The Rescue Pilot Read online

  A lot of loving people, looking at this prognosis, and hearing that their loved one just wanted to give up, would, with great grief, give in. They would listen to doctors who said it was impossible to save Cait, to doctors who had evidently said Cait was in such a condition the treatment, already uncertain, probably wouldn’t work. But here was a woman who was risking her career, spending a fortune, probably planning to pay for uncovered treatments that would leave her in debt for a long time to come…because she loved her sister.

  That didn’t make Rory one-of-a-kind, but it sure made her relatively rare in his experience.

  They’d been playing in silence for about a half hour when he had to ask the question. “Did you have to fight to get Cait into this experimental treatment?”

  She looked up, her face tightening. “Like a pit bull,” she said finally. “I wondered.”

  “You were right to wonder. She might skew their results because she’s so weak, and that could affect the drug’s evaluation.”

  “So how did you manage it?”

  “I argued my way up the chain until I got to the guys who designed the drug and were having it tested. I managed to convince them that it would help them a whole lot if they got a good outcome with someone so far along. More than it would by only picking people who’d just gotten sick. And then I argued that they could quite easily list her as an outlier because of her condition, and use that as an excuse for removing her from their evaluation if it doesn’t work.”

  One corner of his mouth lifted. “You really don’t give up.”

  “Giving up has never gotten me anywhere. I might not be able to make it, when all is said and done, but if you give up, you never find out, do you?”

  “Absolutely not.” The quiet admiration he’d begun to feel for her despite his initial irritation at her pushiness, grew. “You know, I hope if I ever need someone in my corner, I get someone like you.”

  Thanks to the candle he had placed on the table so they could read the cards, he was able to see her blush. My God, Rory could blush. That tickled him somehow. He would have thought her long past it.

  “Just doing what needs doing,” she said quietly.

  Exactly what most heroic people said, he thought. He was tempted to say so, but figured he’d embarrassed her enough.

  She pushed her cards aside. “Enough of that.”

  “Sure.” He started scooping them up into a neat pile.

  “Maybe more later.”

  He nodded, sensing that her mind had wandered off somewhere. Probably to the hours, perhaps days, ahead. He was with her in worry right now. But he could hardly tell her how furious and sickened he would feel if Cait were lost while in his care. Because she was in his care. He was captain of this crashed ship, and her life was in his hands as surely as if he were one of her doctors. He had to get her out of here before her medicine ran out, before she came down with something else in her weakened state.

  Nor was he the kind of man who could just shrug it off and say it wasn’t his fault the plane crashed and that Cait was so ill.

  No, he wasn’t made that way. It was killing him that at the moment he could do so little to protect his passengers, especially Cait. He knew they could hang out for weeks in this plane. He had enough food, enough candles, and with the snow there’d be plenty of water. But none of that would help Cait if her drugs ran out. Four days. By the time the storm blew through, they’d be down to two. If the beacon wasn’t working…

  He didn’t want to think about that. Sitting here waiting for rescue without a beacon, in a plane that would be invisible under the snow, might cost them Cait. So if they didn’t get GPS back, how long could he afford to spend trying to fix things before they’d have to try to hike out, because waiting would ensure Cait’s death?

  He didn’t like their odds.

  He leaned back, closing his eyes for a moment. Cuss-words floated through his mind, but they didn’t help at all, especially since he held them in. A little swearing might ease his anger at this situation, but doing it silently inside his head just fueled his rage.

  Some freaking mechanic somewhere was going to pay for this.

  He looked at Rory. “People make mistakes.”

  “Yes, they do.” Her look questioned him.

  “But some people, given what rides on what they do, shouldn’t make them.”

  “I agree. But, unfortunately, they do anyway. Even brain surgeons.”

  “I know.”

  “The point is?”

  “Right now I’d like to strangle a mechanic.”

  “Ah.” One corner of her mouth lifted. “I felt that way just recently about some roughnecks.”

  “I’m sure you did. I’m just really angry right now.”

  “So vent. I’m angry, too. I was going to be angry with you, until you explained what happened. I’ll join you in thinking of horrible ways to deal with that mechanic, whoever he is.”

  “It had to be mechanical failure.” He’d run over this in his mind a thousand times since the crash, but for some reason he needed to run over it again. “Something caused us to lose fuel fast—faster than a simple leak. And I can’t think of anything except that something was wired poorly—or loose—something that caused us to just dump the fuel. It happened that fast, and I couldn’t stop it.”

  She nodded. “Kinda like I felt when I realized those guys hadn’t stopped drilling.”

  “Yeah.” He shook his head, all of a sudden back in the cockpit in those minutes leading up to disaster. “Fuel jettison equipment was optional on this plane.”

  “You mean they don’t all have it?”

  “No. It depends on the structure. Some planes don’t have to lighten their loads to land safely. This one had it as an option, and obviously I didn’t buy it new. But I thought it was an advantage.”

  “Why?”

  “Because the last thing you want in a crash is a lot of aviation fuel onboard. So I just felt it was better to have a plane with a jettison system than one without. Never occurred to me it might cause a crash.”

  “Do you suppose because it was optional somebody didn’t check it out?”

  “I don’t know. I guess the NTSB will find out. If that’s what happened. I’m just guessing that’s the cause, but I suppose something else could have gone wrong.”

  “The more complex the equipment…” She let the thought dangle. He certainly didn’t need her to finish it.

  He closed his eyes again, envisioning the gauges as the whole flight went to hell. By the time he was sure what was happening and that he couldn’t stop it, they were in deep trouble. That fast.

  “Reliving it won’t help,” she said quietly.

  His eyes snapped open. “You read minds?”

  “Sometimes. No, it’s just that I know. I replayed my orders to those roughnecks a thousand times. I wrote down my exact words and had a native Spanish speaker look them over. I hadn’t misspoken in either language. Then I moved on to wondering what else I could have done.”

  “I’ll get there, I suppose.”

  “Maybe not. You got us down in one piece. I don’t know a whole lot about planes, but when the engines flamed out, a lot of other equipment probably stopped working, too.”

  “It did. And when I replace this plane, I’m getting one with a windmill, to generate power if the engines fail. We have some auxiliary power, but it’s not a lot and it doesn’t work for long. Shortly after the flameout, I started to lose my hydraulic pumps. Mechanics alone weren’t enough. The aux drains fast.”

  “I thought so. From my narrow knowledge base, I assumed most of the power was coming from the turbines.”

  “It does, because that’s efficient. The engines do two jobs. If you think about it, it makes perfect sense. When do I need aux power? Just for the length of time it takes to board and get the engines going. Or long enough to run emergency lighting for evacuation. Why carry another generator?”

  “I agree.”

  He shook his head, tired of h
is own internal hamster wheel. “The odds against this were incredible. No amount of planning would have conceived of this.”

  “Unlike my well disaster.”

  “Point taken.”

  She smiled faintly. “I wasn’t trying to make any point. That was agreement.”

  He liked being able to talk to her, he realized. She understood what fascinated him in ways most people didn’t. She might not be intimately acquainted with planes, but she could discuss aviation intelligently and she didn’t give him the feeling that she was hiding boredom.

  Another sign that he’d been selecting all the wrong women. “So flying is my life, and oil is yours.”

  She nodded. “For now. Someday I hope to have things built up enough that I can delegate more, maybe spend less time in the field. I actually feel pretty rootless now.”

  “At least I have a home base. Do you?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t keep an apartment or anything. My office is my computer and my cell phone. Soon I hope to be a little beyond that. With a real office. And not needing to be in the field quite so much.”

  She averted her gaze briefly. “I wasn’t thinking about the really important issues. This situation has made me reconsider. A career isn’t everything. I haven’t even been good about visiting Cait. I just assumed she was happy with Hal and didn’t need me.”

  “How could you know if she didn’t tell you?”

  “I know, but I still feel guilty. You take some things for granted until life rears up and reminds you that you might lose them.”

  “I think we all do that.”

  “I’m sure. But it doesn’t make it right.” She gave another little shake of her head, looked at her sister and then at him again. “I’ve been questioning myself a lot the last couple of weeks. About what’s essential, and where I really want to be in ten or twenty years. Cait had the life she wanted all laid out in front of her, and now look. So what’s life about, Chase? Have you ever figured that one out?”

  He shifted a little, feeling a bit awkward. He wasn’t used to discussions like this, at least not since his youth when cosmic questions had been hot topics. At twenty you thought of them, and believed you might figure them out. Then you got older and got way too busy to even wonder.

  Yet what better time than now, stranded on a mountainside in a blizzard, in the company of a very sick woman? He could well understand why Rory was wondering, and if he were honest with himself, he probably should be wondering, too.

  “I haven’t been thinking about it,” he admitted. “Flying is—was—my whole life. I expend most of my efforts to keep myself in the air. To grow my business enough that I don’t have costly downtime. But…that’s not enough, is it?”

  “Are you asking me?”

  “I’m asking myself, but I’ll listen to answers.”

  “It’s not enough,” she said firmly. “It’s not that I haven’t been living, but I’ve been living with such an intense, single-minded focus. Cait’s illness has forced me to think about the parts of life I’ve been neglecting. I’m not sure yet which ones I want, but one thing I’m fairly certain of is that my life is going to broaden after this. I can’t be consumed with work and business, however adventurous it may seem.”

  “A lot of people would think you live a broad life already. Travel, other cultures, that sort of thing.”

  “But it’s all about work. I don’t put down roots—all my friends are in the business. I’ve been asking myself what I’ll have left when that’s gone. Not much.”

  “I know. I haven’t been thinking about it, but you’re making me.” He felt emotions beginning to roil inside him, emotions he couldn’t quite identify. It was as if he sensed a big change coming, but didn’t know what it might be or if he would like it.

  And for the last day, since the crash, he’d been looking at Wendy and Yuma. They were so close they seemed to communicate without words, to find comfort in each other’s presence. To be a self-sustaining unit even in the midst of crisis. If he allowed himself to be honest, didn’t he want the same kind of relationship? Eventually?

  “It’s easy,” Rory said, “to push matters down the road. To tell yourself you’ll get to it later. Well, time is passing, and how can I be sure there’ll be a later?”

  “Obvious question right now,” he admitted.

  Her gaze grew intense. “Let’s be honest,” she said. “We can’t be sure we’ll get out of this mess. There’s no guarantee. Not just for Cait, but for any of us.”

  He didn’t argue, because even though he believed they could make it, with the possible exception of Cait, the fact remained that he hadn’t planned on a plane crash, either. What if he hadn’t been able to bring them down in one piece?

  “I don’t think I’d like my own epitaph,” he admitted. “What’s it going to say? He flew?”

  “Yeah. Mine wouldn’t be much different. It’s going to be an empty tombstone if I don’t make some changes.”

  “Do you have any in mind?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Cait wanted to have a family. She couldn’t and they didn’t discover why until they diagnosed her illness.”

  “You want a family?”

  “I’ve begun thinking about it. I mean, what does it come down to, Chase? What is our legacy going to be? If we die in the next few days, what will it all have meant?”

  “I don’t know.” But she was sure making him think about it. “You’re right. It’s easy to just push stuff down the road. And some of them…well, it’s not as if you can just make them happen.”

  “True,” she admitted. “Having a family means finding the right person to do it with. But there are other things. Other legacies. Other reasons for people to say I didn’t just take up space. Kids aren’t the only one.”

  “No. But maybe the one that matters is love. And if that’s the case, you’re doing a damn fine job of it with your sister.”

  In the flickering candlelight, he saw her mouth curve into a faint smile. “Love? A man mentions love?”

  Now he really did feel awkward. “Why not? You want to talk about the meaning of life and what matters, well, even a stupid guy like me can figure out that what matters is the lives you touch, and how you touch them.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said instantly. “I guess I’m a little down on men at the moment. Cait’s husband.”

  “And those guys who didn’t listen to you about not drilling.” But he appreciated her apology anyway. At least she wasn’t the kind of woman who hated all men on principle. If he was going to be disliked, he wanted it to be for something he’d done. There’s been ample reason in his life for that. Wasn’t there for everyone? But a sense of discomfort began to niggle at him.

  “I work with men all the time,” she went on. “Most of the time, in fact. I really don’t have anything against men in general. I don’t know why that popped out.”

  “I do,” he said with a quiet laugh. “Most guys do run like scared rabbits at the mention of love.”

  Her smile widened. “You’re not talking about only that kind of love anyway.”

  “No, I’m not.” Unaccustomed as he was to this kind of discussion, he found himself reluctant to drop it. The quiet intimacy growing between them in the near dark was satisfying something in him, just as their earlier sex had satisfied a need. Only this one seemed so much more profound.

  So he looked for a way to continue it. “Yuma,” he said finally.

  “What about him?”

  “He tried to walk away from life,” Chase said thoughtfully.

  “Wendy said something about that.”

  “Yeah, for years he lived in these mountains with a bunch of Vietnam vets who couldn’t handle the rest of the world. I don’t know a whole lot about post-traumatic stress disorder, but I guess if you live among triggers, it can get pretty bad.”

  “That’s what I hear.”

  “So he hid for a while. Then he came down out of the mountains and started flying our medevac helicopt
er. The same kind of helicopter he’d flown in Vietnam.”

  “I can only imagine how hard that must have been,” Rory observed.

  “Me, too. Anyway, he never forgot the rest of the guys in the mountains. And every working day he does something important for really sick people. Long after he’s gone, people in Conard County are going to remember him.”

  “Not everybody can have that kind of impact, though,” Rory noted.

  “No, but right now I’m flying tycoons around. It’s a job that pays me to do what I love. That’s not a legacy. That’s a toy.”

  “Whoa!” She looked shocked. “Don’t put yourself down like that. You said you had friends. Maybe you do a lot for them and don’t even realize it.”

  “I don’t know,” he said ruefully.

  “Man!” It almost sounded like a curse. “So what should I say? I run around finding oil for tycoons? Ouch.”

  “I didn’t say anything about you.”

  “You didn’t have to. The thing is, you’re right. Obviously, we both do something that people are willing to pay us to do, but if that’s all we do…” She trailed off, frowning.

  Chase felt annoyed with himself. His own self-examination hadn’t been intended to put her down, but he’d done just that.

  As he began to wonder if she’d ever say another word to him, she spoke. “Clearly, at least I need to do something in addition to work. Just more food for thought.”

  At least she wasn’t angry at him, but he was a bit angry at himself. He seemed to be finding maturity late, propelled by this woman’s devotion to her sister. Things to which he hadn’t given much thought gnawed at him now. He wasn’t that old—thirty-six—but he ought to realize by now that in a few eyeblinks he’d wake up some morning and realize that he was forty. Then fifty. He was no longer the young turk who had graduated from the academy and leapt into a career of flying high-performance jets. If failing his flight physical hadn’t gotten that through to him in an enduring way, this certainly had.