“Stay seated and get ready to brace,” he told Mia, trying to keep his tone neutral while wrestling with the controls and eyeing the water that was rising up to meet them way too fast.
Calculating his airspeed, the swell patterns, and the direction of the wind, it didn’t register right away that Mia started singing. Soon enough, though, the familiar tune broke through his concentration and, fuckin’-A, did it make him smile.
His Otter was in bad shape. He had no idea where they were or if anyone had heard his call for help. He was about to perform the most harrowing landing of his life. And yet, he was smiling.
Because Mia was singing John Denver’s “Leaving on a Jet Plane,” the same song he’d hummed weeks earlier in an attempt to relax her when he’d piloted them through one very gnarly thunderstorm.
And yes. The song choice had been intentional. His way of injecting a little levity into a hella tense situation.
Same thing Mia was doing now.Bless her.
“You can’t be serious.” The lawyer’s tone was incredulous.
“Sing with me,” Mia said. “It helps.”
“I can’t sing!”
“Youcan’tsing, or youwon’tsing?”
“I won’t sing unless you want your ears to bleed.”
“I think bloody ears are the least of our worries right now.”
“True,” Cami admitted.
Mia started singing again in that low, throaty voice of hers that was surprisingly on-key given she’d admitted her vocal cords had been damaged. By the time she got to the chorus, the lawyer joined in comicallyoff-key.
Truly,he thought,if tone deaf were a person, her name would be Camilla D’ Angelo. Although what she lacks in skill, she more than makes up for with enthusiasm.
He let their combined voices comfort him,focushim. Only when they were fifty feet from the surface of the sea did he stop listening, every ounce of his brainpower fixed on the task at hand.
Trajectory?Good. He’d been able to line the Otter up parallel to the major swells.
Wave height?About two, maybe three feet.Totally doable.
Airspeed?Still too fast.Damnit!
He gave up trying to regulate his heart and let it clamor against his ribs. A metallic taste coated his tongue, like he’d been sucking on an old penny. From the corner of his eye, he saw what he thought was a white line of sand and the green flash of trees riding in the middle of the sea.
Land? Maybe luck hasn’t completely dumped my ass after all!
Or maybe he was simply imagining things, his desperate brain conjuring up a mirage.
He didn’t have time to take a second look before... “Brace! Brace! Brace!” he roared as the right pontoon hit the water and immediately bounced them back into the air.
Sweet Mother Mary! This won’t be pretty.
“Brace, brace, brace!” he yelled again.
Half a dozen times he was thrown against his restraints before being pressed back into the pilot’s seat as the plane bounded from sea to air and back again.Mia... Mia... Mia...Her name was an urgent refrain echoing inside his head with every rebound.
He’d danced with death so much, he was no longer moved by the thought of his own demise. But Mia Ennis? She had so muchlightinside her. Sure, she tried to hide it, but he saw it. He sawher. And the thought of a world without her in it?
It was too terrible to contemplate.
Then there was Doc—his partner, his friend, his brother-in-arms. He wholeheartedly regretted ever thinking about throwing the bastard out over the Florida Straits. And yeah, he appreciated the irony that they wereallabout to end up in that exact place.
If we live through this, and if Doc truly wants to start something with Mia, I won’t stand in the way, he promised...himself? Doc? God? He wasn’t sure.
