Strategic Engagement (Wingmen Warriors 5)

A chill iced up her spine. Rising, she searched the parking lot. Found nothing unusual. Her fingers slid from the tiny flowers and sought the warmth of her coffee mug.

Quit imagining things. The plant had nothing to do with Kent. She hadn't heard even a whisper from him in the year since moving overseas. He'd either lost her trail or the edge to his insane fury had dulled.

But those fears were difficult to shed. Trust was hard to recapture.

Mary Elise bolted inside, locked the door and tried to blot the image of the tiny plant outside. Tried. Failed. Hand gripping the knob, she sagged back.

Her gaze trekked across the living room to the bar separating it from the kitchen. Pop-Tart wrappers lay scattered across the counter with an open jar of peanut butter beside them.

Daniel's life might seem wrinkled and disorganized from the outside, but his disorder was a choice for comfort in a man totally together on the inside. While she knew her dry cleaned and wrinkle-free silks shrouded a woman with a mess of a life.

"Crap." Daniel bit out the crewdog-worthy curse with precision since there wasn't anyone but crewdogs to hear him in the squadron corridors.

In seconds he would receive an ass-chewing from the Squadron Commander for skirting rules. Technically Daniel hadn't busted a single regulation. But goodwill protocol on the other hand…Damn, but he hated playing politics. He left those niceties and games to his old man.

Or rather once had. Daniel ignored the pounding ache in his head and in a place some might call a heart while focusing on the more literal pounding yet to come.

He lengthened his strides along the industrial carpet, past photos of previous commanders, by a planning room filled with crew members at work—the kind of toe-the-line officers who made life easier for men like his father and Lt. Col. Quade. Voices drifted into the hall—Marcus "Joker" Cardenas and Jack "Cobra" Korba. Solid flyers, intense and by the rules.

Unlike himself.

The Squadron Commander's closed door loomed ahead. Man, the old open-door-policy days of Zach Dawson's command were long gone. Just grit through it. Not the first reaming and sure wouldn't be his last. Daniel rapped his knuckles, twice.

"Yes."

Okay, guess that meant enter. Daniel stepped inside the spacious office, stopping short of an oversize wooden desk looming with flags behind it. "You wanted to see me, sir?"

Lt. Col. Lucas Quade didn't glance up from the file in front of him, the subtle put-down not lost on Daniel. He waited. Studied the rows of airplane photos, a C-17 framed alongside a print of the C-141 Quade flew earlier. Cornell diploma. With honors. Figures.

His old man had wanted him to go there. Actually, his father had wanted him to attend Harvard or Yale, but they didn't have ROTC programs, so the prestigious schools didn't even make Daniel's list of possibilities.

Quade closed the file with precision before raising his gaze to Daniel without standing. "Is that how you report in a military manner, Baker?"

Ah, so that's how the guy wanted to play it. Quade's turf, they had to play Quade's way. Just like days of old with Franklin Baker.

Daniel drew to attention and snapped a sharp salute. "Captain Baker reporting as ordered, sir."

Quade returned the salute, no invitation to sit on the sofa followed like with the past commander. This guy wouldn't be pulling a secret stash of Little Debbie cakes out of his desk drawer to share either. Yeah, he'd received a few "chats" from Dawson about how to better balance the secrets ops Daniel pulled with the commander's need-to-know basis. Chats, not this standing-at-attention bulk.

"Baker, I'm sure you realize why you're in here."

"Yes, sir." He kept his eyes on the flag just behind Quade and consoled himself with the fact that a squadron commander usually only held the position for eighteen months to two years.

About how long it felt like this "chat" would last.

The commander jabbed a finger on the closed file with a red cover sheet declaring "Secret." "You're lucky you covered your ass planning this one."

Daniel didn't bother making excuses. Air Force Academy days had picked up where Mary Elise left off in drilling some caution into him.

Quade continued, "I don't question the mission's importance. And I know damned well there are times you can't be straight-up about where you're going. But, Captain, that was my plane and those were my flyers. No matter how much paperwork you filed or how many strings you pulled, their safety is still on my shoulders. You should have placed a courtesy call to me."

The past blended with the present, too many such confrontations with his father hammering his memory at a time when the last thing he wanted was to think of his old man currently dead in the ground.

Quade blinked slowly. "Answer me one question. Would you have given Dawson a courtesy call?"

Nailed. The question and its obvious affirmative yanked Daniel right back to the present, a not so comfortable place to be. He kept his eyes forward and mind centered on the shopping trip he and Mary Elise would make with the boys.

The Squadron Commander released him from answering by planting his hands on the edge of his desk and standing. "You didn't call me because you didn't want to risk my having a different take on your plan."