Chapter 1
"Hey, I thought you said there was a woman behind every tree here." Captain Bo Rokowsky stared through the windscreen of his C-17, broken clouds revealing the barren landscape of Minot Air Force Base, North Dakota.
Not a damn tree in sight.
Laughter rumbled through his headset from the loadmaster "Tag" and the in-flight mechanic "Mako."
"Yes, sir," Mako drawled from the cargo hold. "Suckered you right into working this air show with that one, didn't we?"
"You dudes got me good." Bo gripped the throttle and let them have their victory. Better to take the ribbing over being "tricked" than to admit his real reason for signing on to this mission.
"The clue bird should have hit you like a whole flock smacking the windscreen when old, married Tag told you that Minot joke about the trees." Mako continued to gloat. "His wife would kick his butt if she thought he was checking out the female population. I just tell my girlfriend you keep them all too busy, anyway."
"One at a time, pal." Bo eased back on the throttle, as usual using a casual tone and attitude to mask a deep-seated attention to detail. "Always one at a time."
Stick in hand, Bo guided the craft toward the base, a mere speck ahead in the middle of flat, flat and more flat farmland, where he would spend the weekend at Minot's annual air show—dateless.
Okay, so he had a reputation around the squadron as a player. But he wanted a steady relationship, wife and kids someday as much as the next guy. Maybe even more, since he'd never had a real home of his own.
If that meant he went through a lot of breakups in the search, such was life. It seemed damn shallow to keep dating a woman once he realized she wasn't The One. Some dumped him, too. He figured he was running fifty-fifty when it came to broken hearts given and received.
Painful? Sometimes. All told, though, the journey wasn't a major hardship. He loved women. After growing up in a boys' home, drifting off to sleep every night with sweat and gas hanging in the air, what guy wouldn't prefer to spend the rest of his life pressed up close to a soft, jasmine-smelling woman? Or rose-scented.
Or even spring-flowers-deodorant scented. He wasn't picky.
Still, he was grateful for Minot's treeless state. Now wasn't the time to shuffle those fifty-fifty odds either way. He had more important things to attend to on the ground than his exhaustive and sometimes tantrically exhausting quest for a Mrs. Rokowsky.
He wasn't working the Minot Air Show to meet flyboy groupies, but rather to meet one woman in particular. And no way in hell would she be open to sex with him.
From the left seat, the squadron commander snapped his critical gaze Bo's way while the boss evaluated. Scowled. "If you boys are done discussing your dating prospects in the Land of Tatanka, let's see about getting this plane on the ground."
Bo clamped his jaw shut. Fun time over, thanks to Lieutenant Colonel Lucas Quade, a gloomy micromanaging pain in the keister kind of leader, better known unofficially around the squadron as "Darth Vader." To be fair, the guy was a solid flier and a technically perfect commander.
Overly perfect.
Loosening his hold on the throttle, Bo flexed the stiffness out of his fingers, already anticipating a couple of hours with his guitar to work out the twinges and frustration. He hadn't "enjoyed" this much supervision since Sister Mary Nic had walked him to the lunchroom in first grade.
Of course he did have a habit of detouring even then.
Under normal circumstances, he wouldn't volunteer to judge the Miss America Contest with Quade, much less spend the weekend under his thumb on a TDY—temporary duty.
But nothing had been normal for nearly a year, since the crash landing and capture overseas to be exact. Discovering that drug-running Air Force personnel and civilians in his own community had supported terrorists responsible for the shoot down only rocked his already cockeyed world.
He wasn't even sure he wanted to stay in the Air Force once his commitment was up next month. And wasn't that a kick-in-the-ass life crisis for a guy who'd been certain since the cradle that he would tear up the skies and raise hell with airplanes? He suspected he wouldn't have his answer until he'd put a piece of his past from a year ago to rest by checking on Paige Haugen and her daughter.
The widow and child of the man he'd helped send to jail. The drug-running bastard with terrorist ties.
"Well, Rokowsky?" Quade hissed low through the headset, punting Bo back into the present. "Are you planning to call for landing weather? Review the approach? Any of this ringing a bell for you, Captain? You're not a lieutenant anymore. How about pulling your weight."
"Roger, sir, I'm on it."
Radioing for the weather report five freaking minutes early, Bo scanned the sky and kept his temper in check. He might question his call to the air these days, but he knew his job and had done everything to the letter on this mission. His check rides attested to his overall nuts-on flying. But wearing the uniform dictated no arguing with the big kahuna.
Bo continued to scope the horizon while listening to the all-clear weather report. So what were those dots mutating the sky—
"Birds!" Bo shouted, yanking back the stick.
A flock of birds—geese maybe—swooped into view, funneling below the craft as the C-17 climbed. Somehow Mako's "clue bird" had taken on a life-threatening reality.