The Gauntlet (17 page)

Miserable, she looked over at him. “What do you mean?”

“He probably in some way feels responsible for Scott’s accident. I’ll bet he favored Scott over you growing up, didn’t he?”

“Well…yes. But don’t all fathers favor a son over a daughter?”

Cam shook his head. “No. Listen to me, Molly, you’re going to have to separate what is your responsibility from what he wants you to be responsible for in your family situation. You have every right to live your life for you, not him. He acts like he owns you. He tries to run your life for you.”

Molly nodded. “I guess I’ve been coming to that conclusion for a while. It’s just so hard to accept, Cam. My mother—God, I miss her so much. She was wonderful.”

“She was the buffer between you and your father,” Cam guessed grimly. “When she died early, you were left unprotected, Molly. There were no arms you could run into to feel safe for a little while, were there?”

“No, I guess not.” The brandy was beginning to ease her fear and roiling emotions. “I never did have a safe place, except my room.”

Whether Cam wanted to or not, he knew he had to leave. If he didn’t, he’d stay the night. Molly didn’t need that on top of everything else she was struggling with. “You have me, Molly. I’ll be your safe place when you need one. Deal?”

She gave Cam a warm, grateful look. “I felt so protected when you challenged my father.”

“I’ll always be there for you, Molly,” Cam said, slowly getting to his feet. “Take this weekend and heal. Just rest.” He reached over barely grazing the skin beneath her eyes. “Get rid of those dark circles. Sleep a lot. Don’t work on any programs until Monday.”

It was sound advice and Molly knew it. She caught his hand in her own. “Thank you, Cam.”

The urge to sweep Molly back into his arms was becoming an excruciating torture. Cam gently squeezed her fingers. “Anytime,” he promised thickly. “Because you’re worth fighting for, Molly. Don’t ever forget that. Look at what you did right today and tonight. I’m proud as hell of you. You stood up to Martin and Norton.”

“And my father.”

A pained smile shadowed Cam’s mouth. “Especially your father. Once he gets over his anger, he’ll call you. This disowning thing is nothing more than a manipulation on his part. I don’t think he even realizes why he did it. You didn’t fall for it, so he’s going to have to regroup and learn to treat you in a different way. All this thing needs is time, and you’ve got that.”

With a slight laugh, Molly said, “Maybe I’ll do better without the weekly phone calls.” And then she sobered. “But I’ll miss talking to Scott.”

“Well,” Cam remarked grimly, “if that brother of yours isn’t completely under your father’s thumb, he’ll call you anyway. I’ll see you Monday?”

Although she still hurt, Molly felt as if weight had been taken off her shoulders. “Count on it.”

Cam squelched the desire to lean down and touch her wonderfully soft, sensitive mouth. “Good night.”

Afterward, Molly sat in the semidarkness of her apartment. So much had happened that it took hours to sort it all out. Later, she got up, took a bath and changed into a pale lavender bathrobe. Near ten o’clock, Molly went to bed and slept deeply. In her dreams, Cam was kissing her, and making slow, beautiful love to her.

Chapter Eleven

“L
isten, you be careful up there,” Cam warned Molly. He’d caught her just outside the women’s locker room. They stood alone in the hall. She wore a body-hugging G-suit, just as he did.

Molly forced a grimace. “With one more month to go, holding on to fourth place in overall standings, don’t think I won’t be.”

Cam walked along the hall with her. It was Friday afternoon, and hers was the last flight of the day before debrief. Unfortunately, the critical spin-test flight was with Chuck Martin. At the stairs they separated, Cam taking the exit door and Molly the stairs.

Molly clenched the knee board that held her flight test tightly in her left hand. On the first floor, students in flight suits were coming and going. Breaking out in a sweat, she went out a back door to meet the van that would take her, Martin, Cam and Norton to their waiting F-14 Tomcats at the nearby hangar.

The weather was bright and dry, a perfect October day on the bay. The breeze coming off the water had a bite to it, but Molly was sweating too profusely to be chilled. As she walked to the van, she saw Martin in the back, a scowl on his face. Cam sat up front with the driver. Vic Norton offered his hand and she took it, climbing aboard. The door slid shut, and they rode off down the landing apron toward the hangars.

On this flight, Vic would fly chase with Cam. Molly felt better that the two of them would be along for the ride. Her and Martin’s conversation and actual tests would be monitored by both instructors, as well as videotaped. Nothing like two sets of eyeballs, as far as Molly was concerned. Confidence was something she’d built, brick by brick, since the crisis with her father.

Molly tried to remain focused on the spin test to come, but as always, her father rose in her thoughts in off moments. The phone calls had ceased completely, and she found her life free of pressure. Scott had found the courage to call her sporadically, obvious strain in his voice each time he took the risk. They didn’t talk about her career. He was distraught, and so was she.

Molly’s gaze drifted to Cam’s back and broad set of shoulders. Warmth flowed through her, a balm to her nervousness over the upcoming test. Through everything, Cam had remained unobtrusively in the background. He never told her what to do, but he supported any decision she made. The past two months had been sweet torture as far as Molly was concerned.

Never again had Cam reached out to hold her or kiss her, but Molly couldn’t forget that tender kiss the night her world had shattered. And the longing she saw in Cam’s eyes wasn’t her imagination. She felt it, absorbed it and hungered for more. Much more. But always, the harsh demands of school and her drive to succeed on her own, took precedence. They had to, for her own sense of well-being.

The van drew to a halt and everyone climbed out. The sunlight was bright, and Molly put on her aviator’s sunglasses. She hauled her helmet bag to the second ladder hooked to the side of the sleek F-14 fuselage. The urge to turn and say goodbye to Cam was there, but she fought it. No one knew of their relationship, and it had to stay that way.

Molly climbed into the radar information officer’s cockpit seat, directly behind the pilot’s, and the crew chief helped her strap in. A firewall separated the two cockpits. Molly removed the firing pins from the ejection seat she sat on and stowed them. Fitting the helmet on her head, she gave a thumbs-up and thanked the young crewman. He saluted her and removed the ladder.

If she weren’t flying with Martin, now ranked fifth in the standings, Molly would have enjoyed the outing. She loved to fly. Making sure her knee board was secured around her left thigh and all the plastic-coated pages were in proper order for the test sequence, she glanced over at the Tomcat containing Vic and Cam.

Her heart nearly burst with fierce pride for Cam. It was a privilege to see him working in the cockpit, his profile clean and his mouth set with the responsibilities of his job. Her feelings toward him grew daily. Whatever had occurred between them that fateful night when he’d held her and kissed her, had unlocked hidden doors in her heart.

“Ready?” Martin demanded.

“Yes,” Molly said, positioning the oxygen mask against her face and strapping it closed on the side of her helmet. The huge canopy slowly descended and locked into place. Setting aside her feelings for Cam, Molly got to work. After takeoff, they would meet the chase plane at thirty thousand feet above the Chesapeake Bay in the restricted airspace where tests took place. Cam would fly his plane approximately half a mile from theirs as Martin put the F-14 through a series of spins. They would fall from thirty thousand and, at Cam’s order, come out of the spin at eighteen thousand feet.

Molly automatically tightened the array of harnesses that kept her against her ejection seat as the F-14 trundled toward the end of the runway, its twin engines whining around them. Sunlight glared through the canopy, heating the inside of the cockpit. Molly adjusted the air-conditioning to make it more comfortable.

The two fighters took off together, a few yards separating their wings. Molly allowed herself to enjoy the powerful thrust that pushed her deep into the seat, thrilling to the incredible surge of power that made the F-14 one of the premier fighters in the world. Martin set the nose of the aircraft straight up, afterburners on. The fighter growled like a hurtling beast lunging toward the edge of the azure sky, thousands of feet unwinding in seconds.

The G-forces were terrific, and Molly concentrated on breathing properly during the swift acceleration of the agile fighter. The sky turned cobalt in color as they neared the thirty-thousand-foot level. The Chesapeake looked small below them, the land on either side of it a mass of orange, yellow and red fall colors.

“Let’s get this over with,” Martin growled.

Molly knew his snappish order would come, and was prepared for him. “Roger, Lieutenant. Our first test is a spin from thirty thousand to eighteen thousand feet.” From prior training, Molly knew that if Martin wasn’t able to get the jet out of the spin at the correct altitude, he had three thousand feet to spare to get the plane under control. It was Cam’s responsibility to order them to bail out if they slipped below the fifteen-thousand-foot mark.

Spins were the most dangerous and most intricate of all the flying demands on plane and pilot—a deadly dance in the sky. Molly had flown a series of spins with Dalton last month. She knew what to expect and made sure there was nothing in her cockpit that could fly around and injure her when the spin started. As an aeronautical engineer, Molly knew that if the F-14—or indeed, any type of plane—went from a spiral spin into a flat spin, it could be dangerous. Pilots were usually unable to bring a plane out of a flat spin, forcing them to bail out.

“I’ll need four complete revolutions of the plane before you straighten it out at eighteen thousand,” Molly reminded Martin. Four wasn’t a lot. Her other two tests were designed for tighter, harder spins, consisting of five and six revolutions within the same altitude requirement.

“Roger,” Martin responded.

Molly was glad they were separated. Martin’s voice was always antagonistic, but this time, it sounded as if he wanted to rip her head off. “Anytime you’re ready, Mr. Martin.”

Molly had no more than gotten the words out of her mouth when he slammed the F-14 into the series of spins. The G-forces built suddenly, pressing like powerful, unrelenting hands against her chest. She gripped the arms of her seat with her gloved hands and tried to keep her head from slamming back and forth as the fighter fell and tumbled, seemingly out of control.

“Twenty-five thousand,” came Cam’s calm voice over her headphones.

Molly knew he’d read off the altitude for Martin. Right now, Martin had his hands full just keeping the jet under his command. Blue sky and brown earth rapidly changed positions in front of her eyes. The fall was breathtaking, her body pounded by the brutal G-forces.

“Twenty-two thousand. Start pulling her out, Martin.”

“Twenty thousand.”

“Nineteen thousand.”

Molly gasped as the F-14 suddenly straightened out from the spin. Martin had cranked the aircraft into level flight right on the money at eighteen thousand feet. She saw Cam come along side and Norton began to check the undercarriage of their fighter for any hydraulic leaks. After the inspection was completed and they were pronounced “clean and dry,” she heard Cam give Martin the order to climb to thirty thousand again.

In the second spin test, Molly counted four-and-a-half revolutions, not five. As they were being checked for leaks, she brought it to Martin’s attention.

“That wasn’t five spins, Mr. Martin.”

“Like hell it wasn’t!”

Molly’s mouth flexed. “It was four and a half.”

“You can’t even count. Captain Sinclair, didn’t you count five?”

Molly was barely hanging on to her building anger. Martin wasn’t supposed to ask Cam anything. Her assessment was all that was needed.

“You completed four-and-a-half spins, Mr. Martin. Next time, I suggest you listen to Ms. Rutledge. She’s your flight engineer on this test. Out.”

Cursing on the cockpit intercom, Martin snarled, “Now you’ve got him twisted around your little finger, Rutledge.”

Molly wondered if Martin had turned off outside communications. He must have, to be saying things so brazenly.

“You’re upset because you didn’t make the mandatory five spins, Mr. Martin.”

“I’ll tell you what, Rutledge—I’m not going to allow you to drag my grades down again. Last time I flew with you, Sinclair flunked me. Never again.”

She heard the shaking hatred in his voice. “You failed yourself, Martin. I had nothing to do with it. Now let’s get to thirty thousand and complete the last test. I want six spins.”

“Don’t worry, you’ll get them,” he grated.

Cam frowned. He could see Martin talking and gesturing in the cockpit. What was being said? The pilot had switched to IC, intercabin communications, and Cam had no way of knowing what went on. When Martin switched back, he sounded furious.

“I’m ready, Captain Sinclair. Let’s get this final test out of the way.”

“You’re clean and dry. Let’s go to thirty thousand,” Cam ordered.

“Martin sounds upset,” Vic said on IC.

“Yeah, I don’t like it.”

“He’s a hothead when he doesn’t get his way.”

Cam nodded, easing his fighter upward, the nose pointed toward the cobalt sky above them. Worry ate at him. “Martin was sloppy on that last spin series.”

“Roger that.”

If Martin couldn’t make five spins, what made him so sure he’d complete six? A good pilot could, and Cam knew it. Martin had his weaknesses, just as any pilot did. When Cam had taken him up for spins before Martin was accepted as a student at TPS, he’d done average on that maneuver, but they weren’t his forte.