PROLOGUE

Baghdad, Iraq: nine months ago

“I don’t think we should see each other anymore once we get back to the States.”

His soon-to-be ex-girlfriend’s rejection rattled around in Captain Bobby “Postal” Ruznick’s head as loudly as the echo of worn out shock absorbers rattled along the dirt road. Dumped by a woman, in a crappy military bus, no less.

A first, but not a surprise.

He’d expected the heave-ho from Dr. Grace Marie Lanier – a profiler for the police when she wasn’t called up for her Army Reservist duty – after their second date to a no-cover-charge bazaar festival in downtown Baghdad. Then she’d hung around for another date and he’d started to think maybe…

So yeah, this did sting a little after all. Not that he would let on and launch into some major discussion when he had bigger concerns.

Such as the off-kilter sense he was getting from the desert town landscape outside the gritty windows. This should have been a simple bus ride to his plane, wrapping up a two week quick gig in Baghdad. But then nothing around here ever turned out simple.

A Special Ops pilot, he had to trust his instincts or he could too easily end up taking the eternal dirt nap.

“Bobby, I know you’re awake behind those sunglasses.” Gracie’s prissy tones contradicted her sultry, exotic scent. “Your boot’s tapping so hard you’re vibrating the floorboards worse than the potholes.”

This didn’t seem like an opportune moment to mention more than one woman had told him he twitched even in his sleep, so he kept listening to her ramble on like his third grade teacher spouting the benefits of Ritalin for settling his ass down. Except his junkie ma never made it to the parent/teacher conference. By the time he’d gone to live with his grandma, he’d figured out to avoid raisins, grapes and sugar. He’d learned to concentrate hard and process those eight ka-zillion stimuli catapulting his way all at once. He’d fast figured out how to pick which one demanded the bulk of his attention.

The newly erected placards scrolled in local dialect along the dusty road won, hands down.

“Really, Bobby, I don’t want to drag this out. Certainly it will be awkward during the flight home, but after we land tomorrow morning, we’ll never have to see each other again. I’ll return to North Carolina, you can kick back on your Florida beach.”

He grunted.

What else could he say? She was right. A shrink and a psycho really didn’t make for much of a match.

He figured he’d been lucky to get three dates. But holy hell, then on date three she’d flattened her hand to his fly during a lip lock behind a Humvee a second before the “time to leave” call from fellow CV-22 pilot Joe “Face” Greco. Face’s sucky timing had cost Bobby’s one chance at Gracie. Sexy Gracie. Blond and busty and so smart he got off on the fact she couldn’t string syllables together after their first kiss.

Now he wouldn’t luck into a repeat.

Damn. Big time damn. And so not anything he could think about now because holy crap something wasn’t right outside the grimy bus window. He couldn’t read the messages spray painted on plywood, and likely no one on the bus could read Arabic either.

Might just be signs for homemade fig preserves or a “have you seen my lost goat?” Or it could be something else altogether – like a warning to locals.

Except these locals were in surprisingly scarce supply in the small village outside of Baghdad, not a kid in sight. He logged all textbook signs of an IED – improvised explosive device. The IED could be stored anywhere or strapped to anyone.

Inside the rusted out jeep on the side of the road.

Buried under that leaning palm tree.

Perhaps stuffed in that dead cow carcass rotting in a ditch.

Gracie shifted in her seat, plastic crackling. Her soft curves pressed against his side and threatened distraction, no matter how adept he was at multi-tasking. More of her sexy scent mingled in with the pervasive military bus smell – much like an old Boy Scout tent, not that he’d ever been a Boy Scout. However his buddy Face had, and vowed military gear carried the same musty stink.

Distracting thoughts whacked him from all sides. Shit. He was better than that now. Concentrate, and do not let emotions slither through to remind him how hell could explode in seconds.

“Bobby, you’re a talented pilot and even a, uh, fascinating man. But we’re just too different. That whole ‘opposites attract’ cliché is true, but not always healthy.”

“Uh, huh.” He shoved to his feet. Fascinating? Cool. He would process that later for sure. But first– “’Scuse me.”

“Where are you going?”

Her faint question tickled at the edges of his narrowing focus. He braced a hand on the back of a seat as he walked, then another seat, left, right, making his way up the aisle with slow deliberation while assessing that cow carcass in the ditch as the already creeping bus slowed at an intersection.

Plenty of carcasses decayed around this place for days, but that bovine gut offered plenty of room to hide a bomb. He suppressed nightmarish images of other IEDs strapped to women and children. His brain flashed with memories of bombs tucked beneath murdered American soldiers waiting to be retrieved and honored for their sacrifice. Instead their dead bodies in the field were rigged to a device and used as a tool by the enemy to blow up more Americans.

His gaze skipped ahead to the camo-wearing driver. The dude wasn’t an Iraqi National since they didn’t hire locals to drive buses. The burly guy was an Army reservist like Gracie. Trustworthy.

But everyone was edgy and, well, Bobby had a rep for acting irrationally. This uptight Sarge driving the rattletrap bus already thought he was a loose canon.

Usually they were t-totally correct. Just not today.

Still there wasn’t time for chitchat. Discussion would cost valuable minutes and he needed to get up front. Fast. Sprinting would get him tackled by any of the Army dudes packing the seats, rifles on their laps.

Of course a rifle didn’t deliver much of a wallop against an IED. He made his way forward.

Slow. Steady. Focused. Almost there.

A hand snaked out, grabbing his elbow. Bobby resisted the impulse to draw back a fist – thank God, since the hand was attached to his crewdog buddy, Joe “Face” Greco who so wouldn’t take well to a fist fight. “What are you gonna do, Postal, get off and walk? Sit down and catch some sleep. We’ve got a long flight ahead of us. Listen, cheap ass, I seriously doubt the driver has any complimentary pretzel packs and a soda cart.”

Postal’s parsimonious ways were legendary.

Bobby nodded toward the empty seats up front, let Face assume whatever he wanted and kept on walking. Past “Vegas,” a family man with kids.

Sandman, Padre and Stones, each of those gunners was a crew member with helmet bags and rifles of their own. His brothers-in-arms who didn’t deserve to be blown to hell by a terrorist IED coated with cow guts. Nobody deserved that.

After dodging countless bullets on the street as a kid and even more bullets as an adult in war zones, he figured he was already living on borrowed time. Better to go down in a blaze of glory than let those bastards hurt a busload of innocents. Like Gracie, who yeah, was always a little too perfect to hang out with a messed up, adrenaline junky like him anyway.

And if he was wrong about the IED? Well, they would just have another reason to laugh and call him Nucking Futz Postal.

Bobby stopped beside the driver. Focus. Adrenaline surge. Act.

He grabbed the wheel before the Army sergeant could do more than look up.

Bobby jerked the wheel left. Hurtled the bus off the road amid hollering from the back. The rear mirror showed slinging bodies too busy righting themselves to overtake him.

Excellent.

He slammed against the seat, clenched his hand around the steering wheel. The driver’s shouts were lost in the…

Boom.

The explosion behind them rocked the earth, drowned out words, but not the hoarse shouts. The rearview mirror filled with the image of flames splitting the road behind them, exactly where they would have driven.

Hands locked, he guided the wheel, plowed the bus through a piece-of-shit barn on the city outskirts. Chickens squawked and scattered.

The bus blasted out the other side of the ramshackle barn, into a ditch and up onto the road again. Safely. Although new shock absorbers were definitely no longer optional.

At least they were safe, and Baghdad International waited ahead in the stretch of desert.

Heated nerves chilled, settling in the stunned silence surrounding him. Sweat sealed his flight suit to his body, but more from the temp than from any stress because he’d always known he would succeed.

Well, he’d been pretty sure.

He nodded to the driver. “Here ya go, Scooter. All yours again. But I’m thinking we need to get the hell out of here ASAP.”

Bobby released the wheel and pivoted away. The swaying bus lurched under his feet before steadying again as the rows of passengers gawked and whispered.

Left hand on a seat, right, left, he made his way back down the narrow aisle.

Joe Greco shook his head and clapped him on the shoulder. “Thank you, crazy ass bastard.”

That he was.

Gracie stared back at him with eyes wide. Wary. Confused. But mostly wary.

Yeah, he was definitely too close to the edge for Dr. Uptight. That pissed him off, which was better than regretting the fact he would never get naked with gorgeous Gracie.

Without a word, he plunked in his seat, slouching. Boot bouncing a never ending restless rhythm, he settled in for a few minutes’ powernap before their flight out of this shithole and out of Dr. Gracie Marie Lanier’s perfect world. She balanced it all, profiler for the cops, then racing to do her duty when called to her Army reservist psy-ops job. All that and hot as all get out. Shee-it.

As still as she sat, Gracie fidgeted causing too many damned tempting brushes of those lush breasts of hers against his arm.

With a final huff, she stilled. “Well, Bobby, you sure picked a hell of a way to avoid our farewell conversation.”

“Nice patch there, Major.”

The words fell from her lips with a light Southern drawl, whiskey warm and just as potent.

Gray glanced down at his sleeve. Anything. Anywhere. Anytime.

The insinuation crackled along the humidity-laden air. Gray let his gaze slide back to her. “Wanna test the motto out?”

Lori laughed, husky, if a bit tight. “Same old gray.” Her chin tipped. “Been there. Done that. Lost the T-shirt.”

His arms folded over his chest. “You left it at my place.”

She laughed again. The great husky laugh of hers that rolled right into him. Just as fast, she had his hormones bombarding the defenses of his reason. Of course sex, great sex, incredible anything, anywhere, anytime sex, had never been their problem. But the minute they’d set their feet on the floor….

Chapter One

Librarian Anna Bonneau was well on her way to landing in the pokey. And that’s exactly where she wanted to be.

Handcuffed to a park bench in protest all afternoon while reading hadn’t been a great hardship since books were her life. However waiting for the police to take notice was starting to give her fanny fatigue.

Finally, a cop cruiser squealed to a stop by the curb.

She should have realized they wouldn’t actually have a problem with her sit-down protest until closing time – five p.m. The recreation area was empty but for autumn trees awash with colors, swings twisting in the wind by Lake Huron , the place her mother had taken her for tea parties.

Losing her mother at twelve had been the most difficult time in her life, and this park represented a living tribute to the warm woman whose time on earth had been cut short by a car accident. Her father – a local retired judge – had tried to continue the picnic tradition, but their differences in opinion during her teenage years made things difficult.

All in the past. Now, Anna did her best to focus on her book while keeping a peripheral check on the police officer stretching out of his cruiser. Finally, progress in her cause.

She’d always wanted to be a librarian. However, landing a job in her sleepy hometown of Oscoda , Michigan was a dream come true. She’d waited three years working in a library in the Detroit area for this position to come open.

Two weeks from now, she would start her job. And not a chance did she plan to let the short-sighted members of the town planning commission rip up this park to plop a “Gentlemen’s Club” restaurant and bar right beside her library.

She shifted her numb tush off the metal bench growing cooler by the second in the autumn temps, all the while keeping her eyes firmly focused on rereading a Suzanne Brockmann reissue. Yes, Anna adored her romance novels as much as the long ago classics.

A scream pierced the air. A child.

Anna jolted up from her seat only to be yanked back down by the handcuff – ouch. Her book fell to the ground as she took in the sight of a parked truck and second male carrying a kid gaining ground on the police officer. She peeked around a tree, angling for a better view. Howling shrieks echoed, closer, fuller, tugging at her heart until she saw someone she’d hoped never to lay eyes on again after he had broken her heart in high school.

Forest Jameson.

As he crossed the lawn toward her, Anna’s tummy back flipped as it had when she’d first seen him bat one over the fence on the baseball field. He was a hunk, no doubt, however too uptight back during their teenage dating days. She’d heard he’d returned about four months ago to set up a legal practice, but she hadn’t seen him since her return a week ago.

Why was he at the park, and why was he hauling along a child? They could be here to play – not that the kid sounded happy. More likely, Forest was here because her father, his long ago mentor, had called and asked him to save her numb tush.

The cop, old Officer Smitty, stopped short of her bench. Closely following, Forest Jameson juggled the boy, a briefcase and a tote bag stuffed with toys dangling from his shoulder.

“Anna.” He nodded a greeting. “You still look the same.”

She wasn’t sure how to take that and before she could answer, he’d turned back to the child.

Forest jostled the wailing, magenta-faced kid wearing sunglasses. “Hang on, Joey. Just a few minutes and we’ll be through here. I promise, son.”

A son? Her eyes zipped to Forest’s ring finger. Bare. She didn’t want to think about the relief.

Forest met her gaze. “Divorced and the nanny quit.”

His tight lipped answer engendered sympathy along with embarrassment over being caught checking.

Forest strode over to the cop. “I’m here to represent the interests of Miss Bonneau.”

Well sheesh. Wasn’t that convenient? “Uh, hello? Miss Bonneau has something to say about that.”

The child – around four, maybe? – arched his back, pumping his feet. “I want to go home!”

“Well, you’re going anywhere if you don’t settle down.” Forest’s unwavering parental tone of calmly stated boundaries was betrayed by his harried composure.

Officer Smitty jumped in with the universal key and unlocked the handcuffs confining her to the bench. “H’lo Miss Bonneau. How about you take care of this little stinker and I’ll have a conversation with the lawyer?”

Click. The handcuffs fell away, ending her latest protest and there wasn’t a thing she could do about it. Maybe she would ride this one out and see what Forest had to say – in the interest of being entertained. Right?

She snagged her book from the ground, placed it on the bench and reached for little Joey. He didn’t even loosen the lock hold on his dad’s neck. Single parent Forest was clearly overwhelmed.

Hmmm. It seemed she needed to bail him out as well and clearly the men would talk more if they thought she was out of the way. She may have wanted her standard quick stop in jail, but her father said Forest never lost his cases so she would simply stay near enough to listen until she came up with plan B.

And the kid surely was a heart-tugger. “Could I take him for you while you work your attorney magic?”

Forest hesitated, which irked her to no end. Finally, he nodded and eased the boy’s arms from around his neck, speaking the whole time. “It’s okay, son. This is Miss Anna. She’s going to play with you while I talk business. Okay?”

Joey hiccupped. “Kay.” His chocolate colored curls stuck to his head with tantrum-induced sweat. “Can I go swing?”

Of course. He passed Joey over. “Anna? You’re sure you don’t mind?”

If he’d been surprised that she guessed his reason for showing up, he sure didn’t show it.

“Not at all.”

She took the child, a solid weight. The scent of baby shampoo and sweat soothed her with the sweet innocence of childhood. Gracious, he was cute in his striped overalls, conductor’s cap and Thomas the Train sunglasses.

Forest opened his mouth as if to speak further, but Anna turned away. Her nerves were on edge and resisting the temptation to stare at the grown up Forest was almost irresistible. His gentleness with the child could well draw her, just as it had when she’d seen him volunteering with little leaguers in high school.

She headed toward the swings offering soothing words both for herself and Joey.

“Can you sit in the swing and hold me, please?” Joey asked.

“Of course, sweetie.”

This was easier than she thought. She could hold the child, keep him happy and listen to the two men decide her fate as if she wasn’t even there. Grrr. She tickled Joey’s chin with the tail of her braid until he chortled. His cool guy sunglasses the cutest little things she’d ever seen.

Unable to resist gloating since that usually riled Counselor Uptight in the past, Anna glanced past Joey to his father. Bummer. Forest hadn’t even noticed. He was too busy unloading baby gear. As he placed the toy bag and briefcase on the bench, his suit coat gaped open to reveal a broad chest covered by his crisp white shirt. She swallowed hard.

He whipped off his steel rimmed glasses and snatched a tissue from the briefcase to clean away evening mist. Anna’s breath hitched. Forest’s blue eyes glittered like a shaken bottle of soda water. Wasn’t she supposed to be the one who delivered surprises?

Darn it, she wouldn’t let him trounce her heart again the way he had when he left town without so much as a farewell.

“Miss Anna, higher!” Joey squealed, yanking her braid. “Miss Anna, want to swing higher.”

She blinked twice to clear her mind. Joey’s tug helped. The kid had the strength of a fifth grader. She welcomed the wake-up call.

Why couldn’t her father understand she believed in justice as strongly as he did? She merely approached it from a different angle with her protests she’d been organizing since passing a petition in the second grade for new monkey bars on the playground.

Forest finished his discussion with Smitty and the older cop ambled off to his patrol car. Forest strode toward her with determined steps and held his arms out for his son, tapping the boy on the shoulder. “Time to go, Joey.”

The little fella pivoted in her lap and launched at his dad with obvious affection. This time, however, he squirmed down to walk, holding his dad’s hand.

Anna eased up from the swing. “What’s the verdict?”

“Since we made it out of here before closing, you got off with a simple ticket, but no jail time.”
“I guess that will have to do, but I was hoping we could squeeze some news coverage.”

A tight smile crooked his perfectly sculpted mouth as he mimicked her voice. “Why thank you, Forest , for keeping me from paying an expensive fine. And heaven forbid I might have actually had to go to jail and eat their fine cuisine. It’s great to see you again.”

She slumped in the swing. He had gone to a lot of trouble for her and she was being brattier than a two year old. “Thank you for your time and help. It’s, uh, good to see you too.”

Even if it had cost her the short stint in jail and a much coveted feature in the weekly newspaper that she’d been hoping for.

Still, heaven knew she needed to put distance between herself and his too-enticing blue eyes. The sparkle in those charmers rivaled any giggles from Joey.

Captain Tanner “Bronco” Bennett gripped the cargo plane’s stick and flew through hell, the underworld having risen to fire the night sky.

“Anything. Anywhere. Anytime,” he chanted the combat mantra through locked teeth.

His C-17 squadron motto had gone into overtime today.

Neon-green tracer rounds arced over the jet’s nose. Sweat sealed Tanner’s helmet to his head. Adrenaline burned over him with more heat than any missile. He plowed ahead, chanted. Prayed.

Antiaircraft fire exploded into puffs of black smoke that momentarily masked the moon. The haze dispersed, leaving lethal flak glinting in the inky air. Shrapnel sprinkled the plane, tink, tink, tinking like hail on a tin roof.

Still he flew, making no move for evasion or defense.

“Steady. Steady.” He held his unwavering course, had to until the last paratrooper egressed out of the C-17 into the Eastern European forest below.

Offloading those troopers into the drop zone was critical. Once they secured the nearby Sentavo airfield, supplies could be flown into the wartorn country by morning. Starving villagers burned out of their homes by renegade rebels needed relief. Now. The scattered uprisings of the prior summer had heated into an all-out civil war as the year’s end approached.

Anything. Anywhere. Anytime. Tanner embraced it as more than a squadron motto. Those villagers might be just a mass of faceless humanity to other pilots, but to him each scared, hungry refugee had the same face – the face of his sister.

A flaming ball whipped past his windscreen.

Reality intruded explosively a few feet away. Near miss. Closer than the last. Time to haul out.

“Tag,” Tanner called over the headset to the loadmaster, “step it up back there. We gotta maneuver out of this crap. In case you haven’t noticed, old man, they’re shooting at us.”

“Got it, Bronco,” the loadmaster growled. “Our guys are piling out of this flying coffin as fast as they can.”

“Start pushing. Just get ‘em the hell off my airplane so we can maneuver.” Urgency pulsed through Tanner, buzzed through the cockpit.

His hand clenched around the stick. No steering yoke for this sleek new cargo plane. And it damned well needed to perform up to its state of the art standards today.

He darted a glance at the sweat-soaked aircraft commander beside him. “Hey, Lancelot, how’s it look left? Is there a way out on your side?”

Major Lance “Lancelot” Sinclair twisted in his seat toward the window, then pivoted back. A foreboding scowl creased the perspiration filming his too-perfect features. “Bronco, my man, we can’t go left. It’s a wall of flames. What’s it like on your side?”

Tanner leaned forward, peering at the stars beyond the side window for a hole in the sparking bursts. Bad. But not impossible. “Fairly clear over here. Scattered fire. Isolated pockets I can see to weave through.”

“Roger that, you’ve got the jet.”

“Roger, I have the jet.” He gave the stick a barely perceptible shake to indicate his control of the aircraft. Not that he’d ever lost control. Lance hadn’t been up to speed for weeks, a fact that left Tanner more often than not running the missions, regardless of his copilot status. “Tag, waiting for your all-clear call.”

“You got it, big guy.” Tag’s voice crackled over the headset. “Everybody’s off. The door’s closing. Clear to turn.”

Anticipation cranked Tanner’s adrenaline up another notch. “Hold onto your flight pay, boys, we’re breaking right.”

He yanked the stick, simultaneously ramming the rudder pedal with his boot. The aircraft banked, hard and fast.

Gravity punched him. G-forces anchored him to his seat, pulled, strained, as he threaded the lumbering aircraft through exploding volleys in the starlit sky.

Pull back, adjust, weave right. Almost there.

A familiar numbing sensation melted down his back like an ice cube. Ignore it. Focus and fly.

Debris rattled, sliding sideways. His checklist thunked to the floor. Lance’s cookies, airmailed from his wife, skittered across the glowing control panel. Tanner dipped the nose, embers streaming past outside.

The chilling tingle in his back detonated into white-hot pain. His torso screamed for release from the five-point harness. The vise-like constraints had never been adequate to accommodate his height or bulk. Who would have thought a simple pinched nerve just below his shoulder could bring him down faster than a missile?

Doc O’Connell had even grounded him for it once before. He knew she would again in a heartbeat. If he let her.

Which he wouldn’t.

Tanner pulled a sharp turn left. The plane howled past a shower of light. He hurt like hell, but considered it a small price to pay. By tomorrow night, women and children would be fed because of his efforts, and he liked to think that was a worthwhile reason to risk his life.

Yeah, saving babies was a damn fine motivator for going to work every day. No way was he watching from the sidelines.

He accepted that none of it would bring his sister back. But each life saved, each wrong righted, soothed balm over a raw wound he knew would never completely heal.

Tanner’s hand twitched on the stick, and he jerked his thoughts back to the cockpit. He couldn’t think of his sister now. Distractions in combat were deadly.

He reined his thoughts in tight, instincts and training offering him forgetfulness until he flew out over the Adriatic Sea.

“Feet wet, crew.” Tanner announced their position over the water. “We’re in the clear all the way to land in Germany.”

He relaxed his grip on the stick, the rest of his body following suit. The blanket of adrenaline fell away, unveiling a pain ready to knife him with clean precision. Tanner swallowed back bile. “Take the jet, Lance.”

“Bronco, you okay?”

“Take the jet,” he barked. Fresh beads of sweat traced along his helmet.

Lance waggled the stick. “Roger, I have the aircraft.”

Tanner’s hand fell into his lap, his arm throbbing, nearly useless. He clicked through his options. He couldn’t avoid seeing a flight surgeon after they landed. But if he waited until morning and locked in an appointment with his pal Cutter, he would be fine. Doc Grayson “Cutter” Clark understood flyers.

No way was Tanner letting Dr. Kathleen O’Connell get her hands on him again–

He halted the thought in midair. Her hands on him? That was definitely an image he didn’t need.

Keep it PC, bud. Remember those soft hands are attached to a professional woman and a damned sharp officer.

All presented in a petite package with an iron will that matched her fiery red hair.

Forget reining in those thoughts. Tanner dumped them from his mind like an offloaded trooper.

Lance pressed the radio call button on the throttle. “Control, this is COHO two zero. Negative known damage. Thirty point zero of gas. Requesting a flight surgeon to meet us when we land.”

“What the–” Tanner whipped sideways, wrenching up short as a spasm knocked him back in his seat. “What do you think you’re doing?”

“Calling for a flight surgeon to meet us on the ground.”

In front of the crew? Tanner winced. “No need, Lance. I’ll be fine until I can get to the clinic.”

“Yeah, right.” Lance swiped his arm across his damp brow as he flew. “I’ve seen you like this before. You’ll be lucky to walk once we land. You need a flight surgeon waiting, man. I’m not backing off the call.”

“Listen, Lance–” Tanner wanted to argue, fully intended to bluster through, but the spasm kinked like an overwound child’s toy ready to snap.

He couldn’t afford to be grounded from flying again, not now. He only had six weeks left until he returned to the states to begin his rescheduled upgrade from copilot to aircraft commander. Not only could he lose his slot, but he would also lose six weeks of flying time, of making a difference.

Why the hell couldn’t he and O’Connell have pulled different rotations, leaving her back at Charleston Air Force Base with her perfectly annotated regulation book and haughty cat eyes?

The strain of ignoring the stabbing ache drizzled perspiration down Tanner’s spine, plastering his flight suit to his skin. Options dwindled with each pang.

“Fine.” Tanner bit out the word through his clenched teeth. What a time for Lance to resume control. “Just have them find Cutter to meet us. He’ll give me a break.”

Not like Doc O’Connell. She probably hadn’t colored outside the lines since kindergarten.

“And Lance, tell Cutter to keep it low key. Would ya? No big show.” Rules be damned, he wasn’t going to end a combat mission publicly whining about a backache. Cutter would understand. Tanner was counting on it.

If by-the-book O’Connell ran the show, he would be flying a desk by sunrise.

PROLOGUE

Five Years Ago: Randolph AFB, Texas

Lieutenant Nola Seabrook accepted that she could face death on Monday. But for the weekend, she intended to celebrate life to the fullest.

She gripped the door of the Officer’s Club bar, preparing herself to do something she’d never even considered before. She intended to find a man – a stranger – for a one night stand.

Lucky for her, she was away from her home base, which gave her a wealth of unfamiliar faces to peruse. Country music and the clang of the bell over the bar swelled as she swung the door wider to reveal the Friday night crowd.

No crying. No fear. She would forget herself with some stranger and lose herself in sensations she might never feel again.

Nola shouldered deeper into the press of bodies. The room reverberated with cheering. The place was packed, as she would expect on a Friday night, but the majority clustered in a circle to the side, the source of the whoop, whoop, whoop. And “Go, Lurch! Go, Lurch!”

Lurch? Now there was a call sign for a guy worth investigating.

Curiosity nipped, sucking her feet sideways.

She angled toward the commotion. Sidestepping an amorous couple making tracks toward the door, she caught sight of a chalkboard mounted on an easel. A bartender stood beside with a nubby piece of chalk to scratch out numbers. Ah. Bets. But what for?

She sidled through to the inner circle. Her eyes homed in on the source of the noise. The focus of the cheering was…

A man.

Holy cow, what a man. On the floor pumping push-ups in BDU pants and a brown T-shirt, he clapped between counts – ninety-five at the moment. The number hit a hundred and still he didn’t stop or even hesitate. Must be his size that earned him the nickname “Lurch” because holy cow, he was big.

Two men in similar uniforms split from the crowd carrying a fifty-some-odd year old waitress on their shoulders like Cleopatra. With ceremonial hoopla, they placed her on the man’s back. Finally, his arms strained against the T-shirt, muscles bulging, veins rippling along the stretch of tendons, but still he pushed.

Up. Down. Again and again.

Ohmigod, her own tummy did a flip of attraction. Arousal. And hadn’t she come here for just this reason?

Twenty-five years old and she didn’t have anyone else to turn to for comfort, which could really pitch her into a tailspin if she let herself think on it for too long.

Her elderly parents gone. Her marriage ka-put because her ex-husband couldn’t take the stress of a wife who might not live to see thirty. Zero siblings. Her best friend deployed to Turkey. Her only other friends a bunch of rowdy Air Force crew dogs who spent as much time on the road as she did, and she really couldn’t see herself showing weakness by bawling her eyes out to any of them.

Charge ahead, girl.

She made a quick check of his left hand. No wedding band. No pale cheater mark along his tan ring finger. Sheesh, she wished she’d thought to change into something other than her flight suit.

Too late for regrets. She was here now, and if she left to change, the man in front of her might be gone by the time she returned. Besides, she didn’t want to miss a second of this display.

Sweat started to pop along his forehead and even a hint along his shoulders, but still he kept moving. The man was a poster boy for health and vitality.

Invincibility, perhaps? All things she so desperately wanted to soak up right now. She found herself clapping the count along with everyone else.

“One hundred forty-eight.”

He switched to one handed push-ups. The crowd roared louder.

“One hundred forty-nine. One hundred-fifty.”

He reached behind to steady the waitress and jumped to his feet, easing the apron-clad lady to hers as well. With all the showmanship of his single-handed display, he wrapped an arm around the waitress’s waist, dipped her and gave her a quick kiss before setting her free. “Thank you much, Delphine.”

“No problem for you, Captain Rick. Anytime you’re in town.”

Rick. She liked that name. Solid.

However if she didn’t get her butt in gear and make a move soon, he would be gone. Nola stepped forward. And thank you, Jesus, that’s all it took.

He looked her way and his deep chocolate eyes held.

Without breaking the stare, he smiled, snagged the rest of his uniform off the back of a chair and slid his arms through, slowly buttoning up over his chest.

DeMassi was stitched over the left pocket and above that she recognized the insignia for a pararescueman. He hurtled himself out of planes. Penetrated the most hostile of territories. Anything to save a downed airman, to bring someone like her home.

Honorable to the core and darn near invincible, for sure. Even his patch proclaimed, “That Others May Live.”

He fastened the last button and started toward her. “Hello, Lieutenant Seabrook.”

“Hello to you, Captain DeMassi.”

“Do you have a first name?”

“Nola, like New Orleans.”

“Ah, classy.” He extended his broad hand toward her. “I’m–”

“Rick. I heard from your cheering section.”

“We’re all away from home, coming in from maneuvers to one of our favorite Officer’s Clubs, needing to let off some steam. They would have cheered on anybody.”

“So you say.” She folded his hand in hers, warm and strong.

More of that vitality she needed. Her imagination skipped ahead to thoughts of his hand against her skin. She didn’t need to worry about concerns of compatibility or depth. This was about the moment. She refused to let echoes of her mother’s preaching voice make her feel guilty or shallow.

Nola’s hand stayed connected to Rick’s, shaking, seesawing slower and slower, up and down like his pushups until finally she inched away with a self conscious laugh, wiping her hand against her flight suit leg. “This is awkward.”

“Why so?”

“I want to be all collected and say something femme fatale perfect but now I’m… She started to turn, her nerve wobbling. “Forget it.”

His hand fell on her shoulder, heavy and warm sparking another jolt of that alive feeling she needed.

“Wait,” he said.

She looked back and what she saw in his eyes mirrored the sensations zipping through her like lightning traveling through an aircraft – not fatal, but hair crackling, unsettling, and oh so invigorating.

“Yes?” She meant the word as a statement as well as a question.

“How about this?” He held her with those deep eyes rather than his hands, as if sensing she needed space. Would he be this perceptive in bed? “Let’s not worry about saying the right things. We can say whatever we want, even if it’s a damn awful first date wrong thing to say.”

Date? She was thinking encounter, but okay. Breathe. His game had intriguing merit. The bar patrons kept their distance, even if they watched with half-veiled interest.

Hesitantly, she hitched her elbows back onto the bar. “You go first.”

He propped one arm beside her and leaned in to make his move, his shoulders blocking everything but him.
“I live with my parents.” He thumped his chest with his fist and belched. “Mom does my laundry.”

She burst out laughing. Settling a somber _expression, she responded, “Speaking of laundry, I just don’t get what all the hoopla is about fancy underwear.”

“Ouch. You go right for the jugular, lady.” He grabbed his head in mock agony. “All right, time for the big guns. My doc said not to worry. It’s only a cold sore.”

“Then you should be able to enjoy our meal together.” She reached for the laminated menu wedged between the condiments. “What’s the most expensive item featured?”

“I don’t know, but it doesn’t matter since I maxed out all my credit cards.”

“Fair enough, since it will soon be our money because I’m husband hunting.” Nothing could be further from the truth. Her divorce left her scathed, but good.

“Ah, good one.” He tapped his forehead, then snapped his fingers. “As long as you don’t mind going a lifetime unsatisfied in bed.”

“As long as we get to go to bed together.”

“I’m counting on it.”

She froze and so did he. They weren’t playing anymore.

He held out his hand. “Dance with me.”

And she did. Silently. Talking softly about anything, mostly seductive. For hours until the crowd thinned and the bell rang for last call. They broke apart and he extended his hand again. She knew if she took it this time they would be heading for a different kind of dance, the one she had come here searching for.

Again, her hand fit perfectly in his. A short stroll later they had walked to his room in the visiting officer’s quarters. He kicked the door closed behind him.

She didn’t even bother telling him she’d never done anything like this before. Truth or not, she didn’t want to sound trite and she didn’t intend to see him again anyway. He seemed okay with that. No guilt for either of them. She was through with words and he seemed to feel the same way.

Between kisses, their clothes fell away until only their underwear remained. Skin to skin. Her hands explored the hardened expanse of his muscles more impressive than she’d even imagined.

And her imagination had been mighty darn amazing. She’d been right to do this. This was exactly the escape she needed this weekend to take her away from the ordeal that awaited her next week.

His talented hands made fast work of the front clasp on her bra and he swept the lacy scrap down her shoulders with reverent fingers. A long, slow exhale slid from his mouth, blowing an appreciative whistle over her exposed skin. “Wow, lady, you are something to behold.”

Gulping back emotion, she lifted his hand, placed the callused warmth over her bared breast and savored the sensation as if for the last time. Which it very well could be.

Because Monday, combat veteran that she was, she began her toughest battle ever – one that started not with a mission briefing, but with a mastectomy.

Lieutenant Colonel Zach Dawson liked to think he’d learned a few lessons after sixteen years in the Air Force, ninety-seven combat missions, two weeks as an Iraqi POW and one very speedy divorce. Most important, he’d learned that being him was a hell of a lot easier than being married to him.

And today, being Zach Dawson was tougher than snow removal in Thule, Greenland.

Zach scooped his LMR – land mobile radio – from the front seat of his truck and loped across the steamy South Carolina hospital parking lot at a slow jog. Nineteen minutes left until visiting hours ended.

Nineteen more minutes, then his longest Friday on record would be over.

Duty dictated he pay a courtesy call to new mother Julia Sinclair, the widow of one of his pilots. Conscience insisted her loss couldn’t be repaid with any simple hospital visit. But for today, that’s all he could do, give her nineteen inadequate minutes of his time as if it might somehow erase her past eight months alone.

If only the radio gripped in his hand would stay silent. Zach clutched the LMR tighter, sprinting past a decorative pond toward the glass doors. As commander of a Charleston Air Force Base C-17 squadron, he kept that radio plastered to his side – his walkie-talkie “pipeline to the flight line.” Since the radio was tailor-made with frequencies acceptable even in a hospital, Zach never slipped out of range. He even slept with the thing. Not much of a life to offer someone else.

Nope, he didn’t blame his ex in the least for walking. He did, however, resent like hell that she’d abandoned their children when she’d strolled off with her cooking instructor boyfriend.

Ruined Zach’s lifelong penchant for brownies – and robbed his two daughters of their mother.

He swallowed a curse as the hospital doors swooshed open to release a blast of cool, antiseptic air. Normally, he didn’t let Pam’s leaving get to him. His father had shown him well how anger had a way of leveling everything it touched faster than a SCUD missile. Zach had too many people counting on him to indulge in a momentary vent that wouldn’t accomplish anything constructive.

But as he entered the hospital to visit Julia Sinclair and her fatherless son, thoughts of children missing a parent just hit Zach damned wrong.

He flipped his wrist to check his watch. Seventeen minutes left and–

The radio crackled. “Wolf One, this is Command Post. Over.”

Wolf One, radio code for the Squadron Commander, which meant trouble. He’d checked in with the control tower before leaving. While he couldn’t be off-line, he’d requested non-emergency questions be directed to Wolf Two, his second in command.

Zach shifted his focus to work-mode and answered without breaking stride. No need to change course until he assessed the situation. “Wolf One here, go ahead, Command Post.”

“Sir, this is Lieutenant Walker. I have a phone patch from Moose two-zero. Please initiate.”

“Roger, Command Post. Break, break,” he answered, chanting the lingo to change who he was speaking to as he rounded the reception desk. He mentally scanned the day’s flight schedule. The mission flying under the call sign Moose two-zero would be … Captain Tanner “Bronco” Bennett’s crew. A crew not scheduled to land until 0100 hours. The early call could only mean an in-flight problem. “Moose two-zero, this is Wolf One. Go ahead.”

“Roger, Wolf One.” The connection buzzed with interference from the plane’s roaring engines. “This is Bronco. Moose two-zero is aborting the mission due to equipment malfunction. Nose gear’s stuck in the Up position. We’ve tried everything, sir. We’re currently holding ten miles east of the field while waiting for word on what to do next.”

Damn. The day from hell had just plunged to a level lower than even old Dante could have penned. Zach twined around a couple carrying flowers, past the gift shop, toward the elevators. “Roger, Bronco. Put a call through to the aircraft’s manufacturer for further input on options.”

“Yes, sir. I’d like to do just that, but Command Post refused our request to speak with the technicians on-call at the manufacturer.”

Disbelief slowed Zach’s steps. “Say again.”

“Command Post refuses to place the call.”

Disbelief gave way to a slow burn. Zach stopped in front of the elevator, stabbing the Up button. “Break, break,” he called to switch speakers. “Command Post, I assume you have a good reason for denying my man’s perfectly reasonable request.”

Bronco might be a new aircraft commander, but he had solid air sense, a gifted set of flying hands and a top-notch knowledge of the aircraft. And all that could only haul him through so far if he didn’t have the proper ground support, support Zach would make sure became available.

No way in hell was he losing another crew on his watch. Never again would he tell a woman her husband wasn’t coming home. Julia Sinclair’s eyes full of restrained tears still haunted his waking as well as sleeping hours. “Well, Lieutenant?”

“Sir, Training Flight is already reading through the tech manuals to find a solution.”

That burn simmered hotter, firing Zach’s determination. Not that he would let it overheat. Once the shouting started, the battle was lost. “Let me get this straight. While my flyers are up there tooling around the skies with busted nose gear, you’re telling them not to worry because you’ve got folks holding a study session with the instruction manual? Lieutenant, if my man Bronco says he’s tried everything, then that’s exactly what he’s done. Time to look for answers outside our base.”

“The Wing Commander says we’re over budget. No unnecessary consultation calls. We can handle this one in-house.”

Zach stepped into the elevator, ignoring the curious stares from an elderly couple wearing “proud grandparent” pins. “Now maybe I’m just slow on the uptake today, Lieutenant, but I have a question,” he drawled, taking his sweet Texas time to let the quiet heat of his words steam through the radio waves. “Do you really think the Wing Commander meant that to save five thousand dollars on a consultation call we’re gonna land a plane nose gear up and do half a million dollars worth of damage? Do you think that’s what the Wing Commander meant about saving money?”

Silence crackled for three elevator dings. “Sir, I’m just repeating what Wolf Two said. He gave the order.”

Frustration bubbled closer to the surface. He should have known his second in command was behind this, a narrow minded, micromanaging ass who couldn’t see the big picture if it swallowed him whole. All the more reason Zach couldn’t relinquish control of his squadron for even a second.

“And this is Wolf One overriding that command,” Zach enunciated softly, slowly. He would take the hit from the Wing Commander later without hesitation. “I assume full responsibility, Lieutenant. Place the call.”

“Dialing now, sir.”

Zach exhaled with the swoosh of the opening elevator doors. “Roger, Lieutenant. Expect me on the runway in…” He glanced at his watch as he plowed into the hall. “Forty minutes.”

That would give him ten minutes with Julia Sinclair and still have him back at base well before they put that plane down. No need to leave now. There was nothing he could do on the runway until Bronco landed. Time management was everything in his job. He couldn’t fritter away valuable minutes waiting around, because he would undoubtedly need them for some other emergency in the morning.

Seeing Julia wouldn’t be any easier tomorrow anyway.

He checked the arrows directing him toward her room number and turned left. So much for finishing up early enough to enjoy a video and popcorn with his kids.

The crisis made for a fitting end to a hell of a day. A day that had started with a memorandum stating the Inspector General’s intent to reopen the investigation into the fatal crash of one of Zach’s crews eight months ago.

And now it was time to face Lance Sinclair’s widow, a woman as much Zach’s responsibility as any of his aviators. A woman who needed the one thing he could never give her back.

A father for her child.

“THIS IS A NO-STRINGS OFFER.”

David felt the need to make the statement, even when the heat between them continued to flare. We’re going to land, have a quick lunch on the way to the gallery and then look at some artwork before supper. If after supper you want to go straight to your room alone, that’s your call.”

He meant it. No matter how much he wanted to be with Starr, it would be mutual or not at all. “We have enough history between us fro you to know that I would never hold you to something unless you want the same thing.”

She stared back into his eyes, holding on for a long drone of the private jet’s engines before finally nodding. “I trust you.”

“Good. Good.”

He was glad she did, because staying strong against the temptation of sleeping in the room next to Starr would be total torture. He wasn’t so sure he’d just made the wisest move.

Dr. Alex Morrow was dead.

Samuel Hatch feared it all the way to his sixty-year-old, ulcer-riddled gut.

The aging operative bolted back breakfast in his office, two antacids with cold coffee. His job as the Director of ARIES came with countless rewards and endless holes in his stomach. Since Hatch had created the top secret section of the CIA, ARIES had become his family, his agents the children he and Rita had never been able to conceive.

Now he suspected he’d lost one.

Restrained tension hummed through him, stringing him as taut as the twine he worked to twist around the wilting plant behind his desk. He aimed the sunlamp with meticulous care, grounding himself in the ritual while he plotted how best to utilize his unlimited resources.

One day’s silence he could accept, especially given the unstable climate in European Holzberg and neighboring Rebelia. But three days and Alex’s tracking device inactive…

Every inch of Hatch’s raw stomach burned after ten years of worrying about his pseudo-offspring. Yet their mission was too important to abandon. ARIES operatives embraced assignments no sane CIA agent would touch.

Their country owed these silent knights countless debts that could never be acknowledged.

Hatch anchored the stake on a struggling strawberry plant he’d grafted from home. He mentally sifted through Alex’s final transmissions like the soil through his fingers as he looked for the proper texture to bear fruit. Heaven help them all if Alex fell into DeBruzkya’s hands. The crazed Rebelian dictator under investigation was a sick bastard.

Heaven help Alex.

His fingers twitched, snapping a limp stem off the plant. He wouldn’t let even one of his operatives, especially this one, go down without unleashing the full arsenal at his disposal. Hatch clutched the crumpled leaves in his fist and turned back to his office.

And what a mighty arsenal it was, compliments of the government’s blank check.

Large flat screen monitors lined one wall, glowing with everything from CNN to satellite uplink status. Computers hummed from his desk as well as along the conference table where laptops perched in front of eight seats. Electronic cryptology boxes littered the workspace for encoding and decoding transmissions.

In the midst of it all, he relied on an old fashioned map of the world with pins marking locations of his operatives. The cover of each agent’s private sector identity offered the freedom to travel anywhere undetected. Already, he’d alerted European operatives to begin searching, but without a narrowed field, there was only so much he could expect.

He needed focus, someone to pull together the minuscule threads of information left behind in a handful of transmissions from Alex. Hatch rubbed the bruised leaves between his fingers like a talisman as he studied the map. Slowly two pins on the board paired in his mind.

The perfect duo for finding answers to the questions left in those last transmissions. Logical Kelly Taylor would balance well with Ethan Williams, a rogue operative who thought so far outside the box he invented his own rules.

And their personal baggage?

They would either have to work through it or ignore it. He didn’t need any fireworks drawing unwarranted – and potentially deadly – attention to this mission.

Hatch reached for one of the seven phones on his desk and punched a three-digit code. One ring later, he carefully placed the mangled leaves on the soil at the base of the struggling strawberry plant. “Taylor, Director Hatch here. I need you to locate Ethan Williams, then meet me in my office with his after-action report from Gastonia.”

Her affirmative barely registered. Hatch studied the sole remaining plant from Rita’s garden that hadn’t been killed by his black thumb. Since Rita’s death, that plant and ARIES were all he had left, and by God, they would bear fruit.

Hatch packed the soil around the base of a new sprout and refrained from reaching for the antacids again. Williams and Taylor would find Alex.

Assuming there wasn’t – as his roiling gut kept telling him – a Judas in their ranks.

Over the Caribbean Sea: Present Day

“Blackbird 33, Blackbird 33, this is Sentry 20 reporting a pirate ship at your ten o’clock, twenty-eight miles.”

Pirate ship? The improbable radio call from Sentry rattled around in flight engineer Shane “Vegas” O’Riley’s headset as he manned his station of the CV-22 aircraft. He couldn’t have heard what he thought.

Sure they were out over the wild and wooly Caribbean, but someone must be screwing with them. Air Force crewdogs were well known for their practical jokes.

Except today, he couldn’t be any less in the mood for gags. This flight to deliver supplies served a dual purpose for him. He would make a stop at a tiny godforsaken island where his wife worked teaching in the latest needy village to cross her aid group’s radar.

There, he would also hand over divorce papers for her to sign.

But back to these freaking pirates. Since the weather was dog crap, he was in charge of the radio while the two pilots had their hands full of bouncing airplane.

Shane thumbed the radio “transmit” key, sweat burning his eyes, his flight suit sticking to his shoulder blades in the unrelenting summer heat. No a/c could keep up. “Sentry did you say a pirate ship? Is Johnny Depp onboard with his swashbuckling costume? Do you want us to land this puppy on the poop deck and get his autograph for you?” Since the CV-22 took off and landed like a helicopter, then rotated the blades forward to fly like a plane, they actually could manage just such a feat if there were a pirate ship. “I’ll tell him it’s for your daughter if you’re embarrassed.”

The jerking craft jarred his teeth, hard, faster than the roller coaster ride he’d taken with his two daughters at Six Flags last summer.

In front of him sat the two pilots. Aircraft commander Postal gripped the wobbling stick while newbie to the CV-22 co-pilot Rodeo took wildly fluctuating system reads off the control panel. Shane glanced over his shoulder back into the belly of the craft to check on the three gunners – and yeah, thank God – they’d strapped their butts down tight.

Their radio crackled in the inclement weather, words sputtering through unevenly, “Pirates… guns at… cruise ship.”

Some theme cruise perhaps? A pocket of turbulence whacked Shane’s helmet against the overhead panel and rattled his brain worse than a baseball bat upside the temple. “I’m so not in the mood for this ‘Argh’ and ‘Shiver me Timbers’ garbage. We’ve got a weather emergency here.”

“Sorry,” the radio voice claiming to be Sentry 20 responded, “not yanking your chain, Blackbird 33. We have a message relay from Southern Command Headquarters. Ready to copy?”

Shane straightened in his seat. “Really? No joke?” he said, still only half believing. “We’ll play along for the heck of it, ready to copy.”

The radio crackled to life. “Blackbird 33, proceed to one-eight dash zero-five north, zero-six-three dash five-nine west to intercept a pirate vessel, suspected to be terrorists threatening a passenger cruise ship. You are ordered to disable the pirate boat,” the connection went staticy for another two jostles, “or destroy the pirate’s vessel, a cigarette boat, if you or the cruise ship are fired on. Copy?”

An order to shoot a cigarette boat that just happened to be tooling around in the water? This could be the worst kind of set-up for an ambush in such a lawless corner of the ocean. Unease prickled up Shane’s spine as he could already see all his crewmembers’ faces plastered across the six o’clock news.

That would be a helluva way to end his career and his marriage in one fell swoop. “Who is this?”

“Listen up, Blackbird,” the voice barked back, “I authenticated the communication when I got it and I think you should do the same.”

Well they got that right. “Rodeo, dig out the code book.”

“Way ahead of you, Vegas. Here ya’ go.” The co-pilot’s normally easy-going demeanor was nowhere to be found as he passed back the book before quickly returning to the controls. Rodeo had his hands full running both his co-pilot’s position and checking Shane’s flight engineer regular duties monitoring engine and aircraft health since he had to deal with this buccaneer BS.

Vegas thumbed through the pages until he found what he needed. “Sentry, authenticate foxtrot-mike.”

“Sentry authenticates with zulu-tango.”

“So, Sarge?” Rodeo’s voice shot over the radio to tech Sergeant Shane O’Riley. “Is that correct?”

Holy crap. Shane verified it once, reread again. No movie star autographs in their future today. This was the real deal. “That is the correct response, sir.”

The aircraft commander, Postal, cursed into the interphone. “Well spank my ass and get me an eye patch.” Clicking over to radio to broadcast beyond the plane, “Good authentication, Sentry, we are headed that way… Rodeo, give me a–”

“Already on it,” the copilot interrupted. He might be new to the craft but the man was a freaking genius, a quick thinker on his feet to boot. That worked well with a gut instinct player like Postal. “Come left to heading one-seven-seven. Showing time to intercept at eight minutes. Target is now twenty miles ahead.”

“Copy all.” Postal’s normally wired façade faded at the very real threat ahead – a flipping terrorist pirate ship, no less. “Crew, lock and load, cleared to fire a burst. Let’s make sure those babies are working in case we need them.”

Brrrrrp. Brrrrrp. The sound of quick bursts from electrically powered mini-guns hammered through his helmet just before the smell of gunpowder drifted up to linger in the cockpit. The right gunner, left gunner, back gunner – Stones, Padre and Sandman – all checked in ready to go.

Both pilots looked out to the horizon searching for a sign of the boat. Shane kept his eyes forward, his thumb on the radio and tried not think about the divorce papers in his flight bag. There wasn’t much to divvy up, not with Sherry living her life in one NGO tent after another. Most of her gear consisted of easy-to-pack toys for the kids while she left a few things back home.

His little girls. They were Sherry’s, adopted during her first marriage – Cara from Vietnam and Malaika from the Sudan. And once the divorce went through he would lose all right to them. Ah hell. His throat clogged.

He wanted to settle down, have a real family life. Sherry insisted she was living a real life around the world and he was welcome to join them anytime.

Where the hell was the compromise in that?

His aircraft commander cranked the craft in a flawless bank. Postal’s wild eyes stuck to the horizon, his hand on the stick. “Work that radar hard, Rodeo. Let me know when you’ve got a good bead on him.”

“Roger that, start a right turn, shallow bank. Roll out. Straight ahead five miles.”

The air grew heavier. Some might say with humidity, but Shane had been around, fought in enough conflicts to know that the minutes leading up to battle sucked emotions out of a person and pumped them into the air where they couldn’t distract a man. Inside, he could stay emotionless. Six years he’d served, since he’d given up the early beginnings of his pro baseball career to enlist after 9-11.

He’d never regretted the decision. But both careers spoke to the core of who he was, a good old fashioned picket fence, baseball and apple pie family man. He thought he’d found that with Sherry and the girls. He wanted to be the big strong dude who built a home for his family and protected them.

And by protecting, he’d meant from burglars. Not freaking pirate ships and tribal warlords that attacked tent villages. What the hell was she thinking hauling the kids around to unruly corners of the world like this?
Postal leaned forward, the air getting a good pound or two heavier until he said… “Okay, I got ‘em visual. Start a turn to go around them. It’s a cigarette boat. Get the infrared cam on them and see what they look like.”

Rodeo nodded, sweat glistening on his dark bronze skin. “Got a lock. Zooming cameras for confirmation… and ah hell, big guns on that boat. I would say the pirates.”

Pirate Captain Jack Sparrow didn’t have a speed boat like that.

The infrared screen display bloomed upward. Gunfire from the boat. Aimed at the CV-22. No more questioning how to respond.

Heaven help them. This was it. Open combat to the death.

First Lieutenant Darcy “Wren” Renshaw flung her flight checklist on the planning room table with a resounding smack. Not much of an outlet for her frustration, but the satisfying thunk on scarred wood made her feel marginally better.

While her siblings pounded dictators in Southeast Asia, she was stuck flying Flipper to Guam.

Restrained anger pinged inside her like antiaircraft missiles. Darcy spun an empty chair and dropped into the seat at the lengthy conference table, eager to start and therefore finish this mission all the sooner.

For once she didn’t plunge into conversation with the other aircrew members plotting their early-morning takeoff from San Diego bound for Guam – an island that still haunted her dreams. No need to infect the crew with her rotten mood. After all, transporting marine biologist Dr. Maxwell Keagan and his two bottlenose dolphins to the South Pacific was considered an honor.

An honor for the rest of the C-17 crew maybe, but for her? Darcy knew better. She hadn’t earned this cake mission, an embarrassing reality that burned over her with the devouring speed of flaming jet fuel.

How dare her three star General father “encourage” the Squadron Commander to yank Darcy’s combat slot to Cantou and schedule her as a last minute substitute on the safer Flipper Flight? She’d worked her boots off to be deserving of the wings on her leather nametag since the first day of pilot training. She wouldn’t start quietly accepting gift-wrapped cushy assignments now.

Sounds of Air Force crewdogs at work wrapped around her, the familiar routine offering none of its usual excitement. Rustling charts, clipped banter. Pilots. Loadmasters. Ground support. Every one of them having already pulled their rotation in conflicts around the world. She couldn’t allow them to shoulder all her risks as well as their own.

Once she offloaded Dr. Dolittle and his dolphin duo in Guam, she would confront her commander. If she wasn’t qualified for combat in the Cantou conflict, then he should remove her from flying status altogether.

Darcy yanked a bag of sunflower seeds from the thigh pocket of her flight suit and wrestled open the cellophane. Munching away emotions she refused to let rule her, she cracked shells, slowly, one at a time to restore her calm while waiting for Dr. Keagan to arrive. “Anybody seen the dolphin doc around yet?”

Captain Tanner “Bronco” Bennett, the aircraft commander, looked up from his chart. “What’s your hurry, Wren? He’s got another ten minutes.”

“Eight,” Darcy answered without checking her watch. “To be early is to be on time.”

“Cool your jets. He’ll get here when he gets here.” Bronco reached into the thigh pocket of his flight suit. “Since we’re waiting, have I showed everyone the latest pictures of Kathleen and the baby at the zoo?”

“Yes!” the room collectively shouted.

Bronco held his hands up in good-natured surrender. “Hey, just trying to pass time till the guy arrives.”

“I’m starting to wonder if you could fit enough pictures in your pocket for that, Captain.” Darcy eased her grouse with a quick grin, drumming her fingers impatiently on the gouged wood.

She hadn’t met Keagan yet, having only arrived at the San Diego Naval Air Station from her home base in Charleston, South Carolina the night before. But the guy must have some heavy-duty clout to warrant military transport for his dolphins.

String pullers weren’t high on her list of favorite folks, especially today.

This time General Pops had gone too far with the overprotectiveness. Sure, she’d been kidnapped in Guam as a kid. A terrifying experience for her family, and one she still couldn’t dwell on for even thirty seconds without dropping her damned sunflower seeds all over the floor. But it was time to get past it.

Darcy cracked seeds one at time to focus her thoughts and calm her pissed off senses. Maybe the time had come to confront her father, too. If only she didn’t have to confront the inevitable worry on his dear craggy face as well.

Why couldn’t her dad understand that by clipping her wings, he’d always denied her the chance to put that week behind her? Her very nature, inherited from seven generations of Renshaw warriors, demanded she fight back. Like the squadron motto on her patch, she would be ready for anything, anywhere, anytime.
She hadn’t expected that to include hauling cetaceans across the Pacific.

Darcy jack-hammered another salty seed with her molars.

Bronco spun her chair to face him. “Geez, Renshaw. How about I get you some rocks to chew? Wouldn’t be half as noisy.”

Bronco’s linebacker bulk filled his chair as completely as his teasing filled the room. Darcy shrugged off her irritation and slid into the camaraderie with as much ease as zipping her flight suit. Childhood years spent as a squadron mascot while her classmates earned Scout badges had left her with a slew of surrogate big brothers and the ability to hold her own around any military water cooler.

She sprinkled a pile of sunflower seeds on top of the aircraft commander’s chart. “Shelling is an art form, boss man. Didn’t they teach you old guys anything when you went to pilot training?”
From across the table, Captain Daniel “Crusty” Baker scooped the shells. “We old guys must have been busy inventing the wheel.”

“Old guys? Ouch!” Bronco thumped his chest. “Renshaw deals another lethal blow to the ego. My wife would be proud.”

Crusty pitched the seeds into his mouth, swiped his hand along his flight suit and grabbed the bag for a second helping.

Darcy snagged it away, irritation creeping through in spite of her resolve. “Get your own, moocher.”

Bronco eased back his chair, a big-brother-concern glinting in his eyes she recognized too well. “What’s got your G-suit in a knot today, Renshaw?”

Uh-uh. She wasn’t answering that one. Her feelings were her own. Always had been since the terrorist raid on her childhood overseas home.

She clenched her fist around the shells until they sliced into her palm. One rogue seed spurted between her fingers and spiraled to the carpet. She inched her flight boot over it to conceal the seed as well as her momentary lapse.

Darcy popped another seed into her mouth. “I’m sorry. Were you talking?” She scavenged a quick grin. “I couldn’t hear you over my crunching.”

Chuckling, the two senior captains resumed pouring over Bronco’s chart.

Tipping back her seat, Darcy dragged the industrial-size trash can forward and pitched her hulls inside. Time to launch this flight and bring her closer to launching her life as well. She rolled her chair away from the table. “I’m going to find out what’s keeping Keagan so we can get this mission off the ground.”

Footsteps sounded from the hall, stalling Darcy half-standing. The door swung open, voices swelling through as three men strode in, two in naval khaki uniforms, one in creased pants and a bow tie.

Ah, the professor.

Just as Darcy started to look away, another man strolled through the doorway. One glimpse at him and she lost all interest in studying flight data scrawled on the dry erase board.

Holy marine mammal, the guy was hot.

Six foot two, three maybe. Early thirties? Given his laid-back air and casual clothes, perhaps he was the graduate assistant accompanying the professor on the flight. A graduate assistant who looked as if he spent all his after school hours on a surfboard.

Sandy-brown hair spiked from his head, the tips bleached from overexposure to the sun. The damp disarray could have been styled deliberately, but somehow she didn’t think so. His five o’clock shadow at 8:00 a.m. hinted his only comb might be fingers tunneling through sun-kissed hair.

A sea-foam colored windbreaker zipped halfway up his broad chest. The banded waist grazed the top of his low-riding drawstring swim trunks. Slim hips and an incredible tush were covered by… Flowers.

Loud tangerine and purple blooms blazoned from faded nylon hitting right around knee-length, obliterating her earlier frustration in a Technicolor sensory tidal wave.

After hanging out in an almost exclusively male world all her life, she wasn’t often rattled by a man’s physical appearance. So why were her fingers itching to comb through this guy’s hair?

The senior Navy officer paused beside the dry erase board. “Sorry for the delay. Ladies and gentlemen, let me introduce Dr. Maxwell Keagan, head of Marine Mammal Communications at the University of San Diego. And his research assistant, Perry Griffin. Now that they’ve arrived, I’ll set up the computer and projector while you introduce yourselves.” The officer turned to the two civilians. “Dr. Keagan, we’ll be ready for your brief in about five minutes.”

“Thank you, Commander.”

Huh?

Dr. Keagan’s answer hadn’t come from Mr. Bow Tie, but from the surfboarder dude with incredible pecs and horrid fashion sense.

Darcy dropped into her seat with more force than a botched parasail landing. She blinked, stared again.

Sure enough those tropical-flower-clad hips were advancing toward her end of the table for an introduction. Not Mr. Bow Tie. That guy was crawling along the floorboards searching for an outlet for the computer like an eager-to-please research assistant.

Surfboarder dude extended his hand. “Dr. Max Keagan.”

A beach bum with a brain. Fantasies didn’t come any better.

“Hello, Doctor.” Standing, she transferred her sunflower seeds to her left hand and extended her right. “Lieutenant Darcy Renshaw.”

His callused fingers enfolded hers, his scent chasing right up the link to blanket her with intoxicating potency. Coconut oil, salty air and a hint of musk wafted from him, like a pina colada after long, sweaty sex on the beach.

If she’d ever had such a moment.

For a crazy, impulsive second, Darcy wondered what it would be like to make that memory – with this guy. A shiver whispered through her that had nothing to do with the whoosh of the air conditioner.

Did she see an answering attraction in his blue-green eyes? Maybe the slightest narrowing of his gaze to one of those sleepy-lidded assessments she’d seen her eight ka-zillion pseudo big brothers give other women when–

Bronco cleared his throat just before the chair behind Darcy jarred the back of her knees. Damn. Did the big guy have to kick it so hard? Be so obvious in pointing out she was still clasping Max Keagan’s fingers?

Darcy jerked her hand away and glanced over her shoulder. Sure enough, the pilots stood side-by-side, a mismatched Mutt and Jeff with identical smirks. Double damn and dirt. They would razz the hell out of her all the way across the Pacific.

She willed herself not to blush. Salvaging what she could of her pride and professionalism, Darcy pulled to attention. “Dr. Keagan, a pleasure to meet you.”

Pleasure? She stifled a groan at her word choice.

Bronco snorted.

Forget salvaging squat. She turned on her boot heel toward the aircraft commander. “With all due respect, sir, I’m going to roll you off the loadramp right after we cross into international airspace.”

She faced Max Keagan again, unable to read anything on the man’s tanned – gorgeous – face. “I apologize for him and for my, uh…” Adolescent drooling? Mortifying lack of self-control? “For staring. You aren’t quite what I expected.”

“No problem. I’ve heard the same in more than one faculty meeting.” He let her off the hook with a few simple words.

Oh, man. Smart, hunky and nice enough to grant her an easy reprieve when he could have been an egotistical jerk.

She was toast.

“Let’s start again.” Composure thankfully back in place, Darcy made the formal introductions without a hitch. They settled into their chairs, Bronco and Crusty suddenly opting for a new seating chart that left only one place for Dr. Keagan. Next to Darcy.

Great. Now instead of teasing her, they were “helping.” She had her very own hulking Cupid with a sunflower-mooching cohort.
She probably needed their help. And then some.

If only she possessed as much ease with flirting as she did with touch-and-go landings.

Touch-and-go. Her heart rate fired like jet pistons chugging to life. Why did a routine flight term suddenly sound sexy courtesy of Dr. Keagan?

Duh! Because his bad-boy, fine self was sitting no less than eighteen inches away, his eyes gliding over her flight suit with a heat she’d never, never had sizzle her way before from any guy. After all, men did not look at their best bud that way, even if said bud was a woman.

Darcy savored the heat all the way to her toes.

Twenty-five years of virginity, of overprotective relatives, of being everybody’s pal and never the object of those sleepy-lidded stares, weighed her down like a seventy-pound survival pack ready to be shed after a marathon trek. She was tired of being slotted into safer roles.

Why wait until after this mission to go for what she wanted? Here was a big, hunky risk ready for the taking.

And she could have that risk without breaking her personal rule. No military men. No men like her father, government protectors by training, trade and blood.

Before she lost her nerve, Darcy extended her fist toward Max. Her fingers unfurled to reveal a now steady palm full of sunflower seeds. “Want some?”

***

Max stared at that slim hand, up to Darcy Renshaw’s wrist where a pulse double-timed in a fragile vein.

He wanted a lot more than sunflower seeds from the leggy dynamo seated beside him. Her flight suit and take-no-lip attitude assured him she could probably down the average man in five different ways. One helluva woman, no doubt.

Not that he intended to act on the impulse to accept that challenge. Following impulses could get even the best of CIA officers killed.

Or worse yet, someone else…