Page 40 of Dice & Dekes

“Goodnight, Viktor,” she says softly.

“Goodnight.” My voice cracks. “Knova…”

She doesn’t answer but reaches for my hand under the covers and laces our fingers together.

I fall asleep like that. A little undone. Holding on to something that was never mine to begin with.

And still hoping—like an idiot—that maybe she’ll stay. Not just the night. Not just the week. But for good. Because every time she’s near me, I remember how much I loved her then and realize I never stopped.

Chapter Nine

Knova

It’s not even two in the morning when my phone starts vibrating. I groan and press my face into the pillow. I’m cozy and warm, and I don’t want to deal with some fucking telemarketer who got his grubby little paws on my number. I let it ring through to voicemail and try to fall back asleep.

Unfortunately, it lights up again.

I grope for my phone. When I turn my head and see who’s calling, all my complaints are forgotten. I snatch my phone to my ear and sit up in bed. “Hey,” I whisper. “What’s going on?”

“This is Ben Arlon, LifeSource Dispatch. We’ve got a rollover at Red Rock Pass—tight access, bad wind shear. Our primary pilot couldn’t get a stable hover and had to call off. You’re our only certified narrow-landing clearance within range. Can you be wheels up in ten?”

I don’t know Ben personally, but LifeSource keeps my number on file for exactly this. When the terrain’s too tight or the descent too risky, I’m the one they call. Military flight certs mean I can reliably put a bird down where most people wouldn’t even try.

While he explains the details of the situation, I rush around the room in the dark, pulling on clothes with military precision. It doesn’t matter what. Viktor doesn’t stir. Figures. Between the back-to-back games and the alcohol at dinner, he’s out cold—and I don’t have time to explain.

I’m twenty minutes from the heliport, and they’ll have the chopper prepped by the time I get there. Not ideal—but faster than rerouting another pilot from across the valley.

* * *

By the time I land at the scene of the accident, EMTs have already brought out the jaws of life.

My brain does this thing in emergencies where it turns off all unnecessary functions. You know how people talk about how electronics pull power through their cords even when they’re not in use? Emotions are like that, too. In times like this, my brain pulls all the unnecessary plugs and diverts every ounce of my energy, every drop of adrenaline, to make the rest of my body run as smoothly as possible.

As the EMTs load the two little girls into the back of the helicopter, I’m not thinking about how they’re only six and eleven. I’m not wondering about the extent of their injuries. I’m not listening to the words their mother screams as she clambers in after them. Those things matter to someone, but they don’t matter to me. Not yet. I don’t fully process the tractor-trailer’s logo, register the angle at which it crushed the little blue compact car against the guardrail, or gasp at the fact that the smaller vehicle is crushed beyond recognition. The crash happened on one of those twisting, shoulderless stretches carved through the red rock—no clearings, no pull-offs, and the kind of gusty canyon crosswinds that make most pilots wave off the approach. I was the only one within range trained for a touch-and-go landing on uneven terrain.

I’m in survival mode, not for me, but for this family. That means, in a turned-around way that I never expected before I went through training, that I can’t care about them yet. If I let myself think about them, my heart will crack open, and the memory of my final tour and what ended it will come spilling out of every pore of my body, and I will be no good to anyone.

That night. That desert. That young man who looked like my little cousin, bleeding out in my lap while I radioed for a medevac that was ten minutes too far. I can’t go back there. Not while I’m flying this one.

My job now is to focus on the wind, the flight path, and the controls. I need to get these girls to the hospital as fast as possible. Everything else might as well not exist.

An EMT gives me the go-ahead, and we lift off. For the next ten minutes to the trauma center, this is a flight like any other. I don’t break a single protocol, don’t take a single unnecessary risk. I am a machine, and machines don’t have feelings. They’re efficient. They’re controlled.

They get the job done.

At the hospital’s helipad, more EMTs scurry around like ants. I bring us in for a smooth landing. This is my purpose. My job.

I watch with that same level of high-functioning detachment as the little family emerges from the helicopter, the mom under her own power, the girls on stretchers. When I see the first kid, I think,I just helped save those children’s lives.It’s strange how I still don’t feel anything. Maybe later, I’ll feel proud. Happy. Relieved. Right now, I’m still empty.

Then I see the second stretcher. Covered. Still. And I realize I was wrong. I only saved one of them.

The rotors are still spinning, but my body won’t move. I sit in the cockpit, hands frozen on the controls, heart suddenly too loud. And all I can think is—what if it had been Knight? Or my parents? Or Viktor?

What if next time, it is?

That’s when it all comes crashing back down.

* * *

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