“He liked excitement. He was always on the go, always chasing the next big find, always testing himself and everyone around him. My mother used to say that one of these days he was going to get himself killed. Turns out she was right.” Her voice went a little unsteady as she said that last.
“Can you tell me what happened? With the plane?” His voice was carefully gentle. She’d told him a lot, but she was still circling the tragedy that haunted her like a wary animal fearing a trap.
She was silent for so long that he wasn’t sure she was going to answer. He did what he could: held her and waited.
Finally she made a restless little movement, and her arm tightened around his neck.
“There was a tropical storm coming in when we took off,” she said. “It hadn’t hit yet, but it was on the way. I wanted to either wait a few days until the storm system passed, or take a commercial flight out of Cancún, which was only a few hours away, but Dad and David and Becca voted me down. The three of them were all adventurers, natural-born risk takers, and an approaching storm that at that point wasn’t anything more than some wind and overcast skies was nothing to them. I was the official wuss.” She took a breath. “They were always calling me that, teasing me about being so cautious and careful. I hated having them think I was a wuss. If I hadn’t hated it so much, I might have stuck to my guns and insisted we take a commercial flight if we had to leave that day, or else wait until the weather cleared. But my father wanted to get back and wouldn’t hear of waiting, and as they all pointed out to me we could be almost all the way home by the time we drove to Cancún and got through the airport onto the flight I’d found, and anyway it wasn’t even raining yet. So I caved. I caved.”
Her voice caught, and she shivered. He hugged her closer.
“So you took off under the threat of an incoming storm,” he prompted. “How long were you in the air before it hit? Presuming it did hit.”
“It hit.” Her words were flat. Cal could feel her pressing closer, and he slid a comforting hand down the smooth curve of her back. “We’d been in the air about forty-five minutes when it started to rain. Only a little at first and then a deluge. Sheets of water pouring down, sluicing over the windows, drumming against the fuselage. Big peals of thunder along with flashes of lightning. We were over the jungle, there was no place to land, so that option was out. Dad tried getting above the storm, but he couldn’t. It was too big. We were flying in clouds so thick and black that it was like the darkest of nights. He had to switch to flying by instruments. The wind was the worst. We were bouncing all over the place, hitting wind shears without warning, going up and down like we were in an elevator. Dad was calm. David and Becca were calm. I was scared to death, but I tried not to let it show.” She paused, and Cal felt her fingers digging into the back of his shoulder. “Then a huge wind shear took us down in what felt like a free fall and somehow the tail broke off. The plane went into a dive and crashed in the jungle. I was thrown clear.”
She stopped. He could feel the tension in her body, hear her too-fast breathing, sense her rising agitation.
“The others?” he asked gently.
“They were still with the plane.”
He smoothed the hair back from her face and pressed another kiss to the top of her head. He knew how hard this was for her. His stomach went tight with reaction to her distress.
“Can you tell me the rest of it, honey?”