“She’s arresting!” As Tristan began closed cardiac compression, she realized the engine sounds were fading. They’d landed.

The doors flew open and Quinn jumped in. “What have you got?”

“Twenty-nine-week-old preemie,” Linda announced. “Dead bowel resected at ACMC, prolonged intra-abdominal bleeding. We think she’s still bleeding.”

“I had to open the incision,” Tristan told Quinn as the rest of the OR team sorted the monitors and lines to offload the patient to the waiting gurney. She jumped out and grabbed the stretcher across from Quinn. “I lost her pressure right away.”

“Are we ventilating now?” Quinn asked tersely as they raced across the rooftop toward the elevators.

“Better. O2 SATs are coming up.”

“Good.” Quinn pressed a finger to the baby’s groin. “I’ve got a pulse. Linda, can you run downstairs to the blood bank and get two units. I don’t want to wait for a courier to bring it up. And call and see if the peds surgeon is here yet.”

“You got it.”

Linda disappeared down the stairs while everyone crowded into the elevator. The doors closed, and silence descended on the rooftop, broken only by the faint ping of the cooling helicopter engine and Jett’s quiet footsteps as she secured her aircraft.

Gail pushed Jett toward the cockpit after they lifted the injured soldier inside. “We have to go! There’s too many of them.”

“Not yet!” Jett ran a few steps back toward the bodies still lying in the smoldering, twisted wreckage amidst mounds of rubble thrown up from the roadway when the transport vehicle had run over the IED.

“They’re dead,” Gail shouted.

Jett kept going until a hail of bullets stopped her. They’d just begun the evacuation when insurgents had poured out of several nearby buildings, opening fire on them. One of their medics had been hit, and for a heart-stopping moment she’d thought it had been Gail. They’d managed to get most of the wounded into the aircraft, but steady small arms fire made it impossible for them to get to the last few casualties.

“Jett,” Gail screamed. “Go. We’ve got wounded on board. Go. Go.”

Still, Jett hesitated. Her aircraft was filled with badly injured men and women, but leaving anyone behind, even the dead, violated everything she believed in. A bullet pinged off a nearby rock, and a shard of stone tore a hole in the shoulder of Jett’s flight jacket. Another few inches and it would have hit her in the neck. The sharp pain and warm gush of blood down her arm sharpened her focus. She twisted and dove into the pilot’s seat. Then she took the Black Hawk up and out of harm’s way.

When Jett landed at the field hospital, Gail disappeared with the wounded and Jett staggered wearily to the showers. Almost too tired to think, she stripped and examined the gash in her shoulder in the wavy metal mirror above the sinks. It was long, but not deep. A little blood seeped from under the edges of the dark crust that had formed over it already. She turned the shower on as hot as it would go and stood under the water, her arms braced against the wall, her head down. She didn’t know how long she’d been there, but the water had begun to cool when she heard movement behind her. Then a hand grasped her uninjured shoulder and spun her around.

“What the hell were you doing out there?” Gail shouted. She seemed oblivious to the fact that she was standing under the spray, still in her uniform, or that Jett was naked. “Were you trying to get killed?”

“I didn’t want to leave them,” Jett yelled back.

“Do you think I did?” Gail grabbed Jett’s shoulders and shook her. “Do you think I wanted to see you blown apart?”

Jett winced and blood trickled down her shoulder.

Gail’s eyes widened. “Oh my God. You’re hurt. Why didn’t you say something?”

“I’m all right.”

“No, you’re not.” Gail’s voice was tight. “I have to be able to trust you out there. I can’t worry about you when I’m—”

Jett jerked away, heedless of the blood still seeping down her chest and over her breast. “Just worry about the wounded. I don’t need you to worry about me.”

“I worry!” Gail skimmed her fingers over Jett’s chest and stared at the drops of blood on her fingers. “Don’t you understand?” She cradled the back of Jett’s neck with her other hand. “I don’t know what I’d do if anything happened to you.”

Gail hadn’t touched her since the night of the aborted massage.

Her fingers trembled over Jett’s skin, softly caressing her. The pain from Jett’s injury and the agony of leaving the wounded behind and the adrenaline coursing through her blood from the near-death experience stripped away the last of Jett’s restraint. With a groan, she grasped Gail’s arms and pushed her against the shower wall. Then she pinned her there with her body while she drove her hands into Gail’s hair and her tongue into her mouth.

For an instant, Gail’s arms came around her and her tongue swept over hers, hot and demanding.

A wave of hunger rose from Jett’s depths, so primal, so powerful, all she knew was need. Gail was warm and alive and hers.

Jett came out of her half-doze with a start and looked around the lounge. Six forty-five a.m. She was alone, but the day shift would show up at any moment. She rubbed her face, stood, and shook the stiffness out of her shoulders. She hadn’t really been asleep, just drifting in that disengaged state where she was aware of her surroundings but her mind was free to wander. Unlike so many other times before when she’d traveled back to her time with Gail, she came back to herself neither aroused nor angry. If she had to put her finger on exactly what she was feeling, she would have named it resigned.

She wandered over to the coffeepot, sniffed the few inches of black liquid in the pot, and grimaced. Then she emptied the dregs into the sink, rinsed the carafe, and poured a fresh pot of water into the coffeemaker. While she was digging around in the drawer for a packet of coffee, she heard footsteps behind her.

“If you’re making coffee, I might have to marry you,” Linda said.

“Is that legal in this state?”

“What? Gay marriage?”

Jett hesitated for a second, then laughed. It was getting easier to talk about what had always been forbidden. “I meant polygamy.”

“No to both,” Linda sighed. “God, what a night.”

“Did you get any sleep?”

“No.” Linda searched through the cabinets above the sink and found a clean coffee cup that she didn’t think belonged to anyone. Even if it did, they probably wouldn’t mind if she used it. “I had my beeper, so I knew you could reach me if there was another flight request. I stayed in the OR with Tris and Quinn.”

Jett poured them both coffee. She didn’t really have an excuse to go to the operating room, but she’d wanted to. She wanted to find out what happened to the patient, and she wanted to see Tristan. While she was flying, she couldn’t pay much attention to what was going on with the patient, but enough had come through to her for her to understand how difficult the situation had been and how much pressure Tristan had been under. Since she couldn’t go searching for her, she’d waited in the lounge, hoping for word.

“How did it go?” Jett asked.

Linda stared into her coffee cup as if the answer were somehow written inside it. “Sometimes no matter what you do, it’s not enough, you know?”

Jett took a slow breath. “Yeah.”

“The mortality rate for preemies that size is five times higher than a full-term baby. Add to that the multiple surgeries and the dead bowel and the bleeding…” Linda shook her head. “Just too much.”

“I’m sorry.” Jett replayed the flight in her head. Maybe if she’d pushed harder, she could have bought a few more minutes. Given Tristan a few more minutes. “Do you think if we’d been able to divert to Cooper—”

“I asked the same thing. Quinn didn’t think so. Neither did Harry Noone, the pediatric surgeon.”

“I guess that’s something.”

“It helps a little.” Linda set her coffee aside. “Tristan doesn’t believe it, though.”

“Where is she?” Jett asked as casually as she could.

“I think she left. She was pretty strung out over the whole thing.”

“She blames herself?” Jett wasn’t surprised, not after listening to Tristan talk about the governor’s daughter-in-law and her feelings of responsibility. Tristan took a lot on herself.

“I don’t think anyone was able to convince her that opening up the abdominal incision isn’t what tipped things over the edge.” Linda smiled ruefully. “The good ones like Tristan and Honor and Quinn always blame themselves.”

“And like you,” Jett said gently. “But you shouldn’t. You and Tristan and the others—you’re good at your jobs, and you care. That’s what counts.”

Linda brushed her fingers over Jett’s arm. “Thanks.” She glanced toward the clock. “Hey. We’re off duty. I’m going to go home and seduce my wife into making mad passionate love to me. Then I’m going to sleep for ten hours—or at least until the kids get home from day camp.”

“I’ll see you this weekend.”

“Do you want to come over for breakfast?”

“Before or after you have sex?”

Linda gave her a little shove. “I could wait for that.”

Jett shook her head. “Thanks, but I think your first plan is probably a better one.”

“All right, but if you change your mind, you probably have a twenty-minute window of opportunity. Need a ride?”

“I’m good. I drove in.”

“I’m out of here, then.”

Linda disappeared into her on-call room and Jett headed for hers to collect her gear. When she pulled out of the hospital parking lot, she still hadn’t shed the sadness over the night’s events, and she could only imagine how Tristan must feel. Knowing Tristan hurt bothered her more than she wanted to admit.