Jina picked herself up from the floor, both literally and figuratively; sitting there was accomplishing nothing and she needed to finish putting her space back in order. If she couldn’t quite push him out of her mind, she could at least occupy herself by doing something useful.

Damn him, she thought yet again; that phrase seemed to come to mind a lot whenever she thought of Levi. Why hadn’t he just kept his mouth shut? She’d been doing a good job of not letting herself acknowledge how attractive she found him; it was that good old survivor instinct of hers at work. Levi wasn’t a man who would even be a comfortable casual date, much less anything more serious. She hated being so aware of him, hated the way her pulse rate shot up like fireworks whenever he was near, or when he spoke to her—even if he was barking an order. She could easily become obsessed with him, and she hated that kind of weakness so she hadn’t let herself, hadn’t let herself do a lot of things.

She hadn’t let herself daydream about when she’d blistered her feet and he’d tended to them, or how he’d ordered the perfect boots for her foot. Well, why should she? She’d paid for the boots, it wasn’t as if they were a gift. She felt silly for liking them because Levi was involved in getting them for her. The boots didn’t mean he cared, regardless of what he said about “it going both ways.” What he cared about was the team functioning as a well-oiled unit, all parts of it healthy and able to do the job. So she turned him on. Big deal. He wouldn’t let that intrude on the team dynamics, and she agreed with him. That was why she’d kept herself to herself.

She hadn’t let herself dream about him, hadn’t let herself wonder about his taste or what it would be like to have that laser attention focused on her, hadn’t let herself flirt, had been strictly business in her dealings with him.

That was what hurt. He’d slapped her down for no reason. Or maybe he thought she was weak, and he’d just been waiting for her to . . . what? Tackle him and ravish him?

Her cheeks burned with anger, because she had entertained a fleeting speculation about the size of his dick. How could she not? Once when he’d squatted down, the angle had been just right and she’d seen that big bulge and she was human, of course she’d enjoyed a brief fantasy. Evidently the fantasy hadn’t been brief enough, because he must have seen something and it was her fault, because the other guys had also done some squatting and all sorts of other positions and not once had she checked out their packages. Just Levi’s. Damn him.

Her thoughts kept circling back to the same path, the same words, and finally she was so annoyed with herself she went out on the balcony without a jacket, to stand in the dark and let the cold damp air chase the frustration out of her brain. Being cold and shivering refocused her thoughts in a hurry, and for some reason put things in perspective.

She didn’t have to let this throw her. She’d carry on as usual, do her job, finish her training—dear God, jumping out of a plane!—and take her place on the team. She hadn’t busted her butt all these months to blow it by boohooing over hurt feelings. So screw him. No matter how hateful he got, she wouldn’t quit.

She slept well that night, despite him. Still, when her phone dinged with a text at five o’clock the next morning, she wished she could have gotten another couple of hours in bed.

Groaning, her heart pounding because what if something had happened to some of her family, she switched on the lamp and fumbled for the phone. “Ah, hell!” The text was from Levi, ACE showing big and bold in the screen. She rubbed her eyes, focused on the text, and suddenly who it was from didn’t matter at all, because the text itself made time stop.

No! Oh God, no! Not today. Not on a Sunday. Sundays were off days, except for running. She’d expected to have more warning, so she could hunt down a sedative, or, failing that, somehow land herself in the hospital. God, if you’re listening, joking not joking.

She got up and hit the shower, because if she died, she wanted to be clean, not that it would matter, because if she went splat, there wouldn’t be enough of her left to tell if she’d been dirty or not. Still, the impulse was strong. Running water was supposed to be soothing. It failed on that count. After her shower she braided her hair, because long hair flying all over the place couldn’t be good while arrowing toward Earth at a gazillion miles per hour.

She choked down half a slice of toast, smeared with peanut butter, though maybe an empty stomach would be a better idea. What if she threw up in midair? Would the vomit descend at the same rate, so she’d go the whole way down surrounded by her own puke? Bummer. On the other hand, if she didn’t eat, her blood sugar might bottom out and that wouldn’t be good, either. She drank just half a cup of coffee because she didn’t want to pee on herself in midair, either.

Another dilemma presented itself. How was she supposed to dress for plunging to her death? A quick check of the weather confirmed that the sky was clear and the temperature was chilly, though it would warm up all the way to mildly pleasant by the middle of the afternoon. This wasn’t a question she was going to text to any of the guys, because they’d never let her live it down. That was based on the assumption that she’d survive the day, so that thought was vaguely reassuring. In the end she put on some long silk underwear she’d bought her first winter in D.C., then dressed mostly as usual for a training day, in cargo pants, a sweatshirt, but sneakers instead of boots because her boots were speed-laced and jump boots weren’t. She tried not to think of things the hooks on her boots could get hung on, during a jump. Finally she grabbed her North Face pull-on snow cap and thought she’d done the best she could.

Trying to focus on the pros and cons of being clean and well dressed while she was terrified out of her mind and might be dying soon didn’t work very well as a means of distraction.

She arrived half an hour early and sat in the car with her head resting on the steering wheel, praying under her breath and wondering if she should call her mom, in case she never had another chance. No, because if she talked to her mom now, she might lose it and blurt out everything, about the GO-Team and the drone, which was way classified, and being forced to parachute, and that would be bad.

A tap on her driver’s-side window made her shriek and jump and bump her knee hard on the steering column, which made her cuss.

Levi stood there, laughing. She hated him, hated the way his laugh lit up his face, white teeth flashing, dark eyes crinkled at the corners. How dare he laugh, after everything? She opened her car door and shoved it hard, banging it against his knee.

“Ow!” He moved out of range, leaning down to rub his knee and glare at her. “Watch what you’re doing.”

She returned the glare as she got out and slammed the door. “I did, and I enjoyed it very much, thank you. It was funny. You know, like when I banged my knee and you laughed.”

For some reason he seemed to be in a good mood. The right side of his mouth quirked up in a half smile, and he said, “Fair enough.” Maybe he was in a good mood because he thought today would be her swan song, and even if she survived, she might say she was done.

As if she would give him the satisfaction. She might die, but she wouldn’t quit.

Boom arrived in his big king-cab pickup and interrupted whatever might have followed, whether it would have been an argument or stony silence. Could have gone either way.

Levi said, “We’re riding with Boom,” and strode toward the truck. Jina trudged along behind him, not willing to trot to keep up with those long strides. She walked differently these days, using longer, more efficient strides herself, but no way could she keep up with someone who was six-four. He should have stopped growing at a reasonable height. Damn him.

She didn’t even like the way he breathed.

He got in front with Boom, and she boosted herself into the backseat. Boom’s truck wasn’t as high as Levi’s, maybe because he had a wife and two kids who also rode in the truck, but these days she wouldn’t have had any problem, anyway. Legs of steel, she thought triumphantly, and although that was an exaggeration, she was in the best shape of her life. Maybe the legs of steel had enough coil and strength to them to keep her from breaking her neck when she landed. Or maybe she could use them to kick Levi out of the plane.

“I like your truck,” she chirped to Boom, knowing her tone would irritate the shit out of Levi, and maybe Boom, too, but Levi was her target and Boom would have to be collateral damage. “It doesn’t look like a pouty Darth Vader owns it.”

Pouty. Boom coughed to disguise what was likely a laugh, and Levi slowly swiveled his head to give her a basilisk stare. She gave him a sweet, very insincere smile. This was fun. For a few seconds she could forget that her knees were knocking together.

The landing strip Boom drove to was in rural Virginia, surrounded by farmland. The strip wasn’t busy, not this early, though a few planes were tied down beside a large, rusty Quonset hut with a rough but serviceable wooden addition jutting out to the left. Two other vehicles were there, but no one was in sight. A Twin Otter sat on the strip, and a fit-looking guy in jeans and a leather jacket was slowly going around the plane, examining every exterior detail.

Just a few months ago she’d have thought a Twin Otter was a pair of cute critters, but now she not only recognized it, she knew it was considered one of the best planes for jumping. Yay for her. If only her test was on paper instead of practical experience, she’d ace the damn thing.

“I rigged the chutes myself,” Boom said to Levi. “Most I’ve ever done at one time.”

“We’ll probably need them all,” Levi replied.

Meaning they were going to keep at it until she either made a jump or died? Probably. Surely they wouldn’t have time for more than two or three jumps . . . would they? She was the only trainee, though, and they were the only jumpers on the plane. They’d be limited by the time it would take the plane to take off, climb to altitude, then land again, plus however much time it took to pick them up from the landing zone. Her heartbeat kicked into another gear, hard and fast. They were really going to do this.

“Where’s the landing zone?” she asked, hoping it was miles away because that would slow everything down.

“Next field over,” Levi said, jerking a thumb to the right. “I would’ve made it here, but there’ll be other planes landing and taking off. I’ve arranged for us to be picked up.”

Of course he had. Why couldn’t they just wait in the field until the plane landed and Boom could pick them up? That would have killed some time. But no, Levi had to be efficient, so they could get in more torture sessions.

Frantically she pulled up the memory of zip lining. Her stomach had been in her throat then, too; stepping off into nothing and trusting the line to hold her had required all her nerve and gumption, but once she’d taken that first step everything had been okay. Maybe this would be like that. The guys had said it was, though they could have been lying. Maybe she’d automatically focus on what she was doing rather than what was happening. Maybe it would be okay.

The sky was a big blue bowl, completely cloudless, as if trying to make up for the days of rain. Too bad, because she had really prayed hard for that rain to continue for the next year or so. There was a chilly breeze, but nothing that would interfere so there was no help on that front. The weather was not cooperating. Jina forced herself to take slow, steady breaths, trying to slow her heartbeat. The air smelled fresh and crisp, tinged with the smell of fuel. A few birds were calling back and forth, not the mad singing they did in spring but a kind of desultory “we’re here” notice.

Boom got the harnesses from the back of his truck and Jina began gearing up. She was concentrating on getting the straps straight and in the right place, so it took her a minute to realize Levi, not Boom, was putting on the other harness. She stopped. “I thought Boom was jumping with me.”

“I’m not certified for tandem jumps,” Boom replied. “Ace is.”

“Oh, shit,” she said, so dismayed that she said it aloud.

“Got a problem with it?” Levi asked, his tone hard.

“Well, I do trust Boom not to cut me loose in midair if I vomit on him.” Oh Lord, she was going to be harnessed to Levi. She didn’t want to be even this close to him, much less strapped so closely to him they’d essentially be spooning.

Boom snorted a laugh, and even Levi gave a quick grin. “You won’t vomit,” he said, and it was as much of a command as it was a reassurance.

She pulled on her knit hat and Boom said, “That won’t stay on.” Sighing, she tucked it back into her pocket and instead stuffed the thick braid of her hair down the back of her sweatshirt.

“Why won’t it stay on?”

“Because we’ll be going a hundred and twenty miles an hour when we leave the plane,” Levi said.

She blanched and tried not to think about it. Her heart started that pounding again. Was it possible to die from fright? She might not have to go splat; Levi might flare his parachute for a perfect landing with a corpse strapped to his chest.

The idea was ghoulish enough that she felt a bit comforted, and the panic subsided. With luck, the experience would scar Levi so much he’d never be able to jump again. Would that be justice, or what?

She was kind of in a daze as they boarded the plane and the two engines coughed to life. The Twin Otter was roomier on the inside than she’d expected: benches lined each side, and she slid onto one of them, buckled herself in. Boom closed the door, and he and Levi took their seats. Levi was right beside her, so close his left leg was touching hers. Silently she shifted her legs away from him.

The pilot, who Boom had introduced as Air Bud because his nickname really was Bud, released the brakes, the engine noise changed, and the plane began moving. The copilot was Bud’s wife, a jumpsuit-wearing redhead with a broad grin and a lot of freckles. Jina wanted to go forward and commiserate with her about what jerks men were, but Boom wasn’t a jerk and she didn’t know about Bud so she clenched her hands on the edge of the bench and stayed where she was.

The plane lifted away from the earth and began a steady climb. Levi got to his feet and he and Boom began making preparations that Jina didn’t watch. She was too busy trying to catch regular breaths and talk her stomach down out of her throat. Her mouth was dry, her legs trembling. She didn’t have to watch to know when the door was opened, because cold air rushed through the cabin.

She had dreaded a lot about all the training stuff, but she hadn’t been actively frightened. Now she was. No, frightened was too mild a word; she was terrified, and it wasn’t something she could talk herself out of.

Then Levi sat down beside her again, tapped her on top of the head, and said, “Time.”

Mutely she looked up at him, the details of what she was supposed to do lost somewhere in the fog of silent panic. He waited, but no matter how frantically she searched her brain, no details surfaced. She was here. She was about to be forced out of the plane. Nothing else came to mind.

An unreadable expression flickered across his face. Silently he scooped her up and sat her on his lap, her back to him, her legs straddling his.

Whoa!

Jina jerked, as shocked as if he’d thrown water in her face. Physical sensations rushed in—the heat and hardness of his body against her back and under her butt and thighs, his breath on her hair—all of it tangling with fear and numbness and throwing everything off-kilter because no one component fit with any of the others. What the hell was he doing? And right in front of Boom!

Clumsily, none of her muscles working in coordination, she tried to shove herself off his lap. He grunted and clamped his right arm around her hips and hauled her back down. “Be still,” he growled. “This is the easiest way to get us harnessed together.”

Harnessed . . . together. Right.

Shaking, breathing hard, she tried to relax as he fastened their harnesses together in four places, on each hip and each shoulder. She was pulled back snugly against the muscled wall of his chest. Glancing down, she saw his spread legs between hers, which spread her legs that much wider. The visual was another shock to her system, sharpening her awareness of him to the point of near pain.

“I’ll be handling everything,” he said in her ear. “You’re just along for the ride, though after we’re under canopy, you can take the toggles and steer us to the LZ. Remember, tuck your head back into my shoulder and curl your legs upward between mine. Got it?”

He was telling her things she’d already gone over during the ground training, but the repetition was good because she wasn’t able to think. She had never been so scared in her life, and the dread was getting worse, not better. Maybe the actual jump out of the plane was the worst, like the guys said, and once she was in the air everything would get better.

Or maybe her heart would explode from the terror. That seemed more likely.

“We’ll free-fall for about a minute. It’s like floating, you’ll have no sense of speed other than the wind. When we get to twenty-five hundred feet, I’ll pop the chute. It’ll jerk like hell when it opens, pull us up and back, so don’t panic. I’ll ease the straps so it’s more comfortable for you. Then it’s an easy ride down.”

Don’t panic? Was it possible to panic more once one was already panicked? Like a re-panic, or a double layer of panic?

“Goggles.”

A pair dangled in front of her, and she put them on. Goggles. So it was really about to happen.

“You’ll do fine,” Boom said reassuringly. “Ace has you.” Then the traitor helped Levi shift with her over to the open door. Lips trembling, she looked up at Boom and started to say something, maybe even beg him to help her, but before she could make a sound, Levi heaved them through the open door of the plane—

Plunging into hell.

Face-first.

Jina jerked and stiffened, instantly engulfed in a screaming wind, her head forced back against Levi’s shoulder while her eyes rolled wildly around so that the brown and green of the earth flipped sickeningly with the merciless blue bowl of the sky. She was screaming, too, along with the wind, deep hoarse screams that scraped her throat raw. It was all too much, worse than she’d expected, more than she could handle. The fear she’d been halfway controlling seemed to explode inside her, a great black force that blew out of her chest and expanded in a split second to swallow her whole, and she fell into the black.

“Jina! Babe! Wake the fuck up!”

The black didn’t want to give her up. She didn’t want it to give her up, she wanted to stay right there, insensate and safe. She slowly resurfaced to the distant sound of Levi bellowing the command to wake up at her. The sound got closer and closer as consciousness returned, and she opened her eyes to stare dazedly around. Her head bobbled to the side, but she was able to catch herself, and she realized they were still in the air, still going down. She jerked again, pushing herself back against him as if she could force herself through his body, anything to put distance between her and the approaching ground.

“It’s okay, we’re under canopy, we aren’t falling.”

He kept repeating that, the words meaningless at first, but after a few times they began making sense and she tilted her head back to stare at the huge white mushroom blooming overhead. The movement moved her head against Levi’s chest and she saw the underside of his chin, his strong jaw, deeply tanned and bristled because he hadn’t shaved that morning. Odd how that seemed so obvious, and why she noticed at all, when she felt so sick. Her heart was slamming against her rib cage with such force she could feel her bones vibrating and she thought she might vomit after all. The fear seemed to come in uncontrollable waves, barely giving her time to catch a breath before she was swamped again. A high-pitched keen of distress vibrated in her throat.

“Babe. You’re all right.” His deep voice was right beside her ear, so close she could feel his breath in her hair. “Here, take the toggles.”

“No!” She thrashed her head back and forth, shrinking from the suggestion. The toggles represented this whole experience, and it was as bad as she’d feared it would be. It was awful. She’d never passed out before, but now she felt as if she might faint again, and she didn’t care what Levi thought or if this got her booted out of training. All she wanted was to be on the ground, and all in one piece. Normally her determination would carry her through a sticky situation, but this wasn’t just sticky, it was horrifying beyond her imagining. She’d felt the same way about bungee jumping—not going to do it, no way, no how.

“All right, all right, you don’t have to.” That rough voice was oddly soothing. Maybe he thought he could afford to be kind now that she was very likely out of the program.

Strange how now that they were actually floating instead of plummeting, she could tell they were moving, going down. At least she was upright instead of facedown, staring at her death. She could look out at the horizon—but she didn’t, because what was below her had her in an unholy grip. To escape it she closed her eyes, not wanting to see the ground getting closer and closer; her whole body felt limp, her muscle tone gone, and despite herself she let her head fall back against his shoulder again. Oh dear God, she was held in place by four buckles. Four. Levi was the one who wore the parachute harness, not her. If the buckles failed, or the straps broke, she was gone.

“When I tell you, lift your legs straight out so they aren’t in my way when we land,” he said. That kind note was still in his tone. She hated him for being nice in the face of her failure. If he’d been this way from the beginning—no, it was probably better that he hadn’t. She didn’t want to like him at all.

She forced her eyes open, because it seemed cowardly not to. The minutes crawled, but at the same time the ground was coming up way too fast. Her breath began hitching in her throat again, and her heartbeat was so fast she was essentially limp in the harness. Details on the ground began to take on sharp clarity, individual leaves on the trees swam into focus, and Levi said, “Legs up!” in that bark of command she was more accustomed to.

Her body obeyed, as she had obeyed so many of his orders. Her thigh muscles shook, but she lifted her legs so she was in an L shape.

It was like seeing her car was about to crash but being unable to stop it. The ground was rushing toward them now, a blurred impression of the black asphalt road, the brown grass, a red cross painted on the ground to make the LZ. A jolt shook her in the harness as Levi touched down, his powerful legs absorbing most of the shock. He made a couple of running steps, then stopped as casually as if falling thousands of feet through the air was an everyday occurrence, and began unhooking them. She was so numb she couldn’t quite absorb that they were on the ground, safe, without any broken bones or anything. She hadn’t smashed herself into red mist.

The harness latches released, and she began dropping, sliding down his body; he caught her, one steely arm around her waist, and said, “Put your feet down now.”

Okay, she thought, everything feeling distant, even herself, as if her mind had disconnected from her body. Still, she put her feet down and he bent down enough to stand her on the ground, then immediately turned around to begin gathering in the canopy.

Jina sat down. She didn’t have any choice about it because her legs folded like noodles, but at least she sat instead of collapsing full-length. The chill damp of the ground soaked into her pants, and in the length of time it took Levi to gather and secure the canopy she began shivering. Wet ground was soft, she thought, and soft ground was good.

She pulled off her goggles and drew her knees up so she could she rest her forehead on them and close her eyes. Shutting out the world was a relief; if she could have deafened herself, she would have, to create a total cocoon, but she couldn’t and sound still intruded. She could hear Levi talking—at first she thought he was talking to himself, then realized he was on a headset talking to Boom. Likely they’d been in communication the whole humiliating, terrifying time. Boom knew how pathetically she’d failed.

She didn’t care. For once in her life, she didn’t care that she hadn’t been able to make herself handle what was in front of her. Parachuting was going to be her Waterloo, because she couldn’t make herself go through that again.

I have to.

The inner whisper came up from her depths. She tried to push the words away, because there had never been anything she’d run into before that had so terrified her beyond functioning. Sure, she’d been scared before, she’d hit obstacles before that she hadn’t thought she could get over, but she’d kept at it with dogged persistence that maybe went beyond the bounds of good sense. This was different. This was fear on a primal level she hadn’t experienced before. This almost reached the level of I’d rather slit my wrists than do that again.

But even below that at the cellular level was something that made her take a deep breath and face the awful truth.

She had to.

She heard Levi’s footsteps come closer, felt him looming over her, blotting out the faint warmth of the sun and leaving her even more chilled, there on the wet ground.

Forcing her lungs to pull in enough air to speak, she raised her colorless face from her knees and looked up at the big man who stood looking down at her. “Let’s go again,” she said.