It was 6 AM. and they were somewhere over Botswana, forty thousand feet up, well away from the brown storm cloud that had enveloped Luanda. Tucker peered down from his window. The clouds had disappeared entirely, even the white ones. Down below their jet were miles upon miles of golden, sunlit Kalahari desert. Its vastness looked as desolate as an ocean. A crash-landing there, even if they survived the initial touchdown, would end up being just as deadly. It was funny. He hadn’t worried about any of that on his flight to Luanda. He’d had other, more pressing, things on his mind. Namely, the person who was now lying directly in front of him, sound asleep.

She lay across the seats directly across from him. She must have walked over sometime in the night while he was asleep. But why? Maybe it happened after their refueling stop in Zambia. It was crazy to think that he’d nearly slept through a landing and takeoff.

It was even crazier that Macy was here with him in person. Tucker was now looking at Macy, in person, in the flesh.

For awhile he watched a shard of early morning sunlight drift across her chest, and then her neck, until it had almost landed fully on her face. She’d likely wake once the sun touched her eyelids. Until then, he had a few moments to take her in, sleeping and relaxed and amazingly beautiful. He frowned. She deserved to be that relaxed all the time. If he could fix all this for her, he’d do whatever it took to make her safe again.

She was every bit the stunning woman he’d known from St. Louis, both physically and intellectually. Though the Luanda version of Macy, the cunning road warrior, had well surpassed anything he could have ever imagined. Her CIA training would have been a little more extensive than that of the police department, but it was her time after the CIA—after Syria—that had most likely forged that cunning. Surviving by the skin of her teeth, and doing it on a nightly basis, would change anyone.

Tucker was still gazing at her when her eyes fluttered open, catching him off-guard and forcing him to look away, to look at anything other than his morning’s study. When his gaze returned to her face, it suddenly looked a little crumpled and a lot confused, as if her seat change was a surprise to her, too.

Or perhaps it was just the reality of it all, coming back to her now hard and bright: waking in a Learjet forty thousand feet up with a sun that was too bright, and with a guy she might not have ever wanted to see again.

A tired voice groaned out of a set of dry lips. “Oh, my God,” she said, her eyes squinting shut and then opening wide, her head lifting slowly off an armrest. Macy sat back, straight, and then squinted again, slouching her head away from the sunlight. Her morning face was now safely in the shadow, yawning.

“I know,” Tucker said, feeling the urge to yawn, himself.

“What the hell . . .”

Tucker yawned and then said it again. “I know.”

What else could he possibly say? What could anyone say about the last twenty-four hours?

“I’m starving,” Macy said.

Tucker laughed, half relieved that she at least felt comfortable enough for hunger. He’d been worried that Macy would wake up regretting everything, the excitement of the night having worn off and leaving her terrified of her future prospects with him. Stuck with him now, forty thousand feet high, in the middle of a DARC Ops uranium-smuggling adventure.

Just thinking about DARC made Tucker feel a little queasy, and definitely not in the mood for breakfast. He would have to play things extremely carefully with Macy and the team. A balancing act. How should he introduce her? And then after , , , would she even want to hang out?

After telling Macy about the mini fridge, Tucker watched her get up, stretch, and then glide over to it as if she had just awoken aboard her own private jet. She looked bored, even. Just another morning above the Kalahari in a twenty-million-dollar piece of aeronautics.

“Cereal,” she said, her head peeking out from the fridge. “And milk. Want some?”

Tucker declined the offer. Was it possible to ask for a gin & tonic at 6:30 AM without sounding like a raging alcoholic?

“You sure?” Macy said from the fridge.

“I’m good, thanks. But you better hurry up. I feel the nose tipping down.”

“What?”

“We’ll be landing soon.”

She walked over to her seat across from him, her gait getting a little wide as the jet banked slightly to the left. Her thighs flexed through her jeans as she steadied herself, and he forced himself to look away again. God, the feel of those wrapped around him. He dropped his head forward, running a hand through his hair. He had to stop thinking about that if he was going to survive the next few hours at least without a permanent hard-on.

And he really had to stop staring now that she was awake, and with the ability to stare back. She was doing just that now, standing in front of him, staring with an almost furrowed brow.

Had she caught him?

Probably. He had been sloppy, still sleepy, and vaguely horny.

Macy’s face eased into a smile. And then a spoonful of something crunchy went into it. She stood there, her legs still wide, her eyes still on him.

“Not to be weird or anything,” Tucker said. “But . . . You look good.”

She took another spoonful. Chewing.

Tucker said, “I mean, now that I can see you in daylight.”

The front of the jet dipped even lower and Macy almost stumbled backward into her seat, milk flowing over the rim and over her wrist. The seatbelt chime sounded and she was already laughing. She took her seat, a leg tucked under her, then brought her wrist up to her face, her tongue lapping milk off her hand like a kitten.

They were both laughing now.

“Do I still look good?” Macy said. “Covered in Cheerios?” She flicked a few off her lap before drying the rest of her arm on her jeans.

“You look delicious,” Tucker said.

“Alright, take it easy.”

His cheeks warmed. Had he really just said that? “Alright.”

“They’re just Cheerios.”

“And you’re just you,” Tucker said. “Good ol’ Macy. The mace queen.”

She frowned and said, “They stopped calling me that.”

“Why? You stopped macing any innocent taxpayers?”

“Oh, God,” she said. “Happens one time and you never hear the end of it. No, I’ve stopped macing people altogether. Now I just shoot them.”

His smile dropped away. “So I see.”

“Almost shot you,” she said, her eyes drifting back to the bowl.

“So how are you doing? You still feel okay about this?”

“Well, it’s not like I had a choice.”

“Yeah.” But he still wished she’d given him a different answer.

Macy brought the bowl to her lips, taking a small sip of milk.

“Is that really Cheerios?” he said. “They have anything fancier, like Count Chocula?”

“So, Tucker,” she said with a smile. “On the plane, the first time around, you coming up to Luanda. When you were wondering about it, about meeting me. What did that look like?”

“What did it look like in my head? Umm, pretty much how it went down.”

“You envisioned hiding in the shower stall of my decoy room, and then getting into a gun fight with someone who might have been trying to kill me?”

“Exactly. I was looking forward to it.”

“Sure.” Macy rolled her eyes. “Well, it was somewhat of a shock for me. One minute I thought I was near death, a shootout, preparing to blow someone away, and then bam, there you were.”

“You handled it very well,” Tucker said. “Better than I hoped.”

“Really? A gun in your face multiple times? Even just a few hours ago I was pointing it at you in the car.”

“You never pulled the trigger, so, I considered it a success. I think we’re off to a good start. A new start.”

“A good start, huh? Maybe.”

“Maybe restart,” he said.

She stopped chewing midway.

He swallowed, his tongue thick as he suddenly regretted what he’d said. She didn’t need that crap right now, and besides they’d already tried that once before. Not that anything had come of it, they’d barely started before the shit had hit the fan. Still, she hadn’t fought for him then. Maybe she just wasn’t interested—back then or now. He cleared his throat, as if trying to clear the air, trying to clear his mind from the past. The bad past.

He looked out of his window, down to where the desert orange had slowly turned to green.