Chương 2
It meant I had crossed from difficult employer into personal nightmare.
"Your daughter gets a vote here."
That landed.
I lowered my eyes to my stomach.
The baby had been quiet since the doctor's office.
"Don't use her against me."
"I'm using her for her."
I opened the car door.
"I still need crackers."
Jonathan was cooking when I arrived home.
He stood barefoot at the kitchen island in a white shirt with the sleeves rolled to his elbows, chopping basil while an old soul record played softly from the speakers.
For one disorienting second, the entire day seemed ridiculous.
Then he looked up and smiled.
"There she is."
He crossed the kitchen and kissed my forehead.
I made myself stay still.
"You smell like a hospital."
"Prenatal appointment."
"Today?"
"Routine bloodwork."
His eyes held mine a fraction too long.
Or perhaps I was seeing guilt everywhere now.
"Everything okay?"
"Perfect."
He crouched and placed his palm against my stomach.
"How's my girl?"
Our daughter kicked.
Jonathan laughed.
The sound was warm, spontaneous, familiar.
I nearly hated him more for that than for the searches.
"You felt that?"
"She likes me."
"She kicks the ultrasound technician too."
"Jealousy is ugly on you, Vic."
He stood and returned to the stove.
I watched him stir tomato sauce.
My doctor had told me not to eat anything he prepared.
Jonathan dipped a spoon into the pan and tasted it.
"Needs salt."
He added some.
Ordinary salt from the ceramic container we had bought in Key West.
Nothing happened.
No sinister vial appeared.
No guilty glance.
He was simply my husband making dinner.
"Actually, don't eat yet," he said.
My pulse jumped.
He opened the refrigerator and removed sparkling water.
"I bought that ridiculous cheese you like."
I stared at him.
"What?"
"The one that smells like somebody abandoned a sock in France."
Despite everything, a laugh escaped me.
Jonathan grinned.
There he was, the man I had married.
That was the cruelest part.
A monster would have been easier.
I ate only the crackers from my purse and blamed heartburn.
Jonathan looked offended on behalf of his pasta.
Later, while he showered, I sat on the edge of our bed and opened the secure application Marcus had installed on my phone.
Three words waited on the screen.
LABS CLEAR SO FAR.
Relief came so violently that I had to close my eyes.
The bathroom door opened.
I locked the phone.
Jonathan emerged with a towel around his waist, rubbing another through his hair.
"You okay?"
"Tired."
He sat beside me.
The mattress dipped beneath his weight.
"We should get away."
My skin went cold.
"Where?"
"Nowhere complicated."
He smiled.
"Just us."
I forced my face to remain bored.
"You hate resorts."
"Who said resort?"
He leaned back on his hands.
"I was thinking helicopter."
The room became very quiet.
Jonathan kept talking.
"A sunset flight over the Keys."
He nudged my knee.
"You used to love flying before flying became work."
"When?"
"Friday."
Three days away.
I looked toward the bathroom, where steam was fading from the mirror.
A normal wife would have teased him about planning romance on forty-eight hours' notice.
A frightened wife would have refused.
I needed to become neither.
"Can pregnant women even do helicopter tours?"
"Your doctor cleared you to fly last month."
He had remembered.
Of course he had.
His smile disappeared for half a second.
Not anger.
Disappointment.
Then it returned.
"That's all I get?"
"I'm carrying a person who currently uses my bladder as furniture."
"Romantic."
"You married me."
"Best mistake I ever made."
He kissed my shoulder.
I waited until his breathing became slow beside me that night before sending Marcus one message.
HELICOPTER, FRIDAY, SUNSET.
His reply came almost immediately.
NO.
I stared at the word.
Then another message appeared.
ABSOLUTELY NOT.
I typed with one thumb beneath the blanket.
Zephyr.
The typing indicator appeared, vanished, then returned.
PROJECT ZEPHYR IS NOT CERTIFIED FOR PREGNANT USERS.
I already knew that.
Zephyr was an experimental emergency-descent system developed for pilots trapped in aircraft failures at low altitude.
Its deployment sequence used compressed gas to throw a compact canopy clear of the body before inflation, eliminating the delay that made conventional parachutes useless in certain emergencies.
The current prototype had passed unmanned drops and controlled human trials, but nobody on my engineering team would have approved what I was considering.
I typed again.
Can it be modified?
Marcus did not answer for almost a minute.
Then my phone rang.
I rejected the call.
It rang again.
Jonathan shifted beside me.
I silenced the device.
A message arrived.
YOU ARE NOT DOING THIS.
I stared at Jonathan's sleeping profile.
His face looked younger in darkness.
I had loved that face through six years of marriage, through two failed fertility treatments, through my mother's funeral, through the night our first pregnancy ended before we had told anyone.
He had sat on the bathroom floor with me until sunrise that night.
Now I wondered whether he had begun calculating my value before or after we finally conceived again.
I typed one final message.
I need him to show his hand.
Marcus answered.
THEN WE CONTROL THE HAND.
At seven the next morning, Jonathan left for the gym.
At seven twelve, Marcus entered through the service elevator with Elena Park, Calder Aeronautics' lead safety engineer.
Elena carried a garment bag.
She looked furious.
"Before we start, I want it documented that this is the stupidest executive request I have received in eleven years."
"Good morning to you too."
"I'm serious."
"So am I."
"That's the problem."
She unzipped the garment bag.
Inside hung what looked like a sleeveless compression vest, except for the carbon-fiber channels running along the ribs and the compact deployment housing across the back.
Project Zephyr.
I touched the fabric.
"How thin?"
"Thin enough under the right dress."
"And the pregnancy?"
Elena's jaw tightened.
"I rerouted the lower restraints around the pelvis."
"Safe?"
May you like
"No."
She met my eyes.
