He adjusts his headset and scans the instrument panel with a casual confidence that suggests he might know what he’s doing.
That’s… something. Maybe he won’t kill us immediately. Maybe we’ll last five minutes before plummeting to our deaths.
A hum crackles through my headphones. Then his voice—low, deep, sliding directly into my ears: “Can you hear me?”
“Uh-huh.” Clearly, I’m at peak conversational performance.
The engine roars to life beneath us, vibrations rattling through my entire skeleton. The rotor blades start their lazy spin, then accelerate into a blur.
My hand instinctively finds Riri’s chain at my throat.
“It’s a bit loud,” he says through the headset. “Sorry about that.”
A bit?It sounds like we’re trapped inside a food processor.
He presses a button. “Inverness Tower, Golf Echo Hotel Charlie Mike, VFR to private site Portree, request taxi.”
I do not have the emotional capacity to process how his professional pilot voice makes my thighs clench.
Someone crackles back through the radio, probably giving us permission to die.
Patrick glances at me and gives a small nod.
Then the world tilts sickeningly wrong. There’s a stomach-lurching sensation of the earth disappearing beneath us.
I squeeze my eyes shut. I want to fast-forward to the part where we’ve landed and I’m horizontal in a bed, possibly drunk, stress-eating my body weight in crisps while I process this aerial trauma.
“Georgie,” Patrick’s voice slides into my ears again. “Open your eyes.”
“I’d rather not.”
“Georgie.” Firmer now. An order.
I crack one eye open.
Oh fuck, fuck, fuck.
Inverness has shrunk to Monopoly board proportions. We’re so high up I’m pretty sure I can see the curve of the fucking earth.
“Oh God,” I breathe. “We’re flying.”
Patrick chuckles in my headset, like he has thenerveto enjoy this. “We are indeed.”
The helicopter tilts, and the Highlands unfold beneath us like something Tolkien dreamed up: rolling hills, deep, endless lochs. No wonder Nessie chose to live here.
“Spectacular,” I whisper, still convinced I’m going to die but maybe fifteen percent enchanted despite myself.
The helicopter dips and I let out a high-pitched squeak. “Was that supposed to happen?”
“Just a bit of turbulence,” Patrick says, all calm and smooth. “Perfectly normal coming over the mountains.”
I blow out a shaky breath and force myself to focus on the stunning mountains rather than the terrifying void below. They really are gorgeous. Probably the last thing I’ll ever see.
But somewhere between the lurches, I realize something: I’m so consumed by the possibility of plummeting to my death that I’ve somehow stopped being terrified of Patrick McLaren.
Huh.
That’s oddly liberating.
