Match Play by Merline Lovelace

Lightning decided it was time to intervene.
    â€œGet me the details on the tournament, will you, Jilly? I need to talk to Hawk.”
    The polite request housed an unmistakable command. To her credit, she didn’t presume on their close relationship by arguing her case further. She did, however, make a face as she straightened and popped him a salute.
    â€œYes, sir!”
    Nick waited until she’d closed the door to pick up the thread. “Jilly made some excellent points. I’d have to clear it with Maggie and Adam before I allow her to go into the field, but…”
    â€œYeah, good luck with that!”
    â€œâ€¦but this is your op. Yours and Rogue’s. The final decision is up to the two of you. Get her take on it and get back to me.”
    Â 
    Dayna took the call from Hawk while circling the shore of a small loch ringed by rolling hills. Black-faced sheep grazed the slopes, lifting their heads to peer over stone walls while Luke navigated the narrow road.
    Dayna stared back at them in disgust as Hawk confirmed that she was on ice until she got a green light from the docs. The news that Jilly had volunteered to step in spawned mixed emotions. Dayna’s initial reaction mirrored Hawk’s. The more he argued against the idea, however, the more she saw its potential. If nothing else, Jilly could maintain the tenuous connection with Kim Li until Dayna returned to the scene.
    â€œSorry, Hawk. I know you don’t like the idea, but I think Jilly would make an excellent substitute if I have to pull out of the tournament. She plays a good game, so she’ll hold her own on the course, and she’s smart.”
    â€œSmart people can end up dead in this business.”
    â€œShe knows that. So does Lightning.”
    â€œShe doesn’t have any field experience.”
    â€œMaybe not, but I’m betting she’s picked up more operational awareness than any of us realize while filling in for Elizabeth these past weeks.”
    She was also all grown up, which Hawk refused to admit. Dayna experienced a momentary qualm when she recalled her brief conversation with Jilly on that very subject. Ruthlessly, she suppressed it. As she’d pointedly reminded Hawk, Gillian Ridgeway was smart. She wouldn’t complicate matters by injecting a personal agenda into the mission.
    Not that it could get more complicated—or more personal. Where she and Luke were concerned, anyway.
    â€œI should know by tomorrow noon whether I have to pull out of the tournament. If I do, Jilly has my vote as a stand-in on the course. She’ll have to jump a plane soon, though, to get to St. Andrews in time for us to bring her up to speed.”
    Assuming Luke could find his way back to St. Andrews, she amended after she’d terminated the conversation with a still-unconvinced Hawk. Although they’d driven less than forty kilometers, they’d traded the neat towns and fishing villages of the coast for windswept moors cut by rushing rivers and deep glens.
    Some five kilometers later the road deteriorated to a dirt track that hugged the shore of the long, narrow loch. Across the lake, the ruins of a castle perched on a high promontory. If there was a hunting lodge anywhere in the vicinity, Dayna couldn’t see it.
    â€œWhere is this place, anyway?”
    â€œWe’re almost there.”
    â€œHow did you find it?”
    â€œIt belongs to an RAF colonel at the base. He’s invited some of us Yanks out to hunt a few times.”
    She tried to envision Luke Harper in tweeds with a shotgun under one arm, stalking deer or quail. The tweeds didn’t work for her but she had no trouble picturing him as a hunter. In essence, that’s what he did every day when he strapped on his two-billion-dollar plane and went after the bad guys.
    â€œThe lodge is pretty rustic,” he warned, slowing for a tight bend.
    Rustic was certainly one way to describe the stone cottage that