feel good. I’m so glad you’re home, baby,” she said as she grabbed his face with both hands and squeezed his powerful legs with her legs, still intertwined. She rubbed his shaved, nearly bald head.

  “Just making sure you’re really here.” Lust overtook her as she felt the scruff on his face from just a couple days without shaving, something he couldn’t let happen in a while, but did every chance he got. They kissed deeply as her hands went under the sheets and she grabbed the part of him that could never hide how much he still craved her.

  He moaned. “I’ve missed you. My home,” Jackson said as they stopped kissing to get some air. “And Jumper.” He looked over at Jumper who still stared at the door. Then he looked again at the alarm clock, aching as her hand still gripping him started stroking up and down again.

  “We’ve missed you.” She smiled devilishly as his eyes rolled back into his head. “If you couldn’t tell.”

  “You’re behind schedule,” he said with the familiar grin that she loved so much, his breathing becoming heavier and heavier as her grip tightened and her movement accelerated. “I got your text that we can’t do lunch, but if we get up now, we could still have a nice breakfast before you have to go to the office.”

  “Right,” Jamie said sarcastically as she stared at him, not relinquishing her firm grip on him. He groaned as she smiled her sexy smile bigger with every rapturous second that passed. “Is that what you want? To have breakfast?”

  He treasured her smile, the way her face looked every time she did. She could get him to do just about anything with that smile, everything except resist the call to travel across the globe to protect his country after a decade of retirement. The yearning, frenzied look in Jamie’s eyes told Jackson what he needed to do.

  “No,” he answered and then shifted his powerful frame on top of her. “I just want you.” It was as if he had waited his entire life to make love to her. She looked at him like he was the only man left in the world; he looked at her as if she was the only woman. They stared into each other’s eyes as if they were under a spell, though that was nothing new for them even after all those years together.

  He felt the growing, powerful rush of blood below as he moved inside her, slowly at first, and then faster, never breaking eye contact, even when they kissed.

  They exploded together, Jamie pushing a pillow into her face momentarily to hide her bliss.

  Jackson kissed her forehead, then her cheeks, then her neck before he collapsed on top of her. They were cheek-to-cheek, chest to chest, with neither of them speaking a word as time continued to tick by on that clock. He buried his face in her breasts as she soothed his strong back.

  “I’ve missed you so much.” Jamie breathed the words seductively.

  Jackson didn’t say a word. He kissed, licked and sucked on every inch of her before they looked at the clock again.

  7:10.

  “I love you so much,” she continued as she wiggled around in the bed, his tongue sending electricity to every inch of her body.

  “I love you so much, gorgeous. I’ve missed you too. More than ever.” He had nearly forgotten the sweet sound of her voice.

  “What time did you get home? I didn’t mean to fall asleep. But I thought you would have woken me up.”

  “You looked so beautiful sleeping. It was late and I knew you needed to get out of here early this morning. I didn’t have the heart to wake you. You know how hard that is to do anyway.”

  “Ha-ha. You think you’re so funny, don’t you?” Jackson often joked that she would sleep through a house flying in a tornado to Oz. “I wouldn’t have minded if you woke me up. I tried to wait up for you, but I didn’t get any sleep Saturday night.”

  “Why not?”

  “Too excited, I guess. You were coming home soon. Just couldn’t get my mind to stop. You know what happens to me. Besides that, Frank called late last night and got me all upset. I guess the drop in adrenaline and everything else made me crash.”

  “That’s what you hinted in your text. Why did he call so late? What’s going on?”

  “No clue. He said I would learn all about it at the meeting this morning. How were your flights? More than a day to get here, right? Twenty something hours.”

  “Yeah. They were fine. Long, but fine. Such a long way back home from that desert.”

  He hugged Jamie tight and she hugged him back.

  Jackson cringed at the thought of not feeling her curvy body snuggled up against his anymore. He squeezed her tighter. “I hate to say it, but you should probably get moving. Don’t want you to get in any trouble.”

  “I haven’t been with my sexy, naked husband in nine months. Let them fire me.”

  Jamie wasn’t worried, one of the most powerful employees in federal government. The nameplate on the big desk in her big office at the Atlanta Region IV FEMA office read ‘Dr. Jamie Mills, Regional Deputy Administrator’.

  “Besides, I’m not going to see you again for an eternity,” she complained sarcastically. “Right, soldier?”

  Jackson has found himself in the line of fire many times in his military career. He was tactically trained to avoid getting shot using any means available to him. He knew that sometimes you have to take cover and shoot back. Sometimes, you just run and take cover until the onslaught stops, whereas sometimes you hunker down right where you are and do nothing while you think of a plan.

  “Don’t take the bait!” the drill instructor yelled all those years ago at Jackson’s first boot camp. “Don’t you take that bait unless you want to get dead!”

  Jackson knew he needed to tread lightly now with his wife’s loaded question. He felt the onslaught coming. He stayed still, saying and doing nothing, for now.

  Don’t take the bait.

  He was preparing to run. That was the best plan. He learned a long time ago that firing back wasn’t the way when it came to Jamie. That never helped, and she had a right to be upset. He knew that he has put her through hell from the night they first met on the West Coa
st.

  “Tell me again why you have to drive all the way to Maine.”

  The sweet tone of her voice was replaced with bitterness.

  Jackson began to make his escape by gently breaking his hold on her.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Getting up, babe.”

  Jamie covered her head up with the bed covers.

  “Why can’t you just fly out there quickly and fly right back?” She fired her soul piercing rounds off with escalating emotion.

  “The guy refuses to mail them,” Jackson replied as he sat up on the side of the bed. “He said there’s no way I can get the collection through airport security. I have to drive.”

  Jackson leaned over, pulled the blanket down to Jamie’s chest and kissed her on the forehead. He stepped off the bed and into a blend of cotton/polyester shorts as he simultaneously stepped towards the bathroom, all with the grace of a gazelle.

  “They’re dead for Christ’s sake!”

  Her bitterness was replaced by rage.

  “What harm are they going to do to anyone? It doesn’t make any sense!”

  “I’m sorry, hon.”

  The bedroom turned into a war zone and bullets of despair were whizzing past Jackson’s face as he peed in the toilet, which took forever it seemed. Why did I have to drink so much water on the plane?

  “I’m just telling you what the guy said. It’s the only way he will sell the collection to me.”

  “To Maine though? Jesus! It’s so far, Jackson. You aren’t even flying one way. What day will you be back?”

  “At ease, soldier,” Jackson said to Jumper as he practically jogged out of the bathroom to the bedroom door. He stroked Jumper’s head a few times and motioned a sign with his hand to put his favorite soldier at ease as he opened the bedroom door. “Go outside, Jumper! Go on, boy!”

  Jackson turned to face his wife while listening to the comforting sound of his dog’s paws sliding along the slippery wood floor on his way to the kitchen. “I love you,” he said to Jamie after turning back towards her in the doorway. He kissed into the air with his eyes locked on hers.

  “I love you too,” she said a little softer and kissed the air. “Now, when will you be back?” She was firm. Unrelenting.

  “It’s a twenty-six hour drive.” He turned back towards the door and disappeared into the hallway. “I figure Jax and I will stop twice to sleep, maybe three times total,” he said with his voice trailing off as he walked down the hallway. "I hope to be back late Thursday sometime. Maybe Friday.”

  “Dad!” Jax yelled in the hallway as he ran up to his father and hugged him, almost knocking his black frame glasses off his face in the process. “You’re here!”

  “Yep! I missed you, buddy!” Jackson straightened up his son’s glasses.

  “I missed you too! What time are we leaving? Hey, Jumper!”

  It had been a long time since Jax’s father and dog, both heroes to him, were sharing the same space. The dog was licking them both as his tail whipped in every direction.

  Jamie sat up with the covers held up to her neck to keep her body covered knowing that Jax would come into the room without considering what might be happening there. “When are you scheduled to return to active duty?” she yelled out. That one was fired from the big gun.

  “I fly out on Friday afternoon,” Jackson yelled back, ducking, just in case she was closer to him than he thought.

  “Jackson!”

  “I’m sorry, baby!”

  He knelt down and hugged his son tightly with one arm as the two pet Jumper in the hallway while Jamie grumbled.

  “I love you both so much!”

  “We love you too,” Jax said. Jumper barked, almost on cue. “Jumper missed you.”

  Jackson laughed, but quickly found himself slipping into gloom. The melancholy father smiled, but couldn’t help to feel badly as Jamie walked out of the bedroom and into the hallway wearing her white bathrobe. His family was closer to him now than they had been in a long time, and nothing in the world could make him happier right now. It suddenly didn’t make sense for him to ever be gone again.

  “I will barely get to see you, Jackson!”

  “We’ll try our best to be back Thursday for dinner,” he said as he stood up and Jumper darted through the doggie door, into the backyard. “There and back. Quick. Promise.”

  Jamie continued protesting under her breath as she turned and walked back to the bedroom.

  “I’m getting in the shower,” she huffed in the bedroom doorway. She turned back to Jackson and leaned against the doorframe, watching him watch her. The face she missed so much made it hard for her to continue being mad. She simply adored the man, everything about him. She would have given anything to keep him right there for the next one hundred years. The shower sounded like the next best option.

  “You coming or what?”

  Chapter 3

  “No. I don’t rightly understand any of this,” Sarah Rally said. Her two young children stood close by her side as tears trickled down all their faces with her young daughter clutching her pink, stuffed elephant.

  Sarah looked to the bouquet of purple wild roses her husband, Reverend Kenneth Rally, had plucked near the Bridge of the Roses on the east side of town. They were sucking up water in a clear glass vase on the kitchen counter. He gave them to her three days ago when he returned from a camping trip there with his youth group.

  The bags under Sarah’s eyes revealed how little she slept last night.

  “My husband was just murdered and now you want me and our children to go with you to Atlanta? I reckon you take me for a crazy person.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” the man who identified himself as Gus replied. “I mean no. No, ma’am. We don’t think you’re crazy at all. But we do need you to come to Atlanta with us.”

  “What the devil for?”

  “For your protection, ma’am,” the other man, Will, replied. “To protect you and your children.”

  The two men to whom Sarah was speaking had knocked on the front door of her Peterton, Virginia home about five minutes ago that Tuesday morning, around the same time Jackson Mills and his wife were making love in Georgia. They introduced themselves as investigators with the CDC.

  “The what?” she asked, concealing none of her mountain drawl.

  “The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, ma’am,” Gus explained at 8:01 a.m.

  He and his partner were wearing white lab coats, but they didn’t look like any doctors she had ever seen. They made a point to stay at least two feet from the Rally family at all times when their masks were off. Their sharp, granite faces made it seem that they spent far more time in the gym than in any medical facility.

  They hoped to report they had custody of the surviving Rally family members before the start of the 9:00 conference call; it was their supervisor’s expectation that they would, no matter the cost.

  Sarah was regretting the decision to answer the door as the two peculiarly dressed men stood in her kitchen, making demands.

  “Protection from what?” she asked.

  Though they weren’t trying to be, the two men were scary. It oozed from their pores. Protected from what? Sarah wondered, still getting no answer from them. Maybe from you she contemplated after she noticed the skull and crossbones tattoo on Gus’ left hand when he walked in the door before he pulled on gloves.

  “Well?”

  “They… we need to run some tests. On you and your children. To ensure…”

  “What?” she asked, interrupting Gus. “That I don’t have what my husband had? That I ain’t goin’ to kill nobody? Allegedly.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “What the hell did he have? Can you tell me that? For heaven’s sake, will one of you please tell me what happened to my husband? The police won’t tell me nothin’. Course they’s the ones that shot him in the head. That reporter from the news told me they won’t tell her nothin’ either.”

  “Our team in Atlanta is
trying to determine what happen to, your husband,” Gus said, “with the help of people like you, Mrs. Rally.”

  “Is that where he is now?” Tears continued to stream down her face. “I asked to see his body and they told me it ain’t here no more.”

  “Yes, ma’am. His remains are in Atlanta at the CDC.”

  “He had a disease?”

  “That’s what we are trying to determine. Now, we need you to go on and pack a bag for you and your children and come with us. Hurry, please. We don’t have any time to waste. The plane is fueled and ready to go.” Will looked at his watch. “Waiting on us.”

  “Oh, my God.”

  Sarah cried as she sat down at the kitchen table and put her head in her hands. It was all so overwhelming. So fast. The men failed to hide their dismay as they sighed in unison. She was barely keeping it together since she heard the news about her husband last night. She hated flying too.

  “No.”

  “No?”

  “That’s what I said. I don’t fly. I hate planes.”

  “It’s a short flight.”

  “Well, I ain’t getting’ on it. You hear?”

  While the CDC does have investigators, the two senior CIA field agents could barely think about anything except their last operation. It should have ended yesterday with the mysterious but cleansing explosion of a drug lord’s Bogota mansion.

  “Get back to D.C. now” their supervisor, Chief Special Agent Cavanagh, had ordered them as they watched the comings and goings at the mansion through high-powered binoculars. “This mission is scrubbed for the time being. We have something more important going on back here in the states. You’ll have to blow him up another time.”

  “This has to be some kind of sick joke.” Sarah sobbed as she pulled her children closer to her body. “They’re sayin’ my Kenny killed that girl. That can’t be true! She was kin. It just can’t be true!”

  The agents looked to each other for help. Grief counseling wasn’t their forte. They weren’t therapists or CDC investigators. They were CIA operatives, borrowed and assigned to this duty by the FBI, and their mission now was simple. Before Mrs. Rally said another word to the media or began showing the first symptom of the virus that was already referenced on top-secret paperwork as CFv1, she and her children needed to be in Atlanta for observation and containment.