When the phone rang, Walker was feeling brighter, more hopeful, than he had in a while. "Gal-Tex," he said, leaning back and peering out the window into the late-summer rain. The brightness tarnished in the wake of the words he heard.
Lindsey walked back into the room just as Walker was replacing the phone. She knew that something was wrong the moment she saw Walker's face. Her heart dropped at her feet.
"What is it?"
Walker hesitated, then said, "Your father." He hesitated again. It was only for seconds, but Lindsey thought it might well have been the passage of days. "His helicopter's missing."
Chapter Eleven
Rain, driven by the rising wind, slanted downward from a scowling sky. Occasionally lightning zigzagged, illuminating the stormy darkness as though it were a stage to be spotlighted for an eager audience. Huddled in a rain slicker that some kind soul at the airport had handed her, Lindsey, a player on that stage, walked toward the helicopter that stood waiting for flight. Already the copter blades whipped and whirled, while the lights, like the eyes of a keen-sighted bird, stared ahead. His hair soaking wet, Walker stood talking—shouting, really, to be heard over the wind—to a man by the side of the aircraft. Inside the helicopter, the charter pilot got a last-minute briefing on the weather.
Her father was missing.
Over the last hour, ever since they'd been notified that her father's helicopter was missing, Lindsey had thought of little else. And yet, for all of that, the four words, the simple four words, would not compute. It wasn't that she didn't understand the words. She did. She just couldn't understand them in terms of her father. There had never been a time in her life when she didn't know where her father was. There had never been a time when he wasn't, at worst, a phone call away. But now she had no idea where he was... or if he was even alive. Walker had said that there would be a tomorrow for her to apologize to her father for slapping him. It had never crossed her mind that tomorrow was such a fragile thing. These last thoughts—the possibility that her father might not be alive, the possibility that she might never get the chance to apologize to him—congealed her blood, making her ice-cold and chilled to the bone.
At her approach, Walker glanced up. He hadn't wanted her to come to the airport to see him off, but he hadn't been able to stop her. After the shock had settled in, she'd become coolly efficient, almost frighteningly efficient. She hadn't shed a tear. Not one. She'd simply garnered what information she could, then had gone by her parents' house to tell her mother. She had promised to be at the airport before Walker left. Even now, as she walked toward him, she looked calm. Below the calmness, however, Walker suspected that she was nothing more than raw, jangled nerves. He longed to pull her into his arms and never let go. He longed to have her never let go of him because, for the first time in his life, he was scared. Scared half out of his mind.
"Yeah, thanks," he said to the Coast Guard representative.
"Let's keep each other informed," the tall, lean man said.
"Right," Walker said, but his gaze was once more on Lindsey. "You shouldn't be out in this," he said when she stood before him. Fat, moist raindrops hurled themselves against her cheeks and into her hair, making the latter frizz and curl like corkscrews, making her look—as she often did—youthful and in need of protection.
"I'm all right. How about you?"
"Okay," he lied, adding, "I have the coordinates where they think the copter went down."
Up until now, the situation hadn't been summed up so bluntly. Missing was one thing, gone down was another, although one certainly implied the other. All this Lindsey thought out rationally before tipping her chin with courage. "Do they know for a fact that it went down?" The "they" she referred to was the Coast Guard.
"No, but it's a fair assumption. They know the flight plan he filed. They know his time of departure. They know the last radio contact they had with him. Those facts set up a rough set of coordinates. The Coast Guard has a vessel headed in that direction right now."
"I see. So what are you going to do?"
The wind carried this last away, and Walker was forced to shout, "What?"
She turned her face upward, so that the words would better reach his ears. Her eyes, their lashes dewed like the grass on a spring morn, squinted against the rain. "What are you going to do?" she repeated.
Die if I don't kiss you, he thought, but said, "Go out and see if we can see anything. Wreckage can be seen better from the air than from the sea."
Wreckage. A grim scene of helicopter parts floating on the wind-tortured sea captured her mind. "Do you think—"
"Yes," Walker said, anticipating her question by the stark look on her face. It was the question she'd wanted to ask ever since hearing the distressing news. "He's alive." The same funny feeling that had told him that something was wrong, the funny feeling he'd tried to ignore, now told him that his friend was alive. Walker hoped to God he could trust the funny feeling. "There's no reason he shouldn't be. Even if he went down, he had a life jacket, a raft, flares. Your father's not stupid. Plus, he's had survival training. He's all right."
Something in the grit of Walker's jaw told Lindsey that he wanted to believe what he was saying so much that he was going to make himself believe it. Since she had to believe it as strongly as he, she, too, would make herself.
"Bring him back," she whispered. The words found their mark—they wove themselves through and through and then about Walker's heart.
"I will!" he said gruffly. "I will!"
Each wanted to say more, but what? There were still no answers to their personal problems. Lindsey still wanted commitment in the form of marriage, Walker still felt that he couldn't ask her to make that kind of sacrifice. Not for the rest of her life. Her young life.
At the revving of the engine, Walker looked toward the pilot, who gave a let's go sign. Walker waved an okay.
"I've got to go," he said to Lindsey.
She nodded. "I'll, uh, I'll be with Mother. When you learn anything—"
"I'll let you know immediately," he interjected.
She nodded again. Took a reluctant step backward. Followed by another. Then she turned and started running for the building. Suddenly, she stopped. Cold. On a dime.
"Walker?" she hollered.
The sound of his name caught up with him just as he opened the helicopter door. He looked back at Lindsey. "Be careful! Please!"
Like she, he nodded... and watched as once more she turned and started for the airport terminal.
"Lindsey?" he called after her.
She whirled, and waited. One second. Two seconds. For him to say something. Which he never did. Instead, he slammed the helicopter door and started toward her at a clipped run. Without preamble, with a strength that startled even him, he pulled her to him. His lips slammed hard against hers. Her lips were wet from the rain. So were his. Wet and slippery and wonderfully soft, wonderfully hard, each wonderfully hungry for the other. The kiss lasted only seconds. On a groan, Walker tore his mouth from hers. He stared, saying nothing. Yet he didn't have to. Lindsey heard the silent words.
He loved her.
She had accused him of not loving her enough, but she saw that he did love her... every bit as much as she loved him.
Finally, he said, "Believe in miracles."
And then he was gone, racing back toward the waiting helicopter. She watched as he disappeared inside. In seconds the engine whined and the craft began to rise from the ground. The motion created a frenzy of wind, causing the slicker to lap about her body. She held her head downward. The pose was prayerful. In that moment she prayed for a miracle. For a miracle that somehow she and Walker would be able to work out their differences. She prayed, too, that he'd bring her father back to her. So that she could apologize, so that she could feel his arms again, so that she could tell him she loved him.
In spite of how he'd hurt her, she still loved him.
In spite of how he'd hurt her mother, her mother still loved him.
It dawned on Lindsey that maybe she'd just learned a valuable lesson, a lesson that only maturity could teach.
Below the helicopter, the iron-gray sea roiled in anger. Pitching, churning, it sent waves crashing high and wide. Walker's stomach similarly pitched and churned in fear. Even if Dean had managed to survive the impact of a crash, he couldn't last long in this sea, not when the beast was foaming at the mouth so madly, not when the beast was swallowing everything in sight.
"Pretty choppy!" the pilot shouted over the sound of the whining wind and wild rain. He indicated the water below.
"That's an understatement!" Walker hollered back, not for a second taking his eyes off the convulsing gray canvas before him. He was searching for a dot, any dot, that looked out of the ordinary—copter, debris of copter, man.
"The storm's worse than I expected!"
"Yeah," Walker said, glad now that he'd sent word for Ramsey and the last of the crew to abandon the platform. He didn't like the looks of the way the weather was shaping up. All of the other men had been accounted for, their names meticulously checked against the rosters as they'd boarded the boats. "Let's stay in this area," Walker said as he consulted the map, the approximated coordinates of the crash marked in red.
"Right," the pilot said, and set the helicopter on its course. The course consisted roughly of a two-mile area, some ten miles from Platform Four, some sixty miles from shore.
After ten minutes, the pilot shouted, "Hell, you couldn't see a whore dressed in red in this!"
Walker had already arrived at this discouraging conclusion... and had rejected it completely. "I can see!" he growled.
The pilot said nothing, and Walker instantly regretted the snap in his voice.
Another ten minutes passed. Silent minutes. Minutes in which the pilot flew as close to the sea as he dared. Minutes in which Walker thought—he couldn't confirm it with visibility as poor as it was—he saw a Coast Guard boat in the far distance. Then again, maybe he saw nothing. Weary, frightened, he closed his eyes for a moment, giving in to the tension headache that throbbed behind his eyes. One second of rest was all he'd allow himself, however, and he began searching, scanning again. Please, please! he prayed.
"Could we make another run in this area?"
The pilot nodded. Walker knew that the pilot thought that it wouldn't do any good—it hadn't the dozen times they'd already done it—but he was at least willing to indulge him for a while longer. Walker knew, though, that their time was fast running out. The wind was becoming unmanageable, making the craft increasingly hard to handle. Walker could tell this by the way the pilot fought the controls.
"There!" Walker cried suddenly, squinting through the driving rain.
"Where?"
"There! At three o'clock!" Walker's heart sprinted into a hurting rhythm. He told himself not to get his hopes up, but that's precisely what he did. In fact, his hopes soared.
The helicopter angled, banked, lowered as the pilot brought it down as low as he safely could. Beneath the craft's whirring blades, the water swirled in a circular motion. In the center of the circle bobbed part of the hull of a helicopter.
Walker's hopes plummeted. Not only hadn't he located Dean, but he'd irrefutably documented that his helicopter had gone down.
"I'm sor—" the pilot began, only to be cut off with, "Let's make the run again. He's got to be out there."
Walker was keenly aware of what the pilot was thinking, which was that Dean was out there all right—in the belly of the beast. He knew, too, that holding the helicopter on course was growing harder minute by minute. This last was confirmed by the way the wind jostled the craft, as though the chopper were made of straw.
"Damn!" the pilot said, fighting with the collective stick in an attempt to maintain balance. For a second, the sea looked dangerously near. Then the helicopter righted itself. The pilot looked over at Walker, "It's getting bad out here—"
"I know, I know, but let's make the run again!"
Walker knew that he'd given the man no option. But then, if the circumstances had been reversed, would Dean have given the man an option? Hell, no! Walker thought. Dean would have screamed, hollered, demanded and commanded. In short, he would have made a royal pain in the butt of himself. Which was exactly what Walker intended to make of himself. He wasn't going back without Dean. Come hell or high water, come the devil or the salty sea, he was bringing Dean back home with him!
"Make the ran again!"
"I'll make more coffee," Bunny said as she reached for the coffeepot.
"No more for me, Mom. I've had enough."
"What about a sandwich? I could fix you a sand—"
"I'm not hungry. Really. Why don't you come sit down?"
"I don't want to sit down. I can't sit down." With this, Bunny stood and took the dirty coffeepot to the sink, where she immediately began to clean it. The cups and saucers followed. Prior to washing the coffeepot, she'd scrubbed the cabinet, watered the hanging basket of ivy and put a load of clothes in the washing machine. "The psychologist I'm seeing says that I control life through activity. As long as I'm busy, doing the things I'm comfortable with, doing the things that comprise a normal life, then nothing bad will happen to me. I mean, I know it can, but I've chosen to believe that it can't."
Despite the worry nibbling at her stomach, Lindsey smiled. "We all play games, Mom. They help to get us through life."
Games. Was she playing games by holding on to the hope that she and Walker could yet be a couple, games like close your eyes to reality, games like pretend and it'll happen? Did she love him so much that she just couldn't envision life without him as her husband, as the father of her children?
"Walker won't marry me," she heard herself saying. At the look her mother sent her, she said, "He thinks it wouldn't be fair to me."
"Is he right?"
In some far corner of her mind, Lindsey realized how odd the question was and not at all what she'd expected as her mother's response. The simple query demanded that she search deeper into her heart. Had Walker simply presented a reality that she chose to ignore? Was she playing another game with herself? Was she so young that she couldn't conceive that time would alter her feelings for him? Would the age difference, which even now was not inconsequential, become even a greater barrier as time wore on? She thought of her life five years, ten years, twenty-five years down the road. Could she imagine her life without Walker?
"No!" she said, in defiance to the barren life stretching before her, to the question her mother had asked. "He isn't right."
Bunny crossed the room and reseated herself. She took her daughter's hand. "Love isn't always perfect," she said. "You don't always get it the way you want it. Sometimes you take it the way you can get it."
"Is that what you're willing to do? Take Dad any way you can get him?"
"Right now, Lindsey, all I want is to see him again. Right now all I want to know is that he's alive." Except for a slight quaver, Bunny's voice was strong, the voice of a woman who'd reduced life to its lowest common denominator. That simplification had strengthened Bunny, as, indeed, had the events of the past weeks.
Seeing her father again was all Lindsey wanted, too. Glancing outside, she realized that night was only hours away. The thought of her father lost at sea, at night, in the midst of a storm, caused an arrow of panic to shoot through her. Was he afraid? Was he, too, sorry that he and his daughter had had words? Would he give anything he owned to apologize? She refused to entertain the notion that he might not be alive.
Where was her father?
Where was Walker?
When would this nightmare end?
"God," Lindsey cried abruptly, pulling her hand from her mother's and standing. She paced back and forth across the kitchen floor. "I wish Walker would call! I wish anyone would call!"
"I know," her mother said softly, one hand folded in the other, so that she wouldn't straighten the sugar bowl and creamer. "I know."
But no one did call. Hour blended
into hour. Dead time, Lindsey thought. Time in which you didn't really exist. Time in which you simply survived. As though it were a shrine, Lindsey watched the clock above the stove.
"Ticktock... ticktock... ticktock," it said, but it whispered, "Dead time... dead time... dead time...."
Dean was dead.
The realization crept into Walker's heart even though he did everything to keep it out. It was the only logical explanation. He and the pilot had searched the sea, as best they could in the inclement weather, and had seen nothing. Except for the one chunk of helicopter debris, there had been not even a remote hint of anything floating on the water. Not that one could see anything with night coming on. Not that one could see anything with the sea heaving and tossing and heaving again. Not even the wreckage of the hull was left in sight. Long ago, it had been sucked under, towed down to the nether world of the hydrous gods.
As had Dean?
The thought sickened Walker, breaking him out in a cold sweat that was incongruous with the hot, humid heat of the evening. Death was one thing. Losing a loved one to a watery grave was yet another. He swallowed hard, wondering if he himself would have met death as valiantly as Dean. And there was no doubt in his mind that, whatever the end, Dean had met it courageously. He was just that kind of guy.
God! Walker thought, he was never going to get to tell him how much he'd always admired him. He was never going to get to explain about Lindsey. He was never going to get to say how sorry he was that the two of them—he and Dean—had had words.
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