“Absolutely not. Sam was going with you. You’ve been looking forward to this trip for weeks.” She knew the last thing in the world Madeline wanted was to lose the opportunity to spend time in the company of the man she was in love with. And if Erin knew Sam, he wouldn’t be crazy about the idea, either.
“But he was going to visit friends there, too. He can go on and I can go in a day or two, when Lois gets back. Really, Erin, I want to stay.”
Erin picked up Lois’s suitcase and Madeline’s bag and handed it to them. “Go. I’m just going to take it easy, try to get some sleep. Keep busy. Don’t worry, I’ll be fine.”
Lois sighed deeply and studied her friend. “You’re a survivor, Erin. Survive, okay?”
Erin nodded. Sometimes surviving wasn’t the best thing, she thought miserably.
Madeline and Lois started reluctantly for the door. “I’ll be back the day after tomorrow,” Lois said. “And I’ll be praying for you constantly.”
“Me, too,” Madeline said.
“Thanks,” Erin said. “Don’t stop.”
Madeline looked a little forlorn, and turned back to Erin, who stood hugging herself in the big, quiet house. “Erin, are you sure you’ll be all right?”
“I’ll be great,” Erin said, affecting a smile. “By the time you get back, I’ll probably be back in the saddle.”
“I hope so,” Lois whispered, then with one last, hesitant look, the two women left Erin alone.
Erin stood in the open doorway, watching each of them drive out of sight. She couldn’t help envying her roommate’s lack of fear in going up. Would Lois feel the same fear as Erin if it had been her captain who crashed…her close friend? The warm October breeze caught her hair, swirled it over her shoulders, and swept it into her face. It had stopped raining, and the temperature had dropped a few degrees. Louisiana summer still hung on, but a pleasant autumn coolness laced the air. The feel of the wind reminded her of freedom—the freedom she used to feel when she was far above the clouds, soaring through a sky so blue that it made her eyes water. Why couldn’t she anticipate that freedom again, instead of feeling the bars rise before her eyes and the vises lock on her wrists and the noose tightening around her neck as soon as she thought of flying?
Catching her breath, Erin closed the door and went back inside. She’d spent more time in this house in the last two weeks than she had since she and Lois had moved in with Madeline. Lush and massive as it was, it was feeling more and more like home. Safer all the time.
The phone rang, but she didn’t want to talk, so she let the answering machine pick up on the fourth ring. The message was for Lois, and after it had clicked off, she lifted the phone off the hook and stuck it in a drawer in the china hutch.
She sat down on the velvet sofa that Lois had brought with her and turned on the television with the small remote. Harold Monroe, the local television news anchor, was reporting the new tax laws. Erin’s mind wandered as she stared blankly at the set, recalling the night two weeks ago when she had sat in this very room, watching this same man, with Madeline playing amateur nurse to her injury. It had been no big deal, Erin had insisted. The minor car accident she’d had on the way to the airport that evening had caused her to hit her head—a concussion, the doctor had said, and she was grounded for a few days. Because of her injury, she had been replaced on the round-trip flight from Shreveport to Dallas.
As Madeline clucked over her, making her head ache worse, she had heard the news report about the crash. Flight 94 from Dallas. No survivors.
As vividly as if it had just happened, Erin remembered the panic that had taken hold of her as photos of the wreckage played across the screen: the plane in a million, indistinguishable pieces, the fire billowing here and there, the bodies being pulled out…
Her pounding heartbeat had deafened her to the reporter’s message, and to Madeline’s rapid-fire prayers, but the two most important words seemed indelibly grafted in her mind…No survivors…no survivors…no survivors…She had sprung up from the couch, intent on rushing to the airport to somehow prove that the report was a mistake. It wasn’t her flight. Not her friends. The newscaster had gotten the information wrong. Not Mick. Not all those people. Not dead!
But there had been no mistake. And Erin didn’t think she had stopped shaking since that night.
The reality of the crash hadn’t been the worst part, however. It was what came later—the speculation about the cause, the media’s interviews with witnesses and ground victims who’d survived, the funerals that came one after another, the shock on the faces of Mick’s wife and son—that had made the ordeal seem endless. And then when the press began hinting that neglect had been the cause of the crash…it had just been more than she could take. No one could tell her that Mick, the man she had flown with almost exclusively for the past five years, could have made a mistake and flown the plane straight into the ground. There was some other explanation. There had to be.
“…National Transportation Safety Board officials still refuse to release excerpts of the tapes…”
Tonight’s news report hauled Erin’s attention back to the television, and she sat rigid, listening, as a still portrait of Mick in his uniform dominated the screen.
“…pending investigation. However, sources at Southeast Airlines tell us that it’s possible that pilot error caused the crash that left 151 people dead, including four ground victims. Forty-eight-year-old Mick Hammon, captain of Flight 94, was a retired Air Force colonel who had flown with Southeast for ten years…”
A malignant rush of fury heated Erin’s face, and she turned the set off and covered her mouth with her hands. It wasn’t his fault!
But whose was it? On the heels of the question came the faint, reckoning voice that had haunted her since that night. I should have been there!
The thought made her stomach turn, and she stumbled to the kitchen sink and splashed cold water on her face, then leaned over the sink to steady herself as tears flooded her eyes.
“Lord, help me,” she whispered aloud. “I know that no one could have stopped it, because no one caused it. My being there wouldn’t have changed things.” But the words sounded hollow in the still house, and no matter how many times she uttered them, Erin knew she would never be convinced.
Chapter Two
The persistent ringing of the doorbell penetrated Erin’s thin, shallow sleep, and she opened her eyes and sat up. Through the haze of grogginess, she realized she had fallen asleep on the couch, wearing her faded jeans and an old sweatshirt. There had been too many ghosts to sleep in the bed. The couch kept her from falling too deeply into a sleep from which there was no escape once the dreams started.
The doorbell rang again, and Erin stood up and looked around, prepared to destroy any evidence that she’d slept on the couch. People were already beginning to question her mental state. But then, she was beginning to question it, too.
Pushing back her sleep-tousled hair, she stumbled to the door and opened it. The man she had seen waiting outside Frank’s office last night stood before her, clad in an ivory sweater that deepened the rough tan on his seasoned face. “Yes?” she asked.
“Miss Russell?”
“Yes,” she said again, irritated.
“I’m Addison Lowe. I was in Mr. Redlo’s office last night…”
“I remember, Mr. Lowe,” she cut in, crossing her arms with a decided lack of tolerance. “I hope you found my conversation with my boss interesting.”
“I wasn’t eavesdropping. I had an appointment.”
“Regardless,” she said, still blocking the door with her body, “you listened to a private conversation that was none of your business.”
“That’s where you’re wrong, Miss Russell,” he said.
“Wrong about your listening? You don’t expect me to believe—”
“No,” he said. “Wrong about it being any of my business. It’s very much my business. It’s my job to know when a pilot’s stability is waning, though I genera
lly find out after it’s too late.”
All the murky grogginess in Erin’s head vanished, and molten fire rose up in her eyes. “I beg your pardon.”
Addison reached for his wallet and handed her a card. “I’m with the National Transportation Safety Board, and I came from Washington to investigate the crash.”
“The National Transportation…” The words faded off into nothingness before they were completely uttered, and a foreboding sense of panic descended. Had she really admitted to being afraid to fly in the presence of an NTSB official? Had he heard everything? She tried not to look as defensive as she felt. “What…what do you want from me?” she asked weakly.
“I understand you were Mick Hammon’s first officer,” he said. “I thought maybe you could answer some questions for me.”
She glared up at him, weighing one consequence against another. He didn’t exactly look menacing. In fact, those dark green eyes sparkled with soul. The normal impulse would be to like him at first sight. But Erin didn’t want to like him. Not if he was the one sifting through the remains of Mick Hammon’s crash.
On the other hand, she asked herself, what choice did she really have? Sighing loudly, she stepped back from the door to let him in. She was still an employee of Southeast Airlines, after all, and when it came to an investigation, the NTSB might as well be the FBI. She looked around for signs of her emotional state that could quickly be discarded, cluttered clues that she was at her rope’s end. “You might have called first,” she said, gathering a pile of wadded Kleenex from the coffee table and rushing into the kitchen to throw it away.
“I tried,” he said. “The phone was off the hook.”
Erin swung around, saw him standing in the kitchen doorway. His green eyes probed mercilessly, seeing far too many things that she wasn’t prepared to reveal. Guiltily, she glanced at the china hutch, where the phone was still buried. “I guess I forgot to hang it up last night.”
“No problem,” he said. There was an almost amused twinkle in his eyes, but beneath that twinkle lay something else. Something like…concern. “I leave mine lying around all the time. Just forget to hang it up.”
“All right.” She stared coldly at him, resentful of the way he was trying to corner her about something that was none of his business. “I took it off the hook on purpose. I was in a bad mood.” Impertinently, she held out her wrists. “Go ahead. Cuff me and haul me in.”
The deep laughter that erupted from his throat took her by surprise, and her anger began to diminish by degrees. For the first time she noticed the strong texture of his short black hair, the thick lines of his brows, and the startling contrast of those laughing, smoky emerald eyes. The corners of her rigid mouth softened, and she smiled when he rubbed his mouth, as if the gesture could wipe away his condemning grin.
“Sorry,” he said, his laughter dying. “I don’t mean to drill you. If you want to leave the phone off the hook, it’s your prerogative.”
“I appreciate that,” she said dryly.
“I’m also sorry I woke you,” he added.
She looked down at her wrinkled sweatshirt, at the jeans she’d slept in. Self-consciously, she raised a hand to her tangled hair. “I…I wasn’t asleep. I had just gotten up.”
“Had you?” he asked skeptically. The look of amusement vanished from his eyes, replaced by that annoying look of concern. Erin wished that just once in the past two weeks she could have looked in someone’s eyes and not seen concern. “Well, whatever…I realize I haven’t come at the best time. But I really need to talk to you before I can go on with my report.”
Erin turned to the coffeepot, groped for the can of grains, and mechanically began filling the percolator. “I don’t know why you have to talk to me. I wasn’t there.”
Addison shifted his weight to one hip and leaned on the counter. Subtly, the scent of woodsy after-shave drifted to her senses. “No, you weren’t there, but you were usually Hammon’s copilot, and, I hear, his closest friend at the airline. I need a lot of background on him if I’m going to come to a fair conclusion about the crash. You can give it to me.”
His words served as sparks to ignite her tinder-dry emotions, and Erin swiveled and glared at him across the small kitchen. “Fair conclusion? Are you kidding me? You just want more evidence to nail him. Why not? He isn’t here to defend himself, is he? You can say just about anything you want to about him.”
“Erin, I’m looking for accurate—”
“You can call me Miss Russell.”
“I got your name from your file,” he said, all warmth gone from his voice. He quietly assumed an authoritative tone. “And I’ll call you whatever you like, Miss Russell. As for your hysterical accusation, I am not trying to ‘nail’ anyone. I’m trying to do my job and make certain that the cause of that crash is known so that it doesn’t happen again.”
Silence continued between them for a series of eternities as the smell of perking coffee intruded on vexed senses. Finally, Erin turned back to it, poured two cups, then grudgingly added the cream and sugar he politely requested. A frown cut deep into her forehead as she handed him a mug, then set a spoon in her own and stirred the dark liquid. “I don’t…I don’t want to talk about Mick with you. Or the crash. Or anything else.”
Addison sipped the coffee and leveled those poignant eyes on her again. “You have to,” he said quietly. “If you don’t, I’ll have you subpoenaed, and you’ll have to talk about it in front of a board of my superiors. Believe me, you don’t want to do that.”
She gulped her coffee, scalding her tongue. Frustrated, she set it back down too hard. It sloshed onto the counter, but she scarcely noticed, for she was staring at Addison with scathing eyes. “Well, do you mind if I brush my teeth first? Change clothes? I didn’t expect to wake up to an interrogation this morning.”
“I’ll wait,” he said, leaning back against the counter. “Take your time.”
Seething, Erin pushed past him and slammed the door as she went into her bedroom.
Addison braced himself for a moment, waiting for another slam or the crash of a glass hurling against the wall, but none came. When he was confident that she wasn’t violent, he wandered out of the kitchen to the living room. Quietly, he regarded the coffee table. Moments before she had cleared it of those wadded Kleenex. That, in itself, disturbed him. He lowered himself to the couch and felt that it was warm. And she’d had on those rumpled jeans and sweatshirt that looked as if they’d served their time. The mottled patches on her skin when she’d come to the door told him he’d awakened her. Had she been sleeping here in her clothes after falling asleep crying?
The thought gave birth to an uncomfortable ache inside him. From what he’d seen of her already, she was teetering on the edge. Her display in Redlo’s office last night had been evidence enough. She couldn’t fly since the crash, and now she couldn’t sleep in her bed. So much fear in such a small package. What was she afraid of?
Even as he asked the question, he knew the answer—not in words really, but in his gut where memories came in pangs instead of images. Only once had he come so close to being in the same state Erin was in today. Once…but that was four years ago. How clearly he remembered sleeping on the bedspread of his bed, fully clothed, sometimes without even shedding his shoes. Or the even worse nights, the ones when he dropped off to sleep in the recliner, unable to face the lonely act of preparing for sleep by walking into the bedroom, knowing he’d awaken to a lonely day. His grief over his wife’s death had made mere life an ordeal. It had taken months for him to get his life back to normal, even after his father-in-law had talked him into moving from his office job at the NTSB to the position of field investigator, to channel that grief into something worthwhile. But still, late at night when he was all alone, that pain came back to him.
Was Erin Russell experiencing that now? Had she been in love with Mick Hammon, even though he was married and at least twenty years older than she? The thought tightened his stomach inexplicably. Why did t
hat idea bother him? He didn’t know this woman, and he hadn’t known the man. What did he care if they’d had an affair? Besides, he told himself, it probably wasn’t true. Maybe it was simply—as her boss had said—the grief and denial over the death of a very close friend.
Whatever the cause of her distress, he thought, he would go easy on her. She was near the breaking point, but he could see the strength in her eyes. It was the same type of strength that had brought him through his wife’s death. He admired anyone with that kind of soul-deep, there-when-it-counted substance.
He looked around the room, at the trinkets that she and her roommates had no doubt collected during their travels. On the walls were framed and matted landscape scenes with Bible verses inscribed beneath them. In a prominent place just inside the door was Philippians 4:13 stitched in needlepoint. “I can do everything through him who gives me strength.” Did her strength originate where his did? Or did that picture belong to her roommate?
The door opened, and Erin stepped back out. Her hair was brushed in soft waves, and she had changed clothes. A baggy pair of slacks hung from her trim figure, gathered at her small waist where a white blouse was tucked inside. Even without makeup she looked lovely. It had been a long time since he’d seen the just-awake freshness of a woman. Much too long.
Still, her eyes were tired, wary, and he knew she would never let her defenses down easily. He would have to work at that.
“All right,” she said, standing before him, arms shielding her stomach. “Interrogate me. I’m ready.”
Addison smiled like a man who’d been misunderstood. “This is not an interrogation, Erin—” He caught himself and held up his hand to stem her unspoken protest. “Excuse me. I meant Miss Russell. It’s an investigation. And I’m afraid it’s going to take a long time. I hope I can count on your cooperation.”
“I’ll do the best I can,” she said. “But let me warn you. If I start feeling that you’re trying to pin this crash on my friend, who was the best pilot I’ve ever flown with in my life, you will have to subpoena me, Mr. Lowe.”