Joint Forces

Praying the rescue wouldn't end up killing them.

Only the strong survive. The words echoed from Scorch's eyes then and now.

Damn straight. J.T. nodded, shifted front for the start of class. Droning voices dwindled with the arrival of the two chemical-warfare instructors from the Civil Engineering Squadron.

At least the nighttime surveillance flights with the DEA were netting results in figuring out who sold out their flight plan. And J.T. welcomed the chance to be a part of the process to nail the traitorous bastards.

Even if the process was slow as hell.

They'd identified the two military leaks. One guy working in aerial port in Rubistan sent back vehicles to the States with the spare tire filled with drugs. The other Air Force leak—in the transportation squadron back in Charleston—took out the contraband. Their reasons were unclear, as were their off-base connections.

Neither had been picked up yet since DEA wanted to topple the whole operation. The two military links were only a small part of the larger operation.

Both men were under twenty-four-hour watch while the surveillance flights continued. Endlessly. God, the bad guys were good at this, but having closure for the shoot down would go a long way toward easing the roar in his head.

For Rena, for his kids, he would figure it all out. She wasn't the same woman he'd married, a woman who filled his life with plants and smiles and just let him be. Now she wanted things from inside him that he couldn't give. And for a man who already felt he hadn't given her near enough, damn but that blew.

Life was easier when they could use sex to work it out, reconnect while relieving stress.

By the time the training filters were being passed around, he'd decided maybe the parking idea wasn't so bad, after all, once Rena finished up with her client. Even if they didn't actually have sex. Yeah, the needy edge would still be there, but so what? Edgy was good. Didn't mean he had to act on it just yet.

He wasn't twenty anymore. He would control himself now. He would have a chance to make headway with her—without worrying about interruption. And he knew just the thing to romance her with, the last thing he would have expected to use. The toughest for him to utilize. But the only tool in his arsenal with which to breach her defenses.

Words.

Hell, talk about underarmed and untrained. He would have to bring in some emergency supplies for reinforcements to go with his pathetic stash of verbal armaments.

"Don't you want to do some word association crap or something?" Bo Rokowsky paced around Rena's sparse office space. He tapped a hanging basket in her lone little window, sent the petunias spinning into a kaleidoscope of pink and purple.

Rena tipped back in her office chair with a slow squeak and resisted the urge to tell him not to kill her favorite plant. The guy was wound tighter than the twisted macramé hanger.

For two prior sessions, her patient had tried to charm his way around answering questions. Yet if he wanted to fly again, he needed to clear the mandated evaluation. Today, she hoped for a breakthrough. She'd studied the way he operated, thought she had his number.

Scorch, Spike … J.T., they'd all been okayed after release in the psych evaluations at Ramstein AFB in Germany. But not Bo.

Every person reacted differently to stress, of course. Bo's youth, his greater injuries, his rootless past may have played a part in diminishing his coping skills. Whatever the cause, the initial debriefing called for further psychological evaluation of 1st Lieutenant Bo Rokowsky once his wounds healed before he could be returned to full flight status.

She'd been surprised when Bo requested her as his counselor since she was married to J.T. She had even gone to her boss to discuss the matter. He'd quickly pointed out that in a small base community, it was impossible to schedule around all the work and friendship connections. Doctors and counselors would forever be referring cases elsewhere. There wasn't a technical conflict of interest. The patient felt more comfortable talking to her. Budget cuts had left them short staffed. She needed to be a professional and do her job.

Bo's initial eval indicated time would likely settle his problem. Something she would have to confirm before he could return to the cockpit.

"Word association is one way to find out about you." She dropped her steno pad on the desk. "Honestly, I prefer just to talk most of the time."

"This should be pretty quick though, right? You just need to find out I'm not about to climb into a bell tower or something."

"That's one way of putting it." She flexed her foot on the chair across from her. The simple sprain, aches, immobility from her accident were making her stir-crazy. What more must Bo have gone through during the deliberate injury of both his hands? "Because of the extent of your injuries in Rubistan, the Air Force wants reassurance you're—"

"Not sporting any loose screws before they let me back in the cockpit. Yeah, yeah, I know, I'm already a wild card as far as my commander's concerned, even before this crap shook down." His dark hair gleamed in the late-afternoon sun streaming through the window as he spun the plant faster. "But you can tell the flight surgeon to tell my micromanaging commander that all the screws in my body—currently located in my arm now, by the way—do appear to be twisted nice and tight. I'm more than ready to resume flying. In fact, the only thing making me go batty these days is too much time piloting a desk."

He abandoned the mistreated petunias for a stroll around the tiny office, combat boots giving off a muffled thud on tile. "I'll admit, I was pretty messed up when I first got back. That was some scary crap over there. But I'm doing better now. Working. Got a new girlfriend, bounced back fast after the old one and I broke up."

"I'll take all that into consideration when I meet with the flight surgeon for the recommendation to Colonel Quade." She seesawed her pen between two fingers. "You don't care for your commander?"

Bo stopped short by her file cabinet. "And you expect me to answer that one? Are you looking to get me booted out the front gate on my ass? Since you're married to one of us, I figured you'd know better than to ask something like that."

So many threads to pick up on in those few words. And she'd get to them all, in time. "Our sessions are confidential. The colonel will only see my recommendation. Not the details on how I arrived at it."

"Since you've seen my file," he said, prying a magnet off the file cabinet, a clear plastic cover over a family photo taken ten years ago, "it's probably no great leap to assume I don't have a lot of experience on how to deal with male authority figures in my life."

"Why would I assume that?"

"How come you're getting paid for me to come up with all the answers?"

"Great job I have here, isn't it?" She smiled.

He grinned back. "All right. I'll play along. It's the government's nickel paying for this anyhow." He held up the family-portrait magnet. "There aren't any photos like this in my past. My old man cut out on us when I was five, cracked under the pressure of paying for all those bicycles and gym shoes. My mother opened a vein rather than live without him. Cops tracked down my old man, who still didn't want the responsibility of picking up the tab for my Nikes and Huffys."

Bo's smile, reputed to have charmed women on every continent, turned tight, hard, lending credence to his fallen angel reputation. He slapped the magnet back on the cabinet. "To give him his due, at least the bastard had enough conscience to make sure he dumped me somewhere decent rather than just cut me loose into the system."

"A Catholic orphanage."

"Ah, so you're reading my file after all. Nice work." He sprawled in one of the two government-issue chairs in front of her desk. "The sisters did good by me. I've got no complaints from then on. Guess I just relate better to women because of those hundreds of mothers in penguin clothes taking care of me."

"And that's a part of why you picked me for your sessions, because I'm a woman."

"Maybe." He grinned again, charming without stepping over the line. The guy was gifted at maneuvering.

She was better. "And since I'm married to 'one of you' then you figured I'd be more likely to cut you some slack."

His boot slid off his knee and thumped to the floor. "Hell. You're as good as Sister Nic."

Nikki? Her daughter? "Sister Nic?"

"At the orphanage, Sister Nic, short for Sister Nicotine. She said most of her prayers in the garden so she could sneak a smoke. I never could get anything past her, either. She was one tough lady, just like you."

"I'll take that as a compliment."

"It was meant as one. She's the finest person I've ever known."

"Is she still alive?"

"Oh yeah, raising hell sneaking her smokes in a nursing home. Just hope she doesn't blow up an oxygen tank with her contraband cigarettes someday."

"Sounds like the two of you are still very close."

"We keep in touch."

"How did she handle your being taken captive?" Even J.T.'s normally stoic mama had broken down on the phone. Rena's fingers tightened around her pen.

In the most horrific call of her life, she'd finished relaying the rest of the facts to the oldest of J.T.'s eight brothers for him to pass along. The hell of it was, she hadn't realized until then that J.T. hadn't told his family about the split. Of course, she hadn't told hers, either, but they hadn't spoken to her since she married J.T.

"You're good at this talking stuff, yes, ma'am. Got me right where you wanted me in the conversation twice in less than five minutes. The government's nickel is being well spent on you."

"Only if you answer my question." She set her pen aside so Bo wouldn't see her hand trembling.

"I never told Sister Nic. I didn't want to worry her. Since the crew members' names weren't on the news, it wasn't a problem keeping it under wraps."

She recognized well that macho mind-set resistant to sharing troubles, always protecting the women without realizing the worry quadrupled without information.

And if they were so busy talking in shortened phrases punctuated with macho backslaps, where was the sounding board for what he'd been through? She would be more reassured if she knew J.T.—

Whoa. Hang on. This was about Bo. She would feel better if she knew Bo had vented to someone like Sister Nic, who could have perhaps drawn upon religious-counseling training.

J.T. had been cleared, right? He was fine.

Except there were levels of "fine" and some of them weren't so "fine." Cleared to work wasn't the same as being a hundred percent when off work. Who would J.T. talk to when the time came to vent?

Jealousy pricked with thorny persistence. "When something as life altering as that happens, you should talk to someone about it."

Bo leaned back in his chair, arms on the rests, so obvious in his primal chest-puffing. "We men aren't big on the touchy-feely chitchat stuff."

Well, now didn't that sound like some other jet-jock she knew? "I've gathered that."

"Besides, while the experience sucked, and I hope like hell never to repeat it, the worst was over pretty quick."

"How so?"

"You know. Don't you?" Defensiveness faded, confusion furrowing trenches in his forehead. "Jesus, I figured J.T. would have told you all this and I wouldn't have to spill every detail."

Lightbulb moment. The real reason Bo had selected her dawned.

Too bad he guessed wrong in assuming her husband told her squat. But then if she let Bo know that, he might well reinvent the past to suit his purposes. If she played along, then at least he would be less likely to lie since he assumed she already knew.