“I’ve already got an ambulance on route there to pick Richard up and transport him to a hospital,” Spence continued, “andI’ve contacted home base. Tabitha is driving Eloise north to that medical facility while Sheila holds down the fort and stays with the dogs.”
Jett gave a sigh of relief. She’d been turning over in her head what the next steps should be. Thank God for Spence. Now it was all covered.
The Diver Downeast task force certainly made a great team.
“Thanks Spence,” Trask replied. “Uh, I’m going dark for a minute. I need to have a few private words with Jett.”
“Trask! Old buddy, old pal,” Spence cried. “Don’t shut us outnow. Things are just getting interesting.”
“Suck it, little bro,” Trask responded with a chuckle, and tapped off his device, dipping his chin to tell Jett she should do the same.
Jett gave an amused sigh.
“Fine,” she said, clicking off. “No witnesses.”
Richard wasn’t listening. He was still breathing, but troublingly, no longer rousable.
Jett verbally poked at Trask. “Just know that if you kill me, there’s nobody here to fly you out, and the clock is obviously ticking on Richard,” she added seriously.
“This won’t take long,” Trask told her as they fed the gurney in through the open doors of her plane. Trask hopped in, right behind. He turned to grab the door handle, and before he closed it, he completely blew her mind.
“I love you too,” he stated, then slammed the door behind him.
“Wha…?”
Jett’s mouth hung open. She knew it did, because her tongue was suddenly cold. She snapped it shut and skidded her wayaround the fuselage to open the cockpit door and hoist herself up into the pilot seat, buckling herself in.
“Hell of a time to tell me that,” Jett scolded, but only half-heartedly, because she was so freaking elated. She’d take those words from him, any day, any time, even if they were dangling on a parapet, seconds away from plunging to their deaths.
“I’m sorry I was so abrupt, but I had to get them out,” Trask said, securing both himself and the stretcher for takeoff. “Just in case. You know?”
The fool actually sounded elated, when most people would be terrified at the thought of lifting off from an ice-runway when the odds were stacked so highly against them.
But not on Jett’s watch.
“Uh, uh. There’s no ‘just in case’ about it,” Jett assured him.
Her nerves hardened like steel now that she was behind the yoke.
Yes, it was going to be tricky, getting her plane up off the ice. But she’d managed in far more unfavorable conditions than these.
She’d accomplished it under heavy enemy fire. She’d done it with not enough runway for any sane person to contemplate, and she’d gutted it out after sustaining a head injury that would have grounded a lesser person.
Today’s take off was no joke. But Jett was good at this. Damned good.
And she wasn’t letting anything happen to any of them, especially now that Trask had declared his love.
Shewantedthat love, and she wanted it for a very long time.
“Clear,” she yelled out of habit, even though there wasn’t another soul within shouting distance except maybe a moose or two.
She brought the plane around and pointed its nose into the wind, doing a quick run-up of the engine before…
“Hang on,” she said, and eased the throttle forward.
It took a hot second for her to check all her instruments, but when she was satisfied, Jett increased her power slowly and smoothly, using the rudder to counteract the confounding, right-hand pull of the aircraft. The surface beneath the wheels wasn’t ideal by any means as her craft picked up speed, but the teeth-rattling only lasted a few seconds before…
They were airborne.
