Thunder rumbled in the distance and a white flash struck the ground with a hollow boom. Suddenly, the cloud they were flying through burst its belly, and the plane was covered with streaming rain. Visibility was impossible as the dark gathered the plane in its forceful palm; it was like entering the gate of Hell. Miranda inhaled and counted to ten, as her doctor had told her to do if she ever began to feel any of her visions or the anxiety that always attacked next. On this occasion, it should work as well.
One…two…three.
Her gaze spotted the left wing of the plane as a flash of lightning struck.
Four…five… S
he raised an eyebrow. “W…What is that?” she yelled, her voice fading in the combined roaring of the thunder and the engine.
“What?”
“There’s something around the left wing,” she said, pointing. How in God’s name had she not seen this when she climbed in? Then she remembered she’d seen only the right side of the plane.
God help me.
“Oh that. No worries, Miss, it’s well secured with screws. The tape was only to mark the area that required my attention. I’ve fixed it with strong screws to hold it in its place. I just forgot to peel the tape off.”
Miranda held her breath, then resumed counting.
One…two…hell, it’s not working!
Even though Mr. Adair kept banking the plane further to the north, the wind took them to the east. As the clouds moved closer, so did the lightning. The clouds also got higher, and they seemed to be closing in on them. At one point, a whole layer of cloud lit up and produced a chain of lightning that stretched toward the ground. That caused a new worry. The lightning could reach for the plane the same way!
Maybe it was time to have happy thoughts. Her doctor recommended a few techniques to calm down; it was time to use them. Paying for all those sessions had to have some reward, didn’t it? She would try another method; relaxing her face, neck, and body muscles. Good, now she would breathe deeply, inhale and exhale…
She opened one eye and looked out the window at the disappearing ground below them.
Another inhale, and exhale….
For the next few minutes, they wove through the clouds, banking to the right, then banking to the left. The lightning surrounded them. Rain speckled the surface of the plane.
Inhale…exhale…muscles relaxed
… When the lightning flashed again, she shoved the jacket in her hand over the window to avoid looking at it.
Her heart pounding, she decided to think about a loved one. Miranda closed her eyes.
Oh, Mother, I miss you already.
Her mother’s face came rushing to her memory; her round face, soft, loving eyes, her warm, caring smile. Miranda remembered the aroma of her delicious cooking, and her stomach growled.
Then suddenly, Miranda’s body snapped backward as Mr. Adair gave the plane full throttle. He pitched the plane up and went into a steep climb. Despite her anxiety, she opened her eyes. What was he was trying to avoid? Was there danger ahead? Something worse than this nightmare?
“Miss…It seems we have ta...” He paused as if to control the fear in his voice. Of course, her mind filled in the words before he could even get any more out:
“make an emergency landing in the storm.”
Unfortunately, that was exactly what he confirmed a minute later. “We are almost there an’ we have ta land. It’s gonna be hard. Hold on.”
Hard? Hold on? Like hard, we are going to die, or hard, we are going to have few scratches?
They flew in darkness now, lightning flashing, turbulence rocking the plane. It felt as if they flew in a big circle to nowhere. She wondered what it would be like on final approach and how close they were to the island. They still had to deal with this monster between them and the ground before they could walk away…
if
they did walk away.
They dropped down through the storm. The plane rocked from side to side and the rain swept sideways. When Miranda’s handbag crashed into her leg, she grabbed it and pulled it closer to her chest. It contained her beloved computer. She was not going to die—no, not now. She thought about the people who love her: her mother, her friends…well, she had few friends, and most of them had grown distant as they married and had children, too busy with their own lives. She was like an outsider to them now, still single. She didn’t have a boyfriend, or even a dog or a cat to care for.
Jack had been her boyfriend for five years when he decided to leave. He couldn’t handle her job as a writer, he’d said. He hated the long hours she spent working on the computer, the interviews she had to do, and her traveling all the time. In their last fight before he left, he’d yelled that her career made him feel neglected, as if he’d been pushed aside for her other interests. This would have been fair if Miranda hadn’t driven herself half-insane trying to make their relationship work. He forgot her efforts to compensate him for her long hours of work by cooking, dressing up for him, or by attempting to fit into his family by visiting his mother, more often than he did actually.
One night he’d called her a frigid woman, without an ounce of emotion. Miranda shook her head: with Jack everything boiled down to being her mistake. The nerve he’d displayed with his accusations! She wondered if she should have mentioned that she’d initiated their lovemaking every time. Frigid, indeed!
Please!
Okay, thinking of people who loved her didn’t calm her, but anger was doing a good job. Anger keeps your fear away, and she was pissed like hell now at a boyfriend who had left
two
years ago. She burst out laughing.
“Are you okay, Lassie?” the pilot asked. “Don’t worry. We’ll get through; don’t lose control of yourself.”
“Shhh, I’m in my zone, trying to be angry instead of scared.”
“Oh well, whatever works, Lassie.”
She watched out the window as they rocked their way through the void. How easy it must be to slam into the side of a mountain in total darkness, never knowing what was ahead. Thank goodness there were no mountains on Fairman Island. She wondered if fog gathered on the ground.
The lightning seemed to be coming in from both sides, as if the storm was trying to break straight through the windows. Miranda’s chest started to hurt a bit. It was a good time for a short, silent prayer.
“I am not going to lie ta ya, Lassie. The island is in the middle of the storm, so hang on.”
Oh, how wonderful
, she thought.
And he couldn’t give me just a tiny lie. Oh, more anger, good, good!
The plane took a nose dive, along with her heart. She grabbed the back of his chair with two clinched hands, eyes open and alert.
“Tighten your seatbelt, we are going ta crash, I can’t see in front of…” He switched the speaker on. “Mayday! Mayday! We are crashing into Fairman Island. Does anyone hear us? Please be prepared!” he screamed and pulled the wheel toward him as a dark mass of land appeared in front of them. “Bloody shit!” he cursed.
Miranda screamed. A tear escaped her eyes, knowing she was about to meet a painful end.
The plane dipped toward the unknown with such speed that Miranda was glued to her seat, her fingers clutched her handbag. The thundering sound of the plane falling mingled with the thumping of her heartbeats in her ears. She swallowed hard, and fought back the fear piling up. The speed and pressure kept Miranda’s eyes wide open. The dark closed in on them, and when a flash of lightning cleared her vision, she saw the wide, silvery ocean rushing up to meet them. Adair yanked the wheel even tighter toward himself.
Yes, pull…pull!
He finally lifted the nose of the plane upward seconds before hitting the water. The bottom of the plane touched the surface of the water slightly and the plane trembled and jerked, splashing water all around them. But he pulled the plane up again and it obeyed. Another flash of lightning illuminated the land: wet, white sand, bushes, and dark rocks.
The plane skidded drunkenly on the water, then the loud crunch of metal eclipsed the roaring in Miranda’s ears. The seat belt held her in place as the plane shuddered violently before coming to a halt. She thanked her guardian angel and released a huge gulp of air but continued holding on to her seat.
The plane floated atop the water, and in what seemed like seconds, they reached the wet white sand and swooshed up onto the beach, like ice-skating to hell. The plane’s left wing bumped into a boulder, which sent them spinning around. “Heavens!” Miranda held her head with her free hand, praying the plane would stop spinning and wouldn’t blow up. Maybe the wet sand would hold them from further sliding, she thought.
“Damn it, stop,” Adair roared at his plane.
The plane suddenly tipped onto its side. The hard, sudden jerk flipped Adair to the seat beside him as the window near his head shattered. A string of vile Scottish curses erupted from him as he pulled his hands up to protect his face from flying glass. A bolt of agony pierced her as a sudden jolt of the plane threw her forward. The motion finally shredded her seatbelt. Her body slammed into the pilot’s crumpled form and new torture hit her. She moaned as sharp pain enveloped her whole body.
Finally, with a loud swoosh, they came to a stop on the wet sand. The smell of gasoline filled the air. Knifelike pain stung Miranda’s forehead, and a warm liquid slid down her cheek. She coughed and took a deep breath; dark foggy smoke stung her eyes, chest and nostrils.
“Miss, get off me…oh, my ribs…Jesus.”
They were upside down, her body squeezed into the tight space. His muscles shifted and he wheezed. He growled in pain, and she flinched.
“Hold on, please. I am trying to get off you,” Miranda said through her clenched teeth. Their impending argument came to a halt as they became aware of the sound of a crowd gathering, car engines roaring, and people hollering.
People…we’re saved!
“
Pull yourself
up
and open the door before the whole thing blows up,” the pilot yelled.
She gathered her strength and adjusted her body to the tight space. She was careful not to step on the pilot, but her whole body was squashing him underneath her. “Ow, watch it,” he growled, as her hand pushed on him.
“Oops, sorry.” She lifted her hand off his…crotch!
The door was snatched open and a hand grasped her shoulder and pulled her out. She clung to the strong hand for dear life.
“Miss, are you okay?” a man asked her. She turned her gaze up and looked into the face of a bald man with an egg-shaped head and a Kaiser mustache boasting curled-up ends. He pulled her into his bulky chest, carried her out, and set her down on the muddy ground. She had never felt better. The solid ground under her feet was more comforting than her mother’s apple pie.
The bald man returned to the pilot and helped him out. The wind blew the smoke all around them, and although the rain streamed down, she feared the plane would burst into flames. Miranda wanted to take off running, but she couldn’t move. Her shaky legs seemed about to collapse. Another man held her before she lost her balance, and he helped her walk away from the plane. Smoke arose around her; Miranda coughed until she shed tears. People had gathered around a black limousine and two black-suited men appeared, then stood like hawks waiting to attack. The crowd of onlookers was made up mostly of men and women in their forties and fifties. They stood in the rain and wind, gazing at the new arrivals with curiosity.
“Look what you’ve done to my plane.” Adair came rushing toward her and pointing at his plane, which was in flames.
One of the men stepped in, blocking the pilot from reaching Miranda with his outstretched hand. Adair almost lost his balance. “What? Wasn’t gonna hurt her,” Adair declared.
Was it a dream she was still alive--the fall, the rescue, the crowd, the men in the black suits? Everything wobbled in front of her. But it wasn’t a dream. It was real. Everything happened fast. The rain and wind eased, she could see more clearly now. Miranda cleared her burning throat. “My fault? If you didn’t waste half an hour arguing about taking me, we would have escaped the storm We needed just few minutes to escape it.”
“Oh, Miss-Know-It-All, aye?”
“Watch how you speak to Mr. Wardlaw’s guest,” warned a well-built man with sleek hair and a clean-shaven face.
People were held by a harsh glare from the black-suited men. None of the villagers dared to come closer to her or Adair.
Were the black-suited men Mr. Wardlaw’s men? Jeez, why would a man living on an almost deserted island need guards around him? That made her wonder what he was hiding. There were at most a few hundred residents on the island, but heck, who was counting?
Maybe he holds the authority on this island.
She’d learned about Kenneth Wardlaw through the Internet, and from the research she’d done after her conversation with him on the phone. He inherited the mansion, restored the Wardlaw’s castle and resided in it for the past few years.
One of the men was speaking on a cell phone in a respectful tone; he walked in long strides toward Adair and handed the phone to him.
“Aye, Sir,” Adair said into the phone, stiffening as he spoke to the person on the other end of the line. His facial expressions were hard as stone. “Nay, she insisted on coming. I told her nay. It wasn’t a three-point landing, Sir, but I delivered ‘er alive.”
“My plane? Totally destroyed. Your men are trying to put the fire out.” His voice quavered. Then, as he took a deep breath, a wide smile spread across his face. “You don’t ’ave to, Sir, but thank…” He shook his head, a shocked look on his face. He gazed at the cell as if it were a coiled snake, ready to strike at him.
Miranda’s smoke-and water-damaged suitcase was tossed aside as the men in black suits put the fire out with the small fire extinguisher they had plus one they retrieved from the plane. The back end of the plane was destroyed. She sighed in dismay and hung tightly to her handbag, thanking God for her safety and the laptop.
“Thank you, gentlemen, and sorry for the disturbance we caused.” She turned her gaze at one of the men. “Excuse me, can you guide me to the bed and breakfast?”