Alex came around to the pilot's side and hopped into the seat behind the wheel. "All set," she announced cheerfully. "Buckle up and we'll be airborne in no time." This far remote in the Alaskan interior, it wasn't surprising that there was no traffic control, no tower to radio in to for clearance before takeoff. It was all on Alex to get them off the ground and headed in the right direction. Kade watched her work, impressed as hell by the way she took charge of the aircraft and set it moving on the pitifully brief runway. A minute later, they lifted off into the darkness, climbing higher and higher into a morning sky devoid of light except for the distant blanket of stars that glittered overhead.
"Nice job," he said, glancing at her as she leveled off their ascent and steered them through a few short patches of bumpy, gusting wind. "I take it you've done this once or twice before." She slid him a little smile. "I've been flying since I was twelve years old. Had to wait to get my official training and license until I was eighteen, though."
"You like being up here with the stars and clouds?"
"I love it," she said, nodding thoughtfully as she checked a couple of the gauges on the plane's dashboard, then looked back out at the vast nothingness in front of them. "My dad taught me to fly. When I was a kid, he used to tell me that the sky was a magic place. Sometimes when I'd get scared or wake up out of a nightmare, he'd take me up with him--no matter what time it was. We'd climb high into the sky, where nothing bad could reach us."
Kade could hear the affection in her voice when she spoke about her father, and he also heard the sorrow of her loss. "How long since your father passed?"
"It's been six months--Alzheimer's. Four years ago, he started forgetting things. It got worse pretty quickly, and after about a year, when it started to affect his reflexes in the plane, he finally let me take him to the hospital in Galena. The disease progresses differently for everyone, but for Dad, it seemed to take hold of him so fast." Alex let out a deep, reflective sigh. "I think he gave up as soon as he heard the diagnosis. I don't know, I think maybe he was giving up on life even before then."
"How so?"
It wasn't meant to be a prying question, but she bit her lip as he asked it, a reflexive reaction that said she probably felt she'd already told him more than she'd intended. From the sudden, uneasy look she gave him, he could see that she was trying to size him up somehow, trying to decide if it was safe to trust him. When she finally spoke, her voice was quiet, her gaze turned back out the windscreen as if she couldn't tell him and look at him at the same time. "My, um ... my dad and I moved to Alaska when I was nine years old. Before that, we lived in Florida, down on the 'Glades, where my dad ran seaplane charter tours of the swamps and the Keys."
Kade studied her in the dim light of the cockpit. "That's a whole different world from here."
"Yeah. Yeah, it sure was."
A sudden metallic clatter sounded from somewhere on the plane, and the cockpit gave a vibrating shudder. Kade held on to his seat, grateful to see that Alex wasn't panicking. Her attention went laser sharp to her instrument panel, and she gave the plane some added speed. The shake and rattle calmed, and the ride smoothed out once again.
"Don't worry," she told him, her tone as wry as her expression. "Like my dad used to say, it's a scientific fact that some of the most alarming aircraft noises can only be heard at night. I think we're okay now."
Kade chuckled uneasily. "I'm gonna have to take your word on that." They flew over a sloping peak, then made a gradual direction change that brought them back over the Koyukuk below.
"So, what happened in Florida, Alex?" he said, returning to the subject he had no intention of dropping now. Instinct told him he was mining close to pay dirt about the secrets she seemed to be holding, but he wasn't looking to further his mission right now. He was genuinely interested in her--hell, if he was being honest with himself, he had to admit that he was starting to truly care about her--and he wanted to understand whatever she'd been through. Hearing the pain beneath her words, he wanted to help heal some of it if he could. "Did something happen to your father or you in Florida?" She shook her head and gave him another of those measuring, sidelong looks. "No, not us ... but my mom and my little brother ..."
Her voice broke, quiet and choked off. Kade could feel a scowl pulling his brows together as he stared at her. "How did they die, Alex?"
For one stunning moment, as her eyes held his, unblinking and stark with revisited fear, a cold dread began to form in his gut. The small compartment they shared some eight thousand feet off the ground got even tighter, compressed by Alex's terrible silence beside him.
"They were killed," she said at last, words that only made Kade's pulse beat faster when he considered one possible cause--a terrible cause that would make this whole involvement with Alex even more impossible than it already was. But then she gave a shrug of her shoulders and looked straight ahead once more. She sucked in a deep breath and released it. "It was an accident. A drunk driver blew a traffic light at an intersection. He plowed into my mom's car. She and my little brother were both killed on impact."
Kade's scowl deepened as she recited the facts in a rush, as though she couldn't spit them out fast enough. And recite seemed an apt description, because something about the explanation struck him as being too pat, too well rehearsed.
"I'm sorry, Alex," he said, unable to tear his scrutinizing, now-suspicious gaze away from her. "I guess it's a small blessing that they didn't suffer."