The Alpha For Her

Chapter 8

Jennifer’s head spun and her gut began to churn. It was happening. It was happening again, but this time she couldn’t blame Flint. She blamed herself. How could she have been so naïve as to think that a man like Flint Dryzek would take any interest in her beyond how he could use her. And that was what he wanted; that was what this was all about. He wanted to use people to further his own goals — whatever they were. And all that talk, all that charm, all that stuff about her cute walk, and about her being beautiful – it was all just to soap her up so that he could get her to front for him at his convention with that silly, stupid name.

And Alaiah. Who the hell was she? Probably a glamorous super-model luxuriating in some cozy cabana somewhere by the water, eating truffles and sipping margaritas in the sunshine by day, and then becoming his pet wh*re at night. No wonder no one ever saw the woman.

By the time Jennifer had reached the tables by the pool, she was in a state.

“Jennifer,” Candy called. She was sitting with some people at a table. “Jen, how’d it go?”

Jennifer just glared.

“Okay,” Candy said, “I won’t ask. “Anyway, the threes are up in my place. You pulled Vera this time.”

“The threes?” Jen asked.

“The puzzle?”

“Oh. Right. Sh*t. Thanks.”

Jennifer headed to her room. She just wanted to forget the whole thing. She didn’t want to play anymore. She wanted to just march right back to the man’s office, and demand that she be flown out of there. And when he came up with some lame excuse about the helicopter being down, she’d walk.

At her door, she heard voices across the way. It almost sounded urgent, and she couldn’t tell if it was arguing or begging. There was a high, almost whiney voice that sounded like Billie, so she went to the door and rapped softly. When no answer came, she peeked inside.

“But there’s just too many things that we can’t know,” a guy was saying.

“So what are we gonna do?” the whiney woman said. “Just give up?”

“It’s impossible. Too many unknowns, and – who are you?”

The guy asked, turning and seeing Jen.

“Just me,” she said.

The guy and girl were standing before a bed sheet that hung from the wall, black marker lines and symbols everywhere. Vera was lounging on the settee, her face in her tablet.

“That’s Jennifer,” Vera said, never looking up. “Our fourth.”

“Oh,” the guy said. “Hi. I’m Aaron, and this is Brianna.”

“Call me Bree,” she said.

Bree was a petite slip of a thing with platinum blonde hair, and Aaron looked like Harry Potter, without the glasses.

“Okay,” Aaron said, “this is great. We need another set of eyes on this. Bree and I have been going nuts trying to solve this puzzle, and Vera’s been no help.”

“I’m thinking,” Vera said.

“Okay,” Jennifer said. “So what’s the puzzle?”

“Do you know what a B-17 is?” Bree asked.

“The Flying Fortress,” Jennifer said, nodding. “Mainstay of the allied bombing campaign of Germany during World War Two. Yeah.”

“You knew that?”

“Doesn’t everybody?”

“No.”

“Okay, so what’s up?”

The puzzle was weird. It seemed that B-17’s flew in squadrons of twelve during daylight runs. Fairly consistently, the Allies were losing half the planes. Some bright boy had developed a new, lighter armor plating. The problem was that the plane could only carry so much; they couldn’t armor the whole plane, and so where would the armor best protect the aircraft?

“The first part was simple,” Aaron said. “You protect the fuel tanks, and the cockpit.”

“Such a word,” Bree giggled.

“I guess it’s where they keep the co*ks,” Jennifer said. Bree burst into laughter. “So?”

“So, we have only three more panels of armor,” Aaron said, “and we’re trying to figure out where to place them. But we don’t know which planes in the formation got shot down, so we don’t know where to put the stuff. See,” he said pointing to the marks on the sheet, “they flew in what was called a box-formation…”

Aaron went on and on about the statistics he had calculated, the strength of the German guns and things that Jennifer didn’t want to understand, then he went off on a tirade about what they didn’t know, while Bree began arguing about what was and was not important. Vera looked at Jen and rolled her eyes.

Jennifer glanced over at the laptop with the pictures of the shot-up planes that had made it back. She clicked through, and frowned.

“Guys,” she said, “it’s simple.”

“Huh?”

“These are the ones that survived, right?”

Aaron and Bree nodded.

“So you put the armor on the places where these planes weren’t shot.”

“Whaa…?”

Vera burst out laughing. She looked at the pics, then kissed Jennifer’s forehead.

“Stands to reason,” she said. “If they didn’t get shot there, they didn’t crash, ergo, the ones who got shot there, crashed.”

“Brilliant,” Bree said, shaking her head. “I’m sending in the answer; somebody help me write.”

“But,” Aaron said, “we don’t know–”

“I’m sending in the damned answer. Then we can all go to the pool.”

That sounded so good to Jennifer, so she wished them luck, and went to change into her swimsuit.

She lounged alone by the pool in the sun. Her swim had eased her fury, and her mimosa had calmed her gut. She liked the sunshine. She liked the pool. She liked the food and the drinks, and the fact that they were free. She loved her tub and all of the luxury. She had made some friends, and she realized how foolish she had been, thinking to walk away.

She had had her interview, so that stress was over. She understood what the challenges that Flint was giving them were all about, and so now that she understood the goal, she didn’t care any longer. She could politely decline his offer, and then while away her time in the man’s opulence, and she didn’t care a whit what he would think of her.

A shadow fell over her. She opened her eyes.

“Hey, Candy. Join me?”

“Are you, like, manic-depressive or something?”

“I might just be.”

Candy took the lounge beside her.

“Sorry I was so snappish,” Jennifer said.

“Bad interview?”

“No, actually. It started rocky, but ended very well. I’m even invited to dinner with Flint tonight.”

“Okay? So, what’s the catch?”

Jennifer tried to frame her answer. She sipped. Then she raised her sunglasses and looked at her friend.

“The catch is that I think that I’m too much of a romantic,” she said. “I get these wild ideas, dreams really, and I can see things that aren’t there, or interpret things so wrong a lot of times.”

“Flint?”

“Yeah.”