Nothing.
The jack box stood at an odd angle. At her touch, it slipped to the side and exposed snipped wires. Burnsey had planned everything.
Ruth stumbled down the aisle to the stack of crates in front of the cabin door. She tried to move the top crate. Why did he have to pick such heavy ones? She couldn’t move them. Weak from spent adrenaline and shaking from the cold, she couldn’t get enough force with her good arm.
Ruth glanced down the aisle to Burnsey’s unconscious form. How much time did she have left? She tried to look at her watch, but she couldn’t twist her arm or slide the watch around her swollen wrist. Wincing from pain, she unbuckled the strap and held up the watch.
Ten minutes before ten? The whole ordeal took place in only five minutes? Impossible. Then she noticed the second hand lay still. Dead. Her throat constricted. Why did Burnsey have to do that? Why did he have to break her watch?
Ruth pressed the cool glass to her lips and squeezed her eyes shut. She was as trapped as ever, and time was running out.
Wasn’t his life supposed to flash before his eyes?
All Jack saw was gray sky and gray water alternating as he drifted below and struggled above, gray to gray, merging together.
Mom and Dad would be devastated, but of the three boys, Jack was the most expendable. Walt, the married man, would fulfill Mom’s dreams of grandchildren. Ray, the gifted pastor, fulfilled Dad’s dreams. Maybe it was best Jack had never told Dad his career plans.
He tried to unclasp the harness again, but his fingers could no longer distinguish metal from fabric. Water slobbered out of his mouth. He was almost too tired to push it out.
Jack knew what would come. He remembered too well falling unconscious, waking up, and spitting out water in panic. Last time a fishing boat saved him from repeating the cycle, but today no boats were in sight. How many times would he go under before he died?
Please make it fast, Lord.
Then he’d be with Jesus. No more sorrow, no more pain.
Would Ruth mourn? In his mind he saw her thrust the scissors into his hands and into his heart. But then he saw her upturned, worry-creased face. “Please be careful, Jack.”
She didn’t love him, couldn’t love him, but she cared and she’d mourn and she’d find some way to blame herself, to punish herself, to cut off anyone who might care.
No! He couldn’t let that happen. Jack opened his eyes underwater, accustomed to the salt, and looked down at the clasp. His fingers clenched like granite, but he pressed the clip against his chest and squeezed his wrists together.
Pop.
Hallelujah!
He flung his arms over his head, down in a giant arc. Up, around, down. Air! He filled his lungs, then scrubbed his face to wake himself up. He shrugged the harness off his shoulders, wriggled it over his hips, and kicked it off.
Then he pulled the tab on his life vest, which inflated and lifted his chest. Jack smiled, tugged off his flight helmet, and let his head droop back. The water played with his hair as he gazed at the clouds. He could rest now. He wouldn’t drown.
When the next swell elevated him, he searched for the rafts in vain. The shore lay close enough to taunt him, yet out of reach.
No, he wouldn’t drown. He’d die of hypothermia. How long had he been in the water? Half an hour? An hour? He’d stopped shivering, which meant his body had given up.
All his striving, all his life, for nothing. Promotions, prestige, positions—all meant nothing.
Lord, did I do what you wanted? That’s all that matters.
At least he’d followed God into the ocean. He was supposed to. He was supposed to face his fear, swallow his pride, and die here.
Why did he resist the gray? It was softness. It was comfort. It was peace. Waves pulsed on his cheeks, the pulse of engines vibrating through the controls, through his arms, through his soul. Water roared in his ears, the roar of cylinders and propellers and air on the windscreen. A shadow slipped over him and closed his eyes.
Seeing planes in the clouds. All his life. How fitting that his last thoughts were about planes.
Would God rescue her to leave her in greater danger? Ruth groaned her answer. No, of course not.
She returned to the back of the plane, passing Burnsey’s sprawled form, and rummaged in the pile from the medical chest. After she fashioned a crude sling from gauze and cradled her tender arm inside, she shook out two lengths of rubber IV tubing. “Please, Lord. Please give me strength.”
With her good hand and her knee, she knotted the tubing around Burnsey’s right wrist, and then around his left, as close to the first knot as possible. She doubled it, tripled it.
Burnsey’s fingers curled. Ruth gasped. He was still unconscious, but how long did she have? Her hand shook as she tied up his ankles.
From a canvas bag on the ceiling, she released some web strapping. She threaded it under Burnsey’s arm and buckled it to the anchoring pole on the floor, and repeated the process at his feet. She’d clamped the sergeant in position like a litter.
After she threw a blanket over Burnsey, Ruth returned to the front of the cabin, found her flight jacket, and draped it over her shoulders. She sank to the floor and pulled her knees as close as her broken arm allowed. Every muscle in her body shook in jolting unison, shook out great, soundless sobs. God had spared her, but more importantly, he had been with her in her darkest moment and was with her still, faithful and good and trustworthy.
A moan rose from the tail of the plane. The blanket rippled. Ruth clenched her hand around her shin and prayed her knots would hold.
Burnsey vomited. Buckles clanged. He cussed. “Ruth! Get me out of here.”
A laugh burst from her throat. “I’m not stupid, Sergeant.” He fell still. Ruth kept a sharp eye on him. Her shivers kept rhythm with the engine vibrations.
“Come on, Lieutenant,” he said in honeyed tones. “You can’t leave me like this. I’m cold.”
“You have a blanket.”
“At least let me clean up this mess.”
“Thank you so much for your helpfulness, but I’ll manage just fine when we land.”
More silence. When they landed at Meeks, Burnsey would be locked up, and everyone would see the truth. Lieutenant Shepard would realize she had been wrong, but could she ever treat Ruth with respect? What about the other nurses? Would they accept her again, or would they avoid her, embarrassed at how they’d acted?
And May? Despite the pain, cold, and trauma, Ruth smiled. How sweet it would be to enjoy the fullness of May’s friendship once more.
If only …
She frowned. No, it was too late with Jack, too much. Too much what? Too much trust?
Trust me.
Ruth shook her head. Now she was imagining things. It was one thing to trust God, another thing entirely to trust a man.
The plane angled downward for the descent to Meeks Field.
“All right, Lieutenant, I’m ready to cut a deal.”
“A deal?” Her laugh jarred her arm and made her wince. “You’re in no position to cut a deal.”
“Listen, I’ve got it all figured out. You cut me free and we’ll get everything cleaned up before we land. I promise I won’t touch you. No time for that anyway. I’ll talk to Shepard, get her to switch crews. She’ll listen to me. You keep your job, I keep my business, and everyone wins.”
“And let you get away with fraud and theft and attempted rape? Never. Besides, I’m in no danger of losing my job.”
“I’m afraid you are if I tell them about your morals violation.”
Ruth gasped. “Mine? You’re the one—”
“Really, officer, I don’t know what happened. I was minding my own business, having a little drink—I know, but I couldn’t sleep. She must have spiked it with something. Next thing I know, I wake up like this—clothes messed up, tied up like a hog. That woman’s crazy. She’s always had it out for me. Bet you anything she’ll say I tried to rape her. Look over there—I saw her knock over the medical chest, waste those meds, just to make it look as if we’d struggled. Her arm? Yeah, that’s too bad. She slipped in that mess she made, fell over the chest, right on top of her arm. She said I broke it? I’m not surprised. She’s been lying about me for months. Everyone knows she hates me. Ask Lieutenant Shepard.”
Ruth’s jaw dangled.
Burnsey’s eyes glinted down the aisle. “Your word against mine, gorgeous. Who will they believe?”
They would believe him. Of course they would. They always did. And Burnsey had covered every detail. He’d probably say she cut the interphone wires and blocked the door to frame him.
“Here’s the deal. Cut me loose, and you keep your job. Remember, you need the money.”
She didn’t need his reminder. If they believed his charges, she’d be kicked out of the Army Nurse Corps and the nursing profession.
The truth brought enormous shakes throughout her body. God would provide. Even if she lost everything—everything, even if she were imprisoned, God would provide for her family. She had to trust him. She had to tell the truth.
Jack always imagined heaven would be blindingly white and gold. Not gray.
He blinked and focused on the gray stripes before his eyes. Soft voices spoke. The book of Revelation said they’d be “of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues.”
Nope, only English.
Jack squinted, and a framework of bars emerged from the gray. So cold. Heaven shouldn’t be cold. So tired. He groaned, and his eyes flapped shut.
“Jack?”
He hiked up his eyelids and turned to the voice. Gray eyes and black hair. Jesus had gray eyes? But where was the beard? No, it was Ray. Oh swell. How did Ray get killed working at a supply depot?
“Jack?” Ray smiled and rubbed Jack’s upper arm. “Hi there. Think you can stay awake?”
“Awake?” he croaked, and broke into a ripping, wet cough.
“Look who woke up just in time for bed.”
Jack wiped his mouth. A curly-haired brunette stood over him. At least she wore white, not gray.
“I can’t give you anything for that cough, Major,” she said in a chirpy voice. “You need to clear out that seawater, but would you like some more morphine?”
Why would he need morphine in heaven? “But I’m—didn’t I?—I didn’t die?”
Ray laughed softly. “You came mighty close. You were unconscious when Air-Sea Rescue plucked you out of the water. You had a bad case of hypothermia.”
He was alive. The gray stripes—the corrugated ceiling of a Nissen hut. The brunette—a nurse. The framework of bars—Jack followed them to where his right foot hung suspended, wrapped in white.
A heavy weight crushed him, crushed out spasms of briny coughs. Jack had been in the hospital when Walt woke up to find his arm had been amputated, and now Ray was here when Jack woke up to find his foot—
“My foot?”
“Oh, you broke several bones.” The nurse had a perky laugh to go with her voice. “You’ll be in a cast about six weeks, young man.”
Young man? The girl couldn’t be older than twenty-one. Jack scanned the hut, like countless others in England, the windows dark already. “What day is it?”
“The seventh,” Ray said. “The invasion was a success. We’re making progress.”
“My crew—did they make it?”
“All safe. Startled a flock of sheep, but they’re fine.”
“Good.” But Jack frowned. Ray was in California, and Jack was in England. Or was he? “Where am I?”
The brunette stuck a thermometer in Jack’s mouth and wrapped hot fingers around his wrist. “You’re at the 65th General Hospital. We just came to Redgrave Park in Botesdale in Suffolk. You wouldn’t believe the quaint little villages we have around here. The nearest town of any size is Bury St. Edmunds, which is about—”
“I been ’ere b’fore,” he mumbled around the thermometer. This gal better be the night nurse so he could sleep through her shifts.
“Jack’s based at Bury St. Edmunds,” Ray said, always the peacemaker.
Then Jack stared hard at his older brother. “What’re you doin’ ’ere?”
Ray managed to look amused and grim at the same time. “Took you long enough to notice.”
“But what—where?”
“The Combat Crew Replacement Center in Bovingdon—training, waiting for assignment to a bomb group.”
“Com’at …” Jack hitched himself up in bed, winced at the pain in his foot, and spat out the thermometer over the nurse’s protest. “But—but you’re an instructor. No, you’re in that supply job. What happened?”
“I volunteered.”
“You what?”
“Major, I need your temperature.” The nurse poked the thermometer at his lips.
He set his mouth hard and stared her down. “Later.”
She skittered away, chattering like a squirrel that lost an acorn.
Jack searched his brother’s solemn, determined face. Ray? Volunteering for combat? What on earth? When they were boys, Ray played with blocks while Jack played with tin soldiers. Ray read books while Jack wrestled Walt into submission. Not that Ray was a sissy—the man played a mean game of baseball, and he’d stood up to more bullies than Jack ever had—he just never got a black eye doing it.
“You volunteered?”
“Yes. I need to be here.” Ray had a set to his eyes and chin Jack had never seen before.
“But why? And why now? I thought you and Helen …”
The firm set to Ray’s eyes collapsed. “Long story. I’ll tell you later.”
“Women always make for long stories.”
Ray gave him a sympathetic frown. “Didn’t work out with Ruth?”
“Nope. Category E, damaged beyond repair.” He slid down under the heavy blankets, tired and cold, inside and out. “Remember those balsa wood planes Grandpa always put in our Christmas stockings?”
Ray leaned forward on his knees. “Sure do. Never lasted long, did they?”
“Kind of like macaroons.” Jack nestled his head into the thin pillow. “Remember? You’d get one or two flights out of them, then crack the horizontal stabilizer, glue it together. Next flight you’d snap the wing in half, glue it together. Chip the nose, more glue. Eventually the glue weighed it down so much it couldn’t fly.”