by Janet Dailey
For a long span of seconds, he merely looked at her, then a gently sad quality suffused his hard visage. “Positive identification has not been made. There was a fire,” he explained, and had to say no more. Cappy’s jaw was tightly clenched as a kind of paralysis gripped her throat. “At this time, it’s believed the victim was a young woman named Goldman—Rachel Goldman.”
The shock of recognition broke the superficial barrier of calm. Tears sprang into her eyes and Cappy quickly lowered her head to hide them.
“Did you know her?” the general probed.
“We were baymates at Sweetwater.” She lifted her head, stunned and shaken. “I never thought it might be her.” Her fears had been for Eden, Mary Lynn or Marty.
“Come with me.”
This time Cappy didn’t protest against being led away, letting the hand at her elbow guide her across the room. A set of pocket doors was slid open and closed after they walked through. The chattering noise of the party didn’t intrude inside the paneled den. General Arnold motioned his aide toward a liquor cabinet while he paused to inspect the titles of the books lining the wall shelves.
“I love books,” he remarked in a deliberate change of subject. He looked around to be sure he had an audience. “Have you seen those new, small-sized books with paper covers? A publishing company named Pocket Books is putting them out. Handy for the soldier to carry with him. But when it comes to reading, I like the solidness of a hard-bound book.”
A wave of vertigo made Cappy sway and she felt Mitch’s hands steady her. She leaned into the support he offered, finding a warmth and a strength that she needed. The general’s aide brought her a snifter of brandy, but she didn’t really want it.
“Drink up,” General Arnold urged.
“Yes, sir.” Perforce, she was obliged to take a sip.
“It was an unfortunate loss,” he said, referring to the crash. He didn’t inquire as to the closeness of her relationship with Rachel, nor did he invite her to confide.
“Yes, sir.”
To Mitch he said, “There’ll be a board of inquiry looking into the crash. I’d like you to be there … in an unofficial capacity.” In other words, as his eyes and ears, with the findings to be reported directly back to him. “Perhaps”—he seemed to consider the suggestion he was about to make, before actually saying it—“Miss Hayward could fly to Camp Davis with you … as your pilot.”
“Thank you, sir.” Cappy was grateful for the favor granted, a cynical part of her aware that it was given out of an Army loyalty to one of their own, daughter of a respected Army officer and girlfriend to one of the general’s prized staff members.
“I must be getting back to the party,” the general said, taking his leave of them.
Alone in the den, Mitch asked, “Were you close to this Rachel Goldman?”
“No,” Cappy admitted. “Is it all right if we leave the party now?”
“Of course.” An instant later, a guiding hand rested on her waist to direct her through the maze of people and rooms.
The night air was summer-warm and still. Cappy rode in the passenger seat without talking. Her fears about the fate of her friends had been eased, but there lingered an unsettling feeling that gnawed at her. She turned her gaze from the traffic on the capital’s streets and the lighted windows of its houses and buildings to look at Mitch. The present route would take them to Boiling Field, where she was stationed.
“Please, I’d rather not go back to the barracks right away.” Cappy felt him looking at her, wary and curious while he searched her expression. “Could we go to your place for a drink?”
“If that’s what you want,” Mitch consented.
An odd silence lay between them for the rest of the ride as Mitch changed directions, crossing the Potomac to the Virginia side, where his apartment was located. Once they had entered the apartment, the long silence was interrupted by short questions and one-word responses, all very correct and polite, as Mitch fixed them each a drink.
A restlessness moved Cappy about the room, finally drawing her to a window where she looked out into the starry night, but she could see little beyond her own reflection in the windowpane. When she turned back to the room, Mitch was standing the width of it away from her, watching her.
“Why are you standing clear over there?” Cappy tried to make light of her question, needing to alleviate the heavy mood.
“If I come any closer, you might bite,” Mitch replied with a vague shrug of his shoulders.
“That’s ridiculous.” She was suddenly impatient with his answer.
“It’s the truth,” he insisted, with no glint in his eye. “Whenever anybody gets too close to you, you start snapping until you drive them away.”
“Is that what you think?” A small, hurt frown entered her expression.
“It’s what I know. Do you want to see my scars?” Behind his half-smile was a hard deep hurt. “You remember the old saying, Once bitten, twice shy? I’d hate to count the number of times I’ve reached out to you and received the cutting edge of your tongue instead.”
She shook her head, trying to dismiss a subject she was reluctant to discuss. Tears were stinging the back of her eyes, and she opened them wide to try to dry them out. He spoke too quietly, his jest was too piercing.
“How could you room with someone for nearly six months without being close to her?” Mitch wondered at the way she could hold people away from her. “Why are you afraid to let anyone get near you, Cap?”
“None of us got along with Rachel. I don’t know why.” She looked at her drink, not really seeing it. “The Army takes. Haven’t you noticed that, Mitch? The Army is always taking things. I’m tired of it. I want it to be my turn.”
Cappy was aware of the selfishness in her needs. But the crash that had taken Rachel’s life had brought her face to face with her own mortality, and she wanted to grab at the things she wanted and hold them for as long as she could.
Mitch stood, silent and unmoving. It was difficult for her to cross the room—she, who had always contained her feelings and kept them bottled inside where no one could see or know how vulnerable she was. But the fear that maybe there wouldn’t be a tomorrow pushed her. She’d been alone and lonely for so long. This time she was going to do the taking.
Halfway across the room, she deposited her drink on top of a table so her hands would be free when she reached Mitch. His stance was unchanged, a stone-statue stillness about him, his lidded gaze veiling his thoughts. With a downcast head, Cappy took the drink from his unresisting fingers and set it aside. A rigid pulse hammered along her throat.
His expression remained unchanged, silence his only response while she lifted her hands and curved them to the rigid muscles standing out tensely along the back of his neck. Slowly his muscles gave in to the pressure she exerted to bring his head down the few inches so her lips could reach his mouth. Her contact with the unyielding line of his lips was tentative, warming gradually from the heady taste of him and the stimulating male scent that clung to his skin.
For long seconds, he was immobile and it was Cappy doing the kissing. When the lines of restraint broke, it was a violent break. His arms pressed her closer to him while his mouth ground down upon her lips with punishing ardor. Cappy didn’t complain.
When he pulled back from the kiss, her hands tightened around his neck. “Hold me, Mitch,” she urged in that tight voice, afraid to let go of her emotions. “I don’t want to be alone tonight.”
The inviting push of her hips, the hot urgings of her lips, and the stirring roundness of her breasts all made their impressions on him, but it was the pooling blue of her eyes that pulled him down.
“Where you’re concerned, I swear I’ll always be the fool,” he muttered thickly. With a scoop of his arms, he picked her up and carried her into the bedroom. “I won’t let you go tonight.”
In the faint light that spilled into the room from the hallway, they watched each other undress. Their uniforms were cast aside, until t
hey were stripped bare of clothes, facing each other as only man and woman.
On the bed, the closeness was savored. The hungry deepening of kisses and stroking of bodies was slow but eager as their needs pushed them, and they tried not to rush the wonder of it. Their play—the erotic sucking of nipples and fondling of bodies—was drawn out as long as possible.
When the moment could no longer be prolonged, he mounted her and penetrated the last barrier. Still, Mitch murmured to her, “Let me in.”
Later in the night, while Cappy slept curled up like a kitten in his arms, Mitch reflected on the shared ecstasy. A keen disappointment knotted the pit of his stomach. She had given him her body and her willingness, but she had kept her feelings apart and not allowed him to get too deeply under the surface of them. Yet they were there; he could sense their wanting.
She confused him—her silence, her fear, her lack of trust.
His hands knew her body, roaming over every crest and crevice of it; his lips knew the taste and texture of her flesh; and his body had rocked with the rhythm of hers, matching and mating. He had gotten into her, and known her physically. But she had not allowed words, had silenced anything he tried to say. She had wanted him and he had satisfied her. But he wanted more than that.
Chapter XVIII
EDEN PROWLED THE room like a cage-crazy tigress. A tense, restless energy permeated the air, the strain and tension showing on both Mary Lynn’s and Marty’s faces. None of them looked as though she had slept a wink since last night’s crash. Cappy had difficulty assimilating the changes that had been wrought in her friends within such a short space of time. She had expected shock and a certain amount of grief over Rachel’s death, but not this bitter anger. Her glance strayed to Mitch as she wished she hadn’t asked him to stay. She doubted that Eden understood the gravity of the charges of dereliction she was throwing about.
“Eden’s upset,” she said to him, calmly coming to the defense of her friend.
“You’re damned right I am,” she snapped.
“Maybe I should leave,” Mitch suggested, aware that his uniform was a less-than-welcome presence in the room. Tempers had been whipped raw, resentment ran high.
“No. Stay,” Marty insisted with belligerence. “Somebody from the top brass oughta hear what we think. No one else is interested enough to listen, so why not you, Major Ryan.”
“Mitch isn’t here in an official capacity.” Cappy held back the knowledge that he was at Camp Davis to observe and report his findings to General Arnold. But she didn’t want him carrying tales back about her friends either.
“Official or not, he’s Army, and somebody in command needs to know the kind of rotten business that’s going on down here.” Eden joined with Marty to insist that Mitch stay. The flash of her dark eyes was hard and her lips were thinly compressed. “You don’t see our leader anywhere around, do you? The great Jacqueline Cochran is conferring with that red-necked commanding officer—as if he’s going to tell her what’s been going on around here.” Her sarcasm and bitterness was thick. “Of course, she has agreed to speak to us—tonight at seven. I beg your pardon—at nineteen hundred hours,” she corrected in mock deference to Mitch.
To hear Eden make such snide comments about their director when she’d always expressed such an admiration for Jacqueline Cochran added to Cappy’s surprise. Beside her, Mitch seemed to settle back, those dark eyes and that quick mind not missing anything.
Cappy thought Eden would have learned from the Sweet-water experience that the Army’s attitude toward complaints was “Tough.” Whatever their gripes about conditions here, it would do them no good to tell Mitch. It would merely put them in a bad light.
“Rachel’s death was a tragic accident.” Cappy had seen the preliminary report, identifying the faulty canopy latch as a contributing factor to her death, although pilot error had been the obvious cause of the crash.
“The tragedy is it could have happened to any of us.” Eden paused, plainly agitated. “You don’t know the deplorable conditions of the planes we’re expected to fly.”
“Eden—” Cappy began, but never got any further.
“She’s right.” Marty sided with the New Yorker, one of the rare times in Cappy’s memory. “Yesterday, two engines failed and the pilots had to make a forced landing. Since we’ve been here, we’ve flown air search for eleven planes that went down in the swamps. And the tires on these planes are so worn, there were five blowouts in one day. Those are just the major things; this has nothing to do with the radios that don’t work, the flap levers that won’t stay locked in position—or canopies that won’t open from the inside.” Stormy-eyed, she ran a hand through her touseled, light brown curls. “Some experiment, huh?”
“Are you serious?” Cappy was appalled by the charges.
“It isn’t just the planes.” Mary Lynn appeared more subdued, less inclined to critical outbursts, but the strain was evident in her pale cheeks and worn expression. Her eyes were very dark, without their usual inner light. “Most of the instructors here know less about the planes than we do, yet they’re giving us check rides.”
“They’re rejects—all of them.” Marty was more sweeping in her condemnation. “You can almost bet that they were assigned to this tow-target squadron because they washed out of some other program. If they were such hot pilots, they’d be flying missions overseas in the combat zones.”
“Do you realize the seriousness of the charges you are making?” Cappy believed them, yet she was stunned by what they were telling her too.
“Don’t take our word for it.” Eden stopped her pacing to challenge both Cappy and Mitch Ryan. “Just ask any of the mechanics.”
“Yeah,” Marty agreed. “They’ve told us more than once that all they try to do is keep the engines running. It’s a waste of time to write anything on the Form One sheets. They don’t make the repairs.”
“They can’t get the parts,” Eden inserted. “That flight line out there is filled with junk aircraft and we’re expected to fly them.”
“Or kill ourselves trying, the way Rachel did,” Mary Lynn offered quietly.
A long silence followed, which no one tried to fill. Eden took another cigarette from her pack and tamped the tobacco in it, hitting it on the side of the pack with short, incisive taps that bespoke her impatience. She carried it to her lips, letting it dangle there while she struck a match to light it.
Her glance sliced to Mitch. “What’s your recommendation, Major?”
“Go through channels,” he replied easily, not rising to her challenging tone. “Tell your story to Cochran when you meet with her at nineteen hundred hours tonight.”
“Will you be there, Major?” Mary Lynn asked, accustomed to her southern world where men played the dominant roles.
“No.” The answer was simple and direct, emphasizing his detached observer status.
When the conversation became a rehash of complaints already covered, Mitch excused himself. Cappy hesitated before she accompanied him to the door, wanting a private word with him. Outside the building, an August sun broiled the Army grounds. The air was still and heavy; disciplined columns of men marched through it with sweaty backs and perspiring lips, constantly drilling until they could act without thinking. In the Army, a soldier didn’t think—he obeyed. Someone else did his thinking for him.
Cappy knew this, yet she turned to Mitch, troubled by all she’d heard. “What do you think, Mitch?”
His handsome face, chiseled in such strong, clean lines, was devoid of expression. “I think there’s a war on and there isn’t always time to do things the right way.”
“I don’t want an Army answer!” she flared.
“Maybe not,” Mitch conceded with a smooth, dismissing shrug. “But it’s likely that’s all you’ll get.”
She knew better than to argue the point, and asked instead, “Where are you going?”
“Between you and me?” An eyebrow lifted to extract her promise of silence, and received her aff
irmative nod. “To ask a few questions on my own. Then, I’d better sit in on the inquiry.”
At precisely nineteen hundred hours, the women pilots met with their director in the operations building. It had been nearly twenty-four hours since Rachel’s plane crashed near the end of the runway; time for the seething anger to come to a rolling boil. Every incident was recapped, every rumor retold, and every fact related. Agreement was unanimous among them.
After the meeting, when the trio of Mary Lynn, Eden, and Marty arrived at the Officers’ Club, Cappy was relieved to see they had calmed down considerably. But the tension hung about them, the waiting air of expectancy.
“What did she say when you told her?” Cappy asked after drinks were ordered round.
“She promised she’d check out the planes herself.” Mary Lynn answered the question about Jacqueline Cochran.
In the early cool of the following morning, a short memorial service was held for Rachel Goldman. Mitch escorted Cappy to the small chapel on the base. Mary Lynn had saved a space for them on the wooden pew where she sat with Marty and Eden.
They felt a closeness to her in death that they’d never known in life. Rachel, tall and feline-sleek with a cat’s grace, passionately giving back whatever she got—friendship or hostility. Rachel, the proud and the wary. Rachel, the stranger.
For Mary Lynn, there was regret that she hadn’t been kinder. Eden couldn’t shake the horrifying image of yellow flames swirling around Rachel while she flew by overhead. A sense of obligation and duty brought Cappy to the chapel, and Marty was there to pay her respects to a fellow flier, a lover of the sky.
As they were filing quietly out of the chapel at the conclusion of the service, Eden noticed the man sitting in the back row, wearing an enlisted man’s uniform. His head was bowed, a crown of thick, black hair absorbing the shine of the sunlight streaming through a stained glass window. His hands were folded in his lap, tightly clutching his soldier’s cap. Although she couldn’t see his face, Eden was sure she knew him.
