“Busy doing what?” I asked with a hint of disinterest, imagining that Aaron was probably dealing with a critical emergency at the boat factory. Maybe the paint color was wrong on one of his new racing schooners and the billionaire who had commissioned it was in a huff.
Katelyn turned to me with disbelief. “You do know that he’s been out on the water every hour since the crash, helping with the recovery. He’s loaned a bunch of his boats and he hasn’t slept a wink in two days.”
Aaron?
Feeling suddenly ashamed of my assumptions, I replied, “Sorry. I didn’t know that.”
“Of course you didn’t know. Because you don’t talk to him. You’re too busy being the world’s best reporter, telling us all about the kindness of strangers and how that has been the one bright light in all of this—how everyone has come together in our community. I watched your show, Jack, and I saw how moved you were by it. But keep in mind—one of those kind strangers is your brother. He’s out there doing a good thing, and it hasn’t been easy on him.”
She turned to look the other way, obviously angry with me.
“Sorry,” I said again. “I’m just reporting what I see.”
She faced me again. “I know, but that’s the problem. You never see Aaron. You don’t want to see what’s good in him, because you’ve always been in competition with him, and you hate when he’s wins at anything. I just wish you could realize that you’ve finally beaten him in the race—the race that seems to matter to you.” She began counting on her fingers. “You make more money than he does, you’re more famous. In this life, you are the one with the bigger house and the fancier carriage. So let’s just call it even, okay?”
“But it’s not even,” I argued, just for the sake of arguing, because when it came to Aaron, I couldn’t seem to let anything go. “He has you.”
Why was I saying this? I didn’t want Katelyn for myself. Not truly. I loved her—yes, I always would—but a long time ago I realized that the thing I loved was our friendship and the family she had created…with my brother. The family she had allowed me to become a part of. When it came to Aaron and me, she was the bridge and the peacekeeper.
Besides, I loved my life, just as it was. I couldn’t imagine Katelyn as my wife. Maybe I had been able to imagine it at one time, but not now.
She scoffed. “Come on, Jack. You don’t want me, not like that. You have an amazing life, and we’re the best of friends, as we were always meant to be. Whatever torch you once carried for me is long gone out and you know it. This is between you and Aaron, and Lord knows he has tried to start over. You’re the one who refuses to put the past behind you. Behind all of us.”
The doors to the ballroom opened, and all the reporters began to file in.
Katelyn and I walked beside each other in silence. Like a physical heat coming off her, I could feel her frustration with me.
We moved into the room and sat down in the second row, each of us withdrawing our notepads and pens. The FBI spokesperson entered with a group of local police officers and rescue officials. They informed us that still, no survivors had been found. The rescue operation had officially become a recovery effort.
As I comprehended the pain of all this loss and the suffering of the family members, my ancient quarrels with my brother suddenly felt petty and irrelevant. So much about why we disliked each other was rooted in the past, from other lifetimes, eons ago. Why should any of that matter today, when I had everything I ever wanted and we were no longer enemies? We were brothers this time.
Well… I had almost everything I ever wanted. I was still a single man.
I glanced around the room. All these families, grieving for each other, devastated by loss…
Every day is a gift.
I thought about what Katelyn had told me—that Aaron had been out on the water since the night of the crash, helping in the search for survivors.
She was right. He was a good man, at least in this life. I’d always known that. I simply preferred not to openly acknowledge it, because I preferred to hold onto my resentment over old squabbles. For some reason, it made me feel complete—as if the world was exactly as it was supposed to be. I was the good guy and he was the villain—which was ridiculous. He wasn’t a villain. We just happened to have loved the same woman on more than one occasion.
And it had been Katelyn’s decision to choose Aaron over me. We couldn’t both win. I had no true understanding of the bond they shared. I didn’t understand it because I’d never experienced anything like it myself. At least not yet.
Although Meg Andrews aroused something in me that reminded me of what I once felt for Katelyn—a sense of connection. Maybe it would lead to something, or maybe not. We’d only just met, and she might disappear from my life as quickly as she entered it. That happened sometimes. People you connected with went away, either in a plane crash or by choice.
So maybe Katelyn had never been the real prize. At least not for me. Maybe that’s what I needed to understand and accept.
I leaned a little closer to her. “I’ll call him tonight,” I said, “just to see how he’s doing.”
“Do you promise?”
“I promise.”
She laid her hand on my wrist and gave it a squeeze of gratitude, just as the rescue official called for a moment of silence to grieve for those who were gone.
For the first time since I had met Katelyn in New York more than ten years earlier, I did not feel forlorn sitting next to her. I did not feel like the unlucky one. Today, I felt only gratitude for having her in my life. As a friend.
The moment of silence ended, and the FBI spokesman moved to the microphone. He immediately began to outline the history of Jaeger-Woodrow Airways and its connection to Marquee-Goldman—a bankrupt airline I was very familiar with.
The room erupted into a wild frenzy of questions. As soon as the press briefing came to an end, every reporter—myself included—made a mad dash for the door, because this story was just the tip of the iceberg.
Chapter Twenty-eight
Meg
“Of course, now everyone thinks it’s negligence on the part of the airline,” I said to my brother Wayne on the phone when we talked later that afternoon. “Either from poor security or some mechanical failure they caused through lazy or corrupt management. The notion that it might have been a terrorist bomb is no longer at the top of everyone’s mind. They’re pointing fingers at Reginald Harrison. But the fact is, we still don’t know. It could very well have been a bomb. He could have been doing everything right, following all the rules, but sometimes… We just won’t know until we have all the evidence.”
“What do you know?” Wayne asked.
I stood in the enormous hangar, staring at the broken sections of the 747 that had been recovered from the water and delivered so far. My colleagues were bagging and tagging everything and entering the information into the computer system. Meanwhile, the larger front half of the aircraft which included the flight deck was still in the field and trees next to Jack’s parents’ house.
“Not much,” I replied, “except that the plane disappeared from radar after both transponders went dead at the exact same second, and the pilots didn’t even have a chance to make an emergency call. That means it was either a massive structural failure and complete loss of power, or a midair collision—which we know it wasn’t—or it was an explosion. But caused by what? Either way, we have a big job ahead of us, piecing this thing together.”
“You’re going to be there awhile, I take it?”
“Yes. Weeks.”
One of my team members approached me with a cup of coffee. I mouthed the words thank you and peeled back the plastic rim to take a sip.
“How about you?” I asked Wayne. “How are you holding up?”
I couldn’t imagine piloting for a major commercial airline after something like this. How difficult it must be for the crew members to trust that everything would be all right after takeoff.
“I’m just
glad I’m not working for Jaeger-Woodrow Airways,” he replied. “I don’t think anyone in the aviation community knew about their history. Harrison certainly kept it well hidden.”
“I just hope we can get to the bottom of this,” I replied as a giant, noisy flatbed truck pulled into the hangar, carrying a massive piece of the starboard wing and a section of the rear cargo hold. Two black cars drove in behind it. I suspected they were the explosive experts from the FBI that called earlier to say they were on their way, along with a few members of the CIA and the FAA.
“I need to go,” I said. “Some important people just arrived.”
We hung up, and I set down my coffee to go and greet them.
o0o
It wasn’t easy to get anything done under the hectic pace of all the meetings with different groups and officials, and the constant ringing of my phone, where questions came at me from left, right and center.
Inside the hangar, members of my own team constantly approached me for assistance. Meanwhile, the FBI had their own forensics experts working on site. Because they were the lead agency on this crash, I had to be careful not to step on their toes or get in their way, or we could end up in a turf war. I had to remember the boundaries and provide support and expertise when it was requested. It wasn’t always easy to do that when all I wanted to do was take charge, kick everyone out of there, and do it all myself. When it came to crash investigations, I was a bit of a control freak.
Shortly after 6:00 p.m., my phone rang again. This time it was Jack. Having not spoken to him all day—and knowing that CNN and other news networks were looking into the connections between Jaeger-Woodrow and Marquee-Goldman Airlines—I was quick to answer it. Maybe he knew something we didn’t.
“Hello?”
“Hey, it’s Jack,” he said. “Can you get away for a quick bite to eat?”
“Not really,” I replied, glancing at the clock on the wall. “They’re bringing food here in a little while. But don’t you have a show to do?”
“Yes, but I’d like to talk to you before then.” He paused. “How about a coffee? We can sit down, just for a few minutes. I’m not fishing for information. I actually have something I want to share with you. Something that might help on your end.”
I glanced around. The place was crawling with the FBI and CIA. I wasn’t sure they’d appreciate a CNN reporter walking in the door.
“Where are you now?” I asked.
“In my car, just leaving downtown Portland. I’m ten minutes away.”
I glanced around again. “How about I meet you in the airport hotel, in the lobby area. Look for the big fireplace.”
“Sounds good,” he replied. “I’ll see you shortly.”
I ended the call and grabbed my purse, then let one of my guys know that I was stepping out for a few minutes.
Chapter Twenty-nine
I walked into the crowded hotel lobby and spotted Jack, already there, seated on one of the sofas in front of the fireplace. He wore a black turtleneck with a brown leather jacket and jeans, and was sitting forward with his elbows on his knees, texting busily.
I watched him for a moment, feeling half in a daze, as if I had suddenly become weightless and was floating off the ground. I wasn’t sure if the reason was my fascination with him as a celebrity—or simply as a very handsome man—or if it was pure mental exhaustion.
Putting one foot in front of the other, I approached him. “Hey.”
He glanced up, slid his phone into his jacket pocket, and like a true, old-fashioned gentleman, he rose to his feet to greet me. He waited until I was seated before he sat down as well.
“Thanks for meeting me,” he said. “I’ll try not to keep you. I imagine you’re pretty busy over there.”
I shrugged. “It’s all right. With the FBI taking the lead on this, it’s not as big a deal for me to slip out for a few minutes. I’m glad you called.”
He regarded me intently for a moment. “How are you doing today? Better?”
I inhaled deeply and rested my arm along the back of the sofa. “Yes. I really needed that sleep last night. It helped a lot.”
“Good,” he replied. “But it’s still been rough today, hasn’t it. They keep upping the death toll, and it’s so hard on the families, having to identify their loved ones when there’s…” He paused. “Not much to identify.” Jack closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose.
Something possessed me. I couldn’t help myself. I leaned closer and laid my hand lightly on his knee. “Are you doing okay?”
He opened his eyes, and to my surprise, took hold of my hand and entwined his fingers through mine. My whole body buzzed with physical awareness. The sensation rushed all the way down to my toes and my heart began to race. It felt so good to touch him, to share the grief, to comfort each other in this small way.
“Life is unfair sometimes,” he said. “It doesn’t make any sense.”
“I know.”
“Have you ever lost someone close to you?” he asked.
I thought about it for a moment and realized how lucky I was to have been so fortunate in this lifetime.
“Just two of my grandparents,” I replied, “but that was different. They were old and we expected it. We had time to prepare ourselves. But this… Something so sudden and unexpected and…violent. I’ve seen it up close, Jack, and you’re right, it is unfair. Especially when you learn about the young children who died, and think about how awful it must have been for the parents in those final moments, not being able to do anything about it, or take away the fear.” I looked away.
Heads bowed, neither of us spoke for a few seconds.
“I know that you’ve lost people close to you,” I said. “In Afghanistan.”
“Yes,” he replied, “and I also lost a good friend when I was thirteen. Which is why I wanted to talk to you.”
Curious, I inclined my head.
“First off,” Jack said, “Thank you for the advance warning about the press conference this morning. That was a doozy. Reg Harrison…”
I nodded. “The FBI is all over it. They’re looking into his business affairs, while my team is helping them investigate the airline’s safety procedures. We’re checking up on how well they’ve been adhering to FAA rules and regulations—among other things.”
I realized Jack and I were still holding hands, and he was stroking my knuckle gently with his thumb. Maybe it was inappropriate—considering we were professionals working separately on an important investigation, and we barely knew each other—but I didn’t care. I couldn’t believe how good it felt. I didn’t want him to stop. I just wanted to sit there all night long, and keep doing this.
“Will this news affect how you do your job?” he asked.
“Not really. I mean, of course I have to keep it in mind, but I’m a structures specialist, so I have to stay focused on what’s in front of me—the wreckage in the hangar. But if other teams have specific information to relay, it might help me zero in on certain areas.”
Jack continued to hold my hand in his. “Well, I don’t know if this will be any help to you at all, but I just spent the past few hours reading an accident report from 1984.”
My brow furrowed with a mixture of interest and concern. “Really? Which one?”
I was well aware that the NTSB accident reports were published on our website and made available to the public. We had been working steadily over the past number of years to publish older reports.
“It was a Marquee-Goldman crash that happened in Arizona,” Jack explained. “I have a personal connection to it because my best friend and her whole family died in that crash. I was thirteen at the time.”
“I’m so sorry. Was that the friend you just mentioned?”
He nodded and didn’t say anything for a few seconds. Then his eyes met mine. “I never knew much about the particulars back then because I was just a kid and information wasn’t as accessible as it is today. All I knew was that there was a fire that caused an explosion ju
st before the plane landed. For a while, there was some thought that it might have been a bomb, but later, my mother told me it was an accident—that something in the cargo hold had caused the fire. I never knew what it was at the time. She never said.”
“It was oxygen tanks,” I told him.
I knew this because I had studied most of the major airline crashes over the duration of my career, even the ones that occurred before I was born.
“That’s right,” Jack replied. “According to the report, they were loaded into the cargo hold without proper precautions because the airline had a habit of blatantly disregarding safety procedures. The crash was blamed on human factors. Evidently, the delivery guys from PineTech—the oxygen supplier—and the baggage handlers weren’t properly trained. They were cutting corners, trying to save time.”
“Yes,” I said, as the details of the report came back to me. “If memory serves me correctly, the person responsible was nineteen, and his only work experience had been a summer job mowing lawns. They paid him minimum wage and gave him half a day’s training. He didn’t secure the canisters like he should have.”
“So you’re familiar with that crash,” Jack said, seeming suddenly energized.
“Yes, but I wouldn’t have thought about it if you hadn’t mentioned it. And it was almost a decade later that Marquee-Goldman went out of business because they were constantly lax in their safety procedures and they failed to implement our recommendations. They just didn’t seem to care. It was criminal, if you ask me, that two more crashes had to occur before they were finally grounded and forced out of business.”
“Yes, it was criminal,” Jack agreed.
“So why are you telling me this?” I asked. “Do you think there’s a connection between that accident and this one?”
“I don’t think anything,” he replied, making it clear that he wasn’t throwing accusations around or speculating like the so-called “experts” on the Internet, who had their own theories about the crash, without ever seeing the evidence for themselves.
The Color of a Promise (The Color of Heaven Series Book 11) Page 12