Blue Skies Read online

  At twenty-one she had dropped out of college to become a flight attendant, and there was no question this disappointed her parents, if not her entire family.

  There was a very familiar pattern to what she’d just been through with Branch, Dixie realized. The only wonder was that she never saw it coming. Her denial must have been powerful. Over and over again she kept falling in love and getting lied to, cheated on and dumped.

  She wished she’d been as brilliant as the rest of her family, but what bothered her even more was that she’d apparently missed out on the meaningful-relationship gene, as well. The rest of them, Mom and Dad, her brother and sister, were all very happily married and had wonderful family lives. From high school through her short college career and every year since, all Dixie had wanted was to have a partner she could love, count on and have children with, like the rest of the McPhersons had.

  Her brother, Hal, was a wonderful husband and father, as well as a big-shot doctor in Houston; her sister, Sue, was married with two kids who went to the day care in her Dallas office building, but Dixie just limped along looking for love, getting jewelry instead. She had been kicked in the teeth so many times it was a surprise she didn’t need dentures. And not just by pilots. She had been used and then jilted in nearly every profession. She couldn’t count the number of times she’d had to go get tested for STDs after discovering the man of her dreams had been cheating on her. In fact, she couldn’t count how many men she’d had sex with—and she’d tried. Suddenly she was terrified.

  Still, despite the brevity of her college education and the lunacy of her romantic life, Dixie knew she was intelligent. Maybe not brilliant like the rest of the McPhersons, but damned smart enough in other ways.

  Although it might not seem like much to the Ph.D.s in her family, at thirty-thousand feet, her kind of skill could be priceless. No one could get control of a cabin or calm a ruffled passenger better than Dixie. She was good with people and she was excellent with safety procedures. She had administered CPR along with an onboard physician, had blown a slide to safely evacuate an aircraft after an engine fire, and had even once calmed the hysteria of a crew member who was suffering some form of posttraumatic stress disorder after the 9/11 attacks.

  For fifteen years she had performed at the top of her game, and now she was tired and disappointed. She wasn’t going any further in her job, even if she did rack up seniority, which translated into a little more pay and a little less work each year. But the challenge was gone and her personal life was in tatters. She was lonely, her heart hurt, and her coworkers didn’t respect her.

  How did Nikki do it? Nikki hadn’t had a guy since her divorce. She didn’t appear to want one or need one. But then Nikki had those two fabulous kids; maybe that was what sustained her. As for Dixie, disappointment that she had no one special had left her feeling bitter. She had just resorted to violence, for God’s sake!

  She felt like such a loser. Not only had she failed to find The One, but she’d let that be the most important thing in her life for the past fifteen years.

  Now she was on her way home from one of the worst trips of her career. Branch was simply the last in a long line of failures, and the fact that he had lied to her didn’t let her off the hook—she should have done some investigating. She was, as her sister flight attendant so coldly pointed out, a ditz.

  Well, all that was about to change.

  Dixie lived in a quaint little town house at the edge of the city in the shadow of the mountains. The complex was gated and secure and featured a community room, fitness center, pool, tennis courts and a drop-dead view. There were four town houses to a building, all with garages. When she’d bought the place she thought it would be temporary. Something to keep the rain off her head until she found Mr. Right, married, got pregnant and bought a nice little house near good schools.

  Her friend Carlisle and his partner, Robert, lived right around the corner; she had told them about the unit when she saw the For Sale sign go up three years ago.

  Now she found herself driving past her own town house, around the corner to Carlisle’s place. It wasn’t late. Maybe she could talk Robert and him into dinner, or at least a drink, because she just didn’t feel like being alone. As she turned into their cul-de-sac, her headlights strafed the front of his house, and she saw something very strange. Carlisle was sitting on the front step of his town house, wearing his flight attendant uniform, his overnight bag parked upright on the sidewalk in front of him. The garage door was open, and his car sat next to Robert’s inside. There was a nice little BMW parked on the street, and the lights were on in the house.

  Dixie parked and got out of the car, then walked up the sidewalk to the steps. Hands on hips, she looked down at him. “Hey, you. You goin’ to work?”

  “I just got home,” he said, standing up. He tossed a look over his shoulder at his house and there was no mistaking his sad expression. “My trip was cancelled. I came home unexpectedly and I found Robert…entertaining.”

  “Oh, damn, Carlisle. That’s awful.”

  He shrugged, his hands shoved into his pockets. “I could’ve called. But I didn’t.”

  Smarter than me, Dixie thought. I never had a clue. “What are you gonna do?”

  “I’ve been trying to decide. Yell and break things? No. That’s unlike me. Too messy. Get drunk? Exact revenge of some kind? I could dip his toothbrush in the toilet every morning.”

  “Very passive-aggressive,” she observed. “You could hit him in the head with somethin’.”

  Carlisle stretched his back. “I doubt he’d hold still for that.”

  She chuckled in spite of herself. “Carlisle, the idea is to do it real fast, surprise the critter, get off one good shot like that whack-a-mole game, before—” She stopped talking as the front door slowly opened.

  A pudgy young man around twenty-five poked his head outside, checking for danger. He paused as though listening for the cocking of a rifle. Dixie and Carlisle both glared. The young man sheepishly came out the door, down the steps past Carlisle, and, head down, made his way cautiously along the sidewalk to his BMW.

  “I’ll be hanged,” Dixie said as the man got into his car. “He’s a baby! Not exactly what I’d call fetchin’. And he’s all swishy.”

  “And a little squishy, too,” Carlisle said.

  By contrast, Carlisle was quite handsome and solid. Thirty-eight, a real blond, he had classically handsome features—high cheekbones, strong chin, great smile. They always were the cute ones.

  “All right, Carlisle,” Robert said from inside the house. “He’s gone. Come inside.”

  Robert stood in the doorway, very much at ease and unembarrassed. As if he’d been caught picking his nose, not screwing around on his partner. Even knowing he was gay, a woman could be stirred by the Latino’s strong good looks. While Carlisle sometimes exhibited that telltale effeminate affectation, Robert—or Roberto—was what they liked to teasingly call “a man’s man.”

  Carlisle’s going to do what he says, Dixie thought in near despair.

  “I don’t think so, Robert. I’m going to help myself to some ‘think time.’”

  Yay!

  “Let’s not drag this out,” Robert said. “That’ll only make it worse.”

  Carlisle grabbed his overnight bag and began to pull it down the sidewalk toward the street. Dixie happily trotted along behind him.

  “If you leave now, you might not be welcomed back!”

  Without turning around, Carlisle lifted his hand in the air and gave him the middle-finger salute. Behind him the door slammed shut.

  He didn’t look back. After stowing his suitcase in Dixie’s back seat, he climbed in front.

  Dixie got in beside him. “I know that was hard for you, buddy. I’m proud of you.”

  He shrugged. “Now what?”

  “My house,” she said. “We’ll have a couple of drinks, something to eat and maybe a little bonfire in the backyard grill. I have some pilot clothes I’m think
in’ of lightin’ up.”

  It wasn’t until the very last leg of Nikki’s three-day trip that the work started to get interesting, and not just the flying part. It was Chicago to Phoenix, the sky was a crystal, unmoving blue, and she was ready to put this trip behind her. She had kids to get back to, a dead ex-husband’s personal effects to sort through, and she was more than a little worried about Dixie. The hollow sound in her friend’s voice had alarmed her, and she knew there was more to the injured-first-officer story than she had heard so far. She sincerely hoped Dixie wasn’t homicidal. And to add to her worries, Nikki’s first officer, Bob Riddle, was driving her nuts.

  Bob was one of those distinguished-looking men in his early fifties with a deep voice that took on a slightly Southern drawl when he was on the radio and PA. It was a condition often referred to as sky drawl, when a pilot without a Southern accent turned into Chuck Yaeger whenever he got on the radio. Bob was tall and tanned, salt and pepper at the temples, full head of thick dark hair and a strong chin. Upon close inspection it appeared he colored his hair and used tanning cream on his face—those telltale orange stains on his cuticles and in the creases of his palms were dead giveaways. But you had to get close.

  His mannerisms were laid back and slow-moving, aping Chuck Yaeger’s loose yet deliberate movements. Except on Bob it was all just affectation, and he had a tendency to look and sound more like that hapless Ted Knight, the anchorman on the Mary Tyler Moore Show. Although married, he was flirtatious and suggestive, and their cabin crew for the last day and a half was all female and seemed to enjoy him a lot more than Nikki did.

  Nikki supposed that if the only time you saw him was when you brought a cup of coffee or meal to the flight deck, you might be impressed with his style, but a couple of days alone in the cockpit with him revealed a copilot who was arrogant and barely competent. He acted as though he’d just brought in the space shuttle when, in fact, he had squeaked by his last two check rides, the evaluation of flying ability judged by the company’s check airmen every six months. Nikki had to watch him every second, but so far his stupid oversights had not put them in mortal peril.

  This lack of skill seemed incongruous with his background. He’d been flying for thirty years and had held significant management positions along the way, including chief pilot or something at a small regional airline that had been driven under by the economic crises following 9/11. But he was used to smaller and less-complicated aircraft, and this jumbo jet was a lot of airplane for the guy. He’d been flying F.O. for a good year and a half now and still he struggled.

  Yet he had the temerity to seem surprised that Nikki was capable of handling a 767. When they met in the cockpit for their first flight together, he had said to her, “Well, let’s see what you got, little lady.”

  She had leveled him with her iciest stare. When she finally found her voice, she said, “Look, Bob, I’m not one of those touchy women who overreact to every little sexist remark, but I would like to explain one important thing to you. I have been a check airman and training captain in this aircraft for more years than you’ve been flying it, and I am your captain, not your little lady. If there’s any show-and-tell going on here, you’re the one on stage. Are we clear?”

  That had put a burr under his saddle for a while, but now he limited himself to occasional grumbling comments about having held positions a lot more stressful and challenging in the business than she had. Too bad he couldn’t limit his arrogance and incompetence, as well. Nikki wondered for the millionth time why the two always went together. But at least this trip was nearly over.

  There was one bright spot, however. He had a hilarious habit of using words that didn’t exist, and did so with typical overconfidence. Nikki found herself mentally repeating them over and over so she wouldn’t forget, and it took all her willpower not to laugh out loud. “The pilots in this company are facing a madrid of problems with our management,” Bob would complain, when he obviously meant myriad. Or, “I wouldn’t have any quelms about participating in a slowdown if it came to that.”

  But any humor she felt was quickly disappearing at this moment. While Nikki was in the cockpit, tapping her fingers impatiently on her knee, Bob slowly, oh so slowly, completed the outside walk around preflight inspection of the aircraft. If he were any slower, he’d be going backward, she thought. She finally heard him in the forward galley. “Well, I guess I better strap this baby to my butt and get you ladies back to Phoenix,” he said to the flight attendants. Then he sauntered into the cockpit and took his place…as second in command.

  “Mind if I come along, Bob?” Nikki asked.

  He looked at her crossly, but forced his lips into a smile. “You’ve got the cutest little sense of humor, Nikki. I love flying with you.”

  Yeah, you love it because I keep saving your life, she thought. But she didn’t say anything. This trip was almost over and there was no need to make the last leg miserable.

  The ops supervisor came aboard and stuck her head in the cockpit doorway. “Captain, I have two air marshals preboarded and waiting in first class. As soon as you’re ready, we’ll board the rest of the passengers.”

  “I’m more than ready,” she said. “I don’t want a late push back. I’ll go talk to them and you can tell the gate agent to get the passenger preboards ready.” She jumped out of her seat. “Bob, prepare to run the checklist while I brief the air marshals and crew.”

  Ever since the tragedy of 9/11 and the impending threat to future commercial flights, the undercover armed air marshals were part of the new routine. They were only on random flights, and the crew didn’t know if they were coming until they showed up and flashed their credentials. Dressed as ordinary passengers, they would preboard via the air stairs from the ground outside, not through the jetway at the gate where all the passengers waited. They would be seated close to the cockpit, either in the first class section or the first rows if there was no first class.

  The captain’s job was to check their IDs and badges, make sure the numbers matched, and then they would go through a little briefing with the cabin crew. The air marshals would advise the crew that they weren’t on board to handle passenger disruptions, since that could obviously be a tactic to breach the cockpit, and that their positions should not be disclosed to passengers, even if they asked about undercover marshals on the flight.

  These two looked like a couple of ordinary guys stashing their carry-ons in the overhead bin. “Welcome aboard, gentlemen,” she said. “IDs, please?”

  The first man produced his picture ID and his badge. She turned over the badge and confirmed the numbers were the same as those on the ID. “Sir?” she said to the second.

  He opened his wallet and flashed her the ID, then tapped his chest and said, “I’m wearing my badge on a chain around my neck.”

  “I’ll have to see it, sir.”

  “I can vouch for him,” the other said.

  “Sorry. Rules are rules.”

  The air marshal got a disgruntled look on his face and then began to slowly thread the chain out of the neck of his polo shirt. Finally the plastic-encased badge popped through the neckline and smacked him in the jaw. “Ow! Jesus!” he exclaimed.

  Nikki gave him a second. Another. She did not roll her eyes, though the temptation was powerful. Finally he removed the chain from around his neck and handed it to her. She compared the numbers and handed it back. “You seem to have…uh…nicked yourself. You might want to step into the lav and dab it or something.” It was all she could do not to add, I sure hope you don’t have to draw your weapon!

  This whole security initiative since 9/11 did not fill Nikki with comfort. It would probably be more cost-effective and safer to give the World Wrestling Federation free first-class travel.

  Nikki decided to take a pit stop herself before settling in for the flight. When she got to the cockpit, she found Bob was turned around in his seat, talking to one of the flight attendants. Her hands rested on the back of his chair and he was caress
ing her forearm. “You know we’re behind you all the way, right?”

  “Absolutely,” she said. “And we appreciate it, too.”

  “Then you just do what you have to do.”

  “Thanks, Bob. We could use more like you.” The woman didn’t stare Nikki down or anything when she spoke, but the implication was pretty clear. The flight attendants were in contract negotiations and there had been a lot of disruptive stuff going on, like sick-outs and slowdowns and a little exercise called CHAOS—Create Havoc Around Our System. All this was meant to hold the company’s feet to the fire so they would realize it made better sense to pay happy employees more money than to put up with these expensive job actions. Nikki did not endorse this behavior, especially now, when the entire industry was a wreck.

  But she and Bob had already had a couple of these conversations, and she would prefer a more peaceful ride home and pleasant end to this miserable trip.

  That’s what she would have preferred, but not what she got. Bob was flying this leg and landing in Phoenix. Nikki kept a closer eye on him than she would the average F.O., and he seemed to be doing okay. Until they were on final approach and he was cleared to land. He was too high and his airspeed too fast, but he wasn’t correcting.

  “Bob, you’re high and hot,” she said.

  “I’m okay,” he shot back, not correcting.

  “Go around, Bob. You’re high and hot.”

  “Naw, we can make this work out,” he said, bringing the aircraft down sharply, still too fast.

  From somewhere on the ground—probably a pilot at a gate who noticed the inbound Aries 767 come barreling out of the sky like a rocket ship—a mike was keyed and a deep male voice said, “That’s gonna leave a hole.”

  Nikki took the controls. “I have the airplane,” she said. “Aries Flight 492 is going around.”

  “Thank God—” came an anonymous endorsement.

  “Aries Flight 492, maintain runway heading, climb and maintain 4,000, contact departure control—”