Crossfire. Jenna Mills

      From a cruising altitude of thirty-nine thousand feet, the vivid blue sky stretched on forever. Far below, the rugged Rockies jutted up like toy mountains. The snowcaps looked little more than dots of vanilla ice cream.

      Elizabeth leaned back and drew a deep breath, let it out slowly. She was eager to get back to Richmond and away from Hawk, but for now she savored the freedom of soaring.

      “Isn’t the view gorgeous?”

      Hawk glanced at her. “Stunning.”

      Her heart kicked, hard. Her throat tightened. “Don’t, Hawk, okay? Not now.” They sat too close, had too many more hours alone together. As it was, she couldn’t breathe without drawing the scent of him deep inside. “Can’t we just enjoy the flight?”

      The corners of his mouth curved into a smile. “Whatever you say, sweetness.”

      Off to the right, a swirl of gauzy clouds curled like a comma. “Thank you.”

      If she didn’t know better, she would have sworn he stiffened. “Just doing my job.”

      “For letting me fly with you,” she clarified. For not treating her like a child. Nicholas barely let her drive.

      Hawk turned toward her. Mirrored sunglasses concealed the deep butterscotch of his eyes, but she knew they’d be gleaming. “I taught you, didn’t I?”

      The question rushed through her. He’d taught her, all right. A lot. Lessons she would never forget.

      Hawk Monroe was the best pilot, the best instructor, she’d ever known. He’d mastered flying while in the Army, piloting Black Hawks into hostile territory in faraway places most people only heard about on the news. He never talked about the missions, but from the aftermath she’d witnessed in his eyes, she knew they’d been beyond dangerous. She wondered if he still thought about the years he’d given to his country, if sometimes he still woke up in a cold sweat.

      Call me a fool, but “Be all you can be” actually meant something to me.

      A smart woman would have turned away, looked straight ahead. Maybe even closed her eyes. But Elizabeth found it hard to look away. He looked deceptively casual sitting there with his headset on, faded jeans hugging his long legs, and the sleeves of his khaki shirt rolled up. On a glance he looked like a thousand other ex-military corporate pilots…except for the Glock shoved snugly into his leather shoulder holster.

      “What do you think about when you fly?” she asked before she could stop herself.

      Hawk took a long sip from a bottle of water. “I try not to think at all. I prefer to savor.”

      Elizabeth smiled. Hawk loved flying every bit as much as she did. Before their relationship had become overly complicated, he’d taken her up often, sharing with her the promise of an early-spring dawn and the vibrancy of a late-summer sunset.

      “Have you been up much since the shooting?”

      “You know what they say about not keeping a good man down,” he answered with a grin. “I was back up—”

      The change was subtle at first, a yaw like brakes on ice. They lurched forward, then backward. Then came the deafening roar of silence. The swirl of amber lights. The drone of buzzers.

      And the plane went from fast forward to slow motion.

      “Shit!” Hawk grabbed the yoke and immediately launched into the emergency procedures he’d drilled into her.

      Her heart slammed against her ribs. “We’re losing altitude!” It wasn’t a dizzying rush or a spiraling plummet, just a gentle sinking in the air, drifting.

      The hallmark of an aircraft with no power.