All in all, a great night for flying.
She glanced at the HUD, Heads-Up Display. The plexiglass screen at eye level mirrored the instrument panel so she never had to take her eyes off the sky. Not that there was much to see in the inky darkness, but a night flight had been crucial for temperature control for the dolphins.
Dolphins. Max Keagan.
Double damn and dirt.
One simple thought about the unusual freight blew her concentration. Her attention winged straight back to the cargo hold of dolphins and their spiky-haired trainer.
"Think about flying," she whispered, chanting, "charts, airspeed, whiz wheels, flight times."
The 4:00 a.m. takeoff from coastal San Diego would keep them in the dark as they chased time zones west. Even with their twelve hours in the air, the sun would only just be rising in Guam once they landed.
Then she wouldn't have the distractions of instrumentation checks and flight schedules to keep her thoughts from lofting along tempting routes. Sure the dolphin doctor's eyes had blazed interest initially. Until his brief. Then she might as well have been stuck behind a Vulcan cloaking device for all the notice he took of her.
Darcy sighed and wondered why the usual spice of flying seemed flat tonight, like unsalted sunflower seeds. She lived for these moments in the air. She'd fought a major battle with her father over entering pilot training.
Of course Pops had won big-time this week by keeping her out of any real war. Irritation tightened her grip on the stick.
Bronco shut his book. "Have I showed you the latest pictures of Kathleen and the baby at the beach?''
"Yes!" Darcy and Crusty said. The headset echoed with the loadmaster's affirmative from the back.
"Oh." Bronco deflated like a parachute deprived of wind.
Darcy flipped the autopilot switch and wriggled her fingers for the pictures. "But I'd love to see them again."
A smile wreathed Bronco's big mug as he passed the pack. "Just for that, my now favorite copilot, you get the takeoff when we leave Guam, while ol' Crusty there warms that jump seat again."
Anticipation fired through her. A takeoff was a rare thrill for any copilot. Training requirements called for copilots to log more landings than takeoffs. Which logistically made sense because the aircraft commander would always be on hand for takeoff, but a copilot needed to be prepared to land if the senior pilot became incapacitated. Or was shot in combat.
The possibility of an imminent war-zone assignment clenched inside her as tightly as her white-knuckled fist on the beach pictures. Not that she was afraid, she told herself. No way. A Renshaw showed no fear. She wanted a chance to make a difference in Cantou like her bomber navigator brother and fighter pilot sister. They didn't have to battle their dad for every walk on the edge the way Darcy did.
She needed this chance to reconcile her past.
All the more reason to look forward to that takeoff from Guam. Except, when she left, she would say goodbye to the aloof professor.
Her sweaty palms stuck to the pictures.
Bronco jabbed a beefy finger toward an image of an infant wearing a sunbonnet by the ocean. "That's Tara taking her first swim."
Darcy loosened her hold on the photos before she crimped the edges. The fella looked so darn proud, she didn't dare pick at him for stating the obvious. "Cool. Maybe you can sign her up for one of those baby swimming classes."
"Already on the schedule at the base pool."
"I'll be waiting for the pictures." She thumbed through the stack with one hand. No landmark occasion recorded. Just twenty-four near-identical shots of a redheaded mother sitting on a beach towel with a chubby baby.
Nothing much, but somehow it pricked at Darcy, revealing an emptiness she didn't dare call loneliness. Since she never allowed relationships into the workplace and she always worked, her social life sucked. Which meant she would just have to live with that emptiness and get on with her job.
Or maybe not.
Her memory filled with that momentary flash of interest in Max Keagan's eyes. Okay, so he'd backed off once he'd stepped up to brief the crew, but damn it, she hadn't misread the attraction she'd seen.
Hell, barely twenty-four hours after her great resolve for going after what she wanted and already she'd surrendered at the first sign of resistance. She wasn't looking to make her own pack of Kodak memories with the guy, not at the expense of losing focus on her career. She just wanted something to fill that lonely corner of herself. A relationship with a man that went beyond big-brother teasing, if only for the duration of her stay in Guam.
Step it up, soldier. Winners never quit and quitters never win. Time for a jaunt to the cargo hold.
Darcy tucked the pictures into the envelope.
"Crusty, are you sick of that jump seat yet? I need to stretch my legs."
Bronco tapped his headset. "Hey, Crusty, is this thing working right? I could have sworn I heard Wren give up the stick. Voluntarily."
"Yeah, man. I heard the same thing. Too bad we don't have a doc on board to check her temp— Hey wait, Bronco." Crusty gasped in mock surprise. "We do have a doctor on board."
"Imagine that," Bronco answered. "Do you think that's why she needs a little stroll in back?"
"You are a genius, my friend."
"Seems we have some private maneuvers already in action on this mission."
Darcy vowed to sabotage their flight lunches.
Except she knew they only teased people they liked. Great. Lucky for her, apparently she really was their favorite copilot.
"Funny, guys. With lame jokes like that, you should take your show on the road." Darcy flipped the auto pilot switch off. "Bronco, do you have the jet?"
The stick waggled in her hand just before Bronco answered. "Roger, I have the jet."
Crusty groused, "Can't believe she called our jokes lame, Bronco."
"Well there aren't privates in the Air Force. Just airmen."
"Details, details..."
She whipped off her headset and unstrapped from the copilot seat. Double-timing, she descended the narrow stairwell into the cargo hold before the pilots could razz her again. The cavernous belly swelled with the tinny echo of activity and engine drones. A red glow hovered throughout, the low lighting set to calm the dolphins during flight. Temperatures had been lowered, as well, per the good doc's instructions.
Scanning for Max, she rubbed her hands along her arms to ward off the chill but found no sign of him in the dimly lit craft. Her stomach lurched with anticipation as it hadn't done since her early days in flight training.
Two rectangular fiberglass tanks lined the center like train carts. The briefings she'd received provided a mental picture of what filled them. A dolphin lay in each one, cradled in a mesh sling. Around ten or eleven feet long, each dolphin rested partially submerged in water.
By the tank farthest from her, the professor's assistant stood beside the loadmaster. Master Sergeant Jim "Tag" Price passed a walk-around oxygen bottle to the assistant. Darcy wasn't fooled by Tag's smile. The seasoned loadmaster ran a tight ship in back and didn't take well to having his rules ignored.
The dolphins were in safe hands. So where was Max?
Bracing a hand along the cool fiberglass, she strode toward Tag. A burst of air whooshed from the dolphin's blowhole. Startled, Darcy jumped, looked around.
Her gaze traveled up until she found Max on the edge of the tank spraying a mist inside. With smooth agility, he swung a leg over, straddling the wall, muscles flexing as he steadied himself.
Rubber boots covered up to his knee, but his toned thigh stayed in plain sight. God, that leg looked good encased in well-worn denim. If she walked a few steps forward and reached up, just a bit...
Darcy hooked her hands on her h*ps before they turned traitor. Her eyes, however, she allowed free rein to rove before he noticed she'd joined him.
A yellow slicker masked most of Max's chest, protecting him from the backspray. She detected a hint of chambray shirt peeking through the unbuttoned coat.
His rebellious hair spiked, calling her hands to bring on the finger comb. Not that she would with a cargo hold full of people watching. But what should she do? Her experience ranked somewhere between nil and nonexistent, unlike her confident older sister.
Maybe that was it.
She would just think like Alicia. Act like Alicia, who'd moved from being president of her senior class to the cockpit of an F-15 in less than a decade.
Being a virgin with next to no experience in the flirting arena didn't mean Darcy hadn't seen others in action. How hard could it be to lift a few of her sister's simpler moves?
Preflighting her plan with a hefty dose of bravado, Darcy braced her shoulders and launched phase two of Operation Dolphin Doc.
"Is it okay for me to be close like this?"
Darcy's husky words punched the air from Max as effectively as a surprise swipe from a powerful dolphin tail. He closed the valve on the hose and looked down into the belly of the cargo plane. "Say again?"
Strolling toward him, she trailed her fingers along the fiberglass tank. "I wouldn't want to upset them by standing too close."
Close to the dolphins. Max swallowed a laugh at himself. Damn, but he was so used to looking for hidden agendas in undercover assignments he'd missed the obvious.
Accepting words and a person at face value.
Max hefted himself over the edge of the transport tank and to the ground, gaining his footing not more than a few inches from her. Darcy Renshaw was a rarity. A good, honest person. He didn't doubt his assessment for a second. He'd seen enough corruption working CIA ops to recognize innocence.
His own thoughts were far from innocent as he wondered what it would be like to drag down the zipper on Darcy's flight suit. To reveal every inch of what waited hidden beneath that bulky green uniform.
He patted the side of the dolphin tank instead to keep his hands occupied. "You're fine standing where you are. Sorry if she startled you."
"I thought you said she would sleep for most of the flight. If so, that's quite a snore she's got going."
"She's just breathing." While he was doing his damnedest not to breathe in the Darcy-scent of baby powder and soap mixed with a hint of hydraulic fluid.
"Well, that's a hefty exhale." Darcy scratched a hand along her collarbone, drawing his attention straight to that zipper and the translucent skin on her neck.
Time to roll out some boring academia to send her sprinting back up to the cockpit. "Dolphins exhale at over a hundred miles per hour."
She stepped closer. Red fluorescent lights lined the ceiling of the aircraft, haloing her in sinful enticement. "It's amazing the force doesn't wake her up."
An air pocket bucked the plane, jostling Darcy closer still. Max yearned for a bigger plane. "Actually, dolphins only sleep with one side of the brain at a time."
"Is it some kind of protection thing? To keep watch for predators? Sharks maybe."
Renshaw wasn't easily daunted. Okay, he needed to dig deeper into class lectures. "Dolphins breathe with voluntary muscles. Not like us where it's involuntary. One side of a dolphin's brain always stays awake to regulate breathing."
"Oh. Kind of like Crusty, huh? Half there sometimes."
He forced himself to grin back at her mistaken perception about the OSI contact currently sitting in the cockpit. Max had never worried overmuch about the lies inherent in his job before. A means to a better end. Why did it bother him now?
Shake it off and get to work. "Did you need something?"
"Not really." Her whiskey-rich voice mingled with the roar of engines. "Just taking a break to stretch my legs."
Legs.
Max kept his famished eyes off those mile-long legs and searched for something safe to study, like her flight suit patches. She shifted from boot to boot, relaying restless nerves at odds with all that gutsy confidence.