“I’ll bring them right to you.”
“Oh shit,” Kennedy said, understanding what I was putting down.
I had weapons of my own thanks to Ford’s obsessive need for being prepared. The only way to save myself was to turn on the offensive. I banked left, hard, but that opened my side up to attack. I changed elevation, aiming for the clouds, then banked to the right, bringing the other chopper into my sights.
He knew what I was doing. He was an experienced pilot whose mission was to end me.
“Take this, you fucker,” I muttered. Sweat glistened on my skin as I pressed the fire button. I watched as bullets shot from the fixed mounted minigun. Yeah, Ford had bought an armored, armed tank of a helicopter for Sparks, Montana, and it sure as shit was coming in handy right now.
He banked. Aimed. Fired.
This time, I had nowhere to go, no chance to evade. I only angled my chopper, so it protected me. But the bullets tore through the tail boom.
I lost control of the steering. Then everything else. “Fuck. Come on…. Come onnnnnnnn.”
“Get an extraction team on the horn,” Kennedy yelled.
“Extraction team? Quincyisthat team.”
“Give me something,” Kennedy snapped back.
“Coordinates are–” Taft stated.
Kennedy and Taft were talking in my ear, but I was tugging on the stick, using the pedals to try and level, to try to keep from going into a tailspin. The ground rushed up fast. Too fast, even as I tilted the rotors forward to get as much lift as I could.
“Mayday. Mayday,” I called, but Taft already knew the deal. I might be close to home but not close enough.
“Stay alive, Quincy. Stay fucking alive.” Kennedy’s frantic voice was the last I heard before the crash.
CHAPTERTWO
KENNEDY
Four weeksearlier
She was in the shower.
Naked.Just a few feet away from me.
But I wasn’t thinking about that. I wasn’t thinking about what she looked like unclothed. Dripping wet. That long hair unbound and streaming down her back.
Nope. Not at all. Living with Quincy was not a daily torture for me. Not in the slightest.
After the shit show with Indi, or Indigo Buchanan, Ford’s girlfriend, being stalked and then kidnapped on top of a mountain by Tully, the psycho involved in her brother’s–and our SEAL team member’s–murder, we all agreed that a helicopter would come in handy.
I’d been all for it. Taft and Hayes had been in as well. Even Mrs. L had been eager for the alternate mode of transpo although a helicopter was a big step up.
Except I hadn’t thought about who would fly the bird.
Until it was too late. After we built a landing pad. After we built a hangar.
Because not only did the brand new chopper arrive, but so did the pilot.
Melissa Mason, aka Quincy.
The best damned pilot I knew in the Navy. She should’ve been a TopGun, but the barriers to female pilots were still too significant.
She was also the best damned lay I ever had.