LOW PRESSURE

by BROWN SANDRA

  “Yes. Inside, with the drapes drawn and the lights on, it’s better. I’ll take a hot shower. That’s calming, too.”

  “Okay then.” He walked toward the door, but she stopped him. When he turned back to her, she said, “You didn’t get yourself a room.”

  He held up the key card. “Yes, I did. Don’t use all the hot water.”

  He found a parking spot not too far away from the building. On his race back, he had to lean into the strong wind. Small hail stones pelleted him and bounced on the pavement. The lightning was ferocious. But it wasn’t raining all that hard, so when he reentered the lobby, he was relatively dry. And starving.

  From the lobby phone, he called their room. When Bellamy answered, he asked if she wanted to join him in the restaurant. “Or would you rather me have them box up something and eat in the room?”

  “I’d prefer that.”

  “Need me to come up and wash your back?”

  She hung up on him.

  He had his hands full when she opened the door to him twenty minutes later, fully clothed, but her hair still damp and smelling of shampoo. “What’s all this?”

  “Vending machine toothbrushes. And paste,” he added with emphasis. “Two cheeseburgers, two fries, two beers for me, one split of white wine for you. We’ll toss for the peach cobbler. That was the last of it.”

  While she spread their dinner on the round table, he took a quick shower, returning to the main room dressed but without his damp boots.

  Bellamy seemed to be as hungry as he was, and they ate quickly, deciding to save the cobbler for later. He carried his second beer over to the bed, rolled the pillow into a ball, and supported his head on it as he stretched out on his back.

  “This is cozy.” He patted the space beside him. “It could get cozier.”

  “Cut it out, Dent. I’m not going to sleep with you.”

  “Sleeping was last night’s agenda. Not what I had in mind for tonight.”

  With a decisive punch, she muted the TV. Then, curling up in the easy chair, she put her hands palm to palm and slid them between her knees as though to warm them. But it was also a slightly protective gesture, which should have alerted him to what was coming.

  “What Moody said—”

  He interrupted her with a long, drawn-out groan. “Talk about a mood kill.”

  “What he said about you living with what nearly happened.”

  “But didn’t.”

  “Still, it can’t be easy to know how close you came to—”

  “Taking out a hundred and thirty-seven people?” Watching her down the length of the bottle, he took another drink of beer, then set it on the nightstand and came off the bed, all in one motion. “Thanks a lot. I’ve now officially lost my buzz.” He moved to the dresser and leaned into the mirror above it to inspect the cuts on his face.

  “Why did you voluntarily leave the airline after the incident?”

  “Too bad it’s not Halloween. I could trick-or-treat.”

  “Why won’t you talk about it?”

  “I wouldn’t even need a mask.”

  “It might help if you opened up about it.”

  “Bad as these bruises look, I may still have them come Halloween.”

  “Dent?”

  “What?” He came around so quickly she actually recoiled.

  But she didn’t give up and go away. “Why won’t you talk about it?”

  “Why are you so damn curious? Morbid fascination? Are you one of those people who goes online to watch videos of plane crashes, people jumping off buildings, multi-car pile-ups?”

  “Don’t do that.”

  “What am I doing?”

  “Slamming the door. Getting defensive. Is that how you were with the investigators?”

  “No, we all became chums. Christmas cards. Birthday greetings. They name their babies after me.”

  She frowned. “You told me that the only way you can relate to a woman is sexually.”

  “All evidence to the contrary.”

  “This is your chance to relate to one, to me, in another way.”

  “That way is no fun. No fucking fun.”

  He returned to the bedside table, picked up the bottle of beer, and took a swallow from it. As far as he was concerned the conversation was over. But Bellamy continued to watch him with those damn soulful eyes that pulled him in and under, and, before he’d even planned it, he asked, “What do you want to know?”

  “You were the co-pilot?”

  “Yes.”

  “You spilled your coffee?”

  “Isn’t that what I told you?”

  “The mechanic, replacing the electrical panel—”

  “All true.”

  “The weather?”

  “Also a factor, but not severe enough to ground us.”

  “But when you were on takeoff—”

  “The most critical time of any flight.”

  “—you were instructed to turn left to avoid a thunderstorm.”

  “Which was the right call.”

  “Lightning struck the plane.”

  “Popping several circuit breakers, including one that controlled the CVR. Cockpit voice recorder. Which wasn’t relevant until later.”

  “A fire warning came on for the left engine, but there wasn’t a fire.”

  “Just like I told you. False warning.”

  “But the captain shut down the left engine.”

  “Correct.”

  “That’s what he did.”

  “Yes.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I flew the frigging airplane!”

  His shout was followed by an abrupt, charged silence. Bellamy sat upright. He cursed himself and moved back to the bed, where he sat down on the end of it and pressed his thumbs into his eye sockets. He kept them there for a minute or more, then slowly lowered his hands and looked over at her.

  “The captain didn’t like me, and the feeling was mutual. He was a totally by-the-book kind of guy, and that kind of pilot. He regarded me as a misfit who didn’t fit the image and didn’t deserve to wear the uniform. In a best-case scenario, we wouldn’t have been scheduled to fly together. But we were. That was the hole in the first slice of Swiss cheese.”

  He stopped to collect his thoughts, to relive that instant in time when he realized that the captain had made an egregious error. “I told you earlier that he reacted as he’d been trained to do on a 727. The thing was, that’s not what we were flying. We were flying an MD80. He’d been trained on the 80, of course, but his upgrade had been recent. When the event occurred, an older reflex kicked in. He reacted to the fire warning without checking the instruments for secondary indications of a fire. Oil temp. Oil pressure. EGT. Exhaust gas temperature.

  “I instantly checked the gauges. Nothing said fire or damage. I realized the goddamn warning was false. By now we’re in a steep left bank, and our airspeed is decreasing. The right engine is pushing the airplane further to the left. The nose is dropping, right wing is tipping up. The airplane wants to roll over.”

  “That’s what you reacted to.”

  “Yeah. I jammed the right rudder to try to bring it out of the turn. I pulled back on the yoke to try to bring the nose up and get the craft level, while bringing it back to the right to straighten it up. And it all had to be done immediately and simultaneously. There wasn’t time to think about it or talk it over. There were no options.

  “Now this took seconds. Seconds. During that time, he and I are yelling at each other. He was shouting at me that it was his aircraft, and I was telling him that what I was doing had to be done. We’re shouting over each other. It was a damned good thing that CVR circuit breaker had popped. That saved us both some embarrassment later on.

  “Anyway, I managed to pull us out of it. He stopped yelling. In eight, no more than ten, seconds, he’d pieced it together, realized his error and how close it had brought us to a catastrophe. He even thanked me, I think. At that point, we were both awfully busy.
r />   “Passengers were screaming. The flight attendants were trying to restore calm. We had no way of knowing the extent of the injuries or damage to the cabins. We were still flying in moderate to severe turbulence on one engine.

  “I asked him if he wanted to restart that left engine, since apparently nothing was wrong with it. He opted to leave it off. He took control again and we returned to the airport. Disaster averted.”

  He stared at the pattern in the carpet between his feet. “No one died, but a lot of people were injured when we pitched. One was a baby that was in his mother’s lap, not strapped in. Lawsuits were filed, and the airline paid out millions to settle.” He looked over at Bellamy and said with a bitterness that went bone deep, “You know the rest. It made big news.”

  He got up and walked over to the window. Parting the drapes, he looked out. “Stopped lightning.”

  “Your actions saved them.”

  “I got lucky.”

  “You know better. Why weren’t you hailed a hero?”

  He sighed. “Because you can’t have a first officer taking over for a captain who’s flying the airplane. He had twenty years’ experience on me. He was an airline golden boy. Give him another few seconds, he would have realized what had happened and what needed to be done to fix it. He would have done exactly what I did.”

  “But you didn’t have those seconds to spare.”

  He shook his head. “We were going in, and it’s a miracle that we didn’t in spite of what I did.”

  “Did the captain own up to his mistake?”

  “Yes, but he also took some of the credit for reversing it and saving everyone.”

  “You didn’t tell them otherwise?”

  “No, we covered for each other. There was no voice recording to disprove us.”

  “So why did you leave the airline?”

  “While the NTSB was still investigating the event, a reporter for one of the networks went digging into my past and discovered that, in my youth, when my girlfriend turned up dead, I was named a suspect by the police. ‘He was later cleared of all suspicion,’” he quoted, sneering.

  “Like hell I was. The implication was that, despite the spiffy uniform, I was still a shady character. The story didn’t sit well with the airline. Even after the accident report had been completed, I was urged to extend my leave. That was as good as telling me to get lost. So I got lost.”

  “Letting them and everyone else think—”

  “Whatever the hell they wanted to,” he snapped.

  “You didn’t care?”

  “No.” He crossed to the night table, picked up the bottle of beer, and drained it.

  “It didn’t bother you to walk away from it?”

  “No.”

  “I don’t believe you on either count.”

  He turned to her, poised for a fight, ready to argue, but her expression was soft and misty, and it instantly deflated him. He sat down on the side of the bed, bending his head low, and, for a moment, said nothing.

  Then, “The airlines have rules and regulations for a reason. From the crew members’ socks to how they fly the airplanes, there are standards that everyone’s gotta adhere to. They’re responsible for the lives of thousands of people every day. To be good at moving all those people, to do it efficiently and safely, everything has to be done uniformly.

  “But that word crawls all over me. I tolerated it while I was in the air force. We were at war. I got it. Orders had to be followed. But in the corporate world? Regulation socks?” He shook his head. “The captain was right: I wasn’t a good fit. So I didn’t mind leaving the structure.” Looking over at her, he said, “But to walk away from the flying was tough. That was bad.”

  “You still fly.”

  “And I love my airplane. But I miss the big ones. I miss jet propulsion.”

  “You could always go back.”

  “No. Even if an airline would consider hiring me, which is highly unlikely, I took a position. I gotta stick to it.”

  “You could fly corporate jets.”

  He waited for a moment, then, acting on impulse, reached across the distance separating them. He slipped his hand beneath her shirt and curled his fingers inside the waistband of her jeans. Pulling her out of the chair and toward him, he said, “Buy one. I’ll fly you.”

  Positioning her between his thighs, he pushed up the hem of her shirt, undid the button on her jeans, and spread open the two ends of the waistband with his thumbs.

  “Dent . . .”

  “We related on your level, Bellamy. It’s time we came down to mine.”

  Then he pressed his open mouth against that wedge of pale, smooth skin.

  Chapter 20

  At the touch of Dent’s mouth, Bellamy’s bones seemed to liquify. Reflexively she reached for something with which to support herself and wound up clutching handfuls of his hair.

  “Does this hurt?”

  Hurt? He was tenderly kissing the dark bruise on her pelvic bone, made last night when she banged into the iron railing outside his apartment. “No.”

  “Good.”

  He kissed the spot again then eased down the zipper of her jeans, his mouth moving into the widening gap, doing wonderful things that caused her insides to quicken.

  “Dent,” she murmured. “We can’t.”

  “We are.” His breath was warm on her skin as he rubbed his face against her. “You taste good.” A gentle suction of his lips pulled her skin against his teeth; he nipped her lightly, making her breath catch.

  He angled back and looked up into her eyes, then gave his full attention to each button on her shirt as he pushed it through the hole. He worked his way up from the bottom and, when all were undone, opened her shirt and kissed the slight indentation between her ribs just under her bra.

  Using the fingers of both hands, he caressed the loose strands of hair that brushed across her nipples. “That’s been driving me nuts.” Pushing her hair aside and leaning in, he replaced his fingertips with his mouth, first on one breast, then on the other, biting her gently through the lace cups of her bra.

  He bracketed her hips with his strong hands, turned her, and pulled her down onto the bed, then leaned above her and claimed her mouth in a kiss so deeply passionate, so uniquely Dent, that she banished her resolve never, ever, to let this happen.

  They kissed long and hungrily. While his hands moved over her, he took her mouth boldly, sweetly, teasingly, and continued to kiss her until they were breathless. When they broke apart, he buried his face in the crook of her neck and whispered, “I think you have a talent for this.”

  He worked his hand into the opening of her jeans, into her panties, and barely paused to cup her mound before easing her thighs apart, separating and caressing, and finding her ready. Instinctually she raised her knees and angled her hips. With a growl of satisfaction, he slid his fingers deep into her.

  Oh, God! This was Dent. The Dent of her most innocent adolescent daydreams and her most erotic adult fantasies, making her whimper with each intimate stroke of his fingers, every breath-grabbing brush of his thumb.

  His hair was soft against her breasts, now freed from the lace cups of her bra. Gently and avidly he loved them with his mouth, his tongue, while from low in his throat came sounds of arousal that were altogether masculine.

  He wanted her, and for these moments, he was hers. Exclusively hers.

  She closed her arms around his head, and arched up to meet the thrusts of his fingers and beg the exquisite pressure of his thumb. She called his name as the first ripple of ecstasy washed through her.

  Then came the tide.

  Ray had watched the sun go down, and then had given his eyes hours to grow accustomed to the dark. He now felt that his night vision was as keen as that of the coyote he could hear yipping in the hills to the west of the airfield.

  A single-engine plane had landed at twilight, but had stayed only long enough to refuel and then had taken off. Shortly after that, the landing-strip lights had been ext
inguished, leaving only a pale glow coming from inside the hangar.

  Ray got out of his truck and jiggled his legs to restore circulation. He did a few deep knee bends, then some curls with his left arm. He caressed the scabbard attached to his belt and kept his hand there as he headed toward the hangar.

  The ground was uneven, rocky, and strewn with patches of wild grass and occasional cacti. Fearing a mishap, he didn’t walk fast, but he moved as quickly and quietly as he could.

  When he got to within fifty yards of the hangar, he slowed his pace and bent almost double to decrease the size of the target he made. He didn’t think the old man would detect him, but he wasn’t taking any chances. He’d looked forward to this. He was pumped. He wanted nothing to prevent him from doing what he’d come to do.

  After tonight Denton Carter and Bellamy Price would know that Ray Strickland was a fearsome son of a bitch. The attack in the IHOP parking lot had been chicken feed compared to the blow he was about to strike. This would shatter them, rattle them, make plain the threat he posed, and intensify their fear.

  Twenty yards from the building, he dropped to the ground and lay there, imagining himself to be as invisible as the special forces guys. He loved watching movies about camouflaged sniper types who could lie in one position for hours, days if necessary, waiting for the perfect shot.

  He thought of himself like that now: lethal, invisible, and invincible. His weapon of choice wasn’t a high-powered rifle but a double-edged blade. He’d passed the long hours of the afternoon and evening stropping it to razor sharpness. He now slid it from the scabbard, loving the hiss it made against the leather, which sounded both sexual and sinister.

  He gripped the bone handle in one hand as he belly-crawled to the exterior wall of the hangar. Pressing his ear to the corrugated metal, he heard the twang of a guitar picking out the melody of a Hank Williams song.

  Ray hated hick music like that, but he was glad the old man liked it. It would screen any sounds he made. Emboldened, he slid up the washboard metal until he was on his feet, then crept along the wall, following it toward the front of the building and the half-moon of concrete onto which the hangar opened.

  By the time he reached the corner, his heart was pounding and his breathing was fast and shallow. He took several moments to slow them down, then counted to three and poked his head around the wall and peered into the hangar.