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Just in case.
    “Hell, no,” he said.
    The medic nodded. “Good.”
    As they trudged back up the mountainside, a single refrain kept repeating over and over again in Shane’s head.
    “Night Stalkers don’t quit!”
     

 

     
     

    8
     
    Baghdad, Iraq
    One year earlier

    Having been up in the north, flying Special Forces members of Task Force 20 around in their search for Saddam, Shane had been away from Baghdad for three weeks. And during much of that time, he’d spent a lot of time thinking about Captain Kirby Campbell.
    He’d been lying on his stomach, his butt ignominiously bared, waiting for treatment in the cubicle the triage nurse had stuck him in. The moment Kirby had opened that white privacy curtain, the air in the small space had turned instantly electric, like heat lightning shimmering on the horizon.
    Her lips, the petal-pink color of peonies in his mother’s garden, were bare of any artificial color or gloss. The urge to taste them hit like a bolt of lightning from a clear blue sky.
    And that was just for starters. Shane wanted to taste the rest of her, too. Every lush, womanly inch.
    She hadn’t really given him any sign that she might be interested. In fact, she’d been brisk and efficient. Of course, being an Army officer, she knew better than to flirt on the job.
    If she’d stuck around long enough for him to have gotten out of that undignified position on that steel treatment table, he would’ve put a move on her.
    But before he could get a chance to even suggest they might go out for a pizza, she’d been called out to treat a soldier wounded by a tank gun barrel that had swung around while he’d been driving by atop his Humvee. The barrel had smashed into his face, and from what Shane could tell, it had shattered every single bone.
    So he hadn’t even gotten to say good-bye before heading out again. But even while he flew over the miles of desert, he couldn’t stop thinking about the sexy military doctor, who in no way resembled M*A*S*H’s Hawk-eye Pierce.
    Which was why the first thing he did when returning to the fortress that was the Green Zone was to head to the CHS.
    He’d just reached the hospital when two Humvees came roaring up right next to the hospital doors. The driver of the front one, obviously the top dog of the pack, shouted instructions to the others before tearing into the hospital.
    Thirty seconds later, he’d returned with CSH medics, who, with the other soldiers’ help, loaded four injured men onto gurneys, then raced back into the ER with the team members bringing up the rear. There was a lot of cursing and yelling, and adrenaline pumping so hard Shane could almost smell it over the sweat, dust, and blood.
    Their long hair and lack of identifying patches revealed them to be Special Forces. Shane might not know them personally, but being a SOAR pilot himself made them his brothers, so he didn’t hesitate to go in with them.
    While the team leader—so furious a vein was pulsing on his forehead, making him look in danger of stroking out—yelled about goddamn delays at the goddamn gate leading into the goddamn Green Zone, the medical team began to triage their new patients.
    Shreds of clothing, equipment, watches, dog tags hit the floor, jettisoned in the attempt to save lives.
    Unable to leave, Shane backed up against a wall next to an American flag, staying out of the way as he watched the woman he’d come here to see do chest compressions on a soldier who had more gaping wounds than Shane could count, exposing bones and torn muscle tissue embedded with dirt and shrapnel.
    Meanwhile, one of the uninjured, who’d picked up a bloodied envelope that had fallen from his buddy’s shirt pocket—probably a letter from home, Shane thought—was shouting for him to “Keep fightin’! You’re gonna to make it!”
    He screamed the words, as if shouting them could make them true. His accent was from below the Mason-Dixon line, maybe Mississippi or Alabama. But the