“Kick ass, sir!” She’d lifted her chin and saluted, aware of the mothers looking her way, no doubt horrified at the rough and tough–looking little girl with the nasty language.

Her own social status had been cemented that long-ago day, but her grandfather had tossed his head back and roared with gruff laughter, as if it had been their own private joke.

And it had been. She’d lost her parents two years before that in a car accident, and by kindergarten her memory of them had faded. Few had dared interfere with her grandfather, and as a result, there hadn’t been much softness in her childhood. That had been fine with Lyndie, who wouldn’t have recognized softness anyway.

They’d moved from base to base, and after her grandfather had whipped each of those bases into shape, they’d take off for the next. She couldn’t remember how many schools she’d attended, having lost track at the count of fifteen before graduating and gravitating toward a similar nomadic lifestyle as a pilot for hire. But she could remember how many different planes she’d flown. She could remember each and every one of them, with her grandfather riding shotgun, teaching her everything he knew.

Those planes had been her real home, and over the years she’d honed her skills, flying whatever she could get her hands on and loving it. When her grandfather died and his nest egg had come to her, she’d upgraded her old beater Cessna 172 to a six-seater 206, which some liked to say was nothing but a big old station wagon with wings.

She loved her Station Air as she fondly referred to it. The big thing sure came in handy. Now, at twenty-eight, she worked for an international charity organization out of San Diego called Hope International. She was paid to fly volunteering experts into regions desperate for their aid. Doctors, dentists, engineers, financial experts…she’d flown so many she’d lost track.

She was flying one such expert now, a U.S. forest firefighter this time, to a small but remote wildland fire in the Barranca del Cobre, an area in northwestern Mexico.

Thanks to her job, she’d spent a lot of time in this particular mountainous region. Surprisingly enough, she’d fallen for the wide, open, undiscovered beauty, and had made it her mission to fly south as often as possible, ensuring that each and every one of the myriad of hidden villages received dental and health care, or whatever they needed. Not a small job.

But right now one of her favorites, an especially isolated village named San Puebla, needed help with a slash-and-burn ranch fire. Due to limited water sources and remoteness, the flames had escaped control. Compounding the problem was the severity of the drought this year, and the fact that wildfires had become a nationwide crisis.