Chương 2
Daniel fastened his belt.
Claire watched his hands.
Walter reached toward a row of switches, touched one, then pulled back.
“Don’t touch anything back there.”
Daniel looked toward the cockpit. “What do you need?”
“I need you to be quiet.”
A strange calm settled over Claire then.
Not peace.
Something colder.
The kind that had helped her through audits when someone across a conference table began lying. Numbers never became offended when you doubted them. They did not raise their voices. They did not ask how you could possibly think that of them.
They waited.
A door had opened.
A belt had released.
A warning light had appeared.
Daniel had known something before he should have.
Those were facts.
Her fear could wait.
The helicopter descended toward a narrow shelf of land above the cliffs.
Walter spoke into his headset. Some of the words disappeared beneath the rotor, but Claire caught enough to understand that he was declaring an emergency and giving their position.
Daniel tried to make a call.
No signal.
He swore under his breath.
Claire took out her own phone.
One bar appeared, vanished, returned.
She sent a message to Nora Ellis.
EMERGENCY. HELICOPTER. COAST. DANIEL WITH ME. DOOR OPENED IN FLIGHT. CALL 911 IF THIS SENDS.
The message stalled.
Then the little progress line moved.
Delivered.
She turned off the screen.
Daniel had seen.
“Nora?”
“Yes.”
His jaw tightened.
That, too, was a fact.
Walter found an old service road running along the edge of a cattle ranch. There was no landing pad. No neat circle. Just hard dirt, dry grass and a fence line that seemed terrifyingly close.
“Brace.”
Claire put one hand over the buckle.
The other covered her abdomen.
Daniel saw.
His face changed.
He had known about the pregnancy for nine days.
For nine days he had behaved as if he did not quite believe happiness that fragile should be spoken about too loudly. He had bought a book about pregnancy and hidden it behind a stack of annual reports in his home office, which would have been funny if Claire had not found it while looking for something else entirely.
Something that had made none of the last nine days funny.
The helicopter hit the ground.
Once.
Bounced.
Walter swore.
The left skid dragged through dirt.
The cabin tilted, corrected, then settled with a metallic groan.
The rotor kept turning.
Nobody moved.
“Stay seated,” Walter said.
Daniel already had his belt half released.
“I said stay seated.”
He stopped.
Walter shut down what he could.
The rotor slowed gradually. Wind from the open door diminished until Claire could hear the clicking of hot metal and someone’s breathing.
Hers.
Daniel’s.
Maybe both.
Walter removed his headset.
For several seconds he stared at the instrument panel.
Then he reached toward it, stopped before touching anything and lowered his hand.
“No one touches the door latch,” he said. “No one touches that belt. No one touches the panel behind your seat.”
Daniel looked at him. “Walter.”
“No.”
“What?”
“You heard me.”
Daniel leaned back.
Walter had worked for Daniel’s father before Daniel learned to drive. He had flown them to ski resorts, board retreats, funerals, weddings, and one humiliating bachelor weekend Daniel still refused to discuss. Claire had seen Walter tell Daniel no perhaps four times.
Never like that.
Claire released her belt only after checking the buckle twice.
Her legs almost failed when she stood.
Daniel moved instinctively.
She raised one hand.
He stopped.
“Don’t.”
“I’m not.”
“Stay there.”
He stayed.
Claire stepped onto the dirt outside the helicopter and bent forward, hands on her knees.
The land smelled like dry grass, salt and fuel.
She waited for nausea.
It came.
She turned away from the helicopter and vomited beside a fence post.
Daniel took one step.
Walter said, “Let her be.”
Claire wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.
Under any other circumstances she would have been embarrassed. She hated vomiting in front of people. She hated anyone hearing her through bathroom doors. It was a ridiculous private boundary for a woman who had once spent three years reviewing corporate fraud investigations for a living.
Now she was mostly irritated that her hair kept sticking to her lips.
She pulled it back.
The helicopter sat crooked behind her, elegant and expensive and suddenly pathetic.
Daniel climbed out.
He kept several feet between them.
“Are you bleeding?”
Claire looked at him.
“No.”
“Any pain?”
“No.”
“Claire, the baby—”
“Don’t.”
He swallowed.
Walter came around the nose of the aircraft.
“We need emergency services and aviation investigators. Nobody from Bennett Aviation touches this aircraft before they get here.”
Daniel frowned. “Of course.”
Walter looked at him.
“You’re going to call them.”
“Call who?”
“The company.”
Walter’s mouth tightened.
“They’ll know we landed.”
Daniel looked toward the helicopter, then toward the empty road.
“That doesn’t mean they know why.”
Claire watched him.
Daniel noticed.
“What?”
“You’re right,” she said.
“About what?”
“They shouldn’t know why.”
He stared at her.
Claire folded her arms.
“So if somebody calls and already knows the door opened, I’d like to know how.”
Daniel said nothing.
Walter’s gaze shifted between them.
The first vehicle reached them twenty-six minutes later.
By then Claire had sat down in the dirt because standing required more concentration than she wanted to give it.
A ranch employee arrived first in a dusty pickup. He was in his fifties, wore a faded baseball cap and seemed disappointed that none of them needed to be pulled from burning wreckage. He offered Claire a bottle of water, warned them about a rattlesnake he had seen near the cattle trough and then spent several minutes trying not to stare at the helicopter.
A county fire engine followed.
Then paramedics.
Then a sheriff’s SUV.
The ordinary sequence of professionals asking ordinary questions helped Claire feel less as if the earth had tilted.
Name.
Age.
Pain level.
Any loss of consciousness.
Any neck pain.
May you like
Possible pregnancy.
That last question made the young paramedic glance at Daniel.
