“I do,” Jac said.

“Then what’s your explanation?”

Jac looked away.

“All right. Let’s get back.” Mallory fished around in her pocket and pulled out another flashlight. She tossed it to Jac. “And don’t wander away this time.”

“Mallory.”

Something in Jac’s voice brought Mallory up short. Sadness, or resignation maybe. “What?”

“I know you don’t have any reason to, but if I tell you the reason I left this afternoon has nothing to do with the training or the job, will you believe me? Will you trust me on that?”

Mallory considered. If it wasn’t work, it was something personal. Something Jac didn’t want to reveal. The options were few out here. “If there’s a problem inside the team, that’s just as critical for me to know as if one of the team members is having trouble with the training. It all comes down to the team, Jac. Not you, not me, not any one of us. Only the team matters.”

“I know. I know I don’t have any right to ask you, but I’m going to.” Jac wanted to curse, but only a reasoned argument would win Mallory over. She couldn’t tell Mallory about Hooker—she was not going to dump his bile on Mallory. The guy was a jerk, and she shouldn’t have let him get to her. She sure wasn’t dragging Mallory into it. “If you could just give me a little time to work things out, I promise I’ll tell you if there’s any problem.”

Mallory drew a breath. Oddly, that nagging irritating sensation was gone. Her gut settled. Jac was right in front of her. Jac was fine. “There can’t be a repeat of this, Jac.”

“All right.”

“And know this, Russo,” Mallory said. “If you give me cause to question your judgment or your ability to function as part of the team again, I’m going to let you go. No questions asked.”

“Fair enough,” Jac said quietly.

“Let’s get back. You’ve got a big day tomorrow.” Mallory turned and walked away. Fairness had nothing to do with it. She was breaking her own rules, and she never did that. She wanted to believe in Jac, and that scared her. Jac Russo scared her to death.

*

“What the fuck, Jac,” Ray muttered while they stood in line at 0530 to board the jump plane. “You keep pissing James off like last night and you’re gonna be screwed.”

“Everything is cool,” Jac said, lying her ass off. Mallory hadn’t come up to the loft until late the night before, and hadn’t said anything other than “Tomorrow is your first practice jump. Get some sleep.”

“If you say so.” Ray looked over his shoulder, then dipped his head. “You nervous?”

“Nah.” She grinned. “It’ll be just like jumping off the platform. And if it isn’t, we probably won’t even know when we land.”

“Wonderful,” he muttered.

“Hey,” she said, laughing. “You’ll have Cooper with you. He won’t let anything happen up there.”

“I know, I know.” Ray glanced at the open cargo doors and the dark interior of the plane’s belly. “I know.”

Mallory slowed beside them. “All set, rookies?”

“Fine,” Jac said, wishing Mallory would actually look at her.

“Totally,” Ray echoed.

“Good. Have fun. Remember to count.”

Mallory walked on and Jac swallowed acid disappointment. She’d fucked up and didn’t know how to make it right, so she did what she knew how to do. Focused on the mission. She ran the jump sequence again in her head. At least she could show Mallory she deserved her spot on the crew.

“Let’s check you out, rook,” Sarah said, coming up with Cooper, who joined Ray. The two veterans checked them over to see that their chutes and harnesses were in order, the steering handles clear, and reserve chest chutes in place.

“All set,” Sarah said. “Questions?”

“I’m good,” Jac said.

They loaded and sat in rows on either side of the cargo bay. When Benny reached two thousand feet, he circled and Mallory pulled open the doors. Frigid wind strafed the interior and Jac’s eyes watered. Sarah gripped her arm.

“I’ll be right behind you.”

“Roger,” Jac said, glad they were jumping first. Now that they were about to do it, she wanted to go.

Mallory dropped a pair of streamers to judge the wind speed and direction, watched for a few seconds, then signaled for Jac to come ahead. Jac moved forward in a crouch until she could sit on the edge of the rail, her legs dangling in the slipstream.

“See the landing zone?” Mallory yelled. “About fifty yards of drift.”

“Roger,” Jac called.

“Ready?”

Jac’s pulse kicked once, hard, then settled. Excitement raced through her. “Yes!”

Mallory’s hand slapped down on her shoulder and Jac pushed out with all her strength.

Jump-thousand—air whipped around her head and her feet jerked up over her head.

Look-thousand—sky and plane passed over her in a swirling flash and the land disappeared.

Sarah dropped out of the plane, a dark blur against the tilting horizon.

Reach-thousand—Jac grabbed the ripcord. Wait-thousand…wait, wait…

Pull-thousand—her body jerked upright and the chute unfurled. She checked her chute—open, no knots, no twists. Sarah drifted down beside her and her chute popped. Jac grabbed the steering toggles and searched for the landing zone.

Time disappeared. The world became a dizzying dance of lush greens, brilliant blues, and blazing sunlight. She was flying, she was free.

Jac yelled, triumphant.

Chapter Sixteen

“Are you ready for your wilderness adventure?” Sarah asked as she packed her PG bag next to Jac.

“Can’t wait,” Jac said, hoping she sounded appropriately enthusiastic. She was looking forward to the field portion of the training. Being cooped up at base was driving her stir-crazy, and sleeping next to Mallory was torture. Especially considering Mallory had barely talked to her since the jump over a week before. Mallory’d been polite enough, saying good morning just before quickly disappearing down the ladder, offering a bland good night if Jac wasn’t asleep, which she usually wasn’t, when Mallory finally came to bed in the dark hours of the night. Unless Mallory was a vampire, she was staying up most of the night to avoid retiring at the same time as Jac. Okay, maybe that was being a little paranoid, but the casual, impersonal exchanges were worse than silence. The last thing Jac wanted from Mallory was casual, and admitting it, knowing it, made her feel ten kinds of impotent. Not a feeling she enjoyed. Helplessness made her short-tempered. Even Ray had noticed and asked her what was wrong. She’d told him she was fine. She wasn’t about to discuss Mallory with anyone, especially one of the guys. Even one of the good guys.

“Gosh,” Sarah said, “someone got out of the wrong side of bed this morning.”

“Sorry.” Jac sighed. “I really am looking forward to being out in the woods. Climbing a few trees sounds like a lot more fun than throwing myself off a platform onto the ground.”

“I always hated that part of the training too.” Sarah laughed. “I mean, after all, that’s why we jump with parachutes. And you have to admit, the jumping is fun.”

“Awesome.” Jac couldn’t help but smile just at the memory of the last real jump—the exhilaration still swamped her. The parachute could completely counteract gravity, and landing feet first on the ground after dropping thousands of feet was still a shock, no matter how controlled the landing. At least she hadn’t landed in a tree—yet. Smokejumpers ended up in trees on one out of three landings and had to drop to the ground on the end of a line. So the continued practice of hard landings off the platform in between plane jumps made sense. Jac knew that, but watching Mallory standing just a few feet away for hours, acting as if Jac wasn’t even there, was eating her up inside. Jac had never wanted to be seen so much by a woman, by anyone, before. She’d spent most of her life trying not to be seen, not to be noticed, not to be pegged as Franklin Russo’s daughter. Anonymity meant not being examined, questioned, scrutinized by her peers, by her teachers, by the ubiquitous reporters—all wondering if she held the same views as he did, if she was really a lesbian like the rumor said, if she was really a right-wing bigot underneath everything. She’d tried so hard to fly under the radar, she was stunned when anyone wanted to get to know her. And Mallory, for a while, had seemed to care about who she was and what she thought. Losing that connection was killing her. She couldn’t sleep, she wasn’t hungry, and her body was in revolt. The barest glance from Mallory made her heart race. And she was horny and couldn’t make herself come. Didn’t even want to and most of the time didn’t try. None of which helped her mood a damn bit.

“What are you doing for your night off?” Sarah asked.

“I hadn’t really thought about it yet,” Jac said. She’d been too busy wondering where Mallory had disappeared to. As soon as they’d finished the afternoon’s jump training, this time on the slamulator, Mallory had headed to her office with her clipboard under her arm. By the time Jac had helped store gear and grabbed a quick shower, Mallory’s desk was vacant and the loft empty. Mallory’s bed had been neatly made up with her sleeping bag rolled and tucked at the bottom of the cot, as if Mallory wasn’t coming back that night. The idea that Mallory might be spending the night off base with someone made Jac feel as if a hundred knives were sticking in her belly. She rubbed it, but the pinpricks of pain didn’t go away. “What are you doing?”

“I’m going dancing. Want to come?”

Jac laughed. “Where?”

“A country-western place in Bear Creek.”

“Tell me you’re not going line dancing.”

“I do a mean two-step. What about you?”

“I don’t know how.” Jac hadn’t gone out with friends since before her last tour, and rarely before that. Suddenly the idea of staying in camp with whichever guys were still around seemed pathetic, but her social skills were feeling a little rusty after the debacle with Annabel.