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A WING AND A PRAYER
Copyright © 2008 by Tracie Peterson. All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, is forbidden without the permission of Truly Yours, an imprint of Barbour Publishing, Inc., PO Box 721, Uhrichsville, Ohio 44683.
All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®. NIV® Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan Publishing House. All rights reserved.
All of the characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual events is purely coincidental.
Our mission is to publish and distribute inspirational products offering exceptional value and biblical encouragement to the masses.
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Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Dedication
Author Bio
one
CJ stared at her reflection in the mirror. Why did she always turn introspective in the bathroom? She reached into her purse, pulled out a compact to adjust her makeup, and grimaced. Her serious expression made her look older than her twenty-one years. Time was not her friend, she decided.
Pulling out her lipstick as well, CJ touched the Burgundy Frost to her lips, blotted the better part of the color onto a tissue, and restored the makeup to her purse.
Glacier, ice blue eyes stared back at her from the mirror, while long, coppery rings of hair cascaded from her head like a waterfall. Before yesterday, CJ had worn her hair parted on the side and straight. The thick red mass had reached nearly to her waist. Now a stranger stared back at her. Why had she let Cheryl talk her into getting a permanent?
“CJ?” Cheryl’s voice called from the other side of the closed door. “Can you be free at three o’clock tomorrow for the final dress fitting?”
“Three is fine,” CJ called back. She could hear her friend’s voice continue on the telephone with the dressmaker. She and Cheryl Fair-child had been friends since childhood. In fact, Cheryl was CJ’s best friend. Correction—her only friend.
CJ stepped back from the hotel mirror for a quick survey of her new, khaki-colored outfit. Cheryl had talked her into purchasing it, telling CJ that it complemented her skin and hair color. It reminded CJ of an outfit you might wear on a safari. With a shrug of her shoulders that sent curls bobbing and dancing, CJ reached for the handle on the door.
When nothing happened, she stared dumbly for a moment. She turned the handle again, but it wouldn’t catch to open the door. Instead it turned freely. CJ pulled at the door, then pushed.
Finally, she gave up and called out for Cheryl.
“The door handle is broken,” CJ explained when Cheryl answered from the other side.
“It won’t budge out here,” Cheryl answered. “Did you lock it?”
“I suppose I did,” CJ replied. “I tried to turn the handle, but all it does is spin.” Then a little louder and with a hint of disgust, CJ added, “Things are made pretty cheaply these days. Anything to save a buck.”
“I guess I ’d better call maintenance,” Cheryl called. “Given the cost of everything in this hotel, you’d expect the door handles to work.”
“Just get somebody up here,” CJ said, starting to realize for the first time that she was trapped.
She pressed her ear against the door and could hear Cheryl trying to explain her problem, via the telephone, to the front desk personnel. Much to CJ’s utter frustration, it didn’t sound as though Cheryl was making much headway.
CJ felt the air grow stuffy. It always started that way. She looked around the small room. Veined-marble sink and counter, toilet, shower stall. The entire room was no larger than eight by eight. Make that six by eight, CJ thought as the walls seemed to visibly move closer together.
“No one in maintenance is answering,” Cheryl called to CJ.
“What do you mean, no one is answering?” The nervousness was evident in her voice. A cold sweat dampened her brow.
“Look, CJ, just sit tight and I’ll go find someone.”
“No! Don’t go!” CJ exclaimed.
“I can’t just leave you in there,” Cheryl answered. “You’ll be okay. Just keep telling yourself that nothing bad can happen to you.”
“Cheryl, please don’t leave me!” CJ’s voice was near to hysteria. She braced her hands against the door, hoping to steady herself. “I don’t want to be alone.” The words sounded like a moan.
“Look, I’ve seen maintenance and housekeeping people all over this place. Someone out there will know how to help us. Take some deep breaths and get a towel wet and wipe your face. I’ll be just a second. You wait right here,” Cheryl insisted.
“Where did you expect me to go? It’s not like I can tunnel out.” CJ was beginning to feel desperate. “Would if I could, though.”
Cheryl’s lyrical laughter sounded from outside the door, breaking a bit of the tension. “Guess you’re right. I’ll be back in a minute.”
“Cheryl?” CJ called, but there was no answer.
CJ returned to her evaluation of the small hotel bathroom. She wouldn’t even be here if it hadn’t been for Cheryl. She could still hear her friend’s animated voice when she’d called to announce her arrival in Denver.
CJ leaned against the wall and forced herself to remember every detail of their conversation. She knew from experience that concentrating on something other than the circumstance at hand would help to stave off her claustrophobia.
Cheryl had been so excited that day, and CJ had been more than a little surprised to hear her friend announce her upcoming wedding. Cheryl had always been the one to adamantly declare herself a most content and liberated woman. That liberation had taken a backseat, however, when Cheryl had fallen hard for CJ’s brother, Curt. CJ had always hoped that Cheryl and Curt would carry through with their plans and marry, but that had been before the accident. After that, everything changed. Now, two years CJ’s senior, Cheryl was marrying a man she’d known for only a few months.
Shaking off the vision, CJ tried her best to forget. “Cheryl’s getting married,” she reminded herself. “If she’s committed to him enough to get married, he must be special.”
CJ tried desperately to remember her conversation with Cheryl. “His name is Stratton McFarland,” Cheryl had gushed over the phone. “He’s tall and handsome and absolutely perfect for me. He even works for Daddy.”
CJ had laughed at that reference. As an only child, Cheryl had been her father’s pride and joy, especially after the death of Cheryl’s mother. If Stratton worked for Benjamin Fairchild and had passed his close scrutiny, he must indeed be a most unique specimen of man.
CJ f
elt her head begin to swim. Her cheeks felt hot, but she knew from experience that the blood was, in all actuality, draining from her face. She imagined that it pooled somewhere in the tightening ball that had become her stomach. It was, she concluded, the reason she generally vomited when the sensation of being closed in got to be too much.
She slid down the wall to crouch with her head on her knees. Her vision narrowed as the black walls inside her mind closed in.
Then it began.
At first it was just the pulsating hum of her blood, rushing to leave her head. Then it changed and grew louder. Now it was the drone of her father’s airplane.
The noise increased. They were flying back from an air show in the Midwest when something happened. CJ could feel the vibrations of that fatal moment. After years of training with her father and piloting a variety of planes, she’d known instinctively that something was desperately wrong with her father’s aircraft.
“We’re going to crash!” she could hear her father tell her mother. The look they had exchanged put more fear into CJ’s heart than she had ever known. More words were spoken, and then her father had glanced back at her. It was for only a sec- ond. He fought to control the plane and offered her a parting smile. “Better get down into position, Squirt,” he’d said as easily as if he were telling her to take the dog for a walk.
“Daddy!” CJ wondered if she’d said the word aloud or if it was only a ghostly murmuring from the past. The droning in her head brought her back to reality. “I can’t pass out,” she moaned and slumped onto the bathroom floor.
Cheryl wasn’t having any luck. In a hotel as big as this one, it seemed incomprehensible that no one could help her. She was beginning to get quite agitated when she spotted a man in coveralls and felt a wave of relief. Poor CJ would no doubt be frantic by now.
“Excuse me,” Cheryl said and took possessive hold of the man’s tan-colored jumpsuit.
An oil-smudged face with twinkling green eyes looked down at her. “Yes?” the man questioned.
“I have an emergency upstairs, and I need you to grab your maintenance tools. My friend is stuck in the bathroom…the handle broke off on the door. You have to hurry. She’s got a real problem when it comes to tight spaces,” Cheryl said, paying no attention to the man’s surprised reaction. Dropping her hold on his arm, Cheryl turned to punch the up button for the elevator.
“My, ah, tools,” the man said with a note of amusement in his voice, “are downstairs, not up. Why don’t you tell me the room number, and I’ll follow you after I get my things.”
Cheryl glanced first to the elevator and back to the man. Her shoulder-length blond hair flipped from side to side as she tried to make up her mind.
“We have to hurry,” she emphasized. The elevator doors opened and the burgundy-uniformed operator waited for her to enter. Looking back to the maintenance man, Cheryl seemed genuinely distressed.
He smiled sympathetically. “Look, miss. I understand the urgency. In fact, I’ll take the stairs down and you go ahead to your room. What’s the number?” the man asked softly.
Cheryl bit her lower lip and gave in to his suggestion. “Six hundred eighteen,” she answered and stepped into the elevator. “You will hurry, won’t you?”
“It won’t take me but a minute.”
Cheryl hoped he was telling the truth. He seemed sincere enough, but she knew CJ would be half out of her mind by now. Glancing at her watch, Cheryl could see that she’d been gone for over twenty minutes.
“Poor CJ,” she whispered.
CJ could feel the twisted metal binding her body to the small enclosure toward the back of the plane’s fuselage. She had been sixteen when her father’s plane crashed, claiming both his life and her mother’s. Yet in spite of the severity of their accident, CJ had never lost consciousness. She could smell fuel all around her and frantically wondered if she would survive the crash only to be consumed by a fire.
After what had seemed like hours, she could hear the rescue vehicles screaming their way to the field where her father had fought to land the plane. More evident than any other sensation, however, was the helpless feeling of being tied to the wreckage. CJ had never been the same after the experience. Claustrophobia had emerged as the result of the crash, that and three years of rehabilitation for her shattered left leg.
Lying on the cold marble floor, CJ fought to remain awake. The flashback to the crash was so vivid that for a moment she could almost smell the aviation fuel. Curling into a fetal position, CJ pulled her knees to her chest and rocked slightly on her side. Why doesn’t Cheryl come back? Where is she?
CJ opened her eyes for a moment, saw the room spin, and closed them tightly again.
“CJ!” a voice called to her. Was it a memory?
“CJ!” the voice came again, and she struggled to concentrate.
“Cheryl?” she asked weakly.
“Yes, it’s me,” Cheryl called from outside. “Maintenance is on their way. You okay?”
“I’m sick, Cheryl. You know, same old stuff.”
“I know and I’m sorry. I hurried and…” Cheryl paused. “He’s here, CJ. The maintenance guy is here. You hang on. He’s going to have you out of there in just a minute.”
CJ forced herself to sit up. Somehow, even in her state of mind, it seemed more than a little degrading to think of the hotel maintenance man finding her on the bathroom floor. She leaned back against the wall just under the towel rack and waited.
When the door opened moments later, CJ didn’t have the strength to get up. Why did she have to be such a baby about these things?
Cheryl rushed into the bathroom, pushing the bewildered man aside. “CJ! CJ, talk to me, honey!” she exclaimed.
CJ looked up and, when she did, she caught sight of the man who stood vigil in the doorway. She tried to smile her thanks, but Cheryl was pulling at her arm.
“Come on; try to stand. We’ll get you out of here and get you something cold to drink. You can lie down on my bed and rest until you feel better,” Cheryl was saying. “Did you hear me, CJ? Come on; help me out here.”
CJ tried to stand with Cheryl’s help, but her knees buckled under her, just as the maintenance man reached out and pulled her into his arms.
“I’ll go turn the covers down,” Cheryl said, pushing past the man. “You bring her, okay?” Obviously used to getting whatever she de-manded, Cheryl left without waiting for him to answer.
“Sorry,” CJ barely whispered. “It’s this claustrophobia thing.”
“Don’t worry about it,” he replied with a warm smile. “I think your friend has the best plan, though. You’ll feel better after you lie down.”
CJ felt her stomach lurch and knew she was going to throw up. When the man started to lift her, she shook her head adamantly. “No—wait. I think I’m going to be sick.”
The man never hesitated. Pulling CJ against his left side, he lifted the toilet lid and centered her over it. CJ unceremoniously lost her breakfast while the maintenance man held back her long, copper hair with one hand and with the other firmly encircled her waist.
“What’s keeping you two?” Cheryl called from the other room.
CJ struggled to compose herself and straightened up to face her rescuer. It was hard to be dignified, given her current state, and she felt like laughing for the first time since she’d arrived at the hotel. The man beside her sensed her amusement. “Just give her a minute,” he answered Cheryl.
Cheryl appeared in the doorway as CJ was rinsing her mouth. She realized at once what had happened. “Oh, CJ. I’m so sorry. I forgot how badly these things affect you.”
CJ was aware that the man’s hands never left her. One minute they held her upright, the next they easily lifted her against his chest.
“Really, I’m much better now,” CJ protested. “I can walk.”
“No sense in pushing yourself,” he declared, following Cheryl.
The scents of musky cologne and oil filled CJ’s senses. “I’m grateful,”
she said, lifting her ice blue eyes to meet his warm, green ones. “My name is CJ.”
“I’m Brad,” he replied and deposited her on the bed.
“I’ll bring you some tea to settle your stomach,” Cheryl said after removing CJ’s shoes and pulling the sheet up under her chin.
“Look,” CJ said, propping herself up on an elbow, “I’m really sorry about this. Thank you for everything.” In complete exhaustion, she fell back against the pillow and closed her eyes.
Brad stood for a moment, mesmerized by the pale-faced woman. How could two people share such a moment as they had just minutes before and know nothing more about each other than first names? Pulling the door closed, he went back to the bathroom door and began to repair the handle.
“I’ve called room service,” Cheryl announced, coming up from be-hind. She peered over Brad’s shoulder as if inspecting his work. “But if they don’t respond any faster than anyone else does in this place, I could be married and moved out before the tea arrives.”
“Having trouble with the service, eh?” Brad questioned casually.
“If I hadn’t come down for you myself, I’d still be sitting here with CJ passed out in the bathroom.”
“I guess I had best let the management know,” Brad offered good-naturedly.
“I already plan to,” Cheryl replied, adding, “Can you see to it that this doesn’t happen again?”
Brad gave the perky blond an appraising glance, then winked to break the tension. “I thought it might be more to my advantage to see to it that all the handles fell apart. Then I ’d have a good reason to come back and see our friend more properly. She seems to be quite an intriguing woman.”
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