MERLINE LOVELACE

"Lovelace has made a name for herself."

—Romantic Times

Merline Lovelace spent twenty-three years in the air force, pulling tours all over the world. When she hung up her uniform, she decided to try her hand at writing. She's since had over forty novels published, with more than five million copies in print. She and her own handsome hero of thirty-plus years live in Oklahoma. They enjoy golf, traveling and long, lazy dinners with friends and family. Watch for Merline's sizzling novel about Teddy Roosevelt's Rough Riders, The Captain's Woman, available in January 2003 from MIRA® Books.

UNDERCOVER OPERATIONS

Merline Lovelace

* * *

This story is dedicated to the men and women who serve their county—in any and all capacities.

Dear Reader,

To paraphrase an old saying, you can take the man out of the military, but you can't take the military out of the man. Or woman!

After spending the first twenty years of my life as an air force brat and the next twenty-three as an air force officer, I confess the military is in my blood. So you understand why I think warriors make such great heroes and heroines. There's that sense of responsibility to country and comrades, that determination to complete a mission, that touch of reckless daring so necessary to win against all odds.

The events of 9/11 have demonstrated that these qualities reach across economic, social and national boundaries. I salute the heroes, both in and out of uniform, who risked all to save others. And to those now fighting to make the world safer, fly high, stay true and come home safe!

All my best,

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 1

Captain Danielle Flynn had walked into some seedy joints during her eight years in the Air Force. Hitting the bars came with the job in her line of work. But on a scale of one to ten, she'd rank this dark, smoke-filled dive set smack in the middle of Oklahoma's panhandle as a minus four.

The place reeked of spilled beer and old grease. Yellowed posters of half-naked babes touting everything from booze to tractors vied for space with the rust spots decorating the corrugated tin walls. A thin layer of red dust coated every horizontal surface. The handful of patrons wore boots, jeans, sweat-stained ball caps and expressions that ranged from mild curiosity to avid male interest as they surveyed Dani.

Except for one. He sat slouched at a table in the corner, nursing a beer. Eyes narrowed against the smoke, he slanted her a sideways glance, let his gaze roam lazily from her neck to her knees, and went back to his beer.

Dani's inspection was considerably more thorough, and what she saw didn't impress her. Jack Buchanan certainly fit the mental image she'd constructed after reading the information she'd gathered about him. If the bristles shadowing his cheeks and chin were any indication, he hadn't seen the sharp edge of a razor in days. Dark circles ringed the armpits of his blue denim work shirt, and his leather boots wore a collection of scuffs and scars.

Hard to believe this down-at-the-heels crop duster once flew supersonic F-117 Stealth fighters. Or that Dani's father, Colonel Dan Flynn, had risked his life to fly through a hail of enemy fire to pluck this loser from the wreckage of his burning aircraft.

Well, it was time for Buchanan to return the favor.

Threading her way through the tables, Dani slid her hand into her shoulder bag, pulled out a flat case and popped open the top. The Medal of Honor lay nested in its bed of dark velvet. The shiny gold disk embossed with the head of Lady Liberty hung suspended from its blue satin ribbon. The nation's highest award for valor in the face of the enemy, it was given only to the bravest of the brave.

Ignoring a sharp little stab of pain, she dropped the case on Buchanan's table. It landed with a soft thud, barely audible over the chink of glasses and the tinny wail of the radio.

"I'm Danielle Flynn. Captain Danielle Flynn. United States Air Force. That medal belonged to my father."

Buchanan tilted his chair back on its rear legs and pushed up the brim of his ball cap, revealing a thatch of blue-black hair badly in need of a trim. Whiskey-colored eyes surveyed her through the thick screen of his lashes. He made a more detailed inventory this time, taking in her windblown hair, her wilted white blouse, her jeans. His gaze lingered on the Air Force Academy ring on her right hand before lifting to her face.

"You don't favor the old man much."

"So I've been told."

It could have been a compliment or an insult. Dan Flynn had been a big, bluff Irishman, as handsome as sin. Dani had inherited his name, his height and his dark auburn hair, if not his laughing blue eyes and easygoing charm.

Without waiting for an invitation, she claimed the chair opposite Buchanan's. Her long legs tangled with his under the table. He didn't move, didn't alter his sprawl so much as an inch to accommodate her.

"My father was awarded that medal for saving your life, Buchanan. Yours and six others. It's payback time."

One dark brow arched. "That right?"

"That's right."

He toyed with his beer bottle, tilting it in a circle. His fingers were long, blunt. Scars traced fine white lines on the back of his hand.

"Last I heard," he said after a moment, "Dan Flynn was buried in Arlington with full military honors. You want to tell me how I'm supposed to settle accounts with him?"

The pain came again, a quick, sharp hurt Dani suspected would take a long time to dull. Three years after his death, she still missed the man who'd been her friend and mentor as well as her father. She couldn't remember her mother, who'd died in a car crash when Dani was just a few months old. She and her father had been so close, so happy. Even happier when the colonel had married widowed Claire Stevens. For the first time, six-year-old Dani had had a real family. Now...

Now what was left of that family was being ripped apart. Dragging in a deep breath, she spelled out the urgent matter that had brought her from Boiling Air Force Base, just outside Washington D.C., to this corner of the Oklahoma Panhandle.

"You can settle your account with my father by flying his daughter—my stepsister—out of Mexico."

She had to force the words. Each one stabbed into her like a stiletto.

"Patricia's a hydroelectric engineer," she explained tersely. "She flew down to Chihuahua on business three weeks ago, then took a few days' vacation at a mountaintop resort in Copper Canyon. She drove off the hotel grounds one afternoon and didn't return. Her company received a call two days later, demanding five million dollars for her safe return."

Buchanan's eyes narrowed. The five million had snagged his interest, Dani saw cynically. Somehow, she'd suspected it would.

"I take it her company didn't cough up the ransom."

"No, it didn't. In an attempt to stop the apparently lucrative business of snatching foreign executives, the Mexican government refuses to negotiate with or allow payment of any kind to the kidnappers. Even if they did, Patricia's company doesn't have that kind of money."

"Bull!" Those gold-flecked brown eyes locked with hers. "Any corporation sending executives abroad these days takes out insurance to cover situations like this."

"Their policy contains a one million dollar cap. And a clause requiring the host nation's cooperation in all release negotiations, which lets the company completely off the hook."

His lip curled in disgust. "They should fire the fool who got suckered in with that policy."

"They have, but that doesn't help in this particular situation. So I'm using my own assets. I'm offering you a hundred thousand, Buchanan. It's every cent I could pull together."

She'd expected him to jump at the offer, was surprised when he didn't. She knew darn well he desperately needed cash. He'd walked away from his Air Force career in a last-ditch attempt to save a marriage that went bust anyway. Had walked away from the subsequent divorce with only the clothes on his back. If the information she'd gathered was correct, his sole possessions these days consisted of a dilapidated pickup and the Stearman biplane he'd patched together with chewing gum and baling wire.

"You could buy a new plane with that hundred thousand, Buchanan. An aircraft constructed specifically for agricultural aviation, with computer controlled aerial dispersal systems. Assuming, of course, you want to spend the rest of your life dusting crops."

She hadn't intended the remark quite the way it came out. She understood farm aviation performed a vital and necessary function. Her Air Force bias had just slipped in.

Buchanan didn't rise to the bait, however. Nor did he defend his rapid descent from hotshot fighter pilot to fertilizer spreader.

"A hundred thousand's a good chunk of change," he agreed. "What, specifically, would I have to do to earn it?"

"Specifically, you would have to fly me down to Copper Canyon, hang loose until I locate my sister, and fly us both out."

"Seems to me the United States government would be pulling out all the stops to rescue the daughter of a Medal of Honor winner," he said slowly. "Not to mention the Mexican authorities."

Frustration rose, so thick and bitter Dani could almost taste it. After three weeks of stomach-clenching tension, three weeks of working with the State Department, the CIA, the Mexican authorities and a host of hostage negotiators, three weeks of increasingly desperate measures, she'd run out of alternatives. And out of patience.

"The U.S. has exercised every diplomatic option in the book. The Mexican government mounted several massive search efforts. Five days ago, a joint U.S.Mexican commando force stormed what they thought was the kidnappers' hideout, only to discover they'd departed the scene less than an hour before. The bastards have a source, apparently. A high-level source. One who tips them off to the government's every move."

She leaned forward, her elbows digging into the stained tabletop.

"This time," she vowed fiercely, "there'll be no leak. No warning. No advance notice of any kind. I want to fly down tomorrow, if you can get your plane ready." Her gaze drilled into his. "I'll pay you half up front. Half when we land back in the States. With Patricia."

Still he didn't grab at the offer. Exercising every ounce of self-control she possessed, Dani waited him out.

"Why me?" he asked when her nerves had twisted tight. "Why not a professional, a soldier of fortune with a small private army to back him up?"

"Because you owe my father. Big time. And because, according to him at least, you used to be one hell of a pilot. It'll take all your skill and then some to put us down in those mountains and fly us out again. More to the point, the resort's in a remote area. A private army, no matter how small, can't go in without tipping off the kidnappers again. So it'll be just you and me, Buchanan. A couple of newlyweds, joyriding around Mexico on their honeymoon."

"Newlyweds?"

Actually, Dani had considered and discarded a number of covers. The area they were going into was a mecca for archeologists, paleontologists and bird watchers, not to mention American developers eager to exploit its stunning natural beauty. She'd decided against assuming any of those occupations, however. Past experience had taught her the most effective covers were the simplest.

A point she kept firmly in mind when Buchanan's mouth curved. It wasn't a pleasant smile, or a particularly flattering one. Yet something crackled in the air between them, and the tension that had tied Dani in knots for so long now took an unexpected twist.

"So what's the answer?" she snapped, annoyed she could feel anything even remotely resembling a sexual response to this man. "Yes or no?"

"No."

The laconic reply tightened her jaws. She waited for him to elaborate, felt a rush of fury when he merely fiddled with his beer.

"That's it?" she demanded. "No sorry 'bout that? No list of reasons why you can't aid the daughter of a man who risked his life to save yours?"

"That's it."

"Dad wasn't wrong about people very often," she said, scorn dripping from every syllable. "Obviously, he missed the mark with you."

She reached for the medal and pushed away from the table. Buchanan's hand whipped out. The hold on her wrist held her suspended half in and half out of her chair. He leaned forward until his face was mere inches from her own.

"I'll bring your sister out, green-eyes. I owe the old man that. But as much as I appreciate the offer to honeymoon with you, I fly solo."

"Not on this mission, Buchanan."

"I do it my way or not at all."

Her jaw locked. Any of the personnel she worked with would have recognized the expression that settled over her face, and instantly found important work that needed doing in another part of the headquarters.

"Not on this mission," she repeated, yanking free of his hold. "We do it my way or you don't get paid."

"Then I guess I don't get paid."

His chair legs scraped the floor. Digging some crumpled bills out of his jeans, he tossed them on the table and tipped two fingers to his hat brim.

"See you around, Flynn."

He sauntered past her, moving with a cocky, confident stride. And, Dani was forced to admit, with a lazy grace that was all his own.

"Yes," she murmured, gripping her father's medal to her chest. "You'll definitely see me around."

She was at the patch of flattened weeds that passed for the local airstrip when the sun broke over the horizon the next morning.

She'd dressed for traveling, in sturdy hiking boots, jeans and a short-sleeved, red T-shirt. A Washington Redskins ball cap confined her shoulder length auburn hair back in a ponytail. Her leather carryall contained a change of clothing, a few toiletries and a nylon wind-breaker... along with a few essential tools of her trade.

Leaning against the fender of her rental car, she sipped the coffee she'd picked up at the only gas station in town. The streaks of red and gold shooting across the sky smoothed some of the jagged edges of the tension that had gripped her for weeks now. The Panhandle had a wild beauty all its own, she decided. Acre after acre of wheat fields turning amber with the dawn. The black, low-lying mesas to the north. The Coldwater River cutting a silver curve to the south.

Too bad the current resident of this particular patch of Oklahoma hadn't contributed much to its natural beauty. Shaking her head, Dani scanned the weedy airstrip. A faded windsock hung limply atop a rusted pole. A dilapidated shed marked with a hazard sign was loaded, she guessed, with barrels of insecticide. The Quonset hut that served as a hangar was definitely World War II vintage.

So was the plane tucked inside.

Dani had done her research. She was well aware that the Stearman N3N biplane inside the hangar had been built in 1940 and performed yeoman service as a trainer for navy pilots. Nicknamed the Canary for its bright yellow paint scheme, this plane and hundreds like her had been sold as excess after the war. Many had then embarked on long second careers as crop dusters.

She was also aware that the Stearman was an extremely stable platform, easy to maneuver, capable of taking off and landing on dirt roads or grassy pastures. Still, the idea of skimming the tops of the rugged Sierra Madres in the back seat of an open cockpit, kept aloft on rickety canvas wings separated by wooden struts, had her sucking down another deep gulp of caffeine.

She'd reached the dregs when Buchanan finally drove up. She could see him coming for a good half mile. His pickup raised a long rooster tail of red dust. Dumping the cold sludge, she crumpled the cup, tossed it inside the rental car and folded her arms.

When he climbed out of the pickup, the canvas light bag he hauled out of the truck gave her a fierce satisfaction. She'd had her doubts about Buchanan during the long hours of the night, but it was obvious he'd come prepared to fly. Aviation maps stuck out of the sides of the bag, and he'd thrust a brown leather bomber jacket through its handles.

He wouldn't need the jacket to conduct aerial spraying in this heat. He was on his way to the high, cool elevations of the Sierra Madres.

"Morning, Buchanan."

He stopped in front of her. In the dusty dawn, he looked even more disreputable than he had in the bar. And considerably more annoyed. Under the thick black bristles, his jaw had locked tight.

"Maybe you didn't hear me last night. I fly solo."

"I heard you."

His glance shot to the leather carryall at her feet, then back to her face.

"We're wasting time here," she said, preempting the argument she saw forming. "Patricia's mom died just a year after my dad. Trish is all the family I have left. You're not flying down to Mexico without me."

"Oh yeah?" He rocked back on his heels. "Just out of curiosity, how do you plan to stop me?"

"Well, I could call a friend of mine at Altus Air Force Base, just south of here, and have him run an intercept. Or I could call another friend at the FAA and have her pull your certification. Or," she added calmly, "I could take you down right now and have done with this cat and mouse game we're playing."

Damn! She was serious. For a moment Jack actually considered accepting her challenge. The mood he was in this morning, he wouldn't mind a tussle in the dirt. Particularly with Danielle Flynn. The woman had stirred more than his interest when she'd strolled into MacIver's place last night.

This morning, she all but tied him in knots.

Those snug jeans wrapped around her hips and rear like a thin coat of paint. Her cotton T-shirt hugged her slender curves in a way that left little to the imagination, and Jack possessed a very vivid imagination when it came to leggy redheads. Deliberately, he squelched the image of Flynn flat on her back in the grass, her legs tangled with his, her green eyes flashing fire.

So she had the neatest, trimmest butt this side of the Red River? So the mere thought of rolling around in the grass with her got him hard? She was Dan Flynn's daughter.

Even without the old man looking over his shoulder, Jack wouldn't move on the woman. His brief contact with Captain Flynn was making it painfully apparent that she'd inherited more from the colonel than her dark copper hair. Jack wasn't about to get up close and personal with another stubborn, hardheaded female. The last one had wrung him inside out before she decamped with a high school band instructor.

A band instructor, for God's sake!

Shaking his head in disgust, Jack invited Danielle Flynn to attempt whatever actions she considered necessary or appropriate. He was going to Mexico. In his plane. Without her.

He was halfway across the grass strip when the ear-splitting report of a pistol stopped him in his tracks. Directly ahead of him, the windsock whipped around wildly on its pole.

That got his attention, Dani thought in smug satisfaction. Thumbing the safety on the Beretta, she strolled up to join him. Buchanan's eyes were glacial when he turned to face her.

"Was that little demonstration supposed to impress me?"

"No. It was supposed to show you that I can take care of myself."

He studied the Beretta for a long moment. It was a new model, a 9000S, with a fiberglass reinforced techno-polymer frame and two special steel rail inserts for the slide. Compact, lightweight and easy to field-strip, with a magazine that packed twelve lethal 9 mm rounds or ten Smith & Wesson .40 calibers.

Evidently Buchanan knew his way around weapons enough to appreciate this wasn't an ordinary side arm. His face registered suspicion and a grudging respect.

"What do you do in the Air Force, anyway?"

"I'm an undercover agent with the Office of Special Investigations. I'm pulling a headquarters tour at Bolling Air Force Base outside D.C. right now, but I've spent most of the past eight years in the field."

His eyes narrowed. "Any particular reason why you neglected to mention that particular bit of information before now?"

"As a matter of fact, there is. I'm not going into Mexico in my official capacity. This isn't an Air Force operation. The politics of the situation won't allow it. This is just me, Buchanan. And you. Now I suggest we load up and get this show on the road."

With a self-assurance that said the matter was settled, Dani slipped the Beretta into the holster strapped to her ankle and plowed through the weeds to the Quonset hut. She didn't realize she was holding her breath until she heard a muttered curse and the thud of boots behind her.

She let out a tiny sigh of relief. She would have gone into Mexico alone, if necessary. She'd planned to do just that if she couldn't convince Buchanan to honor his debt to her father. She was congratulating herself on maneuvering him into doing exactly what she'd wanted him to when his deep drawl sounded just behind her ear.

"It'll be tough, but I guess I can force myself to share a bed with you for a few nights in a mountaintop resort."

"Don't get any ideas. The honeymoon bit is strictly for cover."

She tossed her carryall into the back seat of the Stearman and turned, only to find herself caught between the canvas-covered fuselage and a large, immovable male.

"Maybe we need another demonstration," he suggested with a nasty glint in his eye. "Just to lay out the rest of the ground rules."

"Buchanan..."

She could have taken him down. She'd been taught every defensive and counterdefensive move in the book. But something held her still.

Maybe it was the faint, tantalizing tang of coffee on his breath. Or the tingle just under her skin when his bristly cheek scraped hers. Or the sudden, feminine curiosity that leaped to life all up and down her spine. Whatever it was, it kept Dani motionless as he planted his palms on the fuselage and bent his head.

The moment his lips claimed hers, she realized her mistake. Jack Buchanan subscribed to the fighter pilot school of kissing. He didn't make a slow pass over the target. Didn't perform a careful aerial assessment before engaging the enemy. He swooped in, guns blazing, delivered a full load of armaments and left his designated target with her head spinning and her knees ridiculously weak.

Lord, the man could kiss! Dani fought the urge to rise up on tiptoe, hook her arms around his neck, return fire. Instead, she kept her shoulders against the canvas and her hands fisted at her side. When he raised his head, it took everything she had to infuse her voice with cool disdain as she threw his words back at him.

"Was that supposed to impress me?"

A grin flashed across his face, transforming the rugged planes and angles into something dangerously close to handsomeness.

"No, but it sure goes a long way to making up for the buzzing in my ears from your pistol shot."

Dani refused to admit that the buzzing in her ears had nothing to do with the shot. She wouldn't give Buchanan the satisfaction. Besides, she wasn't about to let this man distract her. Not with her sister's life hanging in the balance.

Still, she couldn't decide whether she was more relieved or disappointed when Buchanan tossed his flight bag into the front seat and kicked aside the wooden chocks.

"Let's roll this baby out and get her fueled, green-eyes. This looks to be one helluva flight."

Chapter 2

Dani had never flown in an open cockpit plane before. Six hours into the flight, she was pretty confident she never wanted to repeat the experience.

Granted, skimming along at fifteen hundred feet was incredibly exhilarating, with the air rushing, silky soft, in her face and scattered cumulus clouds puffing up like mounds of whipped cream in the ocean of blue all around her. The Stearman's 220-horsepower engine purred like a kitten, so the noise wasn't bad. And flying at little more than eighty miles an hour, Dani could swipe the occasional oil spray from her goggles, lean into her shoulder harness and see the patchwork of farms, towns and cities below in precise detail.

Unfortunately, the Stearman's slow speed, ability to fly well below radar and capacity to land on any semi-level surface—all of which made it the perfect aircraft for this mission—also made for a long flight. Once they were out of the Oklahoma Panhandle, Texas rolled by beneath the double wings for hour after hour. The flat, dusty plains around Amarillo. Lubbock's cotton fields. Midland-Odessa's Permian oil basin, with black metal derricks bobbing up and down like giant grasshoppers as far as the eye could see.

At the first refueling stop, Dani unhooked her harness, climbed out and made a dash for the bathroom to get rid of her coffee. The messages scrawled above the urinal raised her brows. The sink was so filthy she figured her own germs were safer than any she might pick up from touching the faucet. She returned outside and waited patiently while the airstrip manager drooled over the Stearman.

At the second stop, there were no bathroom facilities of any kind, crude or otherwise. Nor did an airstrip attendant make an appearance. A cell phone call to the number painted on the fuel tank gave the location of the key and permission to pump away. Buchanan left two bills folded under a rock to pay for the gas.

Thankfully, their third stop was a city airport just outside Fort Stockton, with a real tower and a restaurant. Dani climbed out of the Stearman on rubbery legs as a knot of people gathered to admire the biplane.

"She's decked out in navy colors," an old-timer said with a catch in his throat. "Just like the trainer I soloed in at Pensacola in '43."

"Glad to see you didn't gut the old girl's front cockpit and fit her with a fertilizer hopper," another commented. "From the nozzles you've installed under her wings, I'd guess you disperse chemicals and seed?"

"Not just seed. I also spray dry material to speed up snowmelt on golf courses and small grainfields," Buchanan explained. "Had a contract last year to clean up an oil spill along the Lower Colorado."

"No kidding? That was you? You did a damned good job, from what I heard. Used MT-64 dry microbial pellets, didn't you?"

Left completely behind by the abrupt transition into the technicalese of aerial applications, Dani heeded her stomach's rumblings and made for the restaurant. She was halfway through a heaping platter of enchiladas and french fries, both swimming in scorch-your-eyeballs Texas chili, when Buchanan finally joined her.

"That looks good," he told the waitress. "I'll have the same. And iced tea."

Grimacing, Dani watched him dump six packets of sugar into the quart-size jug of tea that was delivered a few moments later. She refrained from commenting on his sweet tooth, but did remark that she hadn't realized agricultural aviation had taken on such a variety of dimensions.

Buchanan slanted her a cynical glance. "I'm not surprised. I formed the impression last night that you don't hold the profession of crop dusting in high esteem."

"Not as high as flying fighters for the United States Air Force," she admitted. She played with her fork, eyeing him curiously. "Do you miss it?"

"The Air Force or flying fighters?"

"Either. Both."

"Not particularly."

She digested that while he tipped his head back and took a long swallow of his tea. Despite her determination to remain focused on the mission and not the man, Dani couldn't help noticing the weathered skin, the square jaw, the strong column of his throat. He wouldn't be bad if he scraped off those bristles and trimmed his hair, she admitted silently. Not bad at all.

Sternly, she banished the thought and probed deeper. "My father said you were one of the best pilots in his squadron."

"Yeah, well, Dan Flynn knew how to wring every last ounce of performance out of his men and their aircraft."

"Did you ever consider going back into the military? You're what? Thirty-two?"

Actually, he would turn thirty-three in a few weeks, but Dani saw no need to let him know she'd put together a file on him.

"Given the million or so the Air Force spent training you," she commented, "they might entertain a waiver."

"They might, if I was interested in one."

His heaping platter arrived. Several forkfuls disappeared down his throat. She knew she should let him enjoy his meal in peace, but the career officer in her wouldn't let go.

"So why aren't you interested?"

His shoulders lifted in a careless shrug. "What I'm doing suits me fine."

"But..."

"There are no buts, Flynn. Not in my mind. I'm my own boss. I spend as many hours in the air as I can cram in. I take the contracts I want and turn down those I don't."

"You can't prefer tooling around in a World War II vintage plane to flying jets!"

"You think so?" Annoyance put an edge to his voice. "I like flying low and slow. I like throwing my plane into a loop or a hammerhead stall whenever the mood strikes me. I like landing on runways so short I have to plow into someone's backyard to stop. There's nothing that compares to the feel of that old rag-wing's stick in my hand. Nothing."

Except maybe the feel of Danielle Flynn's mouth under his. The thought jumped uninvited into Jack's head and wouldn't jump out.

Damn! He couldn't remember when a woman had gotten to him like this. Even his ex hadn't delivered this kind of quick, hard punch to the gut. Their courtship had been rocky, their marriage even rockier.

And that, Jack reminded himself grimly, was a lesson he wouldn't soon forget. Couldn't afford to forget. Now that he'd arranged his life exactly the way he wanted it, he wasn't about to let some intense, intent career-type take it apart again. Scowling, he dug into his enchiladas.

"Eat up," he ordered curtly. "We've still got a good five hours of flying time before we reach this mountaintop resort of yours."

It took Dani exactly one flip of the biplane to understand that Buchanan was not happy with her for challenging his present career choice. Two to bring her lunch back into her throat.

She closed her eyes to the crazily tilting horizon, gritted her teeth as the harness straps gouged her shoulders, and shouted into the intercom. "All right! You've proved your point. You like throwing your plane into loop-de-loops."

"Those were barrel rolls."

"Whatever," she growled. "Unless you want recycled french fries and chili all over your damned plane, I suggest you fly straight, Buchanan."

The grin he shot her over his shoulder was positively evil.

Dani still hadn't quite forgiven him when they touched down on a dirt airstrip high in the Sierra Mad-res some five hours later. Unsteadily, she clambered out. Her bottom was totally anesthetized from sitting so long, and she was sure the harness straps had carved permanent creases in her shoulders.

While Buchanan made arrangements to service the plane with the attendant who ambled down from the hotel perched high on an escarpment above them, Dani rolled her neck to relieve the kinks and did a slow 360. The sun was slipping behind the mountains to the west, but the beams shooting through the towering peaks illuminated a stunning landscape.

This was Copper Canyon. Barranca del Cobre. Not really a single gorge, but a network of canyons slicing through the Sierra Madres. An area four times larger than Arizona's Grand Canyon, with dizzying changes in elevation and flora that ranged from cactus and sagebrush to cedar and pine. Filled with cascading waterfalls. Staggering cliffs. Verdant valleys. Sprinkled with prehistoric cliff dwellings, abandoned gold and silver mines, and isolated villages inhabited by the shy, dignified Tarahumara people.

And marked by steep, almost inaccessible arroyos. Hundreds of them. Maybe thousands. Any one of which could hide a ragtag band of kidnappers.

Grimly, Dani dug into her carryall for the plain gold wedding band she'd purchased to complete the cover, and slipped it onto her ring finger. She glanced up to catch Buchanan's ironic gaze, shrugged, and led the way up the steep incline to the resort.

The main lodge of the Posada Barrancas clung to the side of the cliff like an eagle's aerie. Two dozen or so individual casitas were scattered along the canyon rim on either side of the lodge. Inside the lobby, timbers held aloft a soaring ceiling, and the sharp tang of pine resin drifted through two-story sliding windows left open to the spectacular vista.

"I'm Danielle Flynn," she told the receptionist. "I called in a reservation."

"Sí, señora. We have the reservation for you and the señor." A warm smile lit her face. "May I congratulate you both? We at Posada Barrancas are honored you chose to spend your honeymoon with us."

"Thank you."

"We've upgraded you, compliments of the house. Here are the keys to our best casita. And this key is for your Jeep. You must be careful when exploring the canyon, though. The roads are very narrow and steep."

Dani accepted the keys, her throat tight. Patricia had been driving one of the hotel's green-and-white-striped vehicles the afternoon she was kidnapped. It took some effort to toss off a casual query.

"A woman I know stayed here a few weeks ago. Patricia Stevens? Perhaps you remember her?"

At the mention of her stepsister's name, the friendly smile fell right off the receptionist's face.

"Sí. I remember." Chewing on her lower lip, the girl glanced around the lobby. "Señorita Stevens was here. She...she left."

That's all the girl would say. Or could say, probably. The hotel had no doubt put a tight lid on word of the kidnapping to avoid adverse publicity. Dani could only hope she had better luck in the villages nestled in the valleys below.

Neither she nor Buchanan spoke during the short ride via golf cart to their casita. But once the bellhop had showed them the amenities and left with a hefty tip, Buchanan gave a low, appreciative whistle.

"Now this is the way to fly."

Dani had to agree. The furniture was all natural wood—smooth, polished pine; white oak; native birch peeling bark in long, curling strips. Fabric woven in colorful Mexican designs covered the chair and sofa cushions. Aztec and Mayan statuary decorated the walls, interspersed with exquisitely woven basketry.

But dominating all was the view. It was, quite simply, magnificent. Tall, sliding glass panels formed one entire wall and framed a panorama of rugged mountains just turning purple. The doors opened to a railed balcony that hung suspended over a sheer, thousand-foot drop.

The bedroom proved even more stunning. A king-size bed sat on a raised platform surrounded on three sides by glass. Sleeping on that platform would be like floating on air, Dani thought, or in an eagle's nest. Not for the fainthearted. Or the acrophobic.

And not for her. Her plans for the next few nights didn't include sleeping.

"You can have the bedroom," she told Buchanan. "I'll take the sofa in the sitting room."

"Fine with me."

He could have offered at least a token protest, she thought wryly. He made up for it—somewhat—by giving her first dibs on the shower. She jumped at the chance to wash away twelve hours of open cockpit flying, along with the serious aches in her lower regions.

"Thanks. I won't be long. Too long," she amended with a huff as she got her first glimpse of the gleaming spa just off the bedroom.

"Do you want me to order something from room service while you're in the bathroom?"

She dragged her rapt gaze from the circular stall with its floor-to-ceiling, all-round jets. "What?"

"Want me to order from room service?" he repeated. "I figure we should stay in. Since we are newlyweds..."

He let the sentence trail off provocatively, but Dani was too enthralled by the gleaming gadgets in the bathroom to do more than flap a hand.

"Okay. Sure. Whatever you want. Just go away, Buchanan. Please, go away."

He gave a small snort. "This honeymoon is starting to remind me a lot of my first."

Startled, Dani swung around and stared at his back as he strolled out. The former Mrs. Buchanan must have lacked a few necessary hormones, she thought. Or brain cells. Had the woman really turned Jack Buchanan away? On their honeymoon? The mere thought of tumbling onto that decadent bed with the man raised goose bumps all over Dani's skin. If he made love with anything close to the same skill he kissed with...

Whoa! She'd better derail that train of thought before it left the station. She wasn't here to test the mattress on that sybaritic bed. Or to indulge in erotic bedroom exercises with a scruffy crop duster. She was here to find her sister. Only to find her sister.

Closing the bathroom door, Dani stripped down, padded into the shower stall and turned the water jets to full blast.

Jack stood at the tall windows, trying his damnedest to ignore the muted buzz of the shower. Trying even harder not to picture in precise detail the wet, naked body of the woman caught in the crossfire of those jets.

He should be exhausted. Should be feeling those twelve hours at the stick, with only short breaks for refueling. Instead, the urge to strip off and join Danielle Flynn in that glass cubicle kept him wound tighter than the Stearman's engine coil.

She bothered him. Big time. Not just physically, although thinking about the way her mouth had tasted under his was enough to put a hitch in his stride. What really bugged him, though, was that he couldn't figure her out.

Last night, he'd pegged her as an uptight, ring-knocking academy grad. This morning, she'd damned near shot off his ear before calmly announcing that she was breaking all the rales by mounting her own rescue operation. Jack was pretty sure the OSI wasn't going to appreciate one of its agents going into a potentially dangerous situation alone, without authority or backup.

She had guts. He'd give her that. Just like her old man.

He emerged from his turn in the shower some time later to find her examining the contents of domed serving dishes laid out on a wheeled serving cart. He'd ordered fish for both of them, a local trout, crusted and served with a red salsa, black beans and chorizo. If the dishes tasted half as good as those heavenly scents wafting across the room promised, he'd made an excellent choice.

"I didn't think I could eat again after this afternoon's aerobics," she commented, her nose twitching appreciatively as she raised another dome.

"Barrel rolls are fun, aren't they? Wait until you experience your first hammerhead."

"Which I hope happens, oh, maybe never. I've decided—"

She broke off, her eyes widening as she turned and caught her first glimpse of him showered, shaved and minus three days' growth. Her reaction drew a rueful grin from Jack.

"I caught a few too many bugs on the way down," he admitted, dragging his hand across his chin. "The whiskers had to go."

Oh, man!

Dani sucked in a breath, sincerely wishing he'd left both the whiskers and the bugs in place. She'd suspected Buchanan might pack quite a punch under his bristles, but she'd seriously underestimated its potency. With his midnight hair slicked back and those golden eyes glinting through those sinfully thick black lashes, he could give the Baldwin brothers a real run for their money.

Shaking herself out of her temporary trance, Dani passed him a plate. They ate at the table set beside the soaring windows. Outside, dusk deepened to night. A few pinpricks of light pierced the darkness. Not many. Aside from a few scattered villages, the canyon was sparsely populated. Which could make tonight's task relatively easy or incredibly difficult.

"So what's the plan?" Buchanan asked as he speared into his trout. "What do we do now?"

"Right now, we don't do anything."

We being the operative word in the equation. Dani had plans for the rest of the night, but they didn't include her dinner companion.

At his questioning look, she shrugged and forked into her fish. "Tomorrow morning we'll drive down to the village and nose around. The kidnappers must have a local base. Someone's supplying them with both information and food. I intend to find out who that someone is."

She intended to do more than that, but she was a professional. She hunted down bad guys for a living. Considering all she hoped to accomplish tonight, she couldn't risk taking along an amateur.

Since she suspected Buchanan might have a different view of the matter, Dani schooled herself to patience for another hour or so. Finally, he cracked a yawn, hooked his hands behind his neck for a body-twisting stretch, and surprised her with another chance at the eagle's nest.

"Sure you don't want the bed?"

"It's all yours."

His glance drifted to her mouth. "We could share."

"I don't think so."

"You might be making a mistake here, Flynn."

She didn't miss the underlying message. He was talking about more than getting naked and sweaty on that wide, inviting mattress. He wanted in on whatever she was planning.

For a moment, she was tempted to take him up on his offer. On both offers. An hour or so spent testing the bedsprings with Buchanan would no doubt do wonders for the tension crawling along her spine. And it would certainly help to have someone drive the Jeep while she operated the specialized piece of equipment she had tucked in her carryall. Convenience, however, wouldn't make up for the danger she'd be exposing him to.

Shrugging, she turned aside his offer. "It wouldn't be my first mistake."

But it could very well be her last.

Dani had time for that one thought and that one thought only when a menacing figure lunged out of the darkness at her an hour later, just as she was about to climb into the white-and-green-striped Jeep.

Chapter 3

It took only a single, fleeting glimpse of the figure in black for Dam's training and instinct to kick in simultaneously. Dropping her carryall, she flattened her right hand into a throat-crunching blade. Her left knuckled into a fist that might have seriously rearranged the man's facial features if she hadn't recognized his set, angry face.

"Buchanan!" Her breath hissed out. "You damned idiot! Don't you have more sense than to creep up on a trained operative like that?"

"If the trained operative had let me in on her plans for the night," he shot back, "maybe I wouldn't have had to creep up on her."

He crowded her against the Jeep, all hard, angry male. Dani had handled bigger and badder men, but she had to admit Buchanan could project a particularly nasty air when he wanted to.

"You want to tell me where you're going, green-eyes?"

"No."

His jaw locked. So did the powerful body pressing hers against the Jeep's fender.

"Wrong answer," he said softly, dangerously. "Try again."

She gave in. Not because he intimidated her in any way, shape or form, but because she'd already wasted too much valuable time.

"I'm going to conduct a little reconnaissance."

"And you didn't tell me because...?"

Dani saw no need to sugarcoat the matter. "Because I didn't want you getting in my way."

She could feel his anger singeing the ends of her hair.

"Do you really expect me to sit around twiddling my thumbs while you scour the canyon on your own?"

"That's exactly what I expect. Your part in this operation consists of flying me into Mexico, providing a convenient cover where necessary, and flying me and my sister out. I'll handle the rest."

"Wrong again."

"This is what I do," she insisted, trying for calm and rational. "I'm trained in specialized surveillance techniques. I brought along a piece of very high-tech equipment that lets me— "

"I'll drive." He bit out. Obviously he wasn't buying calm or rational. "You play with your high-tech toy."

"You're not listening, Buchanan. I don't need you for this part of the operation."

"Tough. You've got me. Grab your stuff and get in the Jeep."

Okay. Fine. She'd warned him. He didn't have a clue what he was getting into, but she suspected he wouldn't find it anywhere near as much fun as joy-sticking a Stearman around the clouds.

Despite the James Bond mystique, the truth was that ninety-nine-point-nine percent of undercover operations consisted of pure drudgery. Manning listening posts. Monitoring electronic emissions. Following up on tips from dozens of different sources in the hopes that one might actually produce a solid lead.

Occasionally, only occasionally, did operatives get to play Lone Ranger and charge in to the rescue. With any luck, Dani thought grimly, tonight might just be one of those occasions.

It wasn't.

She and Buchanan spent the hours between midnight and dawn cruising the narrow, winding roads that cut through the canyon. After the first few hairpin turns, Dani ignored the dark precipices plunging straight down from her side of the Jeep, and concentrated her attention on the hand-held, heat-seeking scanner she'd "borrowed" for this mission.

The powerful device was a derivative of the active-passive defense systems developed by the military to guard missile silos and nuclear aircraft. In those systems, strategically deployed sensors detected any approaching source of heat, however slight. Holographic images of the heat source would then paint on screens in the control center. If the heat source got close enough to actually trigger alarms, security forces would respond, but they'd know whether they were responding to a stray jackrabbit or a possible saboteur.

The scanner Dani aimed across the dark canyon used the same technology. Its sensitive beam pierced the darkness and picked up any heat source registering a specified number of degrees above the surrounding cliffs and rocks. The images that appeared on the screen were small, but astonishingly detailed.

She zeroed in on a mule deer curled up around her fawn under a pine tree. What looked like two coyotes on the prowl. An owl swooping down on a scurrying creature. Isolated farmhouses tucked in the narrow valleys, with assorted farm animals asleep in their pens or roosting in henhouses. An occasional village clinging to the side of a mountain.

Painstakingly, Dani swept each farmhouse for signs of something, anything, out of the ordinary. An armed guard at a door. Sentries posted at the farm's perimeter. She recorded the coordinates of each village in the scanner's computer for return, daylight visits. But it was the cliffs above the farms and villages that drew her most intense scrutiny.

Despite the failed attempt to rescue Patricia, government authorities had gathered some useful intelligence. By far the most significant piece had come from a Canadian executive who'd escaped some months before Patricia was snatched. The kidnappers had kept him hidden in caves, he'd told authorities. He'd also confirmed that they moved often to escape detection. Always at night.

Inch by inch, grid by grid, Dani swept the dark cliffs across the valley. She stayed hunched over the scanner, her eyes glued to the small screen, as Buchanan navigated the tortuous, winding roads. The tight switchbacks and steep curves restricted the Jeep to a slow crawl. By dawn, they'd covered only about ten miles of a series of canyons that stretched for more than a hundred. And they'd surveyed just the east-facing cliffs. They'd have to cross to the far side of the valley to survey those facing west.

When Dani finally tucked the scanner inside the carryall and slumped wearily against her seat, Buchanan hooked his arm over the steering wheel. Eyes narrowed, he studied the sun rising above the rugged escarpments stretching endlessly in both directions.

"Driving these dirt roads isn't going to hack it. Not if you want to find your sister this year."

"The only other options are horse or mule," Dani retorted. Her back ached and her eyes felt as dry and hard as peach pits, but she was darned if she'd give up after just one night. "I doubt they'd prove any faster."

"We've got a plane at our disposal. We should use it."

"In these narrow ravines? At night? With no terrain-following radar or sophisticated navigational aids? You can't be that good a pilot!"

The grin he flashed her said it all. "Sure I am."

"Get this straight, Buchanan. I'm not climbing into that sorry collection of canvas, baling wire and bubble gum you call a plane and swooping sideways through these gullies and ravines in total darkness."

"Chicken?"

"Yes!"

"Well, you've got twelve hours of daylight to work up your nerve. What do we do until then?"

Firmly resolved to use those twelve hours to convince Jack of the idiocy of night aerial surveillance in a forties-era Stearman biplane, Dani hooked a thumb over her shoulder. "We drive back to the hotel, snatch a few hours sleep, then hit the villages."

That was the plan, anyway.

Dawn was exploding into bright, brilliant morning when Jack parked the Jeep outside their casita. Scrunching her eyes against the dazzling sunlight, Dani trudged inside and dumped her leather tote on the table. Puffs of red dust billowed from the bag, adding to the layers already coating her face and clothes.

"Mind if I grab another quick shower before you claim the bedroom?"

"Be my guest."

Stripping off, she set the water to just below scalding and stepped inside the glass booth. Hot needles pierced her body from every angle. Sighing in pure delight, Dani dropped her head back and let the water drill through the tension that had gripped her day and night since Patricia was snatched. It took awhile, but she finally worked up enough energy to soap down and shampoo up.

Wrapping herself in one of the hotel's bath sheets, she plopped down at the built-in dressing table and grimaced at the creature in the mirror. Her cheeks glowed bright cherry from wind-chafing during yesterday's flight. Last night's activities had drawn road maps in the whites of her eyes. Her hair... Well, at least the dust was out of the red tangles.

Flicking on the wall-mounted hair dryer, Dani adjusted its flexible neck to blow down without scorching her scalp, and set to work dragging a comb through the sodden mass.

That was where Jack eventually found her. With her back slumped against the bathroom wall. Her hair a red sail rippling under the force of the blow dryer. Sound asleep.

He'd knocked. He'd give himself credit for that, at least. And he'd called her name. When he'd received no response and cracked open the bathroom door, he'd even spent a good ten seconds debating whether he should pull it shut again.

But he'd never made any claim to sainthood, and Danielle Flynn draped only in a sagging bath towel could tempt the archangels to sneak a peek. Besides, he couldn't just leave her to sleep sitting up.

Or so he told himself as he strolled into the bathroom and cut off the dryer. If she'd stirred then, or flickered so much as an eyelash, he would have just waited with a wicked grin for her eyes to open. When they didn't, he let himself enjoy the view for several more satisfying moments before he scooped her into his arms.

Her lids drifted up at that point. Glazed with sleep, her forest-green eyes filled with confusion. "Buchanan? What are you doing?"

"Taking you to bed."

Jack anticipated a dozen possible reactions to that provocative remark. A sudden tensing of her body. An icy demand that he get real. Or maybe one of the lethal karate chops she'd been ready to lay on him last night. To his surprise, she merely snuggled against his chest.

"Thanks," she mumbled into his shirt. "The couch is too short for you, but maybe if you scrunch up..."

The sleepy murmur gave way to a long sigh as he stretched her out on the downy comforter.

"Two hours," she muttered. "I'll just sleep two hours."

With that mumbled vow, she rolled over and buried her face in the pillow. The towel rolled with her— more or less. Jack's lungs squeezed as he took in a curved spine. A rounded bottom cheek. A long, smooth leg.

When he could breathe again, he dragged his gaze away, gave the wood-framed couch in the sitting room a considering look and tossed a mental coin.

Dani wasn't sure what pulled her from total oblivion. She knew her internal alarm clock hadn't pinged. No way could she have slept for a whole two hours. Her body still desperately craved sleep.

Nor had she sensed danger. No external alarms had gone off, either. Her instincts told her that whatever had wakened her posed no immediate threat. So she lay still, letting her mind rev up to full power. Slowly, she absorbed the hazy light. The damp towel tangled around her body. The heavy arm draped over her waist.

The very heavy arm draped over her waist.

It lay across her, casual, possessive, altogether too intimate. Dani could feel Buchanan behind her now, a solid wall of warm flesh. The damp towel separated them. Barely.

She remembered sitting under the blow dryer. Remembered going horizontal. And she was sure she remembered a gruff promise of sorts.

"Buchanan?"

When the wall behind her made no response, she poked it sharply with her elbow.

"Buchanan!"

He jerked awake, tightening his arm instinctively, and grunted an inarticulate, "Huh?"

Locked against him now by an iron band, Dani twisted her head. His chin, clean-shaven last night, already showed a dark shadow.

"What happened to our deal?"

"What deal?"

"You were supposed to bunk down in the living room."

"Oh, Yeah." His head dropped back to the pillow. His arm loosened a mere fraction. Drawing up his knees, he nested her bottom on his thighs. "This is better."

Much better. Dani could admit the truth when it slapped her in the face. Or in this case, the butt.

"Go back to sleep," he mumbled into her damp hair. "We've still got a good forty minutes."

Dani spent the next forty minutes reviewing her game plan for the coming day, counting the dust motes dancing in the sunbeams and fighting the most ridiculous sense of pique.

Here she was, in bed with the man. Naked, except for the damned towel. His ribs pressed into her bare back with every rise and fall of his chest. The bristly hair on his thighs tickled the undersides of hers. She could feel the warm wash of his breath on her cheek. Feel, too, the hard curve of his arm tucked just under her breasts.

The bath sheet had long since ceased to act as a protective shield. It was now more of an irritant, still damp, still twisted under her in hard ridges. Wiggling discreetly, Dani tried to smooth the lumps.

They wouldn't smooth. Buchanan's weight added to her own and kept the oversize cotton towel pinned in place. Frowning, she tried again.

"Careful, Flynn."

The warning was low and rough and went a long way to soothing Dani's feminine pique. The growing bulge on the other side of the towel eliminated the rest.

It also set off the internal alarms that had been silent up to now. Her heart began a wild rhythm, hammering against her chest with heavy, erratic thumps. Nerves danced under her skin everywhere Buchanan's hard body contacted her own.

She knew she had exactly two options at this point.

She could roll over. Go front to front with him. Fan into fire the sparks they'd been striking off each other since she'd walked into that smoky dive two nights ago.

Or she could roll away. Stay focused on the urgent business that had brought her to Copper Canyon.

With a sharp sting of regret, Dani gathered the towel against her breasts and swung her legs over the side of the bed. Behind her, Buchanan flopped onto his back. She speared a look over her shoulder and felt her stomach clench. For a man with only a rickety biplane and a rusted pickup to his name, he looked— and acted—like he owned the world.

Hands hooked behind his head, his body lean and tanned against the white sheets, he gave her a look that made goose bumps pop out all up and down her spine. "Next time, we'll finish what we've started."

It took some doing, but she managed a cool smile. "You think so?"

"I know so."

She couldn't help laughing. He looked so smug. And so damned sure of himself. She almost hated to burst his bubble.

Almost.

Buchanan's tantalizing promise hovered in her thoughts all day. As if to add to the simmering turmoil he'd created in her mind, he played the honeymooner to the hilt.

Each time they parked the Jeep and climbed out to explore one of the villages Dani had circled on her map, he draped an arm around her shoulders. Anchored side by side like the newlyweds they were supposed to be, they ambled through the dirt streets and explored the local markets.

While she discreetly pumped the locals for information, Jack maintained their cover by purchasing gifts for his new bride. Some were mere trinkets. A wooden flute carved with fantastic shapes. A nest of intricately woven baskets. A small but obviously fecund soapstone figurine.

"The ancients believed this goddess bring babies," the Tarahumara Indian who sold it explained. With a shy smile, she rubbed the figure's grossly distended stomach. "Many, many babies."

"Good," Jack said solemnly. "We want many, many babies."

"Speak for yourself," Dani muttered under her breath.

Nevertheless, she tucked the goddess into her pocket. But when they stopped at an open-air market just after lunch, and Jack picked up a beaten silver bracelet studded with bits of tourmaline, she drew the line. Or tried to.

"How much?" he asked the native craftsman.

The man named his price, and Dani murmured a quick protest. "It's too expensive."

"The stone is the same color as your eyes," Jack said with a shrug, reaching into his back pocket for his wallet.

"You should at least try to bargain!"

"Why? I want you to have it. Our friend here wants to sell it. A few pesos won't change that. Right?"

Thus appealed to, the silversmith nodded in agreement. "It is a good price, señora. The stones, they are very clear and bright."

"Yes, they are."

Dani felt herself weakening. The bracelet really was gorgeous. The primitive designs stamped into the silver swirls hinted at Barranca del Cobre's past. The rough-cut bits of quartz shimmered in the sunlight.

"Do these pieces come from around here?"

"From the caves above the village where my wife's uncle lives, senora. I used to get many such stones there before the..."

He caught himself. A guarded expression dropped over the broad planes of his face. It was, Dani thought with a sudden kick in her pulse, the same careful wariness that had wiped the friendliness from the hotel receptionist's eyes.

"Before the what?" she prompted.

The artisan glanced around, fingering the fringe of his colorful serape. "Before the caves became unsafe," he said finally, choosing his words with obvious care.

She wanted to probe further, but he pocketed the wad of bills Jack passed him, bundled up his wares and scurried away. Her every nerve taut, Dani stared after him.

"Did you see his face?"

"I saw it."

"He's scared. Just like the receptionist at the hotel."

"The thugs who kidnapped your sister must have a pretty extensive network of spies."

"They do," she replied, her stomach clenching as she remembered the tip the bastards had received just before the commando raid last week. "I'm going to nose around, see if I can pick up the name and location of this wife's uncle's village."

Jack's gaze roamed the square and snagged on a tin-roofed cantina. "Okay. While you do that, I'll check out the home brew."

Dani's mouth thinned as she watched him stroll across the dirt square. So much for not sitting idly by, twiddling his thumbs! Disappointed and more than a bit disgruntled, she worked the square.

When Buchanan sauntered up to her some time later, she'd verified the name of the artisan, but was still trying to pin down the exact location of his wife's uncle's village.

"It's about twenty miles from here." Jack informed her. "I've got rough directions. Best guess is that it will take four hours to drive there on these winding roads." Slipping a hand under her elbow, he steered her toward the green-and-white vehicle. "Let's get back to the hotel and rev up the Stearman."

"Wait a minute." She dragged her heels and brought him to a halt. "Before I climb into a Jeep or a plane with you, I want to know how many beers you downed before you solicited this information."

"Two bottles."

She had no idea how much of a punch the local brew packed, but Buchanan didn't show any signs of inebriation. On the contrary, the glint in his eyes signaled he was ready for anything.

As if to prove the point, he curled a knuckle under her chin and dropped a swift, hard kiss on her mouth.

"You drive. I'll fly."

Chapter 4

They located the remote village an hour later. Just in time, too. The sun hung low on the horizon, casting long shadows that almost swallowed the handful of huts clustered at the base of the cliffs. Another twenty minutes or so and they would have been searching the narrow valley in darkness.

Not a prospect that filled Dani with wild enthusiasm. She wasn't particularly anxious to put Buchanan's claim of being able to fly blind to the test. Twisting in her harness, she studied the sheer rock walls they'd just swooped by, and pressed the button for her intercom.

"I want to scan the cliffs above the village. Can you take us down a little closer on the next pass?"

Silly question. Of course he could. Gulping, Dani clutched the sides as he aimed the Stearman straight up, spun her on her tail and plunged back down. The valley that had seemed semi-navigable at best just seconds ago suddenly closed in on all sides.

While Buchanan fought a series of vicious updrafts and ninety-degree twists, Dani did her best to level the scanner at rock precipices above the village. The slicing wind and dizzying, tip-tilted angles defeated her. After the second pass, she was forced to admit defeat.

"I can't hold the scanner steady. We'll have to land and conduct the surveillance on foot. Where's the nearest airstrip?"

"According to the charts, there's a dirt strip about five miles farther up the valley. But I think I can get us down a little closer than that."

He banked, taking the canary-yellow trainer into a steep turn. A moment later, he aimed for a small, fiat plateau almost lost amid the surrounding peaks. Dani squinted through her goggles at the scruffy oaks and twisted piñons dotting the plateau. True, there was a clear patch among the scrub—a very small clear patch!—but it ended abruptly in a sheer drop at the far edge of the escarpment.

"Buchanan! Tell me you're not going to try to land on that anthill!"

"Not to worry. This baby can stop on a dime and give back nine cents in change. You'd better check your harness, though, just in case."

She didn't like the sound of that. At all.

"Jack! Wait! I don't think this is a good idea!"

Her nervous shout got lost in the wind. Either that, or Buchanan simply ignored it. Working the controls with both hands and feet, he leveled off and throttled back. When they were still a good fifty yards from the flat mountaintop, he killed the engine completely.

A sudden, soaring silence surrounded them, the same stillness that must envelop hawks and eagles when they glided on the wind. Dani might have appreciated the profound quiet more if she wasn't convinced that the Stearman would go into a nosedive several yards shy of the designated landing site. She dropped the scanner, scrunched it tight between her boots and clutched the sides of the cockpit with white-knuckled fists.

They skimmed in mere inches above a piñon clinging to the edge of the cliff. The wheels hit once, bounced up and came down with a thump. Dani pushed out a shaky sigh of relief, then sucked it back in again as the plane kept right on rolling. If her paralyzed brain cells had been capable of emitting a signal at that point, she would have squeezed her eyes shut. As it was, all she could do was stare in fascinated horror at the empty void looming dead ahead.

Finally—finally!—they fishtailed to a stop. Buchanan fiddled with the instruments, climbed out of the front cockpit and nonchalantly strolled forward to peer over the edge of the plateau. He ambled back a few moments later, wearing a thoroughly satisfied expression.

"We're right on target. The village looks like it's only a mile or so away."

Thoroughly rattled and trying hard not to show it, Dani climbed out of the cockpit on rubbery legs. "That means the caves are, too."

"So what's the plan?"

"Give me a minute, okay? I'm still waiting for my stomach to catch up with the rest of me."

He looked genuinely wounded. "You weren't worried, were you? I told you the Stearman could stop on a dime."

"I'll feel a lot better if you'd tell me she can take off again on the same ten cents. With—assuming we get lucky!—a third passenger."

"That shouldn't be a problem."

"Shouldn't?"

"Well, I might need to siphon off some fuel. How much does your sister weigh? "

"About the same as I do, give or take a few pounds. Or she did, the last time I saw her."

The last of Dani's shakiness disappeared, edged out by the hollow, helpless feeling that had haunted her for the past three weeks. She'd listened to the taped interview with the Canadian executive who'd escaped his kidnappers, knew what indignities and deprivations he'd suffered.

But Patricia was tough, Dani reminded herself grimly. She couldn't have made it in the mostly male, ultramacho world of hydroelectric engineering without developing survival skills. Besides which, Daniel Flynn had made sure both his girls could protect themselves.

"Okay," Dani said, pulling in a steadying breath, "here's the plan. You stay and guard the plane. I'll work my way down the cliffs, using—"

"Dammit, I thought I made myself clear last night! We're in this together, Flynn."

The anger that flared hot and swift gave Jack his first hint that he might be in over his head. The idea of Dani climbing down those cliffs to take on a band of kidnappers put a kink in his gut. The fact that she'd intended to go it alone completely infuriated him. Conveniently forgetting that he always insisted on flying solo himself, he barked out an order.

"Help me push the plane under those trees."

"Look, Buchanan—"

"Now, Captain!"

Her arm whipped up in a mock salute. "Yes, sir!"

Simmering with irritation, he positioned her behind the left wing and lined up on the right. It took both of them to angle the biplane around and back it tail-first under the shelter of a piñon. While Dani gathered loose branches to cover the nose, Jack hauled over two good-size boulders and jammed them against the wheels.

"That should keep her," he pronounced.

Reaching into his canvas flight bag, he pulled out a Glock. Dani's brows snapped together as he popped the magazine, checked the load and slapped it back in again.

"When did crop dusters start carrying police specials with crosshatched grips and laser sights?"

Shrugging, Buchanan holstered the Glock, unbuckled his belt and slid the weapon around to the small of his back. "I can't speak for the rest of the profession, but I never leave home without one. Ready?"

"Ready."

Not fifteen minutes later, Dani was forced to call a halt.

This narrow slice of Barranca del Cobre didn't run to soft, purple dusks. Once the sun dropped behind the mountains, dark shadows speared across the cliffs. Seemingly in the next minute, inky darkness coated the peaks, the valley and everything in between.

Anticipating a night operation, Dani had tucked a set of night-vision goggles into her gear bag. Even with their powerful capabilities, however, a night descent was just too darned dangerous. Besides, she'd brought only one set. No way was she letting Buchanan navigate in the dark. Biting down on her frustration, she insisted they climb back to the plateau.

"We'll grab a few hours sleep and try again come dawn."

Going back up was easier than going down. Dumping her bag beside the fuselage, Dani kicked away some of the concealing scrub while Buchanan dragged out the packed chutes, the seat cushions and his brown leather bomber jacket.

"It won't be the first time I've bedded down under this baby's wings," he acknowledged, arranging the chutes and cushions into a rough mattress. He seemed to take it as a matter of course that they'd sleep side by side.

Remembering his husky promise to finish what they'd started, Dani opened her mouth to inform him this wasn't the time or the place for a roll in the seat cushions. The chill breeze dancing along her arms had her shutting it again. The temperature would drop considerably before dawn. It only made sense to share body heat.

But that's all they'd share. There was too much at stake and she was too darned close to her objective to lose her edge now. With that thought firmly in mind, she dropped down on one knee and fumbled in her bag. She'd left most of her spare clothes at the hotel, but the silver bracelet was in the bag, tucked away for safekeeping. Nudging it aside, she rummaged around for the toils of her trade.

"You sack out," he instructed. "I'll take first watch."

"We can both sack out. I, uh, requisitioned a supply of electronic sensors for this mission."

With a flourish, she extracted a package of wafer thin, dime-size disks wrapped in. electrostatic plastic, and what looked like an ordinary sports watch.

"These babies are simple, silent and highly effective. If anyone or anything steps on them, the wrist receiver emits an electrical pulse. This little contraption has jolted me out of sleep more than once," she admitted wryly.

He hunkered down beside her while she unwrapped the disks. "How do you activate them?"

She moved his fingers until he found the slight ridge on the underside of one. "You just slide this little tab to the right, then sow the sensors at ten or fifteen foot intervals."

"Got it. I'll plant a half-dozen on the goat path we just climbed up. You sow some around the far edge of the plateau, just in case."

Torn between amusement and irritation, Dani glanced up at his shadowed face. Evidently you could take the pilot out of the Air Force, but not out of the habit of command.

Ten minutes later they were back at the plane. Buchanan made himself comfortable on the seat cushions, taking up more than his fair share of space. Hopefully, he eyed her leather carryall.

"Any chance your magic bag of tricks contains anything edible?"

"As a matter of fact, it does. I raided the bar in our room before we left this morning. We have chocolate bars. We have Spanish peanuts. We have individual rounds of Gouda and Cheddar. Crackers. What I'm guessing are smoked beef strips. Bottled water, and..." she squinted at the label on a tall, slender jar "... cocktail onions. "

"Doesn't sound like we'll starve."

"In one night? Hardly." She tossed him the can of peanuts. "Besides, you went through survival training. Didn't they teach you to make a meal on beetles?"

"Beetles, mosquito larvae and the occasional snake or two." Popping the top on the can, he scooped out a fistful of peanuts. "What about you? Did you have to crunch down bugs in spy school?"

"A few," she admitted, firmly repressing all thoughts of those weeks of Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape training. SERE did not rank among her favorite memories.

While they made a serious dent in the cheese and crackers, the night deepened around them. Shivering, Dani pulled on her nylon windbreaker. The thin layer of protection lessened the bite but generated only minimal warmth. She left Buchanan shrugging into his beat-up leather jacket, and ducked behind a tree for a few minutes. When she returned, he'd taken full possession of the seat cushions.

"Think you can make room for two there?"

She caught a gleam of white teeth. "If we squeeze up tight."

Dani hesitated. For a brief instant, she felt just like Little Red Riding Hood standing before the big bad wolf.

Which was totally absurd. The wolf hadn't even tried to sink his fangs into her this morning when she'd cuddled up against him on a nice, soft mattress. He wasn't likely to do so tonight, when they were both fully clothed and bedded down on a mountain, for pity's sake.

Which just went to show how little she knew about wolves. Or Buchanan. She'd no sooner wiggled into a comfortable position when he pounced. So to speak. It was actually more of a roll than a pounce, but it tilted the cushions and wedged her against him.

"You're not contemplating anything stupid, are you?" he growled.

Her heart skipped a beat. With his mouth only inches from hers, she was contemplating a number of things, almost all of which were monumentally stupid. From the way he'd phrased the question, however, she guessed he wasn't entertaining the same carnal thoughts she was.

"Such as?" she asked, just to clarify matters.

"Such as slipping off the way you tried to do last night and tackling those cliffs on your own. I'm a light sleeper, remember?"

"I remember," she said coolly. "If I do decide to slip off, I'll make sure you're out for the count."

"Wrong answer, Flynn." The irritation that had roughened his voice earlier surged back. "When are you going to accept that we're a team?"

"Oh, I don't know. About the same time you do, I suppose."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"It means, Mr. I-always-fly-solo, that we both possess certain unique skills and don't necessarily feel the need to consult with each other about how to employ them.. .even when one of us is sitting in the rear cockpit, ready to toss up her cookies."

"Still hacked off about that landing? I got us down, didn't I?"

"Yes, you did. I just wish you'd let me know what you plan to do before you do it next time."

He thought about that for a few moments, his eyes unreadable in the darkness that surrounded them.

"All right I'll give it a shot. Here's the plan rattling around in my head right now. First, I'm going to kiss you. On the lips to start with. Then I'm thinking seriously about unzipping your jacket, tugging off your T-shirt and jeans and kissing the rest of you."

Dani's mouth opened. Snapped shut. A dozen flip retorts flashed into her mind, but she didn't utter any of them for the simple reason that Buchanan had already bent his head and was initiating Phase I of his plan.

She braced herself for another fighter pilot-type attack, was all prepared to laugh it off and put an end to matters before they went any further. Instead of swooping down with guns blazing, however, the sneaky devil glided in and merely brushed her lips with his. Slowly. Gently.

So slowly, she had time to absorb the taste of salty peanuts along with the rich scent of leather and healthy male. So gently, she un-braced and allowed herself to relax.

That, of course, was exactly the incentive Buchanan needed to implement Phase II. His head angled. His mouth fastened hard and sure on hers. One hand tunneled into her hair, tangling in the windblown strands, and held her steady while his tongue began a dark, sensual exploration.

Dani thought about calling a halt at that point. She urgently needed to stay centered, to concentrate all her focus on the coming dawn.

Yet dawn suddenly seemed so far away.

And Buchanan was right here, right now.

She fought a fierce, silent battle with herself and lost. Her palms flattened on the worn leather, slid up to hook around his neck. Her tongue danced with his, slowly at first, then with increasing greed. She closed her eyes, shutting out the silhouette of canvas wings and the swaying piñon branches just beyond, allowing Buchanan to dominate her mind as well as her senses.

All too soon, she was ready to move from her mind and her senses directly to her body. Or more correctly, to move on to his. The hands she'd hooked behind his neck unlocked and made a slow trip south, stopping momentarily at each button along the way. His belt buckle gave after a tug or two. His jeans unsnapped with a small pop.

He lifted his head, his breath coming hard and fast. "This team business works both ways, green-eyes. You want to tell me what's next on your agenda? Just so we can coordinate our activities, you understand."

Dani understood. He was giving her the choice. As far as she was concerned, there was only one. It was right there, under her palm, hard and straining against his zipper.

"The first item on my agenda," she said on a low, husky note, "is this."

She pressed the heel of her hand against the ridge and felt a leap of feminine delight at his instant response.

"Then," she murmured, "I thought I might try this."

Her fingers found the zipper tab and worked it down. When she dipped inside the open waistband, he gave a little grunt and went stiff all over.

After that, they abandoned the pretense of following any sort of plan. There was a wild rush to shed their clothes, an urgent tangle of arms and hips and legs. Jack retained just enough sanity to grab his flight bag, fumble among the charts and assorted jumble for a condom, and sheathe himself before Dani's greedy mouth and hands sent him straight into a tailspin.

With his muscles coiled, his entire body taut with need, he kneed her legs apart and positioned himself at the entrance to her slick, wet core. As eager as he, she hooked her calves around his and canted her hips to meet his thrust.

She was every thrill Jack had ever experienced in the air and on the ground, all rolled into one incredible woman. When he tried to throttle back, she pushed him harder and faster. When he drove into her with the force and rhythm of a piston, she gasped, stiffened and locked him deep within her.

The earth was falling away beneath him when her entire body arched. A groan ripped free from far back in her throat.

"Jack! I can't...hold...back!"

"Then don't!"

With a rush of primitive satisfaction, he took her over the edge. Satisfaction gave way to a momentary sense of masculine power while Dani spasmed around him. Then she shuddered, gripped him tight with arms and legs and drove him right off the planet.

She woke him hours later the same way she had the morning before—with a low hiss and a sharp jab to the ribs.

"Jack!"

The hiss barely penetrated his consciousness, but the sharp elbow got his attention. He jerked, tightening his arm around her instinctively, and blinked awake. Before he could grunt out a demand to know what that was all about, she whispered an urgent warning.

"Quiet! The sensors have picked up some kind of movement."

He went still, listening intently. The wind sighed through the tree branches. An owl hooted in the distance. Nothing else disturbed the quiet.

"What was it?" he murmured.

"I'm not sure."

He threw a quick look over his shoulder. The distant glow of dawn gilded the peaks to the east, but their private patch of mountaintop remained bathed in darkness.

Suddenly, he heard a sound. The faint scrabble of a paw or a hoof—or a foot!—on rock. Caught by the wind and carried up to the plateau.

"Sounds like something's climbing up toward us," he whispered into her ear. "Could be a deer or a mountain cat."

"Could be," she agreed grimly. "Or it could be that someone saw the plane come down and has decided to check it out."

That particular thought had occurred to Jack, too. It was hovering foremost in his mind when another rattle of stones broke the stillness. No doubt about it. Someone or something was climbing up the cliffs below.

Both he and Dani sprang into swift, silent action. With a lithe twist, she shed his protective arm and the leather bomber jacket he'd tucked around her while she slept. Hastily, she scrambled into her clothes and grabbed her Beretta with one hand, the scanner with the other.

Jack yanked on his jeans, shoved his feet into his boots and snatched up the Glock. A heartbeat later, they were crouched low and racing for the edge of the escarpment.

Chapter 5

Buchanan cut through the darkness with the silent, lethal grace of a panther. Dani had worked with a number of operatives during her years as an undercover agent, but had to admit the ex-fighter pilot seemed to possess the instincts of a born hunter.

Twenty or so yards from the edge of the plateau, they took up positions designed to provide maximum concealment and an unobstructed line of fire. Dani crouched behind a bush that gave off the pungent stink of turpentine. Jack dropped into a fissure in the rock.

The sun was gold-plating the peaks to the east, but the predawn light had yet to sweep across the plateau. Squinting through the darkness, Dani communicated with Jack by means of hand signals. Together, they worked out a rough plan. She would aim the scanner, Jack the Glock. She'd raise one finger to indicate she'd picked up the heat source. Two to signify it appeared to be of the two-legged variety. Three...

Three meant it was armed and potentially dangerous. In which case Dani would remain concealed, allow the source to climb onto the plateau and let Jack get the drop on him—or them!—from behind.

Pure, undiluted adrenaline pumped through her veins. The receiver strapped to her wrist was pulsing like mad now. Their uninvited guest had tripped at least a half-dozen sensors.

Dani gripped the small scanning device with sweaty palms, willing herself to calm, forcing air into her lungs in measured breaths. Still, every nerve in her body jolted when she heard another scuffle of foot on stone, followed by a grunt.

No, not a grunt. More like a gasp. A harsh, ragged intake of breath laced with panic. Or desperation.

Her jaw tight, Dani aimed the scanner directly toward the sound. A green blip appeared on the screen. She stabbed one finger into the air to let Buchanan know she'd picked up the heat source. A moment later, the blip took on shape and definition, and a second finger shot up.

With startling clarity, the scanner tracked the figure that heaved itself onto the plateau and lay flat, panting. It was definitely of the two-legged variety, wearing what looked like ragged cotton pants and a fatigue-type shirt. Dani's throat closed as she made out the green-and-black camouflage spots on the shirt...and the automatic rifle slung over the man's back.

Grimly, she jabbed a third finger into the air.

She was just about to drop the scanner and aim the Beretta when the man lifted his head. Dani gaped at the screen in disbelief, blinked twice to make sure what she was seeing wasn't a mirage.

It wasn't!

With a wild whoop, she abandoned both the scanner and her concealment and charged full tilt at the prone figure.

"Trish!"

Fifteen yards away, Jack registered the name but didn't take his finger off the dock's trigger until their uninvited guest lurched to her feet.

"Dani!"

The newcomer threw herself forward, laughing and crying at the same time. The two women collided and wrapped their arms around each other in a ferocious bear hug. Total chaos ensued, with more exclamations, more hugs, and both sisters firing questions like bullets.

"How did you find me?"

"It took some doing. How'd you get away?"

"I had one of the guards take me outside the cave to go potty, and I decked him. Are you part of another government task force? They gagged me, dragged me off kicking and fighting, just moments before one hit last week."

"No, no task force. How many kidnappers are there?"

"Ten that I saw." Her jaw tightened. "They wore ski masks whenever they came into the caves, but I'm pretty sure I can identify at least three from various tattoos, broken teeth and the names the others let slip. Those bastards are going down."

Standing in the shadows, Jack could only admire the woman's astounding resilience. She'd just decked an armed guard and scaled a sheer cliff in the dark, yet she was ready to go back and take them all on. No wonder Dani and her stepsister were so close. Their old man had molded them into hard, tensile steel. Remembering the colonel's efforts to do the same with him, Jack smiled and shoved his Glock into its holster.

The movement caused Patricia's head to whip around. She stabbed a swift, narrow glance into the shadows.

"Who are you?"

"Jack Buchanan."

"Formerly U.S. Air Force," Dani supplied. "Now a private pilot."

Enough light was filtering over the peaks for both the hostage and her would-be rescuer to get a good look at each other. While Jack noted a tumble of mink-dark hair and high, sculpted cheekbones, Patricia took in his bare chest, unsnapped jeans and unlaced boots.

Her gaze zinged back to Dani and performed a quick inventory of tangled red hair, a T-shirt pulled on wrong side out and sockless feet shoved into hiking boots.

"Well, well," she murmured, fixing Jack with a longer, considering glance. "This is interesting. I don't recall Dani mentioning you before. Just how long have you two known each other?"

"Long enough." A wicked grin pulled at his mouth. "We're on our honeymoon."

"What?"

"It's a long story," Dani interjected hastily. "One we don't have time to go into right now."

Patricia sobered instantly. "You're right. The guard I conked has no doubt come to by now and sounded the alarm." She did a quick scan of the plateau. "How did you get up here, drive or climb?"

"Neither. We flew. Jack's plane is tucked under those trees over there."

Her sister's jaw dropped. "You landed a plane here? On this mountaintop?"

"Hey, it wasn't my idea."

Patricia closed her mouth, opened it again, looked around once more. Knocked completely out of her cool, she shook her head.

"We...we heard a plane buzz the cliffs earlier, but we thought... That is, the kidnappers thought it was another government search plane. They figured it would touch down at the airstrip north of here, and sent two men to check it out. That's why I climbed up instead of down. I was afraid I'd meet those two on the way back. But I never dreamed...never imagined..."

"Why don't we talk about it later?" Jack suggested, shepherding them toward the Stearman. "I need to dump some fuel and you need to—"

"Oh, hell!"

Dani's exclamation stopped him dead. His stomach did a swift roll as she glanced down at her wrist.

"Is that gadget telling you what I think it is?"

She nodded, her face grim. "We've got more company."

"How long?"

"I'm guessing rive minutes."

Swiftly, he calculated the odds. Eight, maybe ten heavily armed men against one Beretta, one Glock, the rifle slung across Patricia's shoulders.

Well, he'd been in tighter spots. One in particular would remain burned in his memory for a long, long time. Daniel Flynn had extricated Jack and six other crew dogs from that disaster. He would extricate the old man's daughters from this one.

"Good thing the Canary doesn't have to warm up to sing," he said, breaking into a run.

Patricia shot Dani a perplexed look. "Canary?"

Dani didn't have the heart to go into details. Three or four more steps, and Trish would be able to discern for herself the size and shape of the bright yellow biplane. And its age.

Sure enough, her first glimpse of the aircraft brought Patricia stumbling to a halt. Utter disbelief blanked her features.

"That's how you got up here?"

"That's it," Jack confirmed cheerfully, kicking aside the brush piled in front of the nose. Two quick heaves moved the rocks away from the wheels. Tramping over the various items of clothing still scattered under the wing, he thrust one chute at her and the other at Dani.

"Okay, ladies. Squeeze into the rear cockpit and strap yourselves down."

Dani guessed she might—might!—erase the memory of their takeoff, say, sometime in the next century.

Thanks to its many overhauls, the Stearman's 220-horsepower engine coughed a couple of times, burped once and revved up to full power. The ensuing roar shattered the dawn. Frantic birds thrashed out of the bushes. A startled deer bounded across the far edge of the escarpment. And Dani was sure she heard shouts. Close by.

Too close.

Wedged tight in the rear seat, she squirmed around for a better angle. As Jack taxied out from under the trees, she kept the Beretta aimed at the spot where Patricia had flung herself over the edge. Beside her, her sister leveled the semiautomatic rifle at the same spot.

Jack took the Stearman right to the edge of the escarpment, so close that the tail rudder fanned sky as the plane swung around. Patricia sucked in air.

The Stearman lurched into a roll. Gathered speed. Bumped across the rocky surface.

Dani sensed immediately the plane was too heavy. She was sure they'd blow a tire. Or bust a strut. And they were moving too slowly! Craning, she tried to see around Jack's bulk to gauge the distance still remaining.

A burst of gunfire from Patricia's semiautomatic rifle almost shattered her eardrums. She whipped her head back around, saw two men dive for cover and another duck back down below the edge of the plateau. Calmly, she took aim with the Beretta.

The bastards never got off a single shot. The two sisters maintained a steady hail of fire, keeping them pinned while the Stearman bumped and lurched toward absolute nothingness. Suddenly, the ground dropped away beneath the plane's wheels. Sheer momentum kept the biplane moving forward. Five yards. Ten.

Then it sank like the proverbial stone.

Patricia gave a small shriek, dropped her rifle with a clatter and wrapped her sister in a stranglehold. Dani couldn't breathe, couldn't hear for the roaring in her ears, couldn't see a thing except the tendons cording Jack's bare shoulders and neck as he worked the controls.

It probably took only a few moments until he brought the nose up and they were flying straight and level, but those were the longest damned moments of Dani's life. Patricia's, too, judging by the stream of rather colorful invective she let loose. Buchanan didn't help matters by twisting around, giving them a thumbs-up and grinning.

Incredulous, Patricia shouted into Dani's ear, "The idiot looks like he actually enjoyed that."

"He probably did."

"Where did you find this guy?"

"In a bar in Oklahoma."

"And you married him?"

"No. That's just the cover we're using here in Mexico."

Shoving back her wildly whipping hair, Patricia eyed Jack's naked back. Her gaze slid from his broad shoulders to her sister's inside-out T-shirt.

"So does he perform as well in the sack as he does in the air?"

"Better, actually."

Scrabbling around with her boot, Dani found the radio headset and slipped it over one ear so she could communicate with Jack via the intercom without shouting herself hoarse. With the other ear, she listened while Patricia recounted the details of her harrowing weeks in Mexico.

The morning ground haze gradually dissipated, but as they headed north a bank of gray clouds drifted up to obscure the sun. The Sierra Madres wound and twisted below them, too close at times for Patricia's comfort. Her ragged nails gouged canvas on more than one occasion until the mountains began to flatten into rolling foothills.

Dani had just convinced herself they were home free when she caught a high, faint whine. Frowning, she coiled around to squint at the sky behind.

That small black speck was probably a hawk.

Lord, please let it be a hawk!

She tracked it for another few minutes. That's all it took to determine the black blob was, in fact, a small plane. And that it appeared to have vectored in on them. Sighing, she repositioned the headset and keyed the intercom.

"How far to the U.S. border?"

"Another twenty minutes or so. Why?"

"We've got company. Six o'clock and closing fast."

Jack twisted around and squinted at the aircraft.

"Could they be part of the gang who kidnapped you?" Dani asked her sister urgently.

"They could. I heard them talking about a plane they kept at that airport north of the caves." Her lip curled. "They bragged about buying another one with my ransom money. Supposedly, they equipped it with more armament than a Sherman tank."

Dani relayed the information to Jack, who absorbed it with a tight jaw. He eyed the horizon ahead and made an instant decision.

"Hang on. We'll cut into those clouds and alter our course to see if they follow."

They did.

The Stearman emerged from the billowing white mist and dropped so low it almost skimmed the foothills.

A moment later, the small turboprop swooped out of the clouds and dived after them. Small bursts of red shot from its wing. Tracers cut through the sky not fifty yards behind the biplane.

"Damn! They're firing on us."

Jack jerked the stick, sent the bright yellow Canary into a steep climb, and flew back into the cloud bank. While he coaxed the Stearman to every ounce of speed she had in her, Dani reached for the radio switches.

It was time to call in the cavalry. Or in this instance, the United States Air Force.

A quick flick of the switches dialed up a special frequency that broadcast to all Air Force bases within radio range. The closest, she knew, was Laughlin, just a few miles across the Rio Grande.

"Laughlin tower, this is Charlie-echo-mike-three-two-two. Do you read me?"

Her heart hammering, she waited for confirmation. Static crackled through the headset for what seemed like forever. Finally, the calm voice of the controller cut through the screechy noise.

"This is Laughlin tower, three-two-two. We read you loud and clear. How did you obtain this frequency? "

Dani ignored the sharp query and cut right to her message. "This is Captain Danielle Flynn, United States Air Force, transmitting a code forty-five. Do you copy, Laughlin? Code forty-five."

There was a short, startled silence. She could imagine the reaction in the tower. Only agents assigned to the Office of Special Operations could transmit a code forty-five, and then only in the most dire emergencies.

"We copy. Code forty-five. Stand by while we verify."

Swiping the condensation from her eyes with her forearm, she threw a look over her shoulder and saw only a reassuring wall of gray mist.

"What's the nature of your emergency, three-two-two?"

"We have a bandit on our tail, firing at us."

"State your present location, altitude and speed."

Jack supplied the information, which Dani relayed to the tower. They were still over Mexican airspace, but closing on the border fast. Laughlin tower confirmed their position.

"Be advised we have two F-16s from Cannon transiting our airspace. We've received authority to divert them to perform an intercept. They'll meet you at the border."

"If we make it that far," she muttered, switching to intercom mode.

The murmured comment broke through Jack's fierce concentration. He'd put himself in the place he'd learned to go during aerial operations, a small, enclosed capsule where his mind received input from dozens of different sources, processed the data with the speed of light and directed instant action. Wrenching himself out of the capsule, he took a deep breath and keyed the mike.

"We'll make it, green-eyes. This baby's got some tricks left in her that will surprise you. So do I, for that matter. I intend to demonstrate a few when we get down."

His reward for that bit of outrageous bravado was a choking laugh. "Thanks for the warning, flyboy."

"Just trying to stick to my end of our bargain and keep you apprised of my plans," he drawled. "You two strapped in good and tight back there?"

"Yes. Why?"

"Looks like the cloud bank is thinning up ahead. It's show time, ladies."

Dani aged at least two lifetimes in the ten minutes or so before the F-16s swooped down out of the clouds.

In those heart-stopping, eye-popping moments, Jack performed every aerobatic maneuver in the book and, she was convinced, invented a few new ones. He put the Stearman on its tail, on its nose, on all four wing-tips. He rolled it, banked it, looped it, stalled it and somehow managed to keep it out of their pursuer's gun sights.

When the F-16s appeared, the bandit tucked tail and ran like hell. Patricia whooped and wrapped her sister in another stranglehold. Jack did pretty much the same when they finally glided onto the runway at Laughlin.

Dani exited the cockpit in a graceless stagger and fell off the wing into Buchanan's arms. Oil spray coated her face. No self-respecting rat would have nested in her tangled, wind-whipped hair. Yet the gleam in Jack's eyes made her feel like she'd just come up with the winning Power Ball ticket.

"You make one helluva combination copilot, flight engineer and tail gunner, Flynn. Your old man would have been proud of you."

"He would have been proud of you, too," she said softly. "Consider any and all debts paid in full."

Dragging his head down, she closed the account with a long, lip-locking kiss. When Jack raised his head again, his eyes had deepened to molten gold.

"Funny," he growled. "I have a feeling the tab's just starting to run up."

Before she could probe that interesting comment, he set her on her feet and reached up to help Patricia. Her sister's knees wobbled, but she managed a shaky grin.

"Thanks. There were a few moments back there when I wasn't sure if you knew what you were doing."

"Well..."

"Stop! Don't shatter the illusion! Let's just agree you're one fine pilot."

The F-16 pilots echoed Patricia's sentiments when they touched down some time later. They climbed out of their jets and strode across the concrete, their parachutes flapping at the backs of their knees.

"That was the damnedest aerial maneuvering I've ever seen," a tall, tanned major exclaimed. "Where did you learn to fly like that?"

"Same place you did."

"You're Air Force?"

"Former Air Force. I strapped on an F-117 for a few years before I traded it in for an open cockpit."

"Hell, man. You ought to think about going back into fighters. We're training a whole new generation of pilots. You could sure teach them a thing or two."

Dani agreed. So much so that she left Jack in a borrowed shirt, surrounded by representatives from the CIA, the Border Patrol and the State Department, and slipped away to make a private, very personal phone call.

It was late afternoon before the government agencies had finished with them. Early evening when Patricia finished wolfing down her first full meal in weeks, pleaded an urgent need for a bubble bath, and retreated to a suite in the luxurious hotel where she insisted her company put them all up. With what the company had saved in ransom, she declared, they could also supply her and her rescuers with a new wardrobe.

Ever efficient, she even called a local department store and arranged for a selection of designer sportswear to be delivered first thing in the morning. That done, she retreated to a mound of scented bubbles.

Dani opted for a steamy, bone-melting shower instead of a soak. Wrapped in the hotel's thick terry robe, she knocked on the door to the connecting suite.

"It's open."

She pushed through and smiled at the sight that greeted her. Jack lay sprawled on the king-size bed, his hands laced behind his head. Showered and shaved, he wore only a strategically placed towel.

"I've been waiting for you."

Her glance grazed the interesting bulge under the towel. "So I see."

He waggled his brows. "Care to try your hand on the stick?"

Groaning, she shucked her robe. "That has to be the sorriest pun I've ever heard."

"Give me time," he said with smug confidence, rolling her naked body under his. "I can do worse."

He could.

And he did.

Laughing helplessly at his completely outrageous, incredibly erotic aeronautical metaphors, Dani rolled, banked and performed a series of aerobatic feats that left her limp, sweaty and exhausted.

Boneless and replete, she sprawled across his chest while his fingers lazily combed the dark red hair spilling over her shoulders.

"Jack."

"Mmm?"

"I made a call this afternoon. To my boss."

"I bet he wasn't real happy with you for going into Mexico without authorization."

That qualified as the understatement of the millennium. Dani had hung up the phone feeling remarkably akin to pancaked roadkill.

"He did have a rather strong opinion on the matter," she admitted. "Once he calmed down, though, he agreed to pull a few strings."

"Is that right?"

His voice held only lazy curiosity. Suspecting that was about to change, Dani raised her head.

"He's got friends in high places, Jack. He's going to get them working a special review board to see if you qualify to return to active duty."

The idle movement of his fingers stilled. The sleepy satisfaction in his eyes evaporated. Dani had anticipated surprise, maybe even anger that she'd taken the initiative without consulting him. What she didn't expect was the sardonic twist to his lips.

"You're definitely your father's daughter."

Stung, she jerked her head back. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"It means the colonel only understood one way of life, too. For all his heart and courage under fire, he could be as narrow as you are in that regard."

"Come on, Buchanan!" Pushing upright, she gathered the tangled sheet around her. "I know you said you like being your own boss and jockeying around whenever and wherever you please, but..."

"What's the matter, Flynn? A crop duster's good enough to sleep with, but not take out in public, is that it?"

"No, of course not! But you could do more!"

"And maybe I'm doing exactly what I want to do."

His stubborn refusal to admit he was wasting his talents infuriated her.

"Fine! You're doing just what you want to do. So where does that leave us?"

Disengaging, she rolled to the side of the bed and yanked on the terry-cloth robe. Her fists clenched around the ends of the tie belt. She waited, willing him to say something. Anything! When he didn't, hurt piled on top of her anger.

"Sorry we got our signals crossed, Buchanan. I thought we might actually have something going here."

Spinning on her heel, she marched to the open connecting door, sailed through and slammed it shut with enough force to rattle her bedroom windows.

♥ Scanned by Coral ♥

Chapter 6

Buchanan departed the hotel at the crack of dawn the next morning.

Patricia brought Dani the news. Eager to catch up on world events, she'd gone down to the newsstand in the lobby to grab a copy of every news magazine and paper on the racks.

"When I walked out of the newsstand, Jack was climbing into a cab," she informed her sister.

Dumping her armload of goodies, she plopped into one of the chairs set around a square table littered with the remains of a room-service breakfast.

"He didn't look happy," Patricia related. "Neither do you, for that matter. What gives? After the interesting sounds I heard coming through the wall last night, I figured you two would be sleeping in this morning."

"Things didn't work out."

"Things? What things?"

Shrugging, Dani sloshed more coffee into her cup and shoved the carafe toward her sister.

"We have different goals. And different opinions about Buchanan's current occupation."

"Just what does he do? When he's not ferrying undercover agents down to Mexico to rescue their sisters, that is."

"He's a crop duster. He also contracts for some oil spill cleanup and ice-melt."

"And that's bad because...?"

"Because he could probably get a waiver to go back on active duty, but refuses to consider it." Scowling, Dani planted her elbows on the table. "Dad once told me Jack Buchanan was one of the best pilots he'd ever flown with."

"Uh-oh. No wonder the poor man decamped at first light. I would, too, if I had both you and the colonel coming down on me."

Patricia grinned at Dani's offended expression. "I loved Dad as much as you did," she added. "More, maybe, because I wasn't his natural daughter, but he took me straight into his heart, warts and all. I wasn't blind to his faults, though, any more than he was to mine."

"Which specific fault are you referring to?" Dani asked stiffly.

"Dad lived, breathed and slept Air Force. So do you, kiddo. There is life outside the military, you know."

"Oh, that's great coming from the woman who left her fiancé literally standing at the altar. Let's see, what was the crisis that time? Oh, yes. I remember. You had to zip over to China and work an emergency fix to the power grid supplied by the Yellow River Dam."

"Okay, okay. I'll admit that wasn't exactly my finest hour. What does it prove, except that we both need to reassess our priorities? "

"Maybe."

"Maybe, my left foot." Reaching into a wicker basket, Patricia helped herself to a cherry Danish. "Think about it. How many chances does a woman get to have a man like Buchanan teach her aerial maneuvers?"

Not many.

It took Dani several weeks to acknowledge that fact. She spent her nights tossing and turning and generally being hacked at Buchanan Her days she spent at OSI headquarters, pushing paperwork. Her boss had decreed that every field agent had to serve at least one sentence at headquarters, so they'd appreciate their freedom in the field.

She was working her way through a stack of site surveillance reports when one of her fellow agents strolled into her office and hitched a hip on the corner of her desk.

"Hey, Flynn, who was that crop duster who flew you down to Mexico?"

"Buchanan. Jack Buchanan."

"Bingo! I knew I'd heard his name somewhere before."

Dani's inner alarms started pinging. Harrison headed the counterterrorism division at OSI headquarters.

"Before what?" she asked tensely.

"Before I saw the guy mentioned in this morning's operational report. The op rep just hit the In box. You might want to take a look."

"Thanks. I will."

Nodding, he sauntered out. Dani was already at the keyboard. She punched in her security code and waited impatiently while the video input device confirmed her identity. Seconds later, the latest operations report painted down her screen.

She read it through twice. Incredulously the first time. Furiously, the second.

Signing off, she stormed down the hall to her boss's office.

Chapter 7

The bar reeked of spilled beer and old grease. The odors enveloped Dani the moment she stepped inside, along with the stink of stale cigarette smoke. Ignoring the murmurs of interest she stirred among the handful of patrons in boots and jeans, she threaded a path through the tables.

The man slouched at the corner table watched her approach with no sign that he recognized her. His gaze made a slow descent, taking in her pink T-shirt and thigh-hugging jeans.

Dani stopped beside his table. "I want to talk to you."

He tipped his chair back on its rear legs. His whiskey-colored eyes were unreadable.

"That right?"

The deliberate drawl pulled at nerves already stretched wire thin.

"That's right," she snapped. "Outside, Buchanan."

His chair remained at an angle. He made a lazy circle on the table top with his beer. Dani got the message. Gritting her teeth, she ground out a single syllable.

"Please."

He followed her into the Oklahoma night. The hot wind sweeping across the Panhandle had already coated her rental car with red dust. Buchanan didn't appear unduly worried about transferring the dirt to his rear as he leaned against the fender.

Dani planted herself in front of him and cut right to the chase. "Why didn't you tell me you're FBI?"

His shoulders rolled in a careless shrug. "Like you, I didn't go down to Mexico in an official capacity. Who I work for wasn't pertinent."

"It wasn't pertinent?" Her voice spiraled up a full octave. "It wasn't pertinent?"

The fury that had simmered inside her since she'd discovered Jack's real status exploded. She still couldn't believe the FBI had recruited him right out of the Air Force. Or that he used his crop duster cover to travel without the least suspicion throughout the Texas-Oklahoma region. Or that he was the agent who'd recently unraveled a terrorist plot to seed lethal biological toxins into chemicals sprayed by U.S. agricultural aviators.

"Dammit, Buchanan! You let me make a complete fool of myself."

He cocked a brow, forcing her to a grudging concession.

"Okay, okay. Maybe I did that all on my own."

She dragged in a deep breath, caught between her anger and the need that had brought her back out to this hot, dusty corner of Oklahoma.

"I guess what really torques me," she finally admitted, "is that you let me walk away from you that night in Del Rio."

"I was coming after you."

She tipped her chin, glaring at him in the dim light thrown by the single, bug-speckled light. "Oh yeah? When?"

"When I stopped fighting the inevitable and accepted that a bossy, take-charge, super-efficient undercover operative was about to turn my life upside down."

"Really?" She tapped a foot in the dust. "Are you there yet?"

His mouth curved. "Almost."

Her heart skipped. She felt that crooked grin all the way to her toes. The tension that had wrapped around her neck and shoulders eased its tight grip.

"What's it going to take to convince you?"

"Not a whole lot, green-eyes."

He reached for her then, his big hands folding around her upper arms, and drew her closer. She found a comfortable spot with her knees tucked between his and her hands splayed against his chest. Moonlight winked on the silver bracelet that banded her left wrist.

"Let's start with a kiss," he suggested, "and see where it takes us."

Dani knew where it would take them. She'd been there before. Sure enough, the hard, hungry feel of his mouth on hers sent her right into a spinning, dizzying, stomach-clenching hammerhead stall.

ISBN 0-373-48466-6

THE HEART'S COMMAND

Copyright © 2002 by Harlequin Books S.A.

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UNDERCOVER OPERATIONS

Copyright © 2002 by Merline Lovelace

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