Up Close and Dangerous (4 page)

Her limited experience with rafting had taught her that she’d rather have something and not need it than need it and not have it. On the second of her two previous excursions, she’d gotten her period a few days early, and she’d been completely unprepared. What should have been fun had instead been misery, because she’d had to use her extra socks as pads, which meant she’d endured cold, wet feet for almost the entire trip.
Not
fun. This time she had pored over travel-oriented mail-order catalogs beforehand, and ordered everything she could imagine using, such as a pack of disposable sponge toothbrushes, waterproof poker cards, and a book light.

Logan would tease her about overpacking, but she’d have the last laugh if he happened to need anything from her cache. She even had a small roll of duct tape in case her tent sprang a leak, which had
also
happened on that last, miserable trip. She liked rafting, and when she was in the raft being wet and cold was part of the fun, but when she wasn’t actually in the raft she wanted all the comforts of home. Okay, so she was being a girly-girl, but she was sure Peaches would also prefer the aloe body wipes over the joys of washing with a bucket of river water and a bar of soap.

She’d been looking forward to this trip so much that she couldn’t bear the idea of a delay, even if being on time meant she had to endure the company of Captain Justice. She wanted to snort in derision every time she heard the name.
Captain Justice,
for God’s sake. It sounded like the title character of a comic book.

He’d hefted her three bags into the luggage compartment without even a grunt, but though his expression looked set in stone she’d known what he was thinking; that she’d packed her entire closet. If he’d been human he’d have at least looked a little incredulous, or asked her if she had rocks in there; Bret would have grunted and acted as if the suitcases weighed even more than they did, made a joke out of it. Not Mr. Stone-face, though; she’d never seen him so much as smile.

When he helped her into the plane, the firm grip of his hand had been so unexpected she’d almost faltered. Bret didn’t help her, she realized; for all his easygoing camaraderie, he was very careful not to encroach on her personal boundaries, which admittedly had expanded a lot since she’d married Jim. She simply didn’t trust most people now, which made her stiff and unapproachable. Captain Justice either hadn’t noticed her “do not touch” signs, or he simply didn’t care. His grip was strong, his hands harder and rougher than those of the business executives and stockbrokers with whom she usually associated. The shock of being touched, the heat of his hand, actually made her heart lurch.

She was so dismayed she barely registered his order to move to the other seat. As soon as she’d belted herself into the seat he’d indicated, she dug out her book and pretended to be absorbed in it, but mentally she was kicking herself.

How pitiful was she that she would respond so easily to the simple touch of a man’s hand? Not just any man, either, but one who clearly disliked her. Okay, so her love life was currently nonexistent; it would remain that way as long as she had to deal with Jim’s children, because she refused to give them either ammunition or a target. Yes, there were times when she felt incredibly horny, but she hoped she had enough pride not to ever reveal that to someone like Justice, to allow him to think she had such a low opinion of herself that any man would do.

The hell of it was, physically, he
was
an attractive man—not handsome, not a pretty boy at all because his face was too rugged for that, but definitely…attractive. There was something compelling about gray eyes, and his were a lighter shade than usual, with just a faint hint of blue. The expression in those eyes was usually cold and remote, as if he had no feelings at all.

He and Bret were evidently good friends, though she couldn’t imagine him in any sort of real friendship with anyone. When Bret talked about him, though, he sounded as if he really liked and respected Justice. “A pilot’s pilot” was how Bret had once described him. “Completely cool. I swear, there’s not a nerve in his body. He could hold a KC-10 steady in a hurricane, and not break a sweat.”

Bailey had been curious enough, later, to go online and find out exactly what a KC-10 was.

It was easy, now, to imagine him in the cockpit of the huge supertanker, holding it steady while plane after plane swooped up behind him to be refueled. She hadn’t read exactly how that worked, but she didn’t think it could be easy, not at hundreds of miles an hour, being buffeted by high winds.

She surfaced from her thoughts to realize she’d stopped staring at her book and was instead staring at his hands, so sure and steady on the controls. Mortified, she snapped her gaze down again. Thank God she had on sunglasses, so he couldn’t tell she’d been staring at him—though he probably wondered how she could read through the dark lenses. She couldn’t, but he didn’t need to know that.

She felt self-conscious and uncomfortable, which wasn’t like her at all. She needed to relax and get her mind on other things. If she pulled off her sunglasses she would actually be able to read, and the book was a good one, but when she reached up to remove the glasses she didn’t get them all the way off before shoving them back in place again. They were a good shield, and she felt as if she needed one.

Okay, reading was out. A nap, maybe?

It was too early in the day, barely midmorning. She could pretend to nap, the way she’d been pretending to read, but that wouldn’t redirect her thoughts.

If she’d brought her laptop she could have played some games, but she’d left it at home. She wouldn’t have Internet access for the next two weeks, so after its battery died the computer would have been useless weight she’d have to lug around, unless she’d also wanted to carry spare batteries, which she hadn’t, not when she was already taking so much stuff. Their guide was supposed to have vehicles that took their camping gear and personal items from site to site, but there were three rafts, each with six people, so that meant the gear and paraphernalia of eighteen people had to be carted around. She hoped the guide had some damn big vehicles.

The prospect of the next two weeks filled her with excitement. Some of the rafting would be fun, some would be exciting, some of it downright dangerous, but for two weeks she wouldn’t have to watch every word she said, and she wouldn’t be surrounded by people who either openly despised her or looked askance at her. She would be able to relax, to laugh and have fun, to be
herself.
For two weeks, she was free.

She looked out the window for a while, watching Washington’s vast expanse beneath them. Commercial airliners were fast, but she preferred flying in smaller craft because she could see so much better at the lower altitudes. The loud drone of the engine was hypnotic and she actually did doze a little, her head resting against the back of the leather seat. The morning sun hit the windshield, warming the interior of the plane until she began to feel too warm and removed her lightweight silk jacket. She wouldn’t wear silk again for two weeks, she thought drowsily; the silk bed-sack she’d brought, in case her sleeping bag got too hot or too cool, didn’t count.

When she glanced at her watch, she saw with surprise that they’d been in the air almost an hour and a half; time had seemed to be crawling, but maybe she’d dozed longer than she’d thought. “Where are we?” she asked, raising her voice so he could hear her.

He lifted one earpiece of his headset and glanced over his shoulder at her. “Ma’am?” he asked; his expression was cold, but his tone was polite. Barely.

“Where are we?” she repeated.

“Coming up on Idaho.”

She looked through the windshield and saw enormous white-capped mountains looming straight ahead. Her heart jumped and she couldn’t contain a gasp; they were on a collision course with the mountains unless this little plane could go higher—a
lot
higher.

He replaced the earpiece, but she thought she saw a flicker of satisfaction in the set of his mouth. From her angle she couldn’t really tell, but if he’d heard her gasp she had no doubt he was amused. Of course the plane could go higher; they wouldn’t be in this one if it couldn’t.
Jerk,
she thought irritably.

Settling back in her seat, she stared at the mountains. They were still a good distance away, but their size was so overwhelming that they seemed to be crouching right in front of her, like huge prehistoric beasts, waiting for her to get closer before they rose up and pounced.

What was it about mountains? They had always tickled her imagination. In reality they sat there, big wrinkles in the earth. From the air they reminded her of a piece of paper that had been badly crumpled, then halfheartedly straightened. Unless they were volcanoes, the mountains never actually
did
anything, so why did they always seem so alive to her? She didn’t mean “alive” as in they had trees growing on them, or animals both small and large prowling around, but alive as in the mountains themselves seemed to live and breathe, to each have a personality, to communicate with one another. When she was little, she had thought hills were a mountain’s children, that when the hills grew up they would become mountains, and as they grew all the houses that had been built on them would go sliding off. She could remember being terrified any time she visited a home on even the teeniest slope, thinking that at any minute the ground would start rising beneath their feet and they’d begin sliding to their deaths.

By the time she was ten she knew better, but she never quite lost the feeling that the mountains lived.

Gray clouds were building ahead, butting and surging against the mountains as some weather system tried to build enough momentum to make it up and over. The old ladies were dressing up, she thought; the clouds draped around the mountains’ shoulders like a dirty boa, with the snowcaps jutting above and the broad green bases below.

As they droned closer to the mountains, Justice began taking them to a higher altitude. The pitch of the engine changed as the air grew thinner. Thin wisps of clouds wrapped around them, then blew away; the aircraft hit a few bumps in the air, jolting her.

Leaning forward, she tried to make out the altitude reading, but they hit another rough patch and she couldn’t focus on the numbers.

“What’s our altitude?” she asked loudly.

“Thirteen-five,” he said without taking his hands from the controls or looking at her. “I’m taking us up to sixteen.”

The air smoothed out as they climbed above the bumpy thermal layer. She looked down, doing the math in her head. They were two and a half miles high. The
Titanic
had sunk almost that deep in the ocean, about two and a quarter miles. That was a long way down, she thought, thinking of the glittering ocean liner with its lights extinguished, drifting down, broken and dark, all life gone. She shivered, suddenly cold, and reached for her jacket. She paused before putting it on, though, watching the first giant earth-wrinkle slide past beneath them.

The engine coughed.

The bottom dropped out of her stomach as if she were on a roller-coaster ride. Her heartbeat was suddenly thumping hard in her chest. Bailey leaned forward again. “What was that?” Her tone was a little tight, edged with alarm.

He didn’t answer. His posture had changed, going from relaxed to completely alert in a millisecond. That alarmed her more than the slight break in the engine’s monotonous drone. She gripped the edge of the seat, her nails digging into the leather. “Is something wrong?”

“All the readings are normal,” he replied briefly.

“Then what—”

“I don’t know. I’m taking us down a little.”

A little
was right, she thought numbly, staring at the enormous, jagged mountains that abruptly seemed way too close beneath them, and coming closer. He couldn’t take them down very far or they’d be skimming the mountaintops. But the engine seemed to have smoothed out; if that little hiccup had signaled anything serious, wouldn’t it have continued?

The engine coughed again, hard enough that the airframe shuddered. Bailey sat frozen, watching the blur of the propeller blades, listening to the motor as she willed the sound to even out again. “Keep going, keep going,” she urged under her breath. “Just keep going.” She imagined the steady sound, pictured the propeller turning so fast she couldn’t see it. In her mind the plane lifted up and over the mountains, if she just concentrated fiercely enough it would actually happen—

The engine sputtered a few times…and stopped.

The silence was sudden, and complete. In wordless shock she watched the blur of the propeller slow, become distinct blades, and then it…stopped.

5

“S
HIT!”

Captain Justice spat the word through clenched teeth; his hands moved swiftly as he tried to restart the engine, tried to keep the nose up. They were so close to the mountains that if the nose dropped, they would go straight in. The landscape below was a study of stark, inhospitable contrasts: snow-covered crags and boulders, the snow so white it was almost blue, the shadows so dark they were black. The slopes were steep and jagged, dropping away in sharp, almost vertical angles. There was nowhere to land, nowhere even remotely flat.

Bailey didn’t move, didn’t breathe. She couldn’t. The awful paralysis of absolute terror and helplessness seized her body, her voice. There was nothing she could do to help, nothing she could do to change the outcome. She couldn’t even scream a protest; all she could do was watch, and wait to die. They
were
going to die; she saw no way out of it. In a few minutes, maybe even a few seconds, they were going to crash on the rocky, snow-covered top of this mountain. For now, for a precious frozen moment, they seemed to float in place, as if the plane hadn’t quite given in to the laws of gravity—or the mountains were playing cat-and-mouse games with them, letting her feel a faint, unreasonable hope before snatching it away.

“Mayday, Mayday, Mayday!”

Dimly she heard Justice on the radio, calling out the distress signal, their plane designation, and current location, then he cursed viciously and fell silent as he fought the inevitable. The plane dropped suddenly, a move that sent her stomach climbing into her throat, and she squeezed her eyes shut so she couldn’t see the rocky peaks rushing at them. Then the left wing rose as the right one dipped and they rolled to the right, a nauseating maneuver that made her swallow convulsively. A few seconds later the right wing rose and for a brief—very brief—time they were level. Then the left wing dipped and they swung to the left.