Space in His Heart (29 page)

They didn’t say
much on the way down A1A, but her sidelong glances nearly steamed
the windows. He admired her driving skill as she adroitly passed
slower cars like rocks in a stream, as though she sensed his
urgency. In the dark, he watched her skirt ride up her thighs every
time she hit the gas. To her credit, she didn’t push him. But he
owed her an explanation.

“I won’t bore
you with the technical details, Jess, but over the last week, I had
a chance to see some blueprints of shuttle upgrades they’re
discussing at Johnson. It made me realize something I’d overlooked
all along. It might have caused the hydrogen leak. I just need Skip
to confirm that he fixed it.”

“What is
it?”

He closed his
eyes, visualizing the paperwork he’d seen. “There are pins—tiny
plugs that can be found near the coolant tubes of the engine. One
of them could have ruptured a tube and caused the hydrogen
leak.”

“What about the
wiring? I saw a memo today that said faulty wiring caused a short
circuit on Columbia.”

He peered at
her. “What memo?”

“
Another
one of those anonymous things to
Newsweek
. Colonel Price pointed out to the reporter that
it was printed on stationery that was long out of date.”

As Jessica
recounted the interview Price had done earlier that day, a
sickening feeling deepened in Deke’s gut.

She looked at
him as she finished the story with a frown. “Colonel Price thinks
one possibility is someone who wants to force NASA to do a better
job on inspections,” she said. “Maybe someone who works for
Skip?”

He shook his
head and pointed to the right turn on Ocean Boulevard after they
passed Patrick Air Force Base. Maybe Skip himself. Not that he was
that cunning. “I don’t know. But Skip can help us shed some light
on this.”

He found the
side street from memory.

“I think it’s
one of these little bungalows,” he said, peering into the night. “I
was here once, years ago. After Skip’s wife died.”

“
I didn’t
know he lost his wife.” She tapped the brak
e
s at a stop sign. “How sad.”

“Yeah, he’s
never been the same since. Once the Apollo program ended and they
shipped him from Houston to the Cape, I don’t think he ever got
excited about space again. When his wife passed away, he sort of
rolled up into himself.”

“Couldn’t you
just call him and ask him about the plug or pin?”

“I want to see
his face. I want to read him.” He saw the dilapidated Toyota in a
driveway. “Here it is.”

She pulled in
behind the Toyota, her headlights reflecting on the picture window
in the front of the house. They got out of the car and studied the
bungalow, unlit and unwelcoming. He took her hand before they
stepped off the gravel driveway onto the walk.

“You can wait
in the car, Jess. This’ll just take a minute.”

She rubbed her
arms and shook her head. “Doesn’t look like he’s home. But if he
is, I want to hear what he has to say. I want to read him,
too.”

An explosion
cracked in the night and they both jerked at the sound. The
unmistakable echo of a gunshot.

“What the
hell—” Deke grabbed her shoulders and pushed her toward the car.
“Get in. Just get in and don’t move. Don’t even think about
it.”

He
sprinted up the walk and flung open the screen door, bile
rising
in
his throat. He
knew the single gunshot hadn’t been directed toward them. He knew
who’d taken the bullet.

He shook the
knob furiously, then slammed his booted foot into the wood. It
sprang open and the acrid smell of gun smoke assaulted him.

“Bowker!” he
yelled into the silence. “Bowker!”

He fumbled at
the light switch on the wall, flipping two that did nothing, then a
third. The room brightened as a floor lamp came on, shedding a soft
golden glow over the shabby furniture. Instinct made him turn to
the darkened dining room.

Skip lay
slumped over the table, the blood from his mouth dripping into a
wet pool around his head, a gun still in his hand.

* * *

It didn’t take
long for NASA officials to outnumber police, Deke noticed as he
leaned against the refrigerator of Skip’s dingy kitchen. When
Colonel Price showed up, Deke nearly choked.

Mostly,
Deke was relieved he’d convinced Jessica to go home with Stuart,
one of the first people they called. And that hadn’t been easy.
She’d wanted to stay. She
’d
clung to him, shaking, until the police had arrived and the
first few NASA higher-ups. But he had to get her out of there
before they brought the body out.

She only agreed
when he promised, gave her his Boy Scout, Navy, and astronaut word
of honor that he would come to her house when this was finished. He
knew he’d keep that promise. And not just to take her car home. He
had to hold her one more time before he went back to the Cape.
Before he went on that launch pad.

Colonel
Price looked up from the kitchen table, grief etched on his
weathered face. “I had no idea he had so much hate in him,” Price
said, referring to the suicide note they’d been discussing. “He was
a hero. The heart and soul of Apollo.”

“The space race
with the Russians never ended for him,” Deke mused. “There was
nothing more irksome to him than a joint Russia-US space
program.”

“
From
that note, I take it he knew what caused the leak but kept it to
himself
,
thinking we’d
delay the launch.” Colonel Price stood. “I don’t think we can take
the chance of launching
Endeavour
. Skip will win this one. Petrenko will probably
die.”

A hot fury shot
through Deke. “Colonel, we’ve had enough redundant inspections and
enough extremely intelligent people—with no axes to grind—check
every other aspect of the shuttle. He says it right there.” Deke
pointed to the note. “It’s a plug. I know what he means.”

“We have to get
the shuttle down from the pad for a complete re-inspection.”

Deke shook his
head. “A man is dying. Let me get out there with the best engineers
in tow. We can still get into the main engines with the shuttle on
the pad. I just need to see the coolant tubes and check every
single pin. We can fix that problem.”

Colonel Price
narrowed his gaze. “I don’t think so, Deke. It might not just be
the hydrogen leak that Skip mentions in this letter. We don’t know
for sure about anything else. What if he knew something about the
wiring and kept that to himself? Another short circuit that knocks
out a computer and maybe its backup? We can’t be sure that won’t
happen again.”

“I can handle a
manual landing, if necessary, and that would be the worst that
faulty wiring would cause.”

Colonel Price
looked warily at him. “No one’s ever attempted a manual landing
under those conditions.”

“We’ve
practiced it for weeks. I can do it in my sleep. We have to at
least look at the plugs. We have to make a good-faith effort to try
and get Petrenko.”

Colonel Price’s
gaze shifted to the dining room, where police and CSI were still
taking pictures and collecting evidence of what no one doubted was
a suicide. “Go out with a team at daybreak and look at the mains.
Then we’ll decide.”

Deke knew that
was no small victory. “Thank you, sir.”

“Now get back
to crew quarters. They’ve grilled you enough here.”

Deke nodded. “I
will, sir. I have one quick stop before I go.”

The Colonel
started to disagree, then closed his mouth. “Yes, I imagine you
do.”

Driving Jess’s
car, Deke visualized the coolant tubes, ruptured by a pin he’d
started to suspect could loosen from the vibrations of the launch.
If it hit a tube at exactly the right spot, the internal pressure
could cause the leak. So there’d be no break in the tube before the
launch. Bowker knew it and figured they’d never launch with the
hydrogen leak unsolved.

Could it be
fixed? They had to try. They could not let that man die knowing
they hadn’t tried everything to save him.

He took a
deep breath to clear his head, but it only filled his senses with
the floral scent that lingered in her car. He recognized the soap
from the time he’d taken a shower at
Jessie’s
house. Lavender or some equally feminine
thing. It hit him harder than if she’d been there to touch. He
pressed the accelerator, longing to get to her. She waited like a
refuge, a safe harbor. He grew hard at the thought of burying
himself in her, his stomach twisting with desire and
anticipation.

His throat
closed at the sight of her standing in her doorway. She still wore
the short skirt she’d had on for work, her blouse untucked and
loose. She looked a little terrified, but as he approached, the
worried look on her face dissolved into a smile.

“I really
didn’t think you’d come.” She stepped onto the patio to greet
him.

Silently,
he folded her into his arms, inhaling the fragrance in real-time,
feeling her silky hair against his mouth. He could die on Sunday,
but he’d never felt more alive than
at
that moment. Nothing else mattered.

“What
happened?” she asked quietly. “What did the note say?”

“He wanted to
delay the launch and he thought he could do it by not revealing the
cause of the leak. He didn’t want the Commies to win.”

Jessica
took a step back, her mouth opening. “
Commies
? The Russians? They haven’t been Commies for a
while.”

He ran
his fingers through her thick hair, wanting to forget Skip and his
ancient prejudices, wanting to get lost in the woman in his arms
instead. “He’s an old Apollo guy, Jess. You
know
how competitive we were with Russia then.
He was taking it out on Petrenko. Remember, he’s the nephew of a
diplomat. An ex-Communist-turned-democrat diplomat.”

“So, why did he
kill himself?”

“
If
Endeavour
blows,
he’d have the blood of the crew on his hands. No longer a legend. A
villain.”

She paled at
the words and he felt her fingertips tense on his shoulders. “What
will happen to Petrenko?”

“We’re going to
try and fix the shuttle and go get him.”

“
Try
?”

He closed his
eyes so he didn’t have to see the look in hers. He didn’t want to
go there. He wanted to forget Skip Bowker and Micah Petrenko. He
wanted her to make it go away. An incredible need to hold her, kiss
her… love her… rocked him.

“Not now,
Jessie. Please.” He buried his face in her hair, then searched for
her mouth. She welcomed his kiss, and he eased her back into the
house, her tongue igniting him. With one hand, he reached back and
slammed the door closed behind them; with the other he explored her
body, reacquainting himself with every lovely inch.

The feel
of her sent gallons of blood to the lower half of his body, shaking
him with
intensity.
Skip’s bloody face flashed in his mind, and he squeezed his eyes
closed, eliminating anything but the feel and smell and taste of
this woman he needed so much.

“Come inside,”
she murmured, moving toward the living room. “Talk to me.”

“No.” His
fingers seized the buttons of her blouse, fumbling, then tearing.
“We’ve talked for three goddamn weeks. I need you. Now.”

He reached down
to the hem of her skirt, tugging it up, running his hands along the
silky skin of her thigh. He pulled the material over her hips and
cupped the satiny front of her underpants in his hand.

She cried
out, a startled and eager sound, giving in immediately. She pressed
her warm, wet mound into his palm and let out a sexy moan as she
slid down the entryway wall. He followed her, one of his hands
popping buttons, the other finding his way into her hot flesh.
She
moaned
in response,
her fingers dug into his scalp,
and she pulled
him harder against her.

Kneeling on the
floor, he dropped his mouth on the curve of her breast, unhooking
the front of her bra. He suckled a hardened nipple, pulling the
peak between his teeth, wanting to taste her, to absolutely consume
her.

“Here, on the
floor?” she asked in husky, unsteady voice.

“Here.” He
licked the dark circle, his tongue rounding the pebbled nub. “Now.”
His fingers probed the moist flesh between her legs.

He couldn’t
stop. His craving for her shut down every rational thought but the
sensations that spiraled through him. Words choked him and he
crushed her mouth with a kiss, unable to speak. They fell back on
the hard tile floor. Her fingers tugged at the zipper of his flight
suit. She yanked it off his shoulders with as much force as he felt
driving him. He sat up to free himself from the suit.

Reality set in.
“I don’t have a—”

She yanked him
down toward her. “I don’t care. You’ve been through every medical
check known to man.”

“What if
you—”

She
covered his mouth with hers. “Just don’t stop.
Don’t stop
.” She nipped at his lips and pressed
against him, igniting him into granite-like hardness. “Go back to
here. And now.” She reached down and circled his flesh with her
hands. “Right here. Right now.”

He pulled the
crotch of her silk panties aside. He couldn’t wait for them to come
off. They murmured in each other’s ears, erotic pleas, senseless
commands—all drowned out by the blood rushing through his
brain.

Her bare
legs clamped around him and he
thrust
inside her, as deep as he could go, to touch the
very core of her.