Dusty stored the bag, unbuckled his seatbelt, and got Sunny up from her seat. Lucy had a Murphy bed locked down before she reached it. She pulled down the blanket and top sheet and fluffed a compressed pillow before Sunny sat down on the mattress. Dusty knelt in front of her and deftly unlaced her boots, tugging them off her feet before helping her lie down and cover up. When Sunny felt something being pulled around her, she lifted her head and saw Dusty buckle a seat belt over her hips.
“So you don’t bounce out of bed if we hit turbulence,” he said.
Pulling her rubber band from her ponytail, Sunny let her hair down, and almost immediately Dusty’s fingers were combing through the long strands falling onto her pillow. Lucy went back to her chair. It was considerate of her, really. The medicine in Sunny’s stomach had begun to dissolve, and the subtle waves of drowsiness lapped against her consciousness.
Or the dizziness she felt could have been from Dusty’s close proximity. He leaned over her and gently caressed her forehead while gazing into her eyes. Basically, they were alone. The deep thrum of the plane’s engines made it impossible for anyone at the front of the plane to hear their conversation.
“How are you feeling, Sunflower?” Dusty asked in a whisper and as he lightly ran his knuckles over her cheek.
“Still nauseous.”
“Well, give it a little more time.” He touched her lips with is fingertips, and Sunny caught her breath. “I’m … distracting you again?” he asked with the side of his mouth curled in a grin.
Sunny closed her eyes and let the sensations of his touch push aside rational thoughts. “Yes.”
“In a good way, or bad?”
Sunny couldn’t help grin at him. “In a good way.”
“Good.” Dusty’s big chest shrunk as he exhaled. “I was beginning to think …”
She waited. When he didn’t continue, or even look up into her face, she got worried she’d hurt his feelings. “What?”
Dusty cocked his head to the side and lifted up a length of her hair, choosing to study it instead of catching her gaze. “That I couldn’t get you to notice me.”
Sunny snorted. She didn’t mean to; it just sort of came out when she didn’t want to laugh at something so absurd. That noise instantly brought his amused stare up. “Dusty, you have everyone’s attention wherever you go. You are the most handsome man I’ve ever seen.” Did she really just say that out loud?
“Sunflower, I haven’t been spending the time since I met you seeking everyone else’s attention.” Dusty leaned closer. “I only wanted yours.”
It could’ve been the drowsiness caused by the medicine taking over her mind, or maybe her heart had just melted at him sounding insecure. “Then you don’t need to worry.”
“After we get back home, would you consider going out to dinner with me?”
Sunny caught his hand. “When?”
“Every night.”
Sunny smiled. He must’ve taken that as an invitation. He quickly closed the distance and kissed her. Her nausea disappeared with the acceleration of her heart.
“She was impertinent!”
Jim took the clipboard from the special agent’s hand. He had gone down to the dungeon to look over the checklist of what equipment Agent James had checked out. “If you had the same field experience as she’s had, you’d be short-tempered sometimes too.”
“She was rude!”
Jim grinned at the unusually tall man. The dungeon keeper stood not quite seven feet tall, too tall not to stand out for most regular assignments. He was resigned to keeping track of their agencies commodities for the past thirty years. His negative attitude reflected his acquiescence to his position.
“I don’t doubt it.” The relatively short list of items seemed odd, even for an agent as unusual as Lucy. “Woman’s size six black battle dress uniform pants, black long sleeved mock turtle-neck shirt, multi-pocketed vest, web belt with holster, size nine women’s boots, black socks, … volt meter, bolt cutters, three rolls of black duct tape, … one Glock 9mm gun with silencer and extra clips.” He suddenly stood up straight, cursing, “What the hell?” His head whipped up to catch the dungeon keeper’s smoldering stare. “C-4?”
“Twenty-five pounds of it.”
“Just what the devil is she planning on doing with that much plastic explosive?”
The lanky, gray-haired man crossed his long arms over his narrow chest and sighed. “She wasn’t inclined to share that information with me when I asked her, sir. She just got rude, telling me to mind my own business.”
“Did she check out a satellite phone?” Jim asked as he continued to scan the page.
“Yes, sir.”
Jim marched down the wide aisle toward the elevator. He needed to talk with his agent and find out her intentions before they got any closer to their assignment. He took out his phone and hit a single button. The agency’s operator picked up after one ring. “Get me Agent Summers.”
He didn’t want to bother Sanderson while he was flying, but Summers was his co-pilot and should be free to take his call. Jim needed to know where they were. He glanced at his watch. Eleven pm in California. They should have taken off five hours ago, which might put them near Florida already.
“Summers—”
He sounded sleepy. “Agent Summers, this is Brockway. Where are you?”
The man cleared his throat. “In bed, sir!”
“In bed? What are you doing there?”
“Uh, do I have to answer that question, sir?”
A woman’s voice laughed in the background. “Summers, aren’t you flying with Sanderson?”
“No, sir. Agent James didn’t like our jet, so she found a different plane to take on her mission. Captain Sanderson flew right chair with Captain Rockwell Sizemore.”
“She didn’t like our jet?” Jim punched the elevator button exceptionally harder than necessary with the knuckle of his fist. “What kind of plane did they take?”
“A sixty-three-year-old Douglas Commercial 3.”
It took Jim a moment before he understood what he meant. “A DC-3? How did she find a DC-3 in Long Beach?”
“It was in a hangar two doors down. The owner was working on it.”
Jim stepped into the elevator and turned around. “Yeah, that seems about right. Thank you, Summers. You can go back to … whomever.”
He disconnected his call and stared at his reflection in the polished aluminum doors. He stood directly in the middle where the seam came together, his distorted image splitting in two. As badly as he wanted to be a good leader, Jim’s gut had told him he should’ve sent his injured agent home and taken the assignment himself. He could still play along with the best of his agents. At the very least he might’ve partnered with Lucy—to give her the back up she may need. There were times when he regretted ever getting out of the field and into an office.
An old prop plane. Why that kind of a plane? Jim punched the button for the main floor, and as the elevator began to rise, it dawned on him what her intentions were. “She’s going to land directly on the island instead of Nassau. Huh!”
Instead of going home like he’d told his wife, Jim detoured and headed down into the Information Center. Night shift crew took up only a few of the fifty cubicles dedicated to gathering sensitive information, and right now he needed a computer with better connections than his laptop. After he sat down in an isolated corner, he logged on with his username and password.
“What are you doing here?”
Jim turned around to find Kate standing behind him with her hands on her hips. He’d been caught. “I …”
“Don’t try to make something up on the spot, Jim. I know you better than that.” Kate looked around his shoulder at the monitor and said, “I also know you’ve been down in the dungeon checking up on Lucy, when you should have been home. Spill.” She rolled another chair closer to his.
Jim blew out a deep breath. “Okay, fine! Yes,” he said in hushed tones. “I’m checking up on her. Isn’t that what you’re doing here too?” He saw her hesitate before she sat down. “That would be a yes.”
“Of course I wanted to keep my eye on her. She’s my friend, and up until this morning, she was lying in the hospital. I have the clearance, so I’m not doing anything wrong.” Kate motioned toward the computer. “What have you found?”
Turning around, he said, “I found out that Lucy decided to obtain her own ride to the island. Her new pilot is a man named Rockwell something or another. I wanted to pull up any information I can on him.”
“Could his last name be Sizemore?”
Jim lifted his fingers off the keyboard. “That’s right. How did you know?”
Kate smiled knowingly. “Run his name. I don’t think you’ll be disappointed with who Lucy’s flying with.”
Jim leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms over his chest. “Do I really need to bother?”
“It would have been more fun having you read for yourself how Rocky Sizemore landed his crippled jumbo 747 jet on a grassy field outside of Silver City, New Mexico six years ago.”
“Whoa,” Jim whispered. “How did it become crippled?”
“They were on the last leg of a trip from Atlanta to Los Angeles when a small private plane flew into their flight path. Rocky saw it and tried to climb out of its way, but unfortunately the pilot of the private plane did the same thing. It collided with the jet’s undercarriage and took out the landing gear as well as caused a major leak in the hydraulics. Steering was done mostly with rudders and engines. He landed the plane on its belly next to a freeway, saving the 257 people on board.”
“Was the other plane found?”
“Three days later, hikers found some wreckage scattered near the base of the mountain, but they couldn’t find the body of the man who had left the Santa Barbara airport that afternoon.”
“So, Lucy not only found a guy with a plane that can go cross country and then land directly on the island, but she found a guy who’s a hero to fly her there?”
“Evidently so.”
He turned back to his computer. “I want to know where they are right now.”
“Are you going to call her?”
“No. I’m going to track her.” He pulled up her satellite phone number and overlaid it on a map grid, hit a button and waited for a moment. “Her phone has a GPS locator inside it.”
“As does mine,” Kate pointed out. “As does yours.”
“It does,” Jim said quietly, “technically.”
“What do you mean, technically?”
Jim grinned as he glanced around. “I switched mine off.”
“You can do that?” Kate asked, taking her phone from her handbag.
“
I
can.” Jim’s grin broadened as he sat forward. “There she is.”
Kate leaned in closer. “Isn’t that—”
“Yes, it is. They’re in Houston. Huh! She got clearance to land at the LBJ Space Center for refueling—at midnight.” He grinned and tapped the desk with his fist. “Impressive. I wonder what she has planned next.”
“You brought what on board my plane?”
Lucy unbuckled the duffle bag from the seatbelt tying it down. All of her bags had found a seat during takeoff. They had also taken all the food goods, blankets, and pillows from the agency’s jet since Rocky’s plane was a little lacking in some basic comforts. Of course, he didn’t have any real pre-flight notice before they left.
“Oh, come on, Captain Sizemore, it’s not like I have a bag full of sweaty dynamite. It’s just a little malleable plastic explosive.” Lucy tossed a smaller bag unexpectedly into his hands. “I’m keeping the detonator caps separately.”
“Blast it, woman,” Rocky cursed. “Are you insane?”
“No,” Lucy said, lifting a backpack from another seat, “but I do have a headache.” She sat down and tugged at the bag’s zipper. “You know, I wouldn’t think a man like you would fret over a little danger.”
“What do you mean?” Rocky tucked the small bag under the seat near his feet.
Lucy leaned back and gazed at the scruffy older man. “I haven’t lived in a cave for the past six years, Captain. I know who you are, but I didn’t expect to find you holed up in a secluded hangar working on an antique aircraft.”
Rocky sat down across the aisle from her. “I’m not hiding, Agent James. I’m doing what I love with the time I have left.”
Lucy huffed. “Time you have left. What a way to talk. You make it sound like you’re on your deathbed. I’ve known people who’ve reacted to near death experiences in ways that don’t make any sense. Some take extreme chances because they feel like they’ve beaten death, and others are like you.”
“How do you see me?”
Lucy stretched her neck while she thought about how to phrase her answer without hurting his feelings—and couldn’t do it. “Cowardly.”
Rocky jumped up and threw back his shoulders. Lucy didn’t move, but Johnny and Dusty ran down the aisle to where they were … talking.
“I’m not a coward,” he said with a controlled voice. “I landed that plane where no other pilot would have been able to.”
“And what did you do afterward, Rocky?” Lucy changed the tone of her voice to a more sympathetic one. “Did you climb back into cockpit and use your skill to fly another jet? Or did you become a mechanic and tinker away the next five years?”