“There’s a handbook?” Jordan laughed. “No, I didn’t know.”
“The Farrow Guide to Privileged Grandparenting. Chapter 1: Hawaiian Vacations. I’ll get you a copy.”
“You should get right on that.”
“Would you prefer the print or eBook edition?”
“You have a wild imagination.”
“Hey, they’re kids. A couple of months on the island would do them good. There’s still time. I can send a car and hold the jet until they arrive.”
“Thanks, Dad,” Jordan said. “I’m sure they’d love it. But I can’t tuck them in when they’re twenty-five hundred miles away.”
Her father winked. “There’s always Skype.”
Jordan shook her head. “Maybe next year.”
“Fair enough,” Farrow replied. “Keith tells me your tour wraps up next week.”
Jordan nodded. “The first leg of it, anyway. One week on the road, then two weeks off to spend with Emma and Aiden. That was the agreement I made with my publisher.”
Keith added, “After sixteen consecutive weeks on the New York Times and USA Today best seller lists they weren’t about to argue with her.”
“They didn’t try to negotiate a better deal?” her father asked.
“I have a three-book commitment,” Jordan replied. “This is the last one. I told them I was giving serious thought to not re-signing and publishing the next book independently.”
“What did they say?”
“They told me to enjoy my time with the kids.”
Michael laughed. He wrapped his arm around his daughter. “Sounds like you picked up a negotiation tip or two from your old man.”
She smiled. “Could be.”
Jordan admired the aircraft. The private jet was the epitome of luxury air transportation and positively stunning to behold. Its pearl-white fuselage gleamed in stark contrast to the bruised purple and orange twilight sky.
“She looks beautiful,” Jordan said.
“Your father just had her repainted, plus a full interior makeover,” her mother replied. She took her daughter by the arm “Come inside, check her out. She’ll blow your socks off.”
Rock and Keith followed behind as the family boarded the jet. “Anyone else traveling with us today?” Jordan asked.
“Just Rock,” her mother replied. “He’ll be staying on with us in Maui. And the crew, of course.”
“Same gang?”
Farrow answered. “Captain Sanders and First Officer Brentworth have the flight deck. Julie and Gayle will be taking care of us.”
“They’re so sweet,” Jordan said.
“Sure are. Flight attendants don’t come any better. I told them you were coming. They’ll be disappointed that the kids won’t be joining us.”
“I sense a conspiracy,” Jordan joked.
Farrow laughed. “Nothing like that, Shortcake. They just think the world of them. We all do.”
“Next time. I promise.”
“Good. I’ll hold you to it.”
Captain Sanders voice came over the intercom as Julie and Gayle closed and secured the door. “Afternoon, folks,” he said. “We just got the thumbs up from the tower, so we’re good to go. We’ll be in the air in a few minutes so settle in and buckle up. Flight attendants prepare the aircraft for departure.”
As Jordan took her seat a strange feeling came over her. She held Keith’s hand tightly.
“Damn, girl,” Keith said. “You been working out or something? That’s one hell of a grip.”
“Sorry, hon,” Jordan said. “Guess I’m a little nervous.”
“Of flying? With all the traveling you’ve done this past year I’m surprised you haven’t gotten your pilots license and bought your own plane. Since when have you been afraid to fly?”
“I’m not,” Jordan replied. She thought about her confrontation with Marsden at the convention center. “It’s nothing,” she lied. “It’s been a long day. I’m just tired.”
The whine of the jet’s engines rose and fell as the aircraft taxied to its assigned runway. The setting sun serrated the horizon in a bright orange glow. Jordan looked out her window at the row of private hangars. Aircraft mechanics were working on a jet in Hangar A. Hangars C and D were vacant. Jordan watched the ground mechanics roll shut the doors to the Farrow Industries hangar. The jet executed a tight turn. Captain Sanders lined up the aircraft for takeoff.
The turn cast the hangar in bright sunlight. Jordan shielded her eyes against the glare.
Suddenly she remembered the pen Marsden had left behind. Segments from the strange vision she received when she read it on the drive to the airport flashed back to her.
A brilliant, blinding light, narrowing to a column… the smell of aircraft paint… the figure alone in the hangar… the tool on the floor…
The jet began to rocket down the runway, its engines screaming as the plane accelerated.
“Something’s wrong,” Jordan called out.
Keith turned to her. “What are you taking about?”
Jordan unbuckled her lap belt and jumped out of her seat. “It’s the jet!” she yelled. “Abort the takeoff! Something’s wrong with the jet!”
Julie called out to her. “Jordan, get back in your seat!”
Rock unfastened his seatbelt and hurried toward her, gripping the seat backs for support.
A tremendous boom! rocked the underside of the jet.
Captain Sanders yelled over the intercom: “Everyone down! Brace for impact!”
As the aircraft dropped Rock lost his balance, fell backward, and struck his head on the floor.
The jet slammed down hard onto the runway, sliding off the tarmac, out of control, careening across the soft grass on the outskirts of the airport, ripping through the barrier fence and dragging it under its fuselage before coming to rest in the middle of the Interstate.
Jordan had been thrown forward to the front of the plane. She lay at Julie’s feet outside the flight deck cabin door. The flight attendant stared at her through lifeless eyes. Her neck had been broken in the crash. Gayle sat in her seat, slumped forward, unconscious.
The rancid stink of burning metal and blistering paint seeped into the cabin. Smoke crept up through invisible joints in the floor and sidewalls of the jet.
Jordan called out. “Mom… Dad… Keith?”
No response.
“Jordan?” Rock said. “Are you okay?”
“I think so.”
The bodyguard rose unsteadily to his feet and wiped away a trickle of blood from his forehead. “The jets on fire,” he said. Thick smoke began to pool on the cabin floor. “We’ve got to get out of here.” Rock moved past Jordan to the front door of the jet and pulled the emergency release. The door exploded off its hinges and fell onto the highway below. The escape ramp automatically deployed, folding itself out from the fuselage onto the highway.
“I’m not leaving without my family!” Jordan yelled.
“I’ll take care of them,” Rock yelled. “You need to get off the aircraft.” He pulled Jordan up off the floor. “Go! Now!”
Jordan fought back. “No!”
“Sorry, Jordan,” Rock yelled, “but I have to do this.” He grabbed her by her shoulders and threw her out the open door. Jordan half slid, half tumbled down the escape ramp and rolled onto the highway. She rose to her feet, tried to run back up the slick vinyl ramp, slipped and fell. Rock stood in the doorway and waved her away. Blood from the laceration to his head flowed freely, obscuring his vision. He was having difficulty seeing her.
“Get as far back you can. I’ll get everyone out. I promise… Oh Jesus!” Rock pointed past Jordan. “Get on the ground, Jordan! Now!”
Vehicles occupying the center and slow traffic lanes had pulled off the Interstate when the luxury jet came smashing through the safety barrier and screeched to rest against the center lane guardrail. Now a tractor trailer, its load too heavy to stop, was barreling down the open highway toward the downed aircraft. From the open do
or, Rock watched as the driver fought with the steering wheel, tried to regain control of the eighteen-wheeler, attempted to bring the big rig to a stop. Its wheels fully locked, the transport began to turn as it slid across the rain-slick pavement. The rig shuddered and screeched as it bore down on the doomed jet.
“Get down, Jordan!” Rock yelled.
Its course inevitably set beyond any opportunity to avoid crashing into the jet, the massive rig closed in on the dead aircraft. Jordan fell to the ground. She felt a whoosh of hot air overhead as the transport jackknifed and its undercarriage passed over her. It fell on the jet, crushed it, pushed it down, down, down the highway in a raging ball of fire.
Jordan clambered to her feet, bewildered by the incomprehensible event that had just taken place. Mind and body succumbed to shattering panic. She screamed, “Nooooo!” and stumbled toward the cremating mass of truck and aircraft until she found herself caught in a struggle with strangers. Unfamiliar voices surrounded her.
“Stop, you can’t go there…”
“Jesus Christ, did you see that?”
“Someone get her a blanket…”
“Call 9-1-1. This woman needs medical assistance…”
One voice stood out among the others. “What’s your name, honey?” the woman said.
“Quest… Jordan Quest.”
“Okay, Jordan,” the woman said. “You just take it easy. An ambulance is on its…”
The woman’s voice trailed off against the sound of distant sirens as Jordan fainted in her arms.
10
THE ER TEAM burst through the standby doors as the LifeAir helicopter touched down on the rooftop of Angel of Mercy Hospital and raced to meet the paramedics. The Burn Unit had been kept up to date on the status of their inbound patient.
“Talk to me,” Dr. Scott Lyons yelled above the swoosh-swoosh-swoosh of the slowing rotor blades as the team transferred their patient from the helicopter to the gurney and rushed back into the health center.
“Jet fuel burns to ninety percent of his body,” the paramedic replied. “This guy shouldn’t even be alive.”
The man’s face was burned beyond recognition. Shreds of clothing had melted into his skin. The soles of his running shoes had vulcanized to his feet from the intensity of the white-hot fire that erupted when the eighteen-wheeler collided with the jet.
“Respiration?” Lyons asked.
“We kept him on oxygen but he’s barely breathing. My guess is cellular hypoxia from the jet fuel smoke. He’d been breathing carbon monoxide and hydrogen cyanide for God knows how long before we touched down.”
The man’s physical injuries compounded his already grave condition. The radius and ulna of his right arm were broken, as too his left femur. Splintered bone protruded from his body, held in place by a gluey mass of melted fabric and congealed skin. His fingers were skeletonized, nails on both hands gone.
“You check for ID?”
“Couldn’t. Clothing’s charred to the body.” The paramedic shook his head. “I’ve attended my share of burn victims, doc. But nothing as bad as this. Poor bastard.”
“Any other survivors?”
“One. A woman. She was thrown clear of the jet before it was hit by the transport.”
“Transport?”
“It’s all over the news.”
“Where is she?”
“En route as we speak.”
“Name?”
“A witness said her name is Jordan Quest.”
Lyons turned to one of the nurses. “Notify me the minute she arrives.” He looked at his patient. “Maybe she can tell us what happened. And who this is.”
“Yes, doctor,” the nurse replied.
The team wheeled the gurney into the surgical suite. Lyons turned to the paramedic. “You were right.”
“What’s that, doc?”
“Poor bastard.”
The ambulance screamed to a stop at the Emergency entrance to the hospital. The rear doors crashed open and Jordan was wheeled past the triage desk into a waiting suite. The nursing team went straight to work, cuffing her arm, checking her blood pressure, clipping a heart rate monitor to her finger, placing her on supplemental oxygen.
Dr. Lyons entered the room. “Ms. Quest, my name is Dr. Lyons. Can you hear me?”
Lyons removed a penlight from his pocket, opened her eyes, checked Jordan’s pupillary response.
“Pupils are dilated and unresponsive,” Lyons said. “She’s in shock.” He instructed the nurse. “Draw blood. Send it to the lab right away. And check her sugar. Let’s be sure we’re not dealing with anything else.”
“Right away,” the nurse replied.
“Come on, Jordan,” Dr. Lyons said, as much to himself as to his patient, “Help me help you.” He walked to the foot of the bed, scraped his penlight up the soles of both feet, checked her reflexes: Neutral. To the nurse he said, “Page me when her tests are back.”
Jordan saw herself in Maui, lying on the beach at her parent’s vacation home. Emma and Aiden played in the surf at the water’s edge. Keith was chasing after them, water gun in hand, first after his daughter, then his son, spraying them as they ran. Emma screamed with delight. Aiden laughed. In the distance she saw her parents returning from their ritualistic hour-long walk, holding hands, kicking water at one another, acting like a couple of teenagers, just as they had for as long as she could remember. Rock strolled behind them, keeping watch from a distance, glancing inland, ever vigilant.
The day was perfect. Sunny and hot. A gentle breeze. Not a cloud in sight.
She returned her attention to her iPad. She had started to read a wonderful review of a new book from a promising up-and-coming author when suddenly the heavens rumbled, the sky turned crimson, and everything around her began to bleed.
Jordan rose from the lounge chair and walked toward the ocean. The water washing over her feet burned her skin. She stepped back. Though the waves lapped gently against the shoreline and the water itself presented no unnatural appearance, it clearly wasn’t water. Jordan examined the sea foam on the beach, watched the bubbles as they broke. A hissing sound preceded the pop of each bubble. Blood flowed out of them. The wet sand crackled.
She called out to Keith, tried to warn him of the unknown danger, to tell him to get the children out of the water. The growl from the heavens grew louder, like the threating sound of a fast-approaching thunderstorm. One ferocious thunderclap followed the last with greater anger.
Oblivious both to her and the impending storm, Keith and the children continued to play. Red rain fell, plopped down from the sky in thick viscous drops, and smeared Jordan’s skin when she tried to wipe it away. Blood.
Jordan looked up. In the sky, where the sun should have been, a white dot appeared. The object, whatever it was, was hurtling toward them at meteoric speed. Jordan ran along the beach, called out to Keith, Emma and Aiden, her parents, Rock. Her cries went unheard. Her family were oblivious to the object racing earthbound at terminal velocity and the strange environmental changes taking place around them.
The roar of the object had become deafening. Jordan fell to the ground, looked up, watched as it descended, then recognized it too late for what it was.
Her father’s corporate jet, fully engulfed, slammed into the sandy beach and exploded on impact. Flames leapt from the wreckage, then morphed into snake-like form and stood beside the smoking mass of debris, sentries of burning jet fuel, possessed by an otherworldly intelligence. The flames raced along the beach toward, around and past her, as though she was exempt from their rules of engagement; a civilian, not one of the specific targets they sought. Instead they found her husband, her children, her parents, found Rock, and swarmed them, melting them to the ground on which they stood with a heat so intense they liquified right before her eyes.
An emotional fire burned within Jordan so hot that she had no choice but to feed it, let it out.
She screamed.
11
SPECIAL AGENT’S Chris Hano
ver, Grant Carnevale and FBI Director Andrew Dunn rushed into Jordan’s room upon hearing the scream and found her thrashing in bed. Carnevale grabbed his goddaughter by her arms and held her down. Hanover and Dunn stood at her bedside.
“Jordan, honey. Settle down. It’s Uncle Grant. You’re having a dream.”
Jordan opened her eyes. The nightmarish inferno of her father’s corporate jet plummeting from the sky and crashing onto the Maui beach and incinerating her family quickly faded. It was replaced by unfamiliar faces and surroundings. She searched the hospital room in a panic, looked up, and recognized her godfather. Sweat soaked and breathing heavily, she fell back into bed.
“Uncle Grant?”
“I’m right here, honey.”
“Where am I?
“You’re in the hospital.”
Jordan stared at her godfather. “Hospital? How did I get here?”
“There was an accident. Do you remember anything?”
Jordan hesitated, focused, then answered. “Something happened to the jet.”
Carnevale nodded. He held her hand. “You’ve been in a crash. But your doctor says you’re going to be fine.”
“Is everyone okay? Mom and Dad… Keith?”
Carnevale’s mouth went dry. He tried to look away from his goddaughter, couldn’t. “I’m sorry, Jordan.”
Jordan gripped the bedrail, tried to pull herself up. “What do you mean, sorry?” she said. A tremendous pain seized her left arm. She lost her grip on the rail and fell back into bed. Jordan looked at her arm. It was wrapped, shoulder to wrist, in white medical gauze. An immobilizer brace had been secured to her left hand to eliminate wrist movement and protect the damaged tendons from unnecessary strain.
“Where’s my family?”
Director Dunn placed his hand on Carnevale’s shoulder. “We’ll be outside, Grant,” he said. Hanover closed the door behind him as the two men left the room.
Carnevale watched the door fall shut. The circumstances seemed so surreal, the news he had to deliver to his goddaughter unfathomable. Could this really be happening?
The Jordan Quest FBI Thriller Series: Books 1-3: The Jordan Quest FBI Thriller Series Boxset Book 1 Page 5
