Hot on the Trail. Vicki Tharp

Jenna said. “I’ll have another look around. And as soon as I find his ass, we’ll get back on schedule.”

      “You’re loco for trying. Kurt’s a lost cause. You need to—”

      She nailed him in the chest with a dirt clod to shut him up. “I don’t need you telling me what I should do. I get enough of that from my father. This is my program, my baby. Call me naïve or stubborn or crazy. But I can’t give up on him like everyone else has.”

      Santos tucked her under his arm like an overprotective big brother as they walked out of the barn. “I don’t want you to get hurt.”

      Stepping out into the high sun turned their shadows into amorphous blobs at their feet. She glanced across the pasture, past the grazing horses, past the rolling hills that climbed higher and higher and higher until they crashed into the jagged eastern slope of the Rockies. Santos didn’t understand. No one really did.

      “I’m not giving up on him,” Jenna said as she stepped away.

      “Don’t give up, but don’t get your hopes up, either. And if this doesn’t work out, if Kurt fails, remember it wasn’t your program that failed. It wasn’t you who failed.”

      “I have no intention of failing, so don’t count me out yet.”

      * * * *

      In his CO’s outer office at the Marine Corps Air Station Miramar, Quinn Powell fixed the crease on the cuff of his desert utilities and glanced down at the scuffs on his suede boots while his CO’s staff sergeant tap-tap-tapped away on his keyboard, an incessant, proficient percussion that drummed in Quinn’s head like the ticking of a clock wound too tight.

      Much like the clock on his career.

      A career that had taken off, only to stall after his crash, his career now spinning out of control with the ground rushing up fast to smack him.

      The phone buzzed on the staff sergeant’s desk, and he picked up, listened, then said, “I’ll send him in, ma’am.”

      The staff sergeant glanced up at Quinn and bumped his chin toward the inner office. Quinn’s stomach went wonky. He flattened a curled corner on the bandage covering his newest skin graft, and entered his CO’s office.

      Lieutenant Colonel Rosalind Kind sat behind her desk in her flight suit. Rosie the Riveter, everyone called her, though no one dared say that to her face. Well, except Moreland. The last Quinn had heard, the stupid bastard was still cleaning latrines with his tongue.

      His CO’s nickname had more to do with her pinup-girl body, which defied her age and Uncle Sam’s uniforms. But all that mattered in Quinn’s book was that she was one hell of a helo pilot.

      He stood at attention.

      She sat arrow-straight in her chair. “Have a seat, Lieutenant.”

      “I prefer to stand, if that’s okay, ma’am.”

      She was silent a beat. “As you wish.”

      Quinn clasped his hands behind his back, palms sweating.

      Glancing down at the personnel file on her blotter, labeled Powell, Quinn on the tab, his CO flipped through the file, ran her index finger down the middle of the page, speed-reading.

      He kept his gaze on her, not letting his eyes wander to the window, to the dark clouds that obliterated the sun and marched across the airfield like an angry battalion.

      When she made it to the bottom of the page, she sat back, gave him that assessing gaze of hers, as if all his faults were tattooed in Marine green on his forehead. Either that or the rumor she could read minds was for real.

      “How’s the arm?”

      His heart kicked hard at his sternum, one strong, pissed-off thunk, before he forced optimism into his voice. “Better every day, ma’am.”

      Her eyes narrowed, making her look a lot less like Rosie and a lot more like Patton. “Your latest medical report rates your skin grafts at ninety-five percent healed. Strength and neurological function at seventy.”

      “Like I said, better every day.”

      She flipped back a couple of pages in the report, then glanced up at him. “A five percent improvement in strength and neurological function in two months? Not promising, Marine.”

      “I will fly again.” At the last second, he caught himself from sounding pathetic and adding the I have to onto the end. After all, flying wasn’t just what he did. It was who he was.

      As if reading his thoughts, her lips pursed, accentuating the fine lines around them. “The flight surgeon noted that if full function hasn’t returned by now, it’s unlikely that it will.”

      “I just need more time.”

      “You’ve had almost a year.”

      “I’m fine.”

      “The doctor disagrees.”

      “He doesn’t know everything.” The words came out more forcefully than he’d intended. He quickly, prudently, tacked on a “ma’am.”

      Then her features softened and her shoulders lost some of their rigidity, their formality, and she stood and came around the utilitarian desk. She sat on the edge, crossed her legs at the ankles, and braced her palms on either side of her.

      “I know this isn’t easy—”

      “Hardest damn thing I’ve ever done.”

      She raised a neatly plucked brown brow at him.

      “Ma’am.”

      “Do you mind if I finish my sentence?” She wasn’t asking.

      Quinn gave himself a mental Gibbs-slap to the back of his head. Smooth, man, real smooth. Then again, he’d never been good at holding his tongue. Crap attribute for someone hoping for a long career in the military.

      She didn’t wait for an answer. And he was smart enough not to offer one. “What I was going to say was, I know this isn’t easy. You were shaping up to be one of my best pilots—”

      “Am, ma’am. Not were.”

      She eyed him, then rolled her hand in a take-it-off motion. “Let me see your arm.”

      He rolled up the mesh dressing and the bandage underneath. She stepped closer, and he held his arm out to her.

      From his wrist to his elbow, there was a crater in the muscles of his forearm, a skin graft overlaying the once-mangled flesh. Most of the grafted skin was the bright pink of recent healing, while bits of it were red and scabby where the graft was taking its own damn time to heal. Like he didn’t have plans, didn’t have an agenda.

      She ghosted her fingers over the top. She wanted to touch, but at the same time she didn’t. “Hurt?”

      When her eyes met his, he didn’t see the lieutenant colonel, the woman whose decisions could kill his career. He saw a fellow pilot. And he answered with a rare honesty. “Like a bitch, ma’am.”

      She nodded once and stepped back. Then held up her right fist, her arm bent at the elbow. “Grab my wrist, like you’re in the cockpit and it’s the cyclic.”

      He wrapped his fingers around her wrist, and his middle finger overlapped his thumb.

      “Try to keep my arm from moving,” she said. “Show me what you’ve got.”

      She pulled and pushed and tried to move her arm to the right, the left. Mostly he kept her arm centered. She was strong. Not-fighting-a-downdraft-in-a-raging-storm strong, though sweat formed at his temples from the effort.

      Or maybe the doctor was right. Maybe he wasn’t as strong as he’d thought.

      She stopped fighting him, and he let go of her wrist. “One more month, Lieutenant. That’s when you’re due for your annual. You pass the