Mac nodded. “Took lessons in Fairbanks a few years ago; the agency sponsored it.”
“So you’re really FBI?” She looked at him, and he sensed more in her question than just conversation.
“For now. I . . . I’m thinking of resigning.” Somehow his family understood, but he’d barely been able to get his mind around his failure. He just couldn’t spend the rest of his life seeing Brody’s face every time he closed his eyes. Deep inside, Mac knew that until he got face-to-face with Andy MacLeod, show him exactly what his decision had cost Mac and his family, he’d never find closure. Never escape his demons, maybe never be able to do his job right.
“Is it because of your brother?” Emma’s voice was quiet, compassionate.
Mac swallowed hard, caught off guard. Was he that transparent? He sighed. What would it matter if he told her, if he let her into his life just a little further? He knew it was an area he should work on anyway, especially if someday he wanted what his sisters had. What Brody should have had—a wife, a family, a heritage. “Aye, it’s complicated.”
She nodded. “All I can think about is being with my family right now. With Micah and Conner and Dani.”
“You have a big family.”
She gave a huff of laughter. “No, they’re my Team Hope pals. But they feel like family. More family than I’ve ever had.” She looked at him, and he saw sadness in her eyes. “My parents separated when I was sixteen. They never divorced, however, so I was left with that hanging hope they’d somehow reconcile.”
“What happened?” His own parents had fought, sometimes raucous shouting affairs that raised the roof. But they also loved each other with a fierceness that had taught Mac exactly what committed love looked like.
“Me,” she said simply. She stared at the sky, and he felt the loneliness in her voice.
Me. It occurred to him that maybe her lonely flights across the sky above the jagged terrain resembled his own escape into a career that kept him moving and above the pull of relationships and heartache.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“What was your brother’s name?” Emma asked.
“Brody. He was two years younger than me. He died in my arms.”
She blew out a breath. “I’m so sorry.”
“The thing is, he could have lived. A pilot flew over, and I even radioed him, but he refused to land. Brody bled to death.”
She gasped. Then she closed her eyes, as if bearing that pain with him.
Seeing her reaction ministered to the place his grief had rubbed raw. He couldn’t stop himself from touching her hair.
She opened her eyes, frowning. He couldn’t define it as fear or surprise, but he pulled his hand away. Still, the gesture lingered between them, and he felt something warm bloom in his chest.
Something warm and alive and growing in a place he’d long thought frozen over.
Chapter 10
SHE’D KILLED MAC’S brother. She’d killed Mac’s brother. His story cut close—too close—and Andee couldn’t bear to ask him if it had happened near the Dalton Highway. The truth gnawed at her as Mac herded her back to camp. She had no words for this intense grief.
She lay under the tarp long into the night, disbelief burning her eyes until tears ran into her ears. “He died in my arms.” She couldn’t bear to think how that felt.
Andee finally rolled onto her side, listening to Sarah breathe, praying that exhaustion might take over and plunge her into sleep. . . .
She dreamed of that moment when she’d felt alive and free and innocent, before her life had turned into a bad soap opera.
The silence of a plane hurtling to the earth from three thousand feet, without a prop or any power to keep it aloft swept through her mind. Wind whistled against the cockpit window, and the little Cessna shook with the force of the turbulent descent.
Across from her, in the pilot’s seat, Gerard MacLeod sat, his hands on his thighs, stone still, breathing in and out as if they were fly-fishing in Disaster Creek instead of plunging to their deaths.
Andee heard her voice, young and afraid, some ethereal part of herself caught in time. “Gerard, do something!”
“Keep your glide speed under 100 knots; cut your mixture. Turn off your master switch.”
Andee’s hands shook as she complied, holding the yoke as if it might offer her some control. They were falling out of the sky. Her heart had left her body somewhere up there in the firmament.
“Do you see the landing site?” Gerard asked.
Andee spied it, a strip of brown furrowed out of the tundra. She nodded.
“Keep your horizon level. Bring her in steady. Lower your flaps and cut your speed to 60.”
Andee held her breath as the ground rushed at her. Beside her, Gerard made no movement to assist. Didn’t he care that they were about to be crushed and turned into a ball of fire?
“Daddy!”
“Hold her steady, Emma. You can do this.”
“I can’t.”
“You can. You have to.” He left the rest unspoken, but Andee already knew the rest. He wasn’t going to help. He expected her to face her fears, consider her options, and make wise decisions.
Their lives in the bush dictated that she learn to survive.
She swallowed, centered her plane on approach.
“Ease it down, tail slightly low.”
They touched, bounced, landed again, jarring Andee’s jaw.
Her father didn’t even flinch. “Brakes, Emma.”
Brakes! She hit the brakes, fighting the yoke, the burn of her calves. The plane jerked, slowing too quickly. She eased up and let it bump and shake until it came to a stop.
Andee leaned forward, her head on the yoke. Euphoria bubbled out of her, a sort of heady, unbridled joy that started in her stomach and reeled out into laughter. She leaned back, tears streaking her face.
Gerard smiled. “You did it. Great job.”
She looked at him, at the pride in his brown eyes, so much like hers, and felt more explosions of joy. She wanted to be everything he was and more. To be the best, the bravest, the most adventurous.
“Uh-oh,” Gerard said, looking past her. His expression dimmed.
She turned to see her mother hurrying over the tarmac. Her dark hair streamed out behind her, her caribou jacket flapping open. Her expression turned Andee cold.
So, so cold.
“Emma, wake up!” The voice sliced through that moment when Andee saw her life separate into two pieces.
She blinked awake. The barest of light dented the gray pallor inside the tarp. Andee’s nose felt stiff and hard, her joints ached, and her back felt as if a moose had trampled it. Probably from the strain of holding up Ishbane and Flint on belay yesterday.
“You were whimpering.” Nina wore a motherly concern on her wide face.
“I’m okay, thanks. Just a bad dream.” Andee pushed up, turned, and studied Sarah, who’d slept fitfully. The fact that Sarah seemed to want to break free of the cocoon of slumber buoyed Andee’s hope. She checked her pulse and her eyes and nudged her. “Sarah? Sarah, wake up.”
Sarah’s eyes flickered, a groan emerged, but while Andee held her breath, nothing else happened.
“She made noises in the night,” Nina said. “It sounded like she said a name.” She reached out to brush Sarah’s hair from her face. “Frank, maybe?”
“Hank. Her boyfriend.” Andee looked at the bandage around Sarah’s head, then closed her eyes in repose. Hank would be beside himself with worry if he saw Sarah now. A Texan with a personality larger than his state, he’d courted Sarah without any stops and swept her clean off her feet. Andee wouldn’t be surprised if the man proposed any day. No wonder Sarah dreamed of him in her darkest hour.
Andee felt a spark of jealousy. She hadn’t had a boyfriend since . . . well, never. At least not like Hank. She’d had dates in high school, a close friend in college who’d wanted more. But she kept moving, always one step ahead of relationships that might suck her down
to ground level. She couldn’t bear to let a man not only deflate her dreams but wound her the way her parents’ separation had wounded each other.
As it was, she’d inadvertently let Mac tread around the edges of her heart. It would help if he weren’t so . . . unpredictable. Sullen and argumentative one second, brave and painfully sweet the next. Like when she’d caught him touching her hair, a look of concern on his face. It had found her unguarded soft spots and settled there. And his poetry-quoting moment didn’t help in the least.
Who was Stirling McRae?
“We need to get going.” Andee climbed out of the shelter, amazed at the difference in temperature. Inside, she could make out her breath with each word. Outside, the wind yanked it from her body, made her wrap her arms around her waist.
“Cold morning, aye?” Mac sat on the scree slope, his arms on his knees, booted feet digging into the earth, and a slight smile tipping his mouth. He wore three days’ worth of whiskers on his chin, and his hair tangled in the wind, free of the cap now shoved into his pocket.
Oh no. Just when she thought she’d braced herself for the day. She wondered how long he’d been sitting here, watching the sky or her shelter. Protecting her?
The thought churned up a trampled longing inside her.
“We need to get moving soon. I’m going to heat some coffee.” She had dragged her backpack behind her and now dug out the coffee, along with the gas container. “I think we have about six miles to the Granite River. From there, it’s easy to navigate to Disaster Creek.”
Mac nodded. “Flint’s barely hanging on.”
Andee added gas to the stove, primed it, then lit it with her lighter. “In this situation, pain is good. We need to know if he’s getting worse. If I medicate him, he’ll only push harder. Pain tells us when to slow down and ask for help.”
Mac quirked an eyebrow. “I don’t see you knowing when to ask for help.”
Andee turned her back to him. Okay, yes, she knew she had some issues in the asking-for-help area. But out here, a person had to depend on herself. It had taken her years to learn to rely on her Team Hope friends. She wasn’t going to dole out all her trust to the first good-looking Scot.
She knelt beside the stove and poured water into the pot. She had instant coffee, and today they’d share the packets. Maybe tomorrow at this time, she’d be having a birthday breakfast at Soapy Smith’s Pioneer Restaurant in Fairbanks. Or with her father in Disaster.
And wouldn’t that be fun? Her father probably wouldn’t even remember that thirty years ago tomorrow he’d flown her mother to a doctor in Bettles, where she’d given birth to their only child. Or that fourteen years ago he’d helped them exit his life. Maybe she should delete tomorrow from the calendar.
Andee shook the thought away. She’d long ago surrendered her missed birthdays, Christmases, and major life events into the hands of the Lord. Just because she felt vulnerable, tired, and overwhelmed didn’t mean she had to meander the road of what-ifs. She simply hadn’t been gifted with people who readjusted their agenda for her. Except for Sarah. And look where that had gotten Sarah.
“How’s Sarah today?” Mac asked, as if reading her mind. He knelt beside her, and his sudden presence, along with the breeze reaping his masculine scent, startled her.
“I don’t know. She’s breathing okay.”
Mac nodded, took the packets of coffee, and emptied them into the cups. Apparently, he’d passed his math classes because he evenly divided the portions between the six cups. “When I was ten, my brother and I were wrestling. I dropped him on his head on the concrete floor of our house. He was in and out of consciousness for three days. Back then, we had a once-a-week flight out from Deadhorse, with the occasional medical flight.”
As Andee listened to his story, his accent, his low tone, her throat felt scratchy. Her emotions simmered right under her skin today, and if she didn’t watch it, she’d break into idiotic tears.
“My mom prayed and my father called in help. A low ceiling and temperatures below minus fifty delayed the flight. By the time they arrived five days later, Brody was better. They took him to Fairbanks anyway and then to Anchorage for a CAT scan. He’d had a slight concussion, but it had resolved itself. My father said it was because of my mother’s prayers. It reminds me of what Phillips said—that God resurrects people from the dead because of our prayers.”
“I didn’t think you believed in God,” she said, holding his gaze.
A slight smile flickered across Mac’s face. “I believe in God. I’m just not sure He believes in me. Not anymore. But He’d probably listen to you.”
Andee frowned, hoping he might elaborate, but Mac rose, carrying coffee to the men’s shelter.
Emma had the tenacity to rival any of his sisters, cousins, or the entire population of the McRae family still etching out life in the Scottish highland village of Dalwhinnie. Aware of the limitations of their scraggly group, she stopped often for short breaks, making sure everyone got a sip of water, taking pulse rates, and checking for dehydration. He felt like he might be with his mother or the bureau psychologist who’d taken her best shot at digging into his psyche after Brody’s death. In front of Ms. Relax-and-Tell-Me-What’s-on-Your-Mind, he’d felt numb and void of feelings, especially the kind he might spill into a report for his boss.
Without blinking, he’d revealed information to Emma straight from his soul, a piece of himself that he still hadn’t gotten his brain around. God didn’t believe in him? Normally he’d attribute those words to cynicism, but six hours of hiking and hauling a seriously wounded woman through the tundra of northern Alaska made him push that sentence around in his head for a good look.
He’d had a cerebral, wide-angle view of God pretty much since he was a teenager. Mac saw Him as the creator. The One to whom Mac would answer when the final note on his bagpipe faded. He’d made a profession of faith early on, had been baptized by a missionary, grew up on the meat and potatoes of Bible stories and the Gospels. Still, he had a hard time seeing God’s touch in the every day. Yes, he could buy the occasional miracle—lives raised from the dead or even near misses that he felt pretty sure God caught in His capable hands. But God involved in his everyday life? If Mac still believed that, he’d chucked that belief into the wind the day Brody bled out in his arms. God could have deflected the bullet, tripped Brody, or even given him a willing pilot to help save his brother’s life. How hard would that have been?
God didn’t care about the big pictures or little details, and He didn’t get involved in daily lives—at least not in Mac’s. If He had, God would have heard Mac’s cries as Brody’s blood saturated his clothes.
Maybe, however, God heard the prayers of people like Emma. She deserved it, with her die-hard spirit, her patience, the way she cared for people. Obviously his now-discarded belief that Emma might be a terrorist only proved his abysmal skill at judging character. Perhaps that bureau psychologist should have probed a bit harder.
At lunch, Nina and Phillips lounged behind the rest of the group, propped against her backpack. Flint lay spread-eagle, staring at the sky. Ishbane sat farther away, his back to them. Emma had handed out PowerBars, half each. Mac watched her unwrap hers, slowly nibbling at each bite.
“So, what do you do when you’re not flying or saving lives?” Mac had to admit, he had difficulty picturing Emma’s life outside this wilderness.
She moved over to Sarah, checked her pulse, then tucked the sleeping bag around her neck. “I read a lot.”
“No fishing or wrestling grizzlies with your bare hands?”
“I’m afraid of grizzlies, remember?” She grinned.
“I just figured a bush pilot would be busy doing something . . . rugged on her off hours.”
“Oh, I love being outdoors. I lived for the days when my father would return after a month-long absence, cash in his pocket from ferrying hunters or fishermen or flying the mail to remote villages. He’d plunk the money into my mother’s tin flour can, then drag us out t
o the plane. It felt like Christmas unloading all those boxes from Fairbanks filled with food or clothing or books. But the best part was the next few days. Gerard would take me fishing or hunting, snowshoeing, or even mushing the dogs out to check the trap lines.
“I still love being outside. Sarah and I joke that our perfect vacation is a three-day backpacking trip. But I like a five-star hotel with a whirlpool, some honey-grilled salmon, and a decent Caesar salad on occasion. I do know how to use silverware and real linen napkins.” She giggled, and he smiled at the sound. “Actually, I don’t have much free time anymore. I’m saving for an airplane, so every last nickel goes toward a down payment.”
“You don’t own the wreckage we left on Foggytop?”
She shook her head, wincing slightly. “That belongs to North Rim Outfitters, and they’ll be thrilled to know it’s totaled. No, my dream isn’t quite so fancy. I’d be happy with an old twin-engine Ottertail outfitted with an Automated External Defibrillator, a couple of epi pens, portable O2 tanks, spine boards, poison antidotes, and at least one obstetrical kit. And that’s just for starters.”
“I’m seeing a link between the EMT gig in the Lower 48 and your summer job.”
He liked the fact that she smiled at his knowledge of her life. Well, a good FBI agent pays attention.
“I have dreams of opening a Fixed Base Operation— a hangar and possibly a medical clinic—in Wiseman, a sort of midway medical-transport service that would reach the northern rim, the villages in the Brooks Range, and even towns along the Dalton. Fairbanks has some excellent medical services, but up here, weather and conditions are so temperamental, we could use something closer. There are too many people who need immediate on-site care, who can’t wait until they get to Fairbanks for emergency attention.”
Mac’s smile dimmed, his thoughts going to Brody. “If there had been something like that three months ago, my brother might still be alive.”
Emma’s expression clouded. She looked away. “I’m so sorry about your brother, Mac.”
She’d already said that last night. Still, her compassion touched him. “Thanks, Emma.”
Expect the Sunrise Page 14