His Duty to Protect. Lindsay McKenna

die crawling across the ground.

      Weakened, she lay still for a moment, fighting to get her consciousness back. The smoke was an oxygen-sucking monster. The heavy chut, chut, chut of machine guns spitting out their bullets became distant. The flames and roaring fire sounds lessened, too. Her aching ears seemed filled with cotton, erasing all the noise that had pounded relentlessly seconds earlier. Rachel collapsed, her face pressed to the ground, small rocks biting into her cheekbone. Even that pain seemed to float away. She was losing consciousness because she couldn’t get enough air into her lungs. No matter what she did, she no longer had the strength to pull herself forward. The last thought she had was that after the fires were put out, they’d find her body in the weeds.

      It was an ignominious end, Rachel decided. She was a combat pilot. A damn good one. She’d battled through Apache flight school and nearly got kicked out thanks to Captain Tyler Hamilton, who hated her. And yet, she’d fought back and remained to graduate. Shutting her eyes, Rachel thought of her family. Her father, Noah Trayhern, danced before her closed eyes, his smile making her feel better. And her mother, Kit, who was a police detective, had a sharp and alert gaze. Praying, her lips moving, Rachel didn’t want her parents to hear from the Army that she’d died of smoke inhalation on a barren, godforsaken mountaintop in Afghanistan.

      As her world grayed, her body went slack and consciousness receded. Darkness was complete.

      And then Rachel felt someone standing at her side. She couldn’t see who it was, but she felt love radiating from this being.

      Welcome, Rachel, the being said to her. You are all right now. You’re here to review your life. Are you ready?

      This had to be a dream. There was no voice she could hear. But she could feel the words. Confused, afraid, she looked around. Everything was a bright white light, but not so bright as to make her squint. Finally, she said mentally, I guess I am ready….

      She began to see the moment when she was conceived. Her mother was very young, very beautiful. Her father was in the Coast Guard, a commander of a cruiser. The love they had for one another overwhelmed Rachel. Her heart opened powerfully.

      You were brought into this world with love, a voice said.

      Rachel felt hot tears come to her eyes. She loved her family so much! Her given name was Melody Sue Rachel Trayhern. She laughed when she saw herself as a ten-year-old girl talking to her mother, stubbornly telling her mother that she hated the name, Melody Sue. She wanted to be called Rachel, her middle name, because that was her grandmother’s name. And Rachel fiercely loved the elder. She saw her mother smile and laugh. From that point on, everyone called her Rachel.

      Everything moved swiftly for Rachel as she reviewed her life. She saw four more sisters born to her parents. She was the oldest. And they’d had a very happy childhood. Rachel, the pathfinder for the family, as her father referred to her, wanted to go into the military. She’d been allowed into West Point and had been one of the top ten officers to graduate from that military academy. Rachel’s gut tightened as she saw her orders were for Fort Rucker, Alabama, the flight school. She had dreamed of being a pilot, of flying, all her life. Her father told her that flying was in the blood of the Trayherns. Rachel remembered her powerful reaction to that information.

      Rachel felt her heart slam shut with pain. She saw her first days at the Apache flight school. Her anger rose as she saw her instructor, Captain Tyler Hamilton. He stood in front of her company, arrogant, a real bastard, who hated women on the same tarmac with him. And he’d singled out Rachel because she was doing better than the other men learning to fly the Apache helicopter. More rage rose as she watched Hamilton plot her demise. Sheer hatred, that’s what flowed through her. This son of a bitch was going to flunk her out of school. The dream of flying was dying.

      Rachel, the voice said gently. Until you make peace with this man you cannot leave.

      Confused, Rachel looked around. She was surrounded in a white-and-gold glowing fog. How she wished again she could see who owned this voice.

      That way she could explain face-to-face that she could never forgive Hamilton. He tried to ruin her. He’d said the Trayhern family was always trying to get what they didn’t deserve. Well, that wasn’t true. She’d worked damned hard to get her wings at Fort Rucker. She was a good pilot. That bastard wouldn’t take her dream away. The Trayhern family served its country with pride and honor. No way would she stand there and let him kick her out.

      Because of your ongoing hatred, you must go back and work through this with him.

      Before Rachel could say a thing, she felt a powerful, whirling sensation, as if she were in a funnel, spinning around and around. Then she fell and everything grew dark. The gold light disappeared, and the blanket of love dissolved. Suddenly, it was as if an anvil were sitting on her chest. She gasped and coughed violently.

      Her eyes flew open. The sunlight nearly blinded her, and she found herself on her back in the dirt and grass. Someone was kneeling at her side, gripping her shoulder. He was looking into her eyes, panic in his. His mouth opened and he raised his head, screaming for a medic.

      Rachel felt the strong touch of his hand, saw the care and fear in his blue eyes. Her mind refused to work properly. She continued to gasp, grabbing her chest as if to force air into her lungs. Weapons continued to fire in the distance, and she heard men and women calling out orders. The sky. Staring up at the blue sky, Rachel blinked as her chest heaved. No more smoke! The smoke had moved. She was alive. Alive!

      Mind barely functioning, Rachel heard the man at her side calling for help once again. He sounded desperate. Afraid. For her? And then as her consciousness grew, Rachel felt a shock wave of another kind roll through her. This one took her breath away. The man at her side was Captain Tyler Hamilton, the instructor pilot who had almost gotten her flunked out of Apache flight school. What the hell was he doing on her base? Rachel’s mind shorted out, and she struggled to make sense of what was happening. Was this a nightmare?

      Groaning, Rachel couldn’t handle the emotional tsunami, and she blacked out. The last thing she felt was his protective hand on her shoulder. He was the last man on earth who she ever wanted to touch her.

      “Rachel? Rachel, wake up….”

      A woman’s urgent voice filtered through her gray consciousness. Rachel frowned. There was a hand on her other shoulder now, a woman’s hand. She fought to wake.

      “Hey, Cousin. It’s Emma. You’re all right. You’re going to live. Come on, wake up.”

      Cousin? Her mind was frayed. Rachel tried hard to surface. The hand on her shoulder was gentle and soothing, as if to remind her she was alive. Was she? Emma? Yes, she knew Emma. Emma had just married Khalid Shaheen, an Afghan officer in the U.S. Army. He flew the Apache. Rachel clung to this bit of information. If she didn’t, it would leave. Desperately, she forced herself to remember. In July, everyone had gotten leave to fly back to San Francisco. Emma and Khalid had been married there in Golden Gate Park. The whole Trayhern clan had attended, including patriarch Morgan and his beloved wife Laura, Noah and Kit, and Emma’s parents, Alyssa and Clay, were there to celebrate the wedding.

      “Rachel? You’re doing fine, you’re coming back,” Emma whispered near her ear. “You’re here at Bravo Camp. You’re in the dispensary. You’re going to be okay….”

      Emma’s husky voice was like a beacon. She fiercely loved Emma. And Rachel had cried when the Army had released her cousin from duty. Emma had sustained nerve damage to her left hand after being captured by the Taliban. And without her feeling in that hand, she wasn’t permitted by the U.S. Army to fly her beloved Apache. But Emma was strong, and her fiancé had given her a CH-47, which his family had bought, to fly instead. Emma had come back married, and still worked out of Bravo Base with Khalid. She flew nearly every day as a civilian contractor hired by Khalid’s family to deliver books and educational supplies to villages along the Afghan border. Now, Emma was here with her. Emma!

      Though it felt as if bricks were weighted upon her eyes, she forced them open. Rachel saw fuzziness at first. But Emma’s red