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  A rustle sounded from behind Noah, startling the shit out of him, but before he could react, something jammed into his shoulder, something that unbelievably felt an awful lot like a—

  Gun?

  “Keep flying,” said a ragged voice. “Just keep flying.”

  Holy shit. Noah craned his neck. The soft, fuzzy blanket he kept on the backseat was on the floor now. She’d been hiding beneath it, and yeah, the person behind him was most definitely a she. Once upon a time, he’d been considered an expert on the species, and despite her gruff, uneven tones, her voice shimmered with nerves.

  Female nerves.

  Unbelievably, he’d just been hijacked by a nervous woman with a gun. He tried to get a good look at her, but the gun shifted to his jaw, shoving his head forward before he could take in more than a big, bulky sweater with a hood down low over her face—

  “Don’t turn around,” she demanded. “Just keep us in the air.”

  He could. He’d been a pilot ever since the day he’d been old enough, flying on a daily basis, either for a job or on a whim, into a storm or with one on his ass, without much thought.

  He was giving it plenty of thought now. “Hell, no.” His fingers tightened on the yoke. Goddamnit. “What the fuck is this?”

  “You’re flying me to Mammoth Mountain.”

  “Hell, no, I’m not.”

  “Yes, you are. You have no choice.” Then she let out a disparaging, desperate sound and softened her voice. “Look, just get us there, okay? Get us there and everything will be all right.”

  Yeah, except that she didn’t sound as if she believed that line of crap, and he sure as hell didn’t believe it either. Worse, he suddenly had a nasty flashback to another of his flights that had gone bad, six months ago. Only in that one, there’d been no gun, just a hell of a storm in Baja Mexico, where he’d hit a surprise thunderstorm, one with a vicious kick. That time he’d ended up on a side of a mountain in a fiery crash, holding his passenger as she died in his arms....

  So really, in comparison, this flight, with a measly gun at his back, should be a piece of cake. Just a day in the life.

  Knowing it, he swiped a forearm over his forehead and concentrated on breathing. Maybe she was all talk, no show. Maybe she didn’t really know how to use the weapon. Maybe he could talk her out of the insanity that had become his life today. “How did you get in here?”

  The gun remained against his shoulder, but not as hard, as if maybe she didn’t want to hurt him. “No questions, or I’ll—”

  “What? Shoot?”

  She didn’t answer.

  Yeah, all talk, no show, he decided, and reached over to switch his radio on, then went very still at the feel of the muzzle just beneath his jaw now.

  “Don’t,” she said, sounding more desperate, if that was even possible. “Don’t tell anyone I’m here.”

  Hell if he’d suffer this quietly, and he braced himself for action, but then she added a low, softly uttered, “Please.”

  Jesus, he felt like such a fool. Who the hell was she? She’d been careful to stay just behind him, just out of range of his peripheral. He could smell her, though, some complicated mixture of exotic flowers and woman, which under very different circumstances he’d find sexy as hell.

  But not today, the day that was quickly turning into a living nightmare. He couldn’t believe this was happening. Not when he was getting back on the horse. Wasn’t that what Shayne and Brody had told him to do, get back on the horse.

  And he had.

  Was.

  Hence the ski/fuck-his-brains-out weekend.

  What the hell was in Mammoth that was worth hijacking someone? And why was she so desperate to get there? Instinct had him checking the gauges, looking for a place to land.

  “No.” The gun was an emphasis, back to pressing hard between his shoulder blades. “We’re going to Mammoth. Just like you planned.”

  “I didn’t plan for this.”

  “You have a passenger now, that’s all. Everything else is the same.”

  Yeah, he had a passenger. A shaking, unnerved, freaked-out desperate one.

  Give him a thunderstorm in Cabo any day over this....

  “There’s no need to panic, or do anything rash,” she said, and he wondered if she was talking to him—or herself.

  “Yeah, well, if you’re insisting on coming along, then sit.” He jerked his chin toward the copilot seat next to him, because he wanted to see her, wanted to know exactly what he was up against.

  “I’m fine right where I am.”

  Hell if he’d have her at his back with a gun jammed against him for the next hour. “Sit. Down.”

  As if for emphasis, they hit a pocket of air, and the plane dipped. With a gasp, the woman fell backward into the seat behind him.

  Noah smiled grimly. He wasn’t stupid, and he hadn’t been born yesterday. Actually, he hadn’t even been born in this country at all, but in England. He’d ended up here, orphaned as a teen, where he’d proceeded to beg, borrow, and steal his way to his dream.

  A life of flying.

  And she was not going to take that life away from him.

  “You did that on purpose.” Her voice was tight and angry. “Don’t do anything like that again.”

  He hadn’t done it in the first place, but he could have, and would if he got the chance and could manage it without getting his head accidentally shot off, because he really hated it when that happened. “Who the hell are you?”

  “Doesn’t matter.”

  “What’s in Mammoth?”

  “Doesn’t matter.”

  Great. A stubborn female. Who happened to have a gun.

  Never a good combination.

  He glanced back and wasn’t happy to see her standing again, directly behind him so that he still couldn’t get a good look at her.

  “Don’t.” Once again she shoved the gun into his back, a situation of which he was quickly tiring. Right before his crash, adrenaline had pumped through him, but it was nothing compared to what flowed through his veins now.

  Then he’d been scared, to the bone.

  Now he was pissed. To the bone. His radio crackled, and then Shayne’s voice filled the cabin. As a team called Sky High Air, they had a fleet of three jets, three Cessnas, two Beechcraft, a Moody, a Piper, and a Cirrus, and access to others via a leasing network, and had just constructed a building to house them all instead of working out of a very expensive leased wing at LAX. It gave them their own hub, a fixed operating base for their picky, finicky clientele, complete with maintenance and concierge services.

  Not bad for three punks who’d once been nothing more than sorry-ass teenage delinquents.

  “Noah?” Shayne asked via radio. “You there?”

  “I have to answer that,” he told his hijacker. “Or he’ll know something’s wrong.” Without waiting for her response, he pushed the button on the radio. “Here.”

  “Just checking in on your inaugural flight.”

  He was doing fine. Great.

  If he forgot about the gun digging into him.

  “You okay?” Shayne asked.

  Noah hated that his friend even had to ask, but could admit, at least to himself, that the past six months had been just rough enough that Shayne felt he had to. “I’m . . .” He pushed back at the gun. “Hanging in.”

  His kidnapper remained silent, tense.

  “Brody’s flying Mrs. Sinclair to Aspen,” Shayne said. “At least so she says, but she’s had us ready-up four times this past week, only to correct at the last minute. I don’t see today being any different.”

  The idiosyncrasies of the rich and famous didn’t bother him any, as long as they paid for it, but just the words “Mrs. Sinclair” made the butterflies in his stomach tap-dance.

  Mr. Sinclair had been a forty-year-old trust-fund baby who’d built huge resort complexes in every party town along the West Coast while showing off his much younger trophy wife, Bailey Sinclair, an ex-model, a woman who scr