Touch the Heavens (12 page)

She gave him a helpless look. “All I know, Dan, is that the colonel kept the information to himself. He felt the fewer that knew, the better. That way there was less chance of it getting out to the press and putting more pressure on Captain Mallory.”

He clenched the flight cap in his hand. “Unless I can find out the truth about this, Captain Brodie is going to do some real damage. Right now I’ve ordered him to maintain silence until I could do some investigating of his allegations.”

Peg shook her head, giving him a shrug. “No one can get into the colonel’s files until Monday, Dan. I’m sorry.”

Dan turned, capping his desire to explode at anyone who got in his way. “Well,” he muttered, “I guess I’ll go to Captain Mallory, then.”

“I’m sorry,” Peggy said as he left.

“Yeah,” he breathed softly, “so am I.” He strode quickly down the polished hallway, throwing open the back door and taking the concrete stairs two at a time. His heart was beating heavily with fear—fear for Chris. Brodie was on to something. As he drove toward the BOQ he began putting the jigsaw puzzle together. Chris had never lost her skill, confidence or courage to fly jets. If she had been in a crash, it wasn’t showing up in her flying performance. His mind snapped back to the time when he knew a pilot by the name of Jim Rosen. In the past few years he had lost touch with Jim except to run into him at the O’Club whenever he flew to Reese on business. Dan frowned. Reese was where Jim had been flying as an instructor pilot. Chris had also been an instructor at the base. Dan tiredly rubbed his face. And how had Brodie gotten this information? Brodie had sworn to find some dirt on Chris. The colonel wasn’t even allowing his own instructors to know about the incident. Why? Exhaling forcefully, Dan parked the Corvette, getting out. It was up to him to put a halt to the rumors surrounding the woman he loved.

7

T
AKING OFF HIS
flight cap, Dan walked to the end of the hallway on the first floor of the BOQ, where Chris had her quarters. His knock was firm against the door. He swallowed hard, realizing that Chris was probably in severe emotional turmoil by now. His heart wrenched. He wanted to protect her and felt helpless because he wasn’t sure how to do it. Knocking again, he called out her name. “Chris, it’s Dan. Open up.” His voice carried down the hall. Another thirty seconds fled by with agonizing slowness before the door was unlocked. Putting his hand on the knob, Dan twisted it and opened the door, coming face-to-face with Chris.

Chris stared at him. “Come on in,” she said tonelessly, stepping aside. She had changed from her flight suit into the pink silk robe. Droplets of water still clung to her black hair, evidence that she had taken a recent shower. Her stomach knotted as she saw the anger in Dan’s narrowed eyes. Chris walked nervously toward the couch, her arms crossed against her chest. Tensing, she heard the door close quietly behind him. The silence was brutal, and Chris squeezed her eyes shut. She wouldn’t cry! Now everyone would know about the crash. The heartache was too personal.

She felt Dan’s hand upon her shoulder, turning her around. His touch was firm, yet gentle with insistence as she tried to resist.

I don’t want to do this,” he said hoarsely, “but I need to know the truth, Raven. I want you to tell me what happened.”

She lifted her violet eyes upward, tears swimming in their depths. A sob threatened to choke off her voice. “It’s too late!” she whispered painfully.

Dan gripped her shoulders. “It’s not! Look, I tried to find out about this crash through Brodie. All he has is half a story leaked out by someone at Reese. I tried to find out through the commandant, but he’s gone for the weekend.” Dan gave her a small shake. “I didn’t want to have to drag it out of you, Chris. No one, not even the other instructors, knew anything about a T-38 crash at Reese. Brodie is going to spread this rumor around if I don’t find out what really happened,” he said, frustration choking his words. “And I can’t get that information without your help. Did it happen?”

Chris began to tremble, dislodging herself from his hands. She turned her back to him, staring at the curtained window. Tears trickled down her cheeks. “Yes, it happened,” she admitted, raw with pain.

Dan walked up to her and drew her back against his body. His anger at Brodie forced him to ask, “Were you cleared after the investigation?” The words were out and could never be taken back.

Chris turned, her features ravaged with pain. “That’s all you care about, isn’t it?”

He grew tense. “The commandant wouldn’t let you come to TPS if the crash had been your fault, Chris. So it’s a very small part of why I’m here,” he explained levelly, tryng to maintain a conciliatory tone to the conflict escalating between them. “I need the truth in order to keep Brodie quiet.”

She was hurting inside so much that her anger toward Brodie was aimed at Dan instead. Her lips trembled, tears flowing down her face unchecked now. “All you care about is your lousy school image!”

His lips thinned. “Dammit, Chris, quit overreacting. I don’t like this any more than you do.”

She lowered her lashes, everything blurring. “The commandant must have been worried that the crash would affect the school’s image.”

Dan growled an epithet, reaching and placing his hands on her tense shoulders. “Get that chip off your shoulder and hear what I’m asking of you,” he ordered tautly.

Chris glared up at him. Dan was excruciatingly close. His breath was hot and moist against her face. The anger in his blue eyes was laced with thunderstorm black. His fingers tightened against the flesh of her upper arms. “I hear you asking whether or not I’m cleared of that crash!”

“No! Do I have to tear this out of you piece by piece? Is that what you want? I can put some of it together. I knew Jim Rosen. He was a fine pilot. And I also know you. Your flying skills are excellent, Chris. If there was a crash, then there had to be something mechanically wrong with the aircraft.” Dan lowered his voice, realizing he was nearly shouting. His tone became roughened with emotion. “I know what your nightmare was about now. You were crying ‘punch out’ and ‘it’s stuck.’ And I also figure that the crash happened no more than a year ago because you’re still too emotional about it.”

With a strangled cry, Chris fled from his captive hands. She ran to the other side of the room, whirling on him, her face contorted with naked anguish. “I should have stayed!” she screamed. “I should have stayed and helped Jim!”

Dan froze, stunned by the ferocity of her cry. What he was seeing and hearing was more than just a reaction to a plane crash. He groped, blinking back an unexpected reaction: tears. Holding out his hand in a calming gesture, Dan walked slowly toward Chris. She had put her hands across her mouth, shoulders drawn upward, shaking. Oh, God, her eyes. Her eyes were brittle with hurt. His throat constricted as he halted a few feet from her, his hand still outstretched.

“Raven,” he called softly. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have shouted at you. Come here....” His stomach twisted as he saw her eyes widen with despair. She was trembling visibly. All he wanted to do was hold her and take away all the pain he had just forced her to confront. Damn Brodie. Damn the whole double standard system. He realized that he had just broken her emotionally. Acid stung his mouth. “Come...” he begged hoarsely.

As she hesitated, Dan closed the distance between them. He groaned her name, taking her into his arms, pressing her tightly against his body. A sob wrenched loose from her and Dan could only hold her, a feeling of helplessness crawling through his heart and soul. Stroking her unbound hair, he whispered, “I’m sorry, honey. So damn sorry. Let go of that pain. Don’t hang on to it....”

Chris wept brokenly. After a while she became oddly silent, huddled against him, numb after her emotional outpouring. There was a measure of safety in Dan’s arms as she forced herself to talk in a raw, almost inaudible voice. “Jim was AC on the flight. We both were logging proficiency hours in the T-38.” She winced, reliving that day again in her mind. “It was in the late afternoon, and we were flying at thirty-nine thousand feet. It was just straight flight, no acrobatics or anything. We had just leveled out and were flying toward Lackland Air Force Base when the plane suddenly went into a spin. The right rudder was stuck.” Chris shuddered, hearing the scream of the wind, the wail of the jet engines and Jim’s calm voice describing the problem. “He asked me to help him,” she mechanically went on, as if she were a robot describing the incident. “No matter what we did, the T-38 wouldn’t respond. At twelve thousand feet, Jim ordered me to punch out. I said no. We had worked the rudder a little, and I could feel it freeing up slightly and so could he.” She sobbed, hiding her face against Dan’s body. “I punched out at seven thousand because Jim screamed at me to go. I thought he was right behind me...and he rode the bird into the ground....”

Dan took in a shaky breath. “My God, you punched out at seven thousand?” he asked incredulously. He could feel the warmth of her body against him. She should be dead. Ejecting at that altitude in a spin usually killed the pilot. Dan pulled her away from him, searching her pale features.

Chris barely nodded. “You don’t understand. Jim—” she looked up at him “—was my fiancé. We were to be married last December. I should have stayed with him.” She pressed her hand against her mouth. “I should have stayed. Maybe I could have made up the difference—”

Dan gripped her harshly. “No!” he breathed, giving her a shake. “Dammit, don’t you realize that you’re lucky to be alive? Jim made the mistake by trying to pull that bird out at too low an altitude. He should have punched out like you did.” He searched her face, disbelief in his voice. “You must have been injured in that ejection.” He couldn’t believe it. She was whole and functioning after a close call like that. Further, the fact that she had loved Jim Rosen must have impaired her emotionally. Dan was awed by her strength and will to survive such a crippling incident. And it only made her that much more special in his eyes. Truly, Chris Mallory was an exceptional woman beyond any he had ever known.

Her shoulders drooped with dejection. She muffled a bitter sound, pulling from his grip, walking aimlessly around the room. “I had back compression and ankle problems for a while. No big deal. Every pilot who punches out gets it.”

Dan turned, watching her guardedly. “They put you in the hospital?”

“Yes.” She halted, staring down at the coffee table. “I wasn’t in very good condition for a while.”

“More importantly,” Dan murmured, walking to her side, “is how you were dealing with Jim’s loss.”

Chris barely looked over at Dan, feeling as if someone had taken a knife and gutted her emotionally. “They kept me at the hospital for observation. I was tested by the base psychiatrist, interviewed by my commander and helped by the chaplain.” She managed a weak smile. “The chaplain pulled me through the worst of Jim’s death.”

Dan nodded, the silence gathering in the room. “How long ago did this happen?”

“Ten months.”

“And what did the investigation show?”

She sighed brokenly. “That one of the mechanics who worked on that T-38 had left a wrench behind. The wrench slid and jammed under the right rudder, causing us to go into an uncontrolled spin.” She shrugged. “Pitiful, isn’t it? A man’s life is wasted because a mechanic got sloppy on the job and didn’t count his tools when he was finished servicing the T-38.”

Dan understood her bitterness. “You could have died, too.”

“All the Board of Inquiry saw was the loss of one pilot and the loss of a two-million-dollar plane. I was cleared after the investigation. I got a reprimand for not bailing out earlier when I disregarded Jim’s orders.”

“And then you went back to flying status?”

She nodded. “Yes, three weeks later my commander checked me out in a T-38, and I was off to teach recruits to fly again.”

“But you’re still blaming yourself, Raven.”

Chris jerked her head up, glaring at Dan. “That’s my business!”

“No,” he countered swiftly, “you’re wrong. It’s my business.”

Her eyes widened. “Do you think I won’t do as I’m ordered?”

“I’m more concerned that you’ll ride a bird down trying to save it when you ought to be punching out.”

“You needn’t worry about that, Major.”

Dan eyed her speculatively. His gut instinct said not to believe her. He had heard the anguish in her voice earlier about punching out and leaving Jim behind. And he recalled the force of her nightmare that had held Chris in its grip. What would happen if she and another student put a bird into a spin and they couldn’t pull it out? Would she ride it down because of this past trauma, trying to atone for a supposed mistake on her part?

He searched her wan features, and his heart contracted with compassion. She was emotionally wrung out, broken by the confrontation. “I’m going to put a lid on this, Chris,” he began, putting the flight cap back on his head. “I’m going over to talk to Brodie now. I want to find out how he got hold of this information.”

Chris grimaced. “That wouldn’t be too hard. Any crash becomes common knowledge at a base. If Brodie has a buddy at Reese, it was bound to come out.”

“Well,” Dan said grimly, “Brodie knows bits and pieces of what actually occurred.” He walked up to her, cupping her chin, forcing her to look up at him. “When I get done with Captain Brodie, I’m coming back over here. I think we both need to get away from here for a while.”

“And go where?” she asked, bitterness tingeing her voice. Was there any place far enough away from this cauldron of anguish?

“Just away,” he returned quietly, catching her violet gaze. “I feel like driving until we’re too tired to stay awake. We’ll get a couple of rooms and sleep until we decide to wake up. No schedules to meet. No demands.”

Chris felt her heart exploding with emotions she had never before experienced. The touch of his fingers against her cheek possessed a healing balm. “All right,” she murmured brokenly.

Dan released her, taking a steadying breath. He cared for Chris and was frightened of what the unstable future might hold for both of them. Brodie wouldn’t be detoured. He knew in his gut that the vindictive captain would spread his own version of Chris’s supposed incompetence. What would it do to her? How would it impact on her flying? Would it destroy her proud spirit and wash her out of the school? All of those possibilities were very real. And because he believed in Chris, he had to move quickly to try and shore up her broken defenses so that she could continue at TPS and graduate as she deserved. “I’ll be back,” he promised, opening the door.