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that she’d thought in the general terms of their relationship ending a month ago rather than counting the twenty-seven days that had actually passed. Or was it twenty-eight? While she might not miss him, she did long for the casual intimacy of being with someone. She’d liked the human contact while it lasted and missed it.
    But this was Vern Taylor, the handsomest flyboy in MHA and one of her coworkers—an absolute recipe for disaster. Men like him didn’t notice women like her when they could have any cute girl passing through Hood River, Oregon, to windsurf the Columbia Gorge. What was she thinking? He always hooked up with the tall, loud, flashy ones who laughed brightly and easily. And probably gave the same way.
    Personally, she’d never found sex to be the least bit easy. Occasionally good, but it complicated all matters and everything connected with them.
    Like easing right on the cyclic to tip the rotor swash plate, she pulled away from Vern enough to create a small distance between them. But she didn’t shift so far that she couldn’t still see the hose…or sense the warmth of his closeness on her cheek.
    â€œThis Black Hawk…” Denise actually had to swallow to clear the lonely taste her thoughts had left in her throat, as if the emotion was a bad flavor. “It served with the 101st Airborne, the Screaming Eagles. Three tours, I think.”
    Jasper had always been on her about how precise she was about everything. Four miles, not three miles to the nearest restaurant—rounded up from 3.85. “Sixty-five degrees outside,” not “in the sixties.” “It’s seven thirty-eight,” when asked the time. She wasn’t being fussy; it was simply how she thought about things. She’d slowly been forced to append most of her conversations with “I think” or “about” or “somewhere around” until she stuttered like a mistuned radial engine.
    Well, she was done with that.
    â€œThree tours.” She repeated definitively, then added the beginning and ending dates of service because she knew the history of every one of her birds from the moment they flew off the assembly line—and to hell with any man who didn’t like it.
    Except for Firehawk Oh-Two. Something very strange had happened to that helicopter last winter, but she’d never been able to uncover what. And when she’d pushed, she’d not only been stonewalled. She’d been told flat out that questions were unwelcome and were a job-level “didn’t need to know.” Finally, when she still didn’t back down, her questions were deemed a security-level risk.
    With no explanation and a maintenance record that displayed odd discrepancies, she didn’t trust the craft. Without telling anyone else why, she’d had her team help strip the bird down and put it back together, but it was as flawless as any aircraft she’d ever seen. Yet it still wasn’t the bird she’d sent to Australia last year to fight bushfires.
    She wondered if Vern knew what had happened, but she’d guess not. He hadn’t traveled with the two Firehawks when they’d split off from the rest of the MHA team to fight a different bushfire.
    Vern didn’t comment about her elaborate precision and total command of Firehawk Oh-Three’s service record. Instead he was once more inspecting the hose in the distant camp lights.
    She no longer had any excuse to remain leaning so close, so she sat back in the pilot’s seat. But now she could feel his shape in the shapeless pilot’s seat. How pathetic was she?
    â€œThat’s a bullet crease.”
    â€œIt’s what?” She rapped his ribs hard with her elbow as she leaned back over to see.
    â€œEasy there, Wrench. You could hurt a fella. See?” He held it out again.
    â€œYou’re right. It looks like the bullet cut through the first layer or two of the hose. How did