Second Chance - 04 - Broken Wings

  Erin’s eyes filled with hot tears, and her mouth contorted in pain. She covered her eyes with her hand and nodded silently.

  “Then don’t do it,” Madeline said.

  Erin wiped her eyes and looked at her friend. More tears rolled down her face. “I thought you were all for it.”

  “What do I know?” Madeline asked.

  “I have to do it,” Erin whispered, the weight of her fear flattening her words. “I have to get over this, and I don’t know any other way than just to do it.”

  Madeline took Erin’s hand and nested it in both her own. “Things have a way of working out, Erin. They always do.”

  “For you, maybe.”

  “Oh, right. That’s why I got abducted and held captive a few months ago. Don’t forget how we met.”

  Erin hadn’t forgotten. She had been hired to fly Madeline, her friend Sherry, and their captors to safety. It seemed like so long ago. “Even then, it all worked out, Madeline.”

  “Even now, it’s going to work out for you, too,” Madeline returned. “Take last night, for instance. That major hunk fell out of the sky and landed at the youth center. I mean, is that coincidence or what?”

  Erin offered her friend a knowing smile, recognizing her attempt to change the subject. “I wouldn’t use that word, exactly.”

  “Well, whatever works,” Madeline said without regret. “I took one look at that guy and decided I couldn’t send him on his way. He’s almost as good-looking as Sam. Does he sing?”

  Erin grinned. Sam was known for his crazy, off-key singing during most of his waking moments. “I don’t know,” she said, slowly forgetting the terror in the dream, only to remember the soft, peace-invoking thoughts of Addison. “But I’ll find out.”

  Madeline grinned her approval, and Erin reached for the glass again. “By the way,” she whispered before she drank. “Did you notice the color of his eyes?”

  That morning, Erin tried to keep thinking of the color of Addison’s eyes as she prepared for her flight. She donned the uniform with the wings she had worked so hard to earn years ago when female pilots weren’t common, especially at Southeast Airlines. She tied the white bow around her collar and set the black hat upon her head, never once letting herself dwell on the fear that lurked behind every shady corner in her heart.

  For Mick, she thought. I’ll do this for Mick. He wouldn’t want me to quit flying…

  Her hands began to tremble again, and she felt slightly faint. Perfect love drives out fear. Addison had reminded her of that. Addison, she thought. He said I was beautiful. He wants to see me again. Addison, with the jade green eyes…

  The turn of thoughts calmed Erin’s fears and made the task before her more approachable. She’d get through it, and when it was over, she wouldn’t be afraid. She’d have her confidence back…

  She drove to the airport, reminding herself that there was no rain and it was daylight and the sky was clear. It was a perfect day to fly…a perfect day…

  Wary faces watched her as she approached her gate at the airport, and she knew what the crew was thinking. Would she make it this time? Would she be able to go through with it?

  Jack, her captain, waited by the door to the ramp. His smile lacked apprehension, and she wondered where he found his faith in her. “You okay, Erin?”

  Fine! I’m fine! she wanted to scream. Instead, she nodded and smiled tightly. “Yes. Great.”

  “Good,” he said. “It’s a beautiful day.”

  “Beautiful,” she agreed absently.

  She stepped to the window and watched the luggage being loaded onto her aircraft. It was a beautiful day, she thought. So why did she feel only the invisible forces somewhere in that sky, the forces that had foiled Mick’s flight and sent 151 people to their deaths?

  Addison saw Erin the moment he rounded the curve that led to Southeast Gate 14, and mutely he nodded at whatever the chief pilot was telling him. She was dressed in the pilot’s uniform she’d had on the first time he saw her, and again she was staring out that window, hugging her arms, with suppressed terror in her eyes.

  “We’ll get you a representative for your board, to answer questions about policy…,” Jackson, Erin’s chief pilot, who was even superior to Frank, was saying.

  Without meaning to ignore him, Addison stopped and gaped at Erin. Surely she wasn’t flying. Not when she’d already expressed her fear to go up, not when she was shaking so badly now.

  “I think that should make your job…”

  Addison raised a hand to stop Jackson’s rambling, without taking his eyes off Erin’s back. “Excuse me, Bill. I was just…” He turned back to the chief pilot, frown lines distorting his expression. “Is Erin Russell scheduled to fly today?”

  Jackson lifted his shoulders. “I don’t know. I suppose she is, or she wouldn’t be here.”

  Addison’s frown alerted Jackson that there was a problem. “Are you aware of her condition?”

  “She’s been under some stress since the crash,” Jackson acknowledged without concern, “but Frank assured me that she just needed some time. Why? Is there something I don’t know?”

  “Yeah,” Addison said. But, before he was asked to expound, he left the chief pilot and wove through the waiting area toward Erin.

  Erin jumped slightly when Addison touched her back. She turned around, and her first instinct upon seeing him was to smile.

  But Addison’s authoritative look stopped her. “You’re not going up today, are you?”

  “Well…yes. I feel fine,” she said. “I’m ready now.”

  His expression disputed her words. Roughly, he took her hand, raised it, revealing its trembling. “A pilot with complete confidence doesn’t shake like a terrified child.”

  Anger flashed in her eyes, and she jerked her hand away. She saw Jackson coming up behind him and shot Addison a warning look. “You’re out of line, Addison. This is none of your business.”

  “It’s my business when I see a pilot putting an airplane full of passengers in danger.”

  “I’m not putting them in danger! I’m a good pilot!”

  “Then how can you even consider going up today?”

  “I have to, Addison. It’s my job. You do yours, I’ll do mine.”

  “Mine happens to be making sure that crashes don’t recur.”

  “You don’t have the authority to ground me!” she bit out. She turned to her boss, her feelings wavering between hysteria and terror. “Does he, Bill?”

  Bill Jackson stepped between them, a frown graphing his usually preoccupied features. “Wait a minute, Addison. What’s going on here?”

  “She isn’t ready to fly yet,” Addison said. “She’s terrified. She hasn’t come to terms with things yet.”

  “You don’t know what I’ve come to terms with! You don’t know anything about me!”

  “She’s being pressured to fly, because of the takeover,” Addison continued. “Three days ago I heard her telling Frank that making her go up now would be—and this is an exact quote—dangerous and irresponsible. Is that what happened, Erin? Are they making you go up?”

  Flames of rage colored her eyes. “How dare you!” she seethed. “You have no right—”

  “Is someone pressuring you to fly, Erin?” Jackson cut in quietly.

  “No! I’m ready. I am.”

  Addison shook his head slowly and regarded the chief pilot. “She’s right, Bill, about my not having the authority to ground her. But you do. And I have to strongly recommend that you ground her until she can prove to one of us that she’s capable of being responsible for that airplane.”

  She looked beseechingly at her boss. Surely, he wouldn’t listen to Addison. He would let her go ahead with the flight, wouldn’t he? And if he did, would she let him down as soon as she got in the cockpit?

  “I’m sorry, Erin,” the chief pilot said. “Addison has good instincts. I have to trust them.”

  “But—”

  “See me in my office in an hour,” Jackso
n continued. “We’ll work something out to keep you on the payroll in spite of this.”

  The chief pilot left them alone, Erin gaping at Addison, Addison looking regretfully at her. The color of his eyes had changed, she thought bitterly. They were cold now, like the sharp edges of emeralds, full of purpose and reason and the intention to cut right through her if she got in his way.

  Her cheeks blazed even hotter than before. “You jerk,” she whispered. “You made me trust you. You made me drop my guard. I should have known that you’d use that against me the first chance you had.”

  “Erin, this has nothing to do with—”

  “Save it,” she snapped. “Go find somebody else’s life to ruin.”

  Before Addison could find a response, Erin had vanished from his sight.

  Addison tried to get Erin out of his mind for the next few hours as he sat in the hangar, studying the computerized reports of instrument readings he’d gotten back from Washington that day. His team was still working, examining pieces of the plane that hadn’t been sent to headquarters. So many conclusions could be drawn from the angles of damage on the turbine blades, or whether the engines had been running, or the impact with which metal was torn. That was why they’d spent the first week and a half of the investigation with the wreckage right where it had crashed, surveying different pieces in relation to landscape and buildings, to decide exactly how the plane had hit. But there was no getting around the hard evidence he’d found. The plane had flown straight into the ground, with no apparent attempt to pull the nose up to save it.

  Find somebody else’s life to ruin!

  Was that what he was doing? he asked himself. Was he ruining the life that Mick had left as a memory? Was he ruining the lives of Mick’s family? And most importantly, was he ruining Erin’s?

  The noon heat beat down on the metal hangar, warming him unbearably, and making his shirt stick to his body. He walked across the hangar to the table where copies of the other reports lay. He picked up the printed copy of what had been found on the flight data recorder, the metal tape that recorded statistics but no sound. When the cockpit tape was repaired, they’d match the vocal transmissions to this data, and he would know the speed, heading, altitude, vertical velocity, and elapsed time when each radio transmission was made. Until he had the tape, he couldn’t really be sure what had gone wrong. But how could he ignore the evidence until then? And how could he manage the conflict of his feelings for Erin and his feeling about his report? Sid would have a field day with the confusion he was feeling.

  You made me trust you.

  “Blazes,” he whispered, staring at the date before him. Why had he gotten her grounded the way he had? Why hadn’t he been more gentle? More understanding?

  Because he had been so shaken up to see her even attempt it, after what she’d said in Redlo’s office, that was why. Because there hadn’t been time. Because she was under his skin, and when he thought about her, he lost his head.

  Saddam Hussein will become a missionary before she’ll speak to you again, he told himself. Erin hated him now, and he couldn’t blame her. If he hadn’t been so stricken with that sense of responsibility…

  He stopped himself from wallowing in misery. The investigation was all that mattered, he told himself. He’d forget her and just do his job the best way he could. He made a difference, and if she couldn’t see that, then it wasn’t meant to be…

  The other men on his team eyed him cautiously, each starting to speak in turn, then letting the subject of the day’s events drop. It was hard keeping secrets from them, when they often worked together around the clock. They had all heard Bill Jackson a little while ago, when he’d come to assure Addison that Erin was “taken care of.”

  Only Hank, his closest friend on the team, dared to broach the subject. “You did what you had to do, Addison. Don’t sweat it. It’s her problem, not yours.”

  The declaration bore no comfort. “Yeah, well,” he said, knowing his depression over the matter spoke volumes about his feelings for Erin, “I’m not so sure about that.”

  And before any more discussion on the topic could be aired, he found himself loading his briefcase, buttoning his shirt, and leaving the hangar. He’d find her, he told himself, and explain. He’d make her understand. Not because he cared, but so that he could finally concentrate on his work.

  Erin pulled into the Hammon’s driveway and saw Jason in front of the garage, bouncing a basketball listlessly on the concrete. He glanced up and smiled slightly, waved, then hooked the ball into the basket. It bounced back down and rolled off into the ditch beside the drive. Jason didn’t go after it. Instead, he stuffed his hands into his pockets and waited for Erin to get out of the car.

  As she got out and smoothed out the jeans she’d changed into, Erin wondered why she’d come here. Jason didn’t need her misery heaped atop his own. He didn’t need to know of her fears or her anger. For all she knew, he didn’t want to face her after the fight with T.J. But she had been worried about him. Somehow, just helping him cope helped her to cope. “Hi, Jase,” she said, unable to work up much of a smile. “How’s it going?”

  “Pretty good,” he said with no inflection in his voice. He frowned then inclined his head, as if he’d found a major, suspicious flaw in her. “What are you doing here?”

  “I came to see you,” she said. She went to the side of the verandah Mick had built to surround the house, and sat down. “Any crime against that?”

  “No, but I mean…well, I just saw you a couple of days ago, and the day before that, and the day before that.”

  “Are you saying you’re getting sick of me?” she teased.

  “No. I mean your schedule. Four days on, three days off. Shouldn’t you be working today?”

  Erin lowered her face and studied her shoes. The kid was too smart for his own good. She should have known he could see right through her. “No, I’ve decided to take some time off of flying for a while.”

  “Why?” he asked, as if the decision affected him directly.

  “No reason. I’m just tired of the schedule. I need a break.”

  The look on Jason’s young face told her he wasn’t buying her story. “It’s because of Dad, isn’t it?”

  Erin’s eyes flashed, her gaze meeting his head-on, and she knew she should never have come here today. “No, Jason. Really.”

  Jason ambled toward her, scuffing his Reeboks on the pavement. Slowly, he sat down on the deck beside her. “It’s okay,” he said quietly, in a voice that made her forget he was only nine. “You can tell me.”

  She smiled sadly and took his hand. “It’s nothing, really,” she said, trying to keep all emotion from her voice. “I’ve just kind of lost my interest in flying. Bill Jackson is putting me in scheduling for a while, until I decide what I want to do. It’ll be a nice break.” A nice break. Those were Bill’s exact words, as he’d officialized her temporary grounding. He trusted Addison, he said, and had to believe him when he said she wasn’t ready. Besides, Southeast couldn’t afford not to cooperate with the NTSB.

  “What’s scheduling?” Jason asked.

  “Oh, I’ll be working the month-to-month schedules for the crews, working their bids for flights. Finding replacements when someone’s sick, filling open time, reserves, that sort of thing. Apparently the scheduling department is shorthanded since the takeover, because Trans Western has given us some new routes.”

  Jason’s twisted face told her he wasn’t impressed. “And you won’t be flying at all?”

  She swallowed and tried to reinforce her smile. “Not for a while.”

  Jason exhaled deeply. “Why? Dad used to say that flying got in your blood. That a true pilot couldn’t ever really give it up.”

  “It isn’t always that simple,” she said.

  “It is for me,” Jason argued. “I’m gonna learn to fly as soon as my mom lets me. I’m gonna be a pilot like Dad.” He paused and focused on the sky, his young, pale eyes filling with conviction. “I’ll show
everybody that Hammons don’t screw up.”

  Erin laced her fingers together, studying them to keep her emotions at bay. She hadn’t expected such a direct proclamation from Jason. Until now, he’d been evasive about his feelings. “You don’t have to prove anything to anybody, Jason.”

  “But the things they’re saying about him…” Jason looked at Erin and held her eyes, searching them for honesty. “He didn’t screw up, did he, Erin? Dad was too good a pilot to do that, wasn’t he?”

  Erin pulled the stiff child against her, fighting the tears in her eyes. “You better believe he was,” she said. “And anybody who says different better have some hard evidence, ’cause they’re going to get the fight of their life from me.”

  By the time Erin was back home, her anger had reached a fever pitch again. Anger for what Addison had done to her, anger for what Addison was doing to Mick, anger for what Addison was doing to Jason.

  She tore into her apartment and pulled out a blank canvas, quaking at the thought of Jason’s eyes as he’d asked her about the crash, of Addison’s eyes as they’d controlled her. He had betrayed her after she trusted him, and that hurt more than anything else that had happened that day.

  She got her charcoal out of a drawer where she kept it and began marring the white canvas with heavy, vicious marks. If it weren’t for him, she’d be flying now…

  The thought stopped her cold, and she stilled her hand and caught her breath. Would she be, or had he saved her from another instance of humiliation? Had he kept her from freezing again?

  It didn’t matter. He still had no right. No right at all.

  The doorbell rang. Annoyed at the intrusion, she dropped the charcoal and canvas, then went to answer the door. Addison stood there, a look of reluctant regret on his face. His hand shot out to brace the door when she started to close it on him.

  “I have nothing to say to you,” she said.

  Addison pushed his way inside, his eyes as insistent as hers. “No. We have to talk, Erin. You’ve got me all wrong.”

  She crossed her arms and cocked her head up at him. “Then you don’t think I’m unstable and a hazard to the airways, as you told my boss?”