Jesse watched Hannah select a McMillan TAC-50 sniper rifle (with the mod he knew had not been released for civilian sale) and an FN-SCAR combat assault rifle.

“At least they don’t have the Delta-designed HK416,” she whispered. “I like that some things are sacrosanct.”

They both took a pair of Glock 19s, NVGs, extra batteries, extra ammo, a radio—and a spare—and extra batteries for those as well. He grabbed her before she could turn from the supply cabinet and handed her a couple of energy bars and a water bottle. From a pocket, he fished out a Tootsie Pop, unwrapped it, and stuffed it in her mouth.

It earned him a second kiss, sloppier and shorter than the first, but raspberry-flavored and filled with sizzle. She was altering his view of sexy by the moment—this fully-armed warrior woman was stirring up places he didn’t even know he had to be stirred up. She did it much more and his heart was going to be joining in and then all hope for him was lost. Actually, he suspected that might already be the case, but there wasn’t time to think about it.

In minutes they were airborne. D’Antoni gave him right seat and left him to it, acting the perfect copilot. Not Night Stalker trained, but the man was definitely skilled.

The helo felt heavy. A Little Bird was like a tap dance—fast, light, skittering on the controls and across the sky. Muhammed Ali would have approved of a Little Bird; it flew like a butterfly and stung like a bee.

A Sikorsky MH-60 Black Hawk was five tons of helo that could carry another five of fuel, armor, weapons, and personnel. It was the country two-step bird of the Night Stalker fleet. He enjoyed the contrast. Heavier controls, more buffered from the sky, but still more tightly connected than a massive Chinook. Those pilots sat in seats that were practically Barcaloungers and were all about the heavy-lift mission. Their dance wasn’t even a line dance—it was the papa bear leaving his winter den and none too happy about it.

Outside the windscreen, night was settling over southwestern Texas. A hand rested on his shoulder. He knew the feel of it now—didn’t even need that deep feeling of connection to know it was Hannah. Together they watched the last of the sunset coloring the sky in descending shades of red-gold. He’d hoped to get her out on the prairie tonight, for just this moment.

Jesse sighed to himself, but Hannah must have felt it because she squeezed his shoulder in sympathy.

Her voice whispered over the headset intercom so softly that it was as if she was nuzzling his ear. “It’s beautiful.”

“Sure is, isn’t it?” D’Antoni tromped right over any tender moment like a bronc throwing a greenhorn.

Hannah faded away and her hand was gone. Instead of her presence fuzzing his thoughts, he’d never felt so clear about anything more than this moment. Flying, Hannah nearby, the Texas sunset. Somehow all of these elements seemed to mean more than ever—they all belonged together in some way he’d never be able to explain but he thought that maybe, just maybe, Hannah would understand.

“Where are we going?” Jesse asked D’Antoni.

“We’ve got a rodent problem. Border Patrol has been trying to plug a rat hole under the Tex-Mex border with no luck. We don’t normally take on such small problems, but this one has been eluding them.”

“Whoa,” Jesse eased down on the collective with his left hand and pulled the cyclic’s joystick toward his lap to slow them down. “You guys are going in to take down immigrants? You can just drop us here and we’ll find our own way back”—though they were deep in the near-desert of the southwest Texas plains by this point.

His family ranch had many immigrants who worked there. Some seasonal, some had been there for generations. He knew how much of the US economy depended on them—both the legal and the illegal. Stopping them wasn’t the answer, legalizing them was. Seasonal work permits, family passes, something. Taking a mercenary Black Hawk and ramming it down the throats of civilians working hard for a better future was not a “proportional response.”

“Different kind of rodent problem,” D’Antoni didn’t reach out to take the controls and push them ahead. “The Los Zetas cartel is running drugs across the border for forty kilometers north of Laredo. The cartel has perforated the border and the DEA can’t plug the holes fast enough. Getting permission to operate south of the border from the Mexican government hasn’t done them any good. When they try, it mostly gets more Mexican cops and judges killed. We’re private, so we can go after the source directly.”

“The source?”

“We’re going after the head of the cartel. We’re gonna yank him, wrap him up tight, and hand him to the DEA Stateside.”

“The head of the Los Zetas cartel with one helo, four people? Two of them not even military? How crazy are you folks?” But Jesse was easing the controls forward and the Black Hawk regained speed. Taking down drug runners, he had no problem with.

“Six people now. Besides, we aren’t stupid and we don’t endanger our action team—though it’s gonna take some work to get used to a Delta woman. We have some more assets in place under deep cover who are already on this one. This morning we got the extraction signal for tonight.” Then D’Antoni toggled the control that isolated the cockpit intercom from the rest of the helo. “Besides, have you ever found a woman who would stay behind merely because you asked her to?”

Certainly not Hannah Tucker.

* * *

Hannah had slipped into mission mode when the cargo bay door slammed shut. Sitting in the back of a tin toy called a helicopter—that was usually described as “ten thousand parts that just happened to be flying in unison,” until some crucial one decided to fly off in some other direction—there was nothing to do but wait. A lone red nightlight in the ceiling of the cargo bay was finally taking over from the failing light outside the windows.

All a Delta could do was sit and wait for the pilot to do whatever it was he did. She could see Mark Halloran slide into the same Delta Force operator headspace. Silent, appearing relaxed, yet gearing up internally to unleash whatever would be required.

And on the other side of the helo, Faith and Kat. Despite being dressed in basic camo, light boots, and armored vests, they looked like they might be chatting away in the living room over tea and moon pies.

Halloran was leaning against the aft bulkhead beside her.

She peeled back one side of her earphones and yelled at him over the scream of the twin turbine engines, “What the hell?” She nodded toward the women.

He peeled one side of his own headphones back. “I know. It’s definitely surreal. But Faith is better than a radio. No comm failure—if another, stronger telepath isn’t attacking us.” His pride in his wife shone out of him.

“There are psi-type bad guys?”

“Yes, ma’am. There’s a whole world going on here that most folks don’t see. All hush-hush so that we don’t freak regular folks out.”

“Too late for me. Already freaked.”

“I grew up with it, so I can’t tell you much. There was only ever Faith for me. Tried to leave her so as to protect her. All it did was make us both miserable.”

Hannah wondered if she was actually still freaked by the reality of what she was. Seeing two such normal women who appeared to accept their own skills so easily almost made it seem nothing special. If she didn’t really think about it, her “gift” was somehow okay. The thing that was making her miserable about Jesse was not being with him, so she didn’t know what to make of that either.

“So how did a woman barely bigger than Faith ever make Delta Force?” By Mark’s tone that fact was much stranger than creating sounds outside her body.

“You know that being Delta is mostly about perseverance and determination. The former is how I survived my past. The latter is how I’m making sure that I never go back there again.”

Mark offered her a fist bump. “Shit, woman. You’re gonna fit right in here. Ain’t no such thing as a Phoenix woman who isn’t Delta-level determined.”

She nodded and pulled her headset back into place blocking the worst of the engine and rotor noise. Mark did the same and they both settled into doing what a Delta operator did best—they waited.

Fitting in somewhere.

There was a hell of a concept.