And she knew even less about the man sitting beside her.
Worried now, though for no good reason, she side-slipped the plane to lose altitude and radioed her approach to the Lobster Island tower. The response was slow in coming, and informal, but the parallel row of lights sparkled in the near distance, outlining a runway that was much longer than the blasted dirt strips she was used to.
“Almost there,” she murmured, more to herself than Dale.
“Great.” He bit off a curse and she felt another flash of annoyance.
“If you’re going to snarl at me every time I open my mouth, this is going to be a very long investigation, Metcalf.”
“This from the woman who’s called me a ‘slimy toad’ whenever she’s seen me for the past three months?” His knuckles whitened. “You wanted happily ever after. I wanted to be friends. The two don’t mix, Tansy.”
It still hurt that their breakup hadn’t crushed him like it had crushed her. Then again, that was part of the problem. “Never mind,” she snapped. “Forget I was about to suggest a truce. Let’s just keep biting each other’s heads off and hope the patients don’t notice.”
The little plane dropped down through the last fifty feet of air and the rocky bulk of the island flashed beneath them. Their airspeed bled from a hundred miles per hour to eighty, then slower.
Dale sighed heavily and reached out a hand as though to touch her, but he didn’t. “Tansy, I’m sorry. I don’t mean to fight with you. But this is…awkward for me.”
The first of the runway lights glinted below the plane and Tansy brought it down expertly, letting the wheels kiss the smooth, shadowed tarmac. “It’s awkward because of me. Because of us.”
“No.” He shook his head. “Or at least, not entirely. It’s the island. You see, I was born—”
Crack!
A horrendous jolt yanked the control yoke from Tansy’s fingers. Her body slammed against the shoulder harness and the plane bottomed out, hard, on the runway.
“Christ!” Dale yelled, grabbing for a handhold. “Hang on!”
No time. There was no time for hanging on. Sparks flashed by the windows, brighter than the sunset. Metal screamed.
“Dale! The landing gear’s collapsed!” Fear grabbed Tansy by the throat. Control. She was out of control.
The little plane slid sideways down the runway at almost fifty miles per hour. Metal ground against asphalt, and sparks spewed higher against the dusky sky. She fought the useless yoke for a few seconds before letting it go. She glanced out the cockpit window. There weren’t any buildings to hit at the end of the runway, thank God.
Then her stomach dropped. “The runway
ends!
” she shrieked. “Dale! The ocean!”
“Hang on, baby. Hang on!” Somehow, their hands twined together. Their eyes caught and held as the plane slid over the end of the runway and tilted down.
Metal howled. The plane slammed against something. It twisted and fell, bounced, and continued to fall until they hit bottom, hard.
Tansy’s head smacked into the side window.
First, she saw watery stars.
Then she saw nothing.
Chapter Two
The endless moment of freefall was sickening. Dale’s stomach lodged in his throat, then dropped when they hit bottom and Tansy’s head cracked into the side window. She sagged against her safety belt.
“Tansy! Tansy, stay with me. I need you to stay with me!” The words were rote, the feeling beneath them anything but. Panic roared in Dale’s ears. Then he realized it wasn’t just panic.
It was the sound of waves breaking on the plane. They’d fallen into the bay. And Tansy was unconscious.
“Damn!” He yanked free of his belt and struggled to his feet, hunching down in the small cockpit space. The cold, salty water of Lobster Bay splashed around his ankles. God, he hated the ocean.
The floor tilted by degrees as the weight of the engine pulled the front of the plane down. Heart pounding, hands shaking, he glanced out the forward window. In the crimson of twilight, he could see wavelets and greasy, gray water edging up the nose of the plane.
How long until the tower sent help? How long would the little plane float?
Working quickly, he checked Tansy’s vitals. “Tansy! Tansy, sweetheart, wake up. We need to get out of here, baby.” The endearments slipped out, though he’d rarely used them when they had been a couple. At least not out loud.
How deep was the water just past the landing strip? He didn’t remember. He hoped it was shallow. Lobster Bay was tricky that way. But even four feet of water would be too much if he couldn’t get them out of the plane before it flooded.
Tansy stirred, and relief rattled through him. He could get her out. He had to get her out.
“Flotation,” he muttered, knowing that HFH stocked their planes with life jackets as well as the standard cushions. He bypassed the field equipment crammed in the back and yanked the jackets from their compartment. His hands were still shaking. What was wrong with him?
“You’ve worked outbreaks in Tehru and terrorist bombings in the Middle East,” he reprimanded himself. “Two people in a sinking plane should be a piece of cake.” He stilled his hands by force of will, but he couldn’t stop the lurch of his heart when he returned to Tansy’s side and she opened her eyes.
The knowledge hit him like a fist to the gut. This wasn’t a stranger in Tehru or the Middle East. This was Tansy.
And that made all the difference.
“Dale? What—?” Pain and sudden comprehension clouded her eyes. “We crashed. The landing gear broke.” She turned her head towards the storage space and winced. “We’ve got to grab the field kits and get out of here.”
“Put this on first,” he ordered, helping her into the jacket over her protests. “We’re in the water and I don’t know how long we’ll float. Forget about the equipment.”
“The hell I will. We have an outbreak to work.” Listing to one side as the plane sagged beneath her, Tansy stumbled to the cargo area. She fumbled with the straps securing their instruments. “The cases are shockproof and rigged to float. We’ll get as many as we can out the door before we jump.”
The floor tilted even further and water surged up to cover most of the cockpit window, blocking out the bloody light of dusk. Dale cursed under his breath. “There’s no time for the equipment, Tansy! Let’s get the hell out of here.”
“We’ve got time. Help me with this,” she demanded.
He clenched his teeth.
Stubborn.
She’d always been stubborn, and more concerned with the patients’ safety than her own. At times it scared him and drove him crazy. Other times it made him proud.
This was one of those crazy times.
“We’re getting out. Now.” In the near-blackness, he looped an arm around her waist and dragged her to the door, grimacing when the floor tilted beneath his feet and metal groaned sickeningly.
The plane was rolling in the water.
“Get the door!” she yelled, finally ready to abandon the equipment. “We’re going down!”
“Hurry!” Dale yanked his jacket over his head and tried to help her crank the door release. In a flash, he imagined sinking to the bottom of the ocean with Tansy, trapped in the half-open cockpit. Drowned. Like his parents. “No!” he shouted, and jammed his shoulder against the door.
It cracked open, followed by a gush of water.
“Dale!” Tansy grabbed for him when he lost his footing and went down between the angled seats.
He bobbed up and spat a mouthful of cold, salty water. “Go! Get the hell out of here.”
“Not without you,” she yelled back. “Come on, we’ll jump together and swim away.”
Dale knew there’d be suction when the plane went down. They had to get away, and fast. He scrambled to the door, kicking a pair of floating equipment cases out of the way, and boosted Tansy out the door as a wave crested over the plane and swamped the cockpit.
He choked, spitting more seawater. God, he hated the taste.
“Dale, come on. Hurry! I don’t think it’ll float much longer.”
He hauled himself through and jumped. His foot slipped on wet metal and he landed almost in the plane’s shadow. The water was cold and harsh.
Like coming home.
Striking out hard, he saw Tansy paddling for all she was worth. Not fast enough.
He was a strong swimmer. He’d had to be, growing up on an island with one of the highest lost-at-sea rates in the Northeast. He grabbed Tansy’s jacket and struck out for the beach, hauling her along over her feeble protests. The lights on shore slowly grew closer, though part of him wished they wouldn’t.
Halfway there, he heard the unforgettable
hiss-chug
sound of a lobster boat’s engine. He tamped down the memories and lifted an arm to the shabby-looking vessel that slowly approached out of the twilight. “Over here!”
“’Hoy there, did everyone make it out?” The man’s voice was muffled by wind and wave, but it sounded familiar.
If he weren’t already freezing wet, Dale might have shivered as childhood ghosts crammed his brain in a sudden rush. He blinked against them and focused on the cold, hard water and the woman beside him. He raised his voice and called, “Yes. Everyone’s out.”
It was a lucky thing, too, he thought as the last slice of wing disappeared into the oily, black sea. The water just beyond the runway must be deeper than he remembered, or else the tide was running high. He felt a twinge of remorse for the field kits that had seen them through so many tough assignments, so many exotic locales. The cases were waterproof, but he doubted they were
that
waterproof.
“Hang tight,” the helmsman shouted over the noise of the waves and the motor, “we’ll have you out of there in a jiffy.” The near-derelict boat lurched through the surf and Dale could just read the faded name on its bow.
Churchill IV.
The name brought a twist of guilt. Dale had promised his parents’ friend, Walter Churchill, that once he left the island he’d make a new life for himself and never look back. Well, he was back, and so far it had been a hell of a homecoming.
“Climb aboard, you two. What the heck happened to your plane?” The helmsman steered the
Churchill IV
in close, and another rain-suited figure leaned over and tossed a thick, greasy rope.
“We crashed,” Dale answered shortly, though he wanted to know the same thing. One moment, Tansy had been landing as deftly as ever, and the next, the plane was sliding down the runway on its belly.
It made no sense.
He helped her aboard, then scrambled into the boat in a motion that came back easily after all these years. He checked on Tansy. She was pale and shivering, though the men had wrapped her in a coarse, soggy wool blanket. “You okay?”
“Never better,” she answered with a crooked smile that squeezed his chest.
Her aplomb was ruined by a thin trickle of blood from a cut on her temple, and the fine tremble of her lower lip. He took a step towards her. “Tansy—”
“I’m fine, Dale. Really.” She leaned away.
He knelt down in front of her and took her chilled hands in his own. “Tans—”
She pulled free and stood as the helmsman gestured his companion to the wheel and strode over. The boat’s running lights picked out the glittering tracks of salt spray that trickled down his yellow rain suit. A billed hood cast the man’s face in deep shadow, but there was something familiar about the rolling walk, the wide, powerful shoulders. A chill skittered through Dale.
Letters and a phone call hadn’t prepared him for this. Not really.
The slickered figure lifted a hand and pushed back his hood to reveal a shock of white-blond hair above a weather-beaten face that might once have been pale. The man’s tired blue eyes were clear, but dulled with worry. Dale steeled himself to shake the proffered hand. “Mickey.” He saw the face of a boy beneath that of the man. “It’s been a long time.”
“Welcome home, Cousin Dale.” Mick nodded and glanced down at Tansy, who sagged against the railing. “And you’d be Dr. Whitmore. Welcome to Lobster Island. I’m sorry for your plane, but thank God you’re both all right.”
Dale let the voice wash over him as he tried to fit Mickey’s image to the memories he’d carried for fifteen years. They’d been as close as brothers until the day Dale’s family had gone down in a ferocious spring storm, leaving the seventeen-year-old at the mercy of his grief-maddened uncle.
Trask.
Even the memory of the name brought impotent rage.
“I see some debris. I’ll bring her around to it,” the other slickered man called, interrupting the memory, though not the anger.
“Some of the cases may have washed out of the plane,” Dale said harshly, trying to find his doctor’s focus.
The job,
he thought.
Focus on the job.
“Pick up as much of the equipment as you can. We’ll need it to investigate your shellfish poisoning.”
At his elbow, Tansy was ghost-white. Guilt seared through him, layered atop the anger. He should have told her about the island. He should have prepared her better for the shock of learning that this poor, wretched place had once been his home. That these people were his family, such as it was.
Mick muttered a dark curse at the mention of the outbreak. “It’s bad, or I wouldn’t have asked you to come. We’ve had three deaths since I called, and another two sick, including the mayor and the sheriff.”
Dread curled through Dale, though he hid it deep down with all the other emotions.
“That’s impossible,” Tansy said after a moment. “PSP isn’t fatal, and certainly not in those numbers.” Dale could see her mind working.
Personal problems, plane crashes, the cold and the wet faded to the background as his mind clicked over to field mode alongside hers. “You’ve had more cases?” he asked. “I thought the fisheries people locked down all your lobster traps.”
Mickey cursed and jerked his chin toward the dock, dark in the gathering twilight. Black, boat-shaped shadows bobbed gently at their moorings. “The fleet hasn’t put to sea in over a week. The catches were bad after the spring storms, but this is a disaster. If we don’t get the docks open, the whole island will be hungry by winter. That’s why I asked you to come.” He glanced out to the end of the marked runway. The landing lights shone bright in the darkness. “Though you almost didn’t make it. What the hell happened?”