Page 43 of Risky Passion

"Six."

I whistled. "That's young. Your parents must have been young themselves."

"They died on Mom's thirty-fifth birthday." Her voice remained steady, but her eyes fixed on some distant point over the water.

"God, I'm sorry. May I ask what happened?"

"Sure." She tucked her hair behind her ear as if collecting her thoughts. "Dad bought Mom a scenic flight for her birthday. A joy flight over the North Queensland islands. Out there."

She swept her hand toward the ocean where the Milky Way shimmered across the darkening sky and mirrored in the black water below. "Something happened mid-flight, and the plane crashed into the water. There were no survivors."

“Jesus.” Her tone was so matter-of-fact, I got the sense she’d told this story too many times, sanding it down to the bluntest version. “And yet you still became a pilot?”

A ghost of a smile brushed her lips. “Flying makes me feel closer to them. I like to think their last hours were beautiful . . . soaring overthe islands, the sea glittering beneath them. Before they . . . you know.”

“Do they know what caused the crash? Engine failure?” I asked softly.

She shook her head. “No idea. There was no communication. No Mayday. They just dropped from the radar and nobody saw anything.”

“Lucky you managed to make your Mayday,” I said, “otherwise I might never have found you.”

Her hand drifted through her hair, a gesture that seemed more habit than thought.

“Ever since I got my pilot’s license, I’ve been trying to understand how it happened. It was a perfect day. The pilot was experienced.” Her voice caught. "Mom sent me photos from up there showing crystal waters dotted with islands like jewels. Then, twenty minutes later . . . just gone. Three lives lost without a reason."

Her gaze drifted to where the horizon melted into darkness. "Something happened up there, Jaxson. Something I can’t explain.”

A tightness settled in my chest as I nodded. “It’s the not knowing that’s the worst.”

My mind slipped to my sister Charlotte. She'd been a force of nature at sixteen. Dragging her friends into every party or saving-the-animals cause, overflowing with restless energy,anda fiery temper.

Maybe having older triplet brothers fueled that fire in her. I could still see her that last day, dark hair whipping across her face as she spun toward the door. Her final words, hurled over her shoulder: "And turn your stupid music down!"

Twenty years later, and that slammed door still echoed in my head. But it was the silence that followed her disappearance that drowned out so many other memories I had of her. Some nights, my mind filled that silence with possibilities, each one worse than the last. Where did she go? What happened to her? Was she still alive? The questions gnawed deeper with each passing year.

Tory leveled her gaze at me, and fearful she’d catch on that I, too, had a loss, I said, “Anyway, my brother, Whitney, may still be at Angelsong, so I said I’d come back to him. When we get to my car, I’ll charge my phone and give him a call. It’s possible he may have already left.”

Tory nodded. “I wouldn’t mind checking out Angelsong anyway. I heard it was a fascinating building.”

“When it was built, yes. Pity it was used for such horrors.”

Onyx jerked her head toward the right. “Hey, what you got, girl?”

A few paces later, she stopped at my shirt and shoes that I’d tucked beneath a twisted mangrove root earlier.

“Good girl,” I said, rubbing the fur between her ears.

As I pulled on my shirt and settled on a log to clean my feet, Onyx's nose twitched and her hackles lifted slightly. I glanced between her and Tory, who'd waded into the shallows. She stood transfixed by a dark shape about fifty yards out.

"Ladybeetle," she whispered, pointing to an edge of one of the plane’s floats barely breaking the surface. Her voice cracked on the name, and her shoulders trembled.

I abandoned my shoes and splashed into the shin-deep water to wrap her in my arms. She collapsed against me, her sobs muffled in my shirt.

"Hey," I murmured into her hair. "You survived that crash. That’s nothing short of incredible."

Her fingers clung to my shirt, and her sobs deepened. As I tightened my hold on her, my gaze drifted to the jagged outline of the plane float. The tide must have receded because the float had been completely submerged when I first spotted it.

Out on the dark water, faint lights flickered and bobbed in the distance. Hope surged through me. Could it be a search boat looking for Tory?

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