“First of all, I didn’t crash, I landed. Second, it wasn’t a perfectly good airplane, it was out of gas.”

“I seem to remember that being your excuse last time too.” Dave stuck out his bearlike paw to Colt. “Thanks for saving our bacon, flyboy.”

“So that was you, huh?” Colt accepted the offered hand and squinted at a dark smudge on the SEAL’s face. “What’s that?”

Dave reached up and touched his forehead with a grimace. “Oh, just hit my head trying to fend off that helicopter while you took your sweet time getting to us.”

Colt rolled his eyes. “Glad I didn’t drag my feet any longer — it would have really messed up your devilish good looks.”

Dave grinned. “We need to stop meeting like this.”

“Yeah, I thought you said you’d be in touch. What gives?”

“I definitely will.” He paused. “But I got a plane to catch right now.”

Colt looked over Dave’s shoulder and saw a patient being loaded onto the Gulfstream. “Where you headed?”

“Back to San Diego, my man.” Dave nodded at Rucas, then turned and jogged to the business jet medevac.

Colt watched him leave before turning to his wingman, whose face registered nothing but confusion. “What the hell was that all about?”

Colt shook his head. “Long story.”

50

The strange humming noise was becoming more prominent. It wasn’t getting louder. It was just becoming more difficult to ignore. With the humming came a faint glow that was also becoming more difficult to ignore. Like a wedge, it was breaking apart the dark nothingness that had defined her for the last… How long had it been since she’d seen the light?

“She’s coming around,” the unfamiliar voice said.

Her eyelids flickered as if attempting to open but failing to do so. The humming was persistent, and the glow of light was filling her awareness to the point that she could no longer avoid it and retreat inside her comforting darkness. Lisa Mourning opened her eyes but quickly snapped them shut.

The split-second view she had managed to take in was terrifying. She was in a brightly lit tube with wires and hoses and vaguely familiar machines all around her. And then there were the people. They looked friendly enough, but she knew looks could be deceiving.

“Lisa,” another voice said. “Can you hear me?”

It’s a trap.

She knew her captors had used deceit to unbalance her and cause her unending pain. This had to be just another one of their ploys to catch her off guard, to humiliate and hurt her. She couldn’t give in to the temptation, no matter how badly she wanted to go home.

Home.

A faint memory flickered.

We’re here to bring you home, Lisa.

With tentative curiosity, she opened her eyes again and struggled to keep them open so she could examine her surroundings. She didn’t recognize the two people hovering over her, but bits and pieces of information she knew came from her past began to fill in the void.

She was in a plane.

No, this is a jet.

The humming came from the jet engines.

She was strapped to a bed softer than anything she had ever felt before — especially not a concrete floor, wood box, or canvas stretcher. It was warm and soft and felt sinfully exotic.

“How are you feeling, Lisa?” the man standing over her asked.

She parted her lips to answer but felt a stiffness in her jaw she didn’t recognize. She probed the inside of her mouth with her tongue and registered a few simultaneous realizations. She was missing a few teeth she used to have, and her mouth was bone dry.

“Thirsty,” she croaked.

The doctor—yes, that’s what he is—nodded to her and pushed an ice chip against her lips. She opened her mouth slightly and felt the coldness slip into her mouth and dissolve. The moisture felt heavenly, and she felt an immediate sense of relief flood her body.

“More,” she whispered.

The doctor nodded again and pressed several more chips of ice into her mouth to gradually reintroduce water into her system. She was finding it easier to keep her eyes open and looked away from the doctor’s face to examine the rest of the interior. A few words written on pieces of equipment provided more clues that she was no longer being held by the Chinese.

She startled when another man stepped into view. Thick, dark hair framed his tired eyes, but his face was calm and oddly familiar. He wasn’t a doctor, but Lisa had the vague impression she had met him before.

“Hello, Lisa,” the man said. “My name is Connor. Do you remember me?”

Connor.

The name sounded familiar, and she dug into the recesses of her mind to recall from where she had known the dark-haired man. Even his voice had a lyrical quality she knew she had heard before. But the man’s appearance and voice filled her with a sense of dread, as if her body knew there was a reason to be afraid, but the memory remained hidden from her.

She shook her head.

“You are on an Agency plane,” Connor said in a carefully measured cadence. “We are flying you back to California.”