Her dad eyed up the man standing on the dock waiting to board the small craft that would take off from the water. Cora didn’t need to look at the guy to know that he was weird. In Alaska they dealt with a lot of odd ducks, from people born and raised here to visitors.
Usually passengers who chartered their plane services into the wilderness were dressed as tourists did, wearing overpriced clothing purchased from outdoorsman catalogs. This one wore black jeans and a black leather jacket beneath a black puffer jacket.
Her father grunted. “If a hunter sees him, he’ll think he’s a bear out of hibernation.”
Cora hid her smile and turned to the dock. She approached the man standing there with a duffel bag that appeared bulky with goods and probably weighed more than the required limit to keep their plane light.
“Hi, I’m Cora Hutton. You’ll be flying with us on the Hutton Husky today.” She gestured to the plane outfitted with pontoons to land in water. “I’ll need to weigh your bag, sir.”
His dark stare penetrated her as he handed over the duffel. She withdrew a fish scale from her pocket and hooked the bag strap over it. “Our limit is ten pounds, and you’re at twelve, but it’ll do.” She passed the bag to him, and he accepted it without a word.
The ice cold stare lingered with her long after she walked to the plane. Her father muttered, “He’s a nutter, isn’t he?”
“I think so,” she whispered.
“Escaped convict wanting to disappear in the bush?” her father asked with a cock of his gray brow.
It was a game she and her daddy played, guessing their passengers’ stories.
A shiver ran through her that had nothing to do with the dropping temps. “Definitely.”
“I’ll keep an eye on him. Climb in, Cora girl.” Her father’s rough tone always warmed her when he called her by the pet name. Since the time her mother passed from a quick battle with cancer when Cora was ten, she’d been flying with her father. He taught her everything she knew—about flying and about life.
One of her most cherished lessons had to do with being a good neighbor to everyone she encountered. A person never knew when their action could save another’s life, her father preached, and she lived by the bush code.
Settling in her seat in the cockpit, she glanced to the door as the passenger boarded. She noted how he scanned the controls, looking hard at the instrument panel before taking his seat and stowing his bag at his feet.
He’d booked with them using the name of Ron Smith, but she couldn’t attach that name to the man. He appeared foreign from his dark, dashing looks to the expensive imported boots he wore. She mentally shrugged—this was America. No ethnic group had a specific look and she couldn’t judge.
But she did judge his hard stare boring into her from behind while her father took the controls and started the engines.
She slipped her headset on and threw her daddy a glance. “We’re clear for takeoff. Please keep your seatbelt on during the flight,” she told the passenger.
He didn’t reply, which made her wonder even more what he was hiding. He could be Russian—they saw a lot of that this far west.
Her father lifted a finger to his temple and wiggled it to indicate the man was a bit touched in the head. She smiled and focused herself in order to assist her father. The engines whirred, freshly inspected and in good working order. Her father was a stickler about his planes and checked over them with a magnifying glass before each and every flight. It only required one small, bad part to take a plane down.
The plane skated across the freshwater lake, getting speed. The runways were short with the tree branches thick with snow, but they lifted off, gliding up above the trees. Cora loved this part best—looking down just after takeoff, feeling like she had a giant’s perspective of the landscape below.
Her father got the plane leveled out and buzzing at a steady speed, while she checked the weather doppler. They knew a storm was brewing but planned to be well out of it and back at home in front of their cozy woodstove before the snow hit.
“I keep thinking about that venison stew waiting at home to warm up,” she said through their headsets.
“My stomach’s been growling for it too.” Her father scoured the air, and she knew why his military buddies had nicknamed him Eagle. After years with the Air Force, he’d finally been stationed in Anchorage. He signed on for an extended term because he loved it so much, and the minute he served his time and retired, he moved his wife to Alaska and bought his first bush plane.
At that time, Cora had been born, and there were albums full of photographs of her growing up as a pilot’s daughter, with infant Cora in his arms in the cockpit before a flight and continuing through her teens. When she was twenty, she dropped out of the community college he insisted she attend, declaring she wanted to fly and use her knowledge from the business courses she’d taken to help him expand his business.
Ever since, they’d been shuttling people all over Alaska, mostly to the remote areas other plane services wouldn’t fly. With a website linked to the Alaska tourist page, they got plenty of business, but Hank “Eagle” Hutton wasn’t a man who flaunted money. They still lived in the same small cabin of her childhood and it’d taken a lot for Cora to even talk him into upgrading to a new woodstove that better heated their home.
The things her father wouldn’t skimp on, however, were supplies. He never left the hangar without enough food, water, bullets and other supplies to see them through “just in case.” She never wanted to think about the just in case, but she’d inherited her father’s practical common sense.
Being thirty years old in the Alaskan wilderness meant she didn’t have many chances to meet men, and lately, she felt the clock ticking. She never bought those magazine articles talking about women’s biological clocks, but for months now, she’d been waking to dreams of holding her own infant in her arms and raising a family in the bush.
During her waking moments, she accepted her life as it was and didn’t dwell over those strong urges brought on by hormones. Life always worked out—either she’d have a family or she wouldn’t.
In the distance, the gray bank of clouds threatened with the storm looming over them and counting down another clock to reach the destination and home before conditions grew too rough to fly.
“I hope this isn’t another May 1999,” she said to her father.
He shot her a glance. “Me too.”
In May 1999, she and her father had taken a couple guys to what was known as the Bear Grounds for a week’s hunt. After cautiously checking the weather in the days and hours leading up to the flight, it looked clear. But in true Alaska style, the winds changed and conditions went from decent to whiteout in an hour.
Sitting right here in this seat, she couldn’t see anything through the thick white flakes and swirling winds, but somehow her father had managed to set them down safely on a lake that had recently thawed.
There, she and her father sheltered with their two passengers, who were equipped for hunting in warm clothes. What camping gear they carried with them saw them through for several days, along with the stores her father insisted on carrying.
Soon their plane would be grounded for the season, and they’d spend their winter doing other things such as harvesting what food they grew in their greenhouse and hunting for meat. What they didn’t buy, they were able to supplement. Cora might sometimes long for a warm man next to her in bed, but she didn’t care about gourmet food or civilization.