Unfortunately, even if he did find a good spot, he might not be able to get them there. He didn’t have much directional control. Small adjustments were all he could make.
Luck would play a huge part in this ditching, and he’d just established he’d run out of that exact thing.
Fuck!
He was no stranger to the burn of adrenaline through his veins. For years, he’d ridden that high on a daily basis. But ever since bugging out of the Navy, he’d gotten used to the slower pace of life. Working to regulate his breathing and heart rate didn’t come automatically anymore. He had to concentrate on both, reminding his amygdala not to respond instinctively to the fear hormone pumping through his system.
“Is there anything I can do to help?” Mia’s husky voice was usually a balm to his brain. Hearing her now, crystal clear since the only other sound to breach the hull of the plane was the harsh rush of the wind outside, only reminded him it wasn’t just his life he was responsible for.
He had three passengers who were counting on him to make sure they walked away from this with all their favorite parts intact.
And let’s be real, all their unfavorite parts too.
Something foul and nauseating hatched in his stomach and started wriggling around. He regretted the ham and cheese biscuit he’d snagged from the hotel buffet on the way to the airport. The large cup of black coffee wasn’t doing him any favors either.
“Stay seated and get ready to brace,” he told Mia, trying to keep his tone neutral while wrestling with the controls and eyeing the water that was rising up to meet them way too fast.
Calculating his airspeed, the swell patterns, and the direction of the wind, it didn’t register right away that Mia started singing. Soon enough, though, the familiar tune broke through his concentration and, fuckin’-A, did it make him smile.
His Otter was in bad shape. He had no idea where they were or if anyone had heard his call for help. He was about to perform the most harrowing landing of his life. And yet, he was smiling.
Because Mia was singing John Denver’s “Leaving on a Jet Plane,” the same song he’d hummed weeks earlier in an attempt to relax her when he’d piloted them through one very gnarly thunderstorm.
And yes. The song choice had been intentional. His way of injecting a little levity into a hella tense situation.
Same thing Mia was doing now. Bless her.
“You can’t be serious.” The lawyer’s tone was incredulous.
“Sing with me,” Mia said. “It helps.”
“I can’t sing!”
“You can’t sing, or you won’t sing?”
“I won’t sing unless you want your ears to bleed.”
“I think bloody ears are the least of our worries right now.”
“True,” Cami admitted.
Mia started singing again in that low, throaty voice of hers that was surprisingly on-key given she’d admitted her vocal cords had been damaged. By the time she got to the chorus, the lawyer joined in comically off-key.
Truly, he thought, if tone deaf were a person, her name would be Camilla D’ Angelo. Although what she lacks in skill, she more than makes up for with enthusiasm.
He let their combined voices comfort him, focus him. Only when they were fifty feet from the surface of the sea did he stop listening, every ounce of his brainpower fixed on the task at hand.
Trajectory? Good. He’d been able to line the Otter up parallel to the major swells.
Wave height? About two, maybe three feet. Totally doable.
Airspeed? Still too fast. Damnit!
He gave up trying to regulate his heart and let it clamor against his ribs. A metallic taste coated his tongue, like he’d been sucking on an old penny. From the corner of his eye, he saw what he thought was a white line of sand and the green flash of trees riding in the middle of the sea.
Land? Maybe luck hasn’t completely dumped my ass after all!
Or maybe he was simply imagining things, his desperate brain conjuring up a mirage.
He didn’t have time to take a second look before... “Brace! Brace! Brace!” he roared as the right pontoon hit the water and immediately bounced them back into the air.
Sweet Mother Mary! This won’t be pretty.
“Brace, brace, brace!” he yelled again.
Half a dozen times he was thrown against his restraints before being pressed back into the pilot’s seat as the plane bounded from sea to air and back again. Mia... Mia... Mia... Her name was an urgent refrain echoing inside his head with every rebound.
He’d danced with death so much, he was no longer moved by the thought of his own demise. But Mia Ennis? She had so much light inside her. Sure, she tried to hide it, but he saw it. He saw her. And the thought of a world without her in it?
It was too terrible to contemplate.
Then there was Doc—his partner, his friend, his brother-in-arms. He wholeheartedly regretted ever thinking about throwing the bastard out over the Florida Straits. And yeah, he appreciated the irony that they were all about to end up in that exact place.
If we live through this, and if Doc truly wants to start something with Mia, I won’t stand in the way, he promised...himself? Doc? God? He wasn’t sure.
And lastly there was Camilla D’ Angelo. She seemed like a decent woman. Surely she was too young, and had far too much left to do in life, to be taken out so soon.
So, we’ll make it. It’s not our time. It can’t be.
Just when he thought they actually might make it in one piece, just when they’d slowed enough for him to rake in a shuddering breath, he heard the crunch of bending metal and knew one of the pontoons had given its all and could give no more.
Everything that came next happened in slow motion.
With the left pontoon crumpled flat, the tip of the left wing dipped into the ocean. And that was all it took to send them into a cartwheel. At first, all he saw through the windshield was clear, blue water as the nose of the plane plunged into the sea. Then all he saw was sky as what was left of the tail section sank into the drink.
The noise inside the aircraft was incredible. A groaning, crunching, buckling of metal. He thought he heard the lawyer scream. He knew he heard Mia catch her breath; he was that attuned to her. And then...
With one final moan, the Otter came to a teeth-rattling halt. The cacophony of noise was diminished to a few squeaks and thumps as loose objects settled into place. And a second later...ear-splitting silence.