Second-Chance Hero

by Justine Davis

  For a moment longer Tess kept looking at him, making it clear she knew he was dodging her tacit inquiry.

  “I’ll go make sure he isn’t putting avgas in,” she said, and turned to walk toward the fueling truck.

  The fueler shifted his attention to her, with a look of male appreciation that Draven completely understood. The kid was probably about eighteen, and Tess was…well, however old she was, he didn’t really know. But twice that kid’s age, anyway. But it didn’t really matter. She was a very attractive woman, period.

  He started up the gangway into the plane. As a prototype still unscheduled for production, the interior lacked the usual Redstone amenities and was only roughly finished, but he’d flown in much worse. And he guessed the cockpit would already be finished with all the gadgets and controls that Josh felt were standard. First and foremost Josh was a pilot. Even if it did give his insurance agent heart palpitations when he elected himself test pilot to put some new design through its paces.

  Draven wedged his duffel under one of the half-dozen standard airline seats that were temporarily bolted in place. He then headed back to confirm his earlier guess. He’d been right, the cockpit was a finished work of art, and he smiled to himself.

  “Like it?”

  He turned to see Tess standing there, smiling. “More important, do you?” he asked.

  “He’s topped himself this time,” she said, gesturing at the banks of dials, screens, switches and other controls. “If something’s not here, it hasn’t been invented yet. Enhanced vision system so you can see through heavy weather, and at night. The latest GPS, of course, and collision avoidance system. Ground proximity warning, integrated hazard avoidance system, map displays that move as you do, you name it, it’s here.”

  “No weapons?” he asked dryly.

  She grinned. “Got a jamming device for incoming missiles, will that do?”

  “I suppose it will have to,” he said in mock resignation.

  “Hey, we got an order from a place in Asia I can’t even pronounce for a Hawk IV to serve as their Air Force One because of that jammer. And there are advancements on this new plane that the commercial aviation industry won’t see for years.”

  “Because Josh isn’t afraid to take the risks.” She was as passionate about this plane as Josh himself was.

  “No, he’s not. Not in his work.”

  It was Draven’s turn now; he hadn’t missed the undertone in her voice. “Tess?”

  “Got your gear aboard?” she asked, dodging the silent inquiry just as he had hers. He let her; he could hardly do otherwise, considering.

  “Yes.”

  “Belt in, and I’ll give you a takeoff you’ll never forget.”

  “Mind if I sit up front?”

  She looked surprised. He couldn’t blame her. Usually he was busy with mission plans on a flight to a job. He didn’t tell her he hadn’t wanted this mission to begin with, and was trying to avoid thinking about it, he who rarely avoided anything. He’d once been told, by a well-meaning woman, that it was because he didn’t care enough about anything but his work to need to avoid it, and he supposed that was true. He’d seen and done too much in this life to let down his guard that much.

  “Fine,” she said, gesturing to the copilot’s seat.

  The takeoff was all she’d promised and more. The plane was both fast and quick, two very different things when it came to small planes. It was also nimble and powerful, as she showed when she banked for a three-sixty turn and straightened out all while still climbing.

  “You’re lucky,” she said when they leveled out. “This’ll only be about a five-hour flight.”

  “I’m also lucky,” he said, “because if I was flying commercial, I’d be headed for Houston or the East Coast to make a connection, and would get to Belize sometime tomorrow.”

  “I can guarantee you’ll get there sooner than that,” Tess said.

  Thanks to the distraction of the new plane and Tess’s enthusiasm for it, the flight passed quickly enough. The Hawk V performed faultlessly, and Draven was in a more equable state of mind by the time they touched down at Goldson International Airport, where all private planes were required to land in Belize.

  But he was back to being edgy again by the time he’d rounded up water transport out to the island temporarily known as Redstone Cay, where the project was being built. And after he transferred from the second boat to the third—he suspected the captains were brothers, and shared the wealth with this method—he was wishing he’d just hired a seaplane, even if it had meant waiting for a couple of hours.

  What they were going to need, he thought, was their own airstrip. Then at least people could get there directly, maybe even get an exception to the rule about private planes having to go into Belize City. They could—

  An airstrip.

  Draven’s mind slammed to a sudden stop. Josh had never said exactly what stage of building they were in, had only referred to “the Redstone Cay Resort project.” Draven hadn’t asked, because it didn’t really matter to him, his equipment would be the same regardless, until he got on scene and assessed.

  An airstrip.

  It made sense. Whenever Redstone built in a hard-to-reach location, particularly an island, an airstrip was often the first thing to be built. It made getting people, supplies and equipment there so much easier that it was well worth the effort and expense. And who was their premier airstrip overseer?

  But it couldn’t be, could it? It was too soon, too soon after the earthquake and her hospitalization? She should still be recuperating, going through therapy and rehab. Shouldn’t she?

  Not the way my luck’s running lately.

  He groaned inwardly, nearly certain now. An airstrip.

  God help him, Grace.

  Chapter 2

  Grace leaned back in the office chair that tended to roll to the left. She suspected the floor in the construction trailer wasn’t level, but hadn’t gotten around to doing anything about it yet. She’d been too busy trying to figure out who it was who had decided they didn’t want an airstrip built here.

  Grace O’Conner sighed. She’d done the right thing, calling the home office for help. She could design an international airport, handle most aspects of getting it built and in a pinch fly at least a prop plane in and out of it, but this was beyond her. She didn’t have the training to deal with this kind of thing, and she knew it. She’d also known that what was happening was too much for the single security guard they had had up to now. He had been hired locally, with the assumption that no more help would be needed at this early stage of the project.

  But as Josh Redstone had told her when she’d made the call—it still disconcerted her that the man frequently answered his own phone—no one expected her to build the airstrip and police it, too.

  Odd, she thought. She had a beautiful place to work in, great weather and the full support of the mayor of the small town down the beach a couple of miles, grandly called Matola City. He’d even thrown a welcome party for them in his own home. But while her last project had been a much welcomed airfield nearly destroyed by an act of God, this one was under attack by man. And she had no idea who.

  After that act of God in Turkey, she’d spent hours buried in that pile of rubble with nothing to do but try to ignore the pain and think about dying, and what would happen to Marly, her daughter, if she did. As the pain had gotten worse and no help came, her thoughts had become crazier, and she had begun to talk out loud just to assure herself she was still alive. And she bargained with God, who, if he really had caused that earthquake, had a lot to answer for. She’d sworn never to put herself in jeopardy again if he would just let her live to take care of her daughter.

  And now, every time that missing foot began to ache, she was reminded of how lucky she was to be here to feel even that phantom pain, lucky that she hadn’t died under that pile of fractured brick and mortar.

  The form that luck had come in still haunted her dreams, but she tried not to thin
k about it, at least not all the time. It was done, she was alive, and grateful for it.

  Wearily, she rubbed at her forehead, where a headache was beginning to build. Maybe she should have listened to them after all. Here she was, on a sparsely populated sandbar of an island off Belize, battling mosquitoes, beetles the size of Volkswagens and who knew what else, when she could be sitting at home with a glass of iced tea and a nice book to read.

  Like an invalid?

  Just the thought stiffened her spine.

  She made herself get back to business. She wondered if what was happening was bigger than simply not wanting an airstrip built, if perhaps whoever it was simply didn’t want Redstone here at all. She knew that wasn’t impossible. Many people who hadn’t had any firsthand experience with Redstone found it hard to believe that the company really was all it was reputed to be. Once they’d dealt with them they knew the reputation was well earned, but there were still doubters. And despite the small population, she supposed there could be at least one of those here on Redstone Cay.

  Of course, she knew that what was more likely was that whatever slime controlled the local drug trade was the one behind all this. They’d warned her it was a rampant problem in this part of the world, but she’d hoped that here, on this quiet, almost isolated cay, it would be minimal.

  And not for the first time she felt a qualm; one of the reservations she’d had about bringing Marly down here was just that. There had not been a drug problem with her daughter yet—that she knew about—but the fourteen year old had been teetering on the edge of real trouble long enough that Grace couldn’t help wondering if it was only a matter of time.

  She heard the roar of a motor, one she’d come to recognize. She got up and glanced out the window, and saw the bright orange and white cigarette-style boat coming into view from the direction of the mainland. There were only two occupants, both male, one considerably taller than the other. It looked like Jorge Nunez at the wheel, and he was gesturing in the general direction of the dock.

  She went back to the desk and picked up her walkie-talkie then headed outside. She slipped her sunglasses from the top of her head to her eyes as soon as she was down the steps; she’d learned early on to protect her blue eyes from the near-equatorial sun.

  She headed toward the dock, curious. She paused as someone in a hard hat waved at her from the heavy equipment enclosure. The area had been empty two days ago, but now that the rain had swept through and the weather promised to hold, the fleet of graders, backhoes, earthmovers and compactors had moved in. They’d even been, with typical Redstone efficiency, two days ahead of schedule.

  And that same night they’d had their second incident of sabotage. The first, a bucket of paint tossed over gravel to be used as a base, had been minor enough they’d written it off as petty vandalism, but this one had nearly cost them a very expensive piece of machinery. Sand in the fuel tank did not make for efficient running or much longevity. If someone hadn’t noticed the tiny pile of sand on top of the filler pipe, they might have started the bulldozer and ruined the engine.

  It appeared someone really didn’t want this job finished.

  The man started toward her, and after a few steps she saw it was Nick Dwyer, the foreman of the entire project.

  “Ms. O’Conner,” the man said, touching a finger to the edge of his yellow helmet as they stopped a few yards from the chain-link enclosure.

  “Nick,” she said with a nod; she’d not seen the grizzled veteran of three of her projects yet this morning. Then, with a smile, she added, “Even after all the work we’ve done together, I still can’t get you to call me Grace, can I?”

  He smiled back. “No, ma’am. You’re my boss, and it doesn’t seem right.”

  She studied him a moment, remembering. His smile faded.

  “I know,” he said quietly. “Time was I didn’t show you that respect.”

  “Time was,” she answered, looking steadily at his weathered face, “you didn’t know I deserved it.”

  The smile returned. “And that’s part of the reason you do,” he said. “Because you know it has to be earned. And by God, you did it with that Alaska project.”

  “Thanks, Nick.”

  She couldn’t deny that airstrip at Redstone Sitka had been a problem from the beginning. Building anything in Alaska was a challenge, but building an airstrip there had its own unique problems. There was the permafrost; they’d had to move the proposed site for the strip because the original location was too poorly drained. Drainage was always a problem, but at an Alaskan site, it meant ice was mixed with the finer grained sediments, which was a recipe for disaster. The last thing she’d wanted was to lose the strip to frost heaves, slumping or anything else.

  So she’d come up with an idea that involved a different kind of base and a new freeze-resistant soil stabilizing compound Ian Gamble had come up with, coupled with an interlocking surface system that could expand and contract more freely. And it had been a success. Better than five years ago and constant testing had shown it was holding up better than she’d dared hope.

  Nick turned to head back to the equipment, then turned back. “Oh, tell your little girl she can have that ’dozer lesson she wanted. This afternoon, after work hours.”

  Grace knew she was gaping, but couldn’t help it. “Lesson?”

  Nick nodded. “She’s been asking the guys, but they wouldn’t until they cleared it with me.” Then, as the obvious registered, he frowned. “You didn’t know? She said you said it was okay.”

  It was one of those moments as a parent she hated. Did she openly catch Marly in the lie, and further alienate her? Or let her get away with this one, because at least she was showing an interest in being here?

  Or an interest in being able to mow the whole thing down, she amended ruefully, admitting with reluctance that she could no longer say with certainty what would be out of the realm of possibility in her daughter’s behavior.

  “I’ll get back to you on that,” she told Nick.

  She let out a sigh as Nick left and she continued her trek to the dock, where the racing boat was nearing the dock now. Just getting Marly—who at fourteen was hardly a little girl anymore, in stature or attitude—here had been a major undertaking. The fact that people traveled from all over the world to vacation in this tropical, crystalline water place hadn’t made much difference in her complaining about not getting to spend the summer with her friends, although now that they were here, it was hard to tear Marly away from the beach.

  And those friends were exactly why she wanted her daughter away for a while in the first place. She’d seen Marly slip further and further away from the close relationship they’d once had, and while she was willing to cede some of that distance to the process of adolescence, Marly had gone beyond just that. And Grace wasn’t about to let her go any further. She could only hope she hadn’t already let her go too far.

  She pushed the persistent worries out of her mind, and focused on the new arrival. The man with Jorge, carrying a large duffel bag, jumped nimbly onto the dock before the boat had even come to a halt or been tied off. Jorge gave him a grin and a thumbs-up, then roared away, kicking up a wake that sprayed his former passenger from the knees down. The man didn’t seem to mind, or even notice.

  She noted how he moved as he walked the length of the dock toward the beach. She paid more attention to that these days, comparing her own impaired stride to those of intact people, trying to see where she might improve. But never in her life would she try to imitate this easy, powerful stride; even before she’d lost her foot she wasn’t built right for that walk, it was far too masculine.

  Because of her concentration on his movement, she didn’t really see his face until he was much closer. When she finally shifted her gaze, her breath caught in her throat. On some level, her gut knew instantly. It clenched, sending a wave of shivering sensation through her.

  Her brain took longer to process what she was seeing. It ticked off each element, from the
longish, nearly black hair to the wicked scar that slashed down the left side of his rugged face. And most of all the haunting and haunted green eyes that appeared in her dreams, startling her awake with the fear that she was back in that pile of rubble, pinned, dying and alone.

  She had never expected to see that face again. Had decided long ago she never wanted to. It wasn’t that she wasn’t grateful. Or that he was hard to look at. Her reaction had little to do with what he looked like, or the fact that when she’d first seen him she’d thought him a harshly beautiful angel come for her.

  To her, this man was a creature of nightmare. Her nightmare. The nightmare that had never completely ended.

  And the creature was indeed coming for her.

  Despite knowing she was likely here, Draven winced inwardly at the sight of Grace at the foot of the pier. Standing there, she looked much different than when he had last seen her, pale and bruised and hooked up to machines in a hospital bed.

  Standing.

  It finally got through to him. She was standing there, on her own two feet. Well, one of her own, and one of Ian Gamble’s; the new prosthetic foot he’d designed was rapidly becoming a marvel in medical circles, Draven knew. He’d read the data as soon as he knew she’d be getting the foot.

  Made of graphite and titanium, yet incredibly flexible, it had built-in biofeedback microprocessors that could read the angle, direction and intensity of the strain put on the foot every tenth of a second. It could adjust almost as quickly as a natural foot to different walking speeds and conditions, making it much more stable than previous prostheses.

  And then she started walking toward him, and he was reminded yet again just how good Ian Gamble was. It took him a moment to realize he was fixating on that to avoid the rush of awareness flooding him. She was walking, and walking easily, less than six months after the removal of her mangled foot.

  He should have thought of this long before it had come to him in the plane. The same strength that had allowed her to survive three days pinned under a pile of concrete had also sped her through the rehabilitation process. He’d even known how fast it had gone, because he had requested constant updates. And the bills; he and Redstone had made certain she’d gotten the best. He marveled at the ease of her gait, noting there was barely a trace of difference between the natural foot and the prosthesis. If he hadn’t known to look, he would never have seen it. Not for a while, anyway.