“Not if I can help it, no.” Dar smiled. “It’s my job to make sure he doesn’t ever have to.”

The sales exec nodded thoughtfully. “That’s true, and boy, does he rely on that,” he said. “You’re one key player.”

Dar shrugged. “I do what I have to do.”

He chuckled. “And God help any of us that get in your way. You’ve pinned my ears back a time or two.”

“Nothing personal.” Dar’s eyes twinkled slightly.

“Hmm.” Bob cleared his throat and changed the subject. “You definitely perked up the stockers, that’s for sure.” Her dinner companion let his eyes, finally, wander over her. “You’re much nicer to look at than Al is, and you know your stuff. Nice work with those offshore investors. They were trying to nail you.”

“I’ve faced a lot worse.” Dar paused as she felt a chill run down her back. It was the oddest feeling, and she just barely resisted the urge to look behind her. Abruptly, her stomach tightened, and she felt a knot Red Sky At Morning 25

form in her guts. What in the hell?

“Dar?” Bob caught the change and sat up. “You okay?”

No. Dar felt the blood drain from her face, and her heart started pounding. Was it the wine? She set the glass down. “Yeah, I’m all right...” Her throat went dry, and she felt a surge of anxiety almost make her start shivering. “I think.”

Bob put his glass down and reached over, touching her shoulder carefully. “You’re pretty pale. Maybe you should put your head down.”

“No.” Dar suddenly had the urge to be up and moving, an animal reflex fed by nervous energy that made her thighs twitch and tighten.

The fear now gripped her guts, and she was afraid she was going to throw up. “Listen, maybe I had something that didn’t agree with me...”

“I’ll get a cab.” Bob stood decisively and walked to the curb, snapping his fingers expertly. He motioned the waiter over with his other hand and handed him a bill, then walked back over to where Dar was just standing up. “Let’s go. I’ll get you back to the hotel.”

“It’s all right—” Dar started to protest.

“Lady, your well-being is important enough to make Alastair P.

McLean say the word ‘fuck’ to me,” the sales exec told her firmly. “You are going to let me get you back to your room, and I’ll call in a doctor if I have to.”

It would have almost been funny if Dar hadn’t felt like her insides were clawing their way up, eager to erupt from every body orifice she had. “Okay.” She let herself be bundled into the cab and concentrated on taking deep breaths, trying not to throw up.

KERRY HUNG ON to the seat arms, one hand jerking free to tighten the seatbelt she’d prudently left fastened across her lap. Josh sat beside her, gasping as the plane bucked in the air, his fingers white with the strain of clutching the leather cushions.

“Folks,” the captain’s voice sounded strained, but calm, “I know it’s pretty scary back there right now, but you all just hang on, and we’ll be through this in a bit. Storm front caught us by surprise tonight, so just hold on tight and keep calm.”

Okay. Kerry’s heart was hammering so hard, she could barely hear the man’s voice. Her entire body was tense with fear, and she closed her eyes as the plane dropped unexpectedly, making her weightless for long, long seconds. Then the sensation stopped abruptly, and the plane lurched, tipping on its side and shuddering.

She had to focus on something, so she chose the most vivid thing in her life, clamping her jaw down tight as she pictured her lover’s face, trying to let the image fill her mind’s eye and push out the horror all around her.

The shaking went on for a lifetime. She heard things fall in the galley and the flight attendants cursing, then soft, faint echoes of some 26 Melissa Good kind of alarm behind the closed door of the cockpit.

The fear was almost choking her.

And then it stopped.

The violent shaking settled to the odd bump, and the labored sound of the engines evened out, still sounding rough but no longer giving the plane-sickening surges of speed and slacking.

Slowly, Kerry opened one eye, then the other. Her dinner was chatting with her tonsils, and she hoped like crazy that no one was going to ask her to either think or speak until it decided if it was going to go any higher or not.

She looked out the window, and her heart almost stopped again.

They were between two layers of roiling gray clouds, ducking between shooting streaks of lightning, a moment’s peace between two slices of hell.

DAR THANKED BOB, reassured him for the tenth time that she’d be all right, then closed the hotel room door and escaped into the peaceful silence within.

It was dark in the room, and she only turned on one small light before she trudged across the carpet and collapsed on the bed, her body curling instinctively into a ball as she lay there trying to figure out what the hell had happened to her. For the moment, she was merely sick to her stomach and had a pounding tension headache. The frantic anxiety had faded, leaving only a knot in her gut that simply refused to loosen.

“What in the hell was that?” Dar spoke aloud, her voice slightly hoarse. “What’s wrong with me?” She was scared, she admitted to herself, vague snippets from popular magazine articles about anxiety attacks flashing into her memory. Stories about people who couldn’t even leave their houses. “No.” Dar let her eyes close and she rested, forcing herself to breathe slowly and calmly. “That is not what’s wrong with me. I won’t put up with that.”

After a few moments of simply lying there, she pushed herself upright and got to her feet, glancing at the clock as she did so.

Instinctively, her hand went for her cell phone, and she opened it, dialing a number by heart and listening to the ring.

Voice mail. Dar’s brow creased, then she shrugged. “Guess you forgot to turn this back on, huh?” she spoke into the phone. “Listen, something weird just happened to me. I...” Dar hesitated. “I’d like to talk to you about it. Give me a call as soon as you get this, okay?” A pause. “Okay. Talk to you later.” She closed the phone, then went over to the desk and sat down, activating her laptop and telling it to make a network connection.

A few clicks later, the light from the laptop’s active matrix screen lit her features with a ghostly glow, her face still as her eyes flicked back and forth, reading data. Another click, then she entered Kerry’s Red Sky At Morning 27

flight number and hit enter.

En route—delayed.

“Delayed.” A thousand thoughts sped through Dar’s mind. “Why?”

Suddenly, her guts clenched again and she doubled over, grabbing the edge of the table as a wave of fear almost swamped her. It forced a tiny cry from her throat, and she took a deep breath and held it, forcing the emotions down as she struggled to regain control.

It was tough, but she managed to do it. After wiping the sweat off her fingers, she refreshed the screen, watching the words refuse to change. She looked at the clock and calculated times. Then she picked up her cell phone and dialed a number.

It rang. A voice picked up, relatively cheerful given the time of night. “I need status on one of your flights. It’s listed as delayed.” Dar spoke slowly and clearly. “I need to know why it’s delayed, and you’re going to tell me specifically, or I’ll go up your chain of command until I wake up someone high enough to come down to that center you’re sitting in and use a fire hose to make you give me the information.”

Pause. “Is that clear?”

Dead silence. “Yes, ma’am,” the voice finally spluttered. “Can I have the flight number?”

Dar gave it, aware of a shiver working its way through her.

There was quiet, save for the distinctive clicking of a keyboard.

“Okay...um...Ms...”

“Roberts,” Dar provided softly.

“Right...Okay, well, from what I can see here, that flight hit some bad weather over Virginia...um...”

“Specifically,” Dar reminded her.

The clerk sighed. “Ma’am—”

“I am the chief information officer of ILS. I can, if I have to, break into your reservations system and get the information myself, but it’s going to take longer, and I’m not in the mood. So just tell me,” Dar bit the words out, “what...is...the...problem?”

“It’s not—well, they’ve got some damage to the aircraft, but the captain thinks he can land it okay. The problem is they’ve got to go through another storm first. They’re trying to land in DC.”

Dar clamped an arm across her stomach and bit the inside of her lip. She had to take several breaths before she could speak. “Okay.

Thanks.”

“Ma’am?”

Dar just closed the phone, and let her head drop forward to rest against the laptop’s cool edge.

KERRY WRAPPED HER arms around the pillow she had in her lap and just kept her eyes closed as the plane rocked and yawed its way through the clouds. She could feel little shudders running through the 28 Melissa Good frame of the aircraft, and she managed to compose a tiny prayer, which she sent outward, asking for nothing more than to hear Dar’s voice again.

That was all.

She felt a touch on her hand, and she jerked her head up to see Josh looking back at her, his face white as a sheet and looking very young.

She managed a smile for him. “We’re gonna be okay.”

“I know you’re an old, married lady, but can I hang onto your hand?” Josh asked. “I’m so scared, I think I just saw my left testicle float past my earlobe.”

That forced a breath of laughter from Kerry, and she reached over, clasping his hand with her own. “Sure.”

“Folks...” The pilot’s voice drew their attention. “Here’s the situation. We got hit by lightning and lost one of our engines, but don’t get excited. We have three.”

“Easy for him to say,” Josh muttered.

“We were trying to make it out to Chicago, but there’s a really big front ahead of us in that direction,” the pilot went on. “Washington is already closed, so we’re gonna swing out east and try to get into New York.”

New York. Kerry hung onto that one tiny sliver of very good news.

New York was where Dar was, and right now she very, very much wanted to be there.

“But we’ve got to get through this storm cell to do that. It’s going to be a little scary, but you all hang on, and we’ll get you down all right.”

“A little?” Kerry felt like throwing up. “I wonder how long it’ll take?”

One of the flight attendants, harried, coffee-stained, and exhausted, heard her. “Thirty minutes.”

“Thanks.” Kerry gave her a grateful smile. “Have you ever been through this before?”

The attendant, a slim, middle-aged woman with salt-and-pepper hair and an interesting face, nodded briefly. “Twice. Every time, I swear I’m retiring.”

Kerry felt an uncomfortable pressure building in her ears, and she sighed, hugging her pillow with one arm and keeping a grip on Josh with the other. The plane began to rock violently again, and the murmur of voices, which had risen, fell again to silence. The cabin lights flickered off, leaving only the indirect lighting on, and the lightning outside brought lurid flashes of silver darting unexpectedly into the cabin.

“I hate this,” Josh whispered. “I’m quitting the minute I get on the ground, I swear. I’ll go into business with my Uncle Al back home.”

Glad of the distraction, Kerry licked her lips. “What does he do?”

“Pizza parlor,” Josh yelped, as a bang sounded and the plane tilted to one side. “Oh, my God.”


Red Sky At Morning 29

Kerry exhaled, keeping her eyes glued on the window. The clouds were so thick and dark outside, she could only see the edges when lightning flared within them, or when the faint lights from the plane’s leading wing edge broke free of the clinging mist.

It was like being inside a bag, rolling down a mountain. She couldn’t see anything, she had no sense of where the ground was...

Kerry felt like crying. The fear was so overwhelming, it made her want to scream, but she bit down on the inside of her lip and simply bore it—time running so slowly it was as if every minute was lasting an hour. Fifteen of them passed before something else changed.

The nose lifted, then plunged to one side, throwing the stewardesses. It hung at that angle for an eternity, then slowly straightened out and jerked downward. Kerry started shivering.

The plane kept rocking and bucking, so unstable it made her dizzy as her sense of balance fought to compensate for the movement.