Space in His Heart (33 page)

“Really? That’s
very interesting. I better go now. Bill Dugan’s here.”

She
disconnected, then set the cordless phone on the table, preparing
her accusation. “When’s the last time you updated your client
stationery files, Bill?”

He slowly rose
from the sofa and they stood eye-to-eye.

“Who was
that?”

“
An
employee of mine. The one who just found the server that was used
to send the emails to
Newsweek
.”

He narrowed his
eyes. “You can’t prove anything that way.”

“No. But you’re
opening your own agency, Bill, and stealing a big account. Your
motivation to make R&C look bad is pretty strong. Did you put
the extra stationery in my office while I was out of the office so
you could pin the memos on me? Or was that just dumb luck?”

He took a step
toward her and she jerked away.

“
Where
did you get all the information?” she demanded. “
Did Skip
Bowker leak all that to you? So you’d be his puppet with your media
contacts? So you’d leak the story about the cosmo
naut and the inspection problems?”

He just
narrowed his eyes, a thin sheen of sweat forming above his lip.
“You’re crazy, Jess.”

She shook
her head. “No. No, I’m not. You’ve been sabotaging me all along. To
make R&C look bad so you can have the account. And now that you
know they like me, you
want to use me
—”

He lunged
at her across the coffee table and she jumped back. Stunned that he
would try to hurt her, she froze. “Get out of here. You’re dead in
the water, Dugan.
Your list of transgressions is a mile
long, starting with tampering with government property.
”

His face paled.
“Don’t be a fool, Jessica. I’ve run the NASA account for years. No
one would believe I’d do anything to hurt the business.”

She pointed to
the door. “Get the hell out of here.”

The TV flashed
to a white screen and crackled. They both turned at the same
time.

NASA Coverage Discontinued
, a simple banner read.

She glared back
at Bill. “Go!” she screamed, her focus dragged to the TV and what
this could possibly mean. Grabbing the remote, she stabbed in the
number of an all-news channel and looked back at Bill, realizing
he’d stepped into the kitchen.

“What are you
doing?” She used the remote to point to the front door. “Get out of
my house.”

His eyes
darkened, but he held up one hand in surrender. “I’ll leave the
back way,” he said, and she saw him step toward the sliding door to
the patio.

“
We have
word from Johnson Space Center’s Mission Control that a problem on
the space shuttle
Endeavour
has
resulted in the loss of one of its onboard computers.” The
newscaster yanked her attention and she spun back to the
TV.

“Oh my God,”
she covered her mouth in horror and stared at the screen, aware of
the sound of the sliding door opening, grateful that Bill had left.
She’d deal with his lunacy later.

The image
switched to a familiar network reporter she’d spoken to many times
in the last few months. She punched the volume, desperate for
information.

“NASA has not
released official word, but the open feed to the shuttle has been
closed off to the public and only Mission Control in Houston is in
touch with Commander Stockard and his crew at this time.” Her heart
froze at the mention of his name. She upped the volume again, as if
making it louder could change the news.

“
We’ve
been given no word on the status of the cosmonaut Micah Petrenko,
only that he has exited the Space Station and is under medical
surveillance on board
Endeavour
. NASA has reported that the space shuttle had begun its
firing sequence to undock and return to
E
arth when one of the onboard computers
failed.”

Jessica’s
throat closed in terror, a white heat suffocating her as the
reporter continued
,
“A
landing with only redundant systems functioning is considered an
emergency and is unprecedented in well over one hundred shuttle
missions. The only other option, should the redundant computer
fail, is an in-flight crew escape system that has never been tested
except in simulated training exercises.”

It would be
torture for both of us.

Yes, Deke, it
might be. A moan escaped her lips and her legs threatened to buckle
as she listened to the reporter close his story.

“
It
remains to be seen if Commander Stockard will opt to bail
out by parachute at thirty
thousand feet tonight or early tomorrow morning.” Bail
out by—

The hand
clamped on her mouth, making her stumble backward as Bill jerked
her other arm behind her. She gasped for air, but only sucked the
skin of his hand and he twisted the other arm harder.

“You will not
screw this up for me,” he growled in her ear. Then she saw the
glint in the hand that covered her mouth. Blindingly close, she
could make out the serrated edges of her knife, still wet with
tomato juice.

Jessica started
to scream, but Bill’s hand strangled her into a mumble.

“Shut up!”

She closed her
eyes, blood rushing through her head, barely hearing the phone
ringing on the table. He tugged her arm up at a painful angle.

“
Poor
Jessica,” he whispered and slowly started backing her out of the
room. “Her career shot to hell. Her promotion lost. Her boyfriend
in trouble—maybe dying—in space. She must have
snapped
.”

He cracked her
arm in time with the word and her shoulder exploded in agony as he
dragged her toward the kitchen.

“
I’ll be
the one to find your body,” he said quietly, a bit of glee in his
voice like he was in a brainstorming session and the ideas were
just
flowing
. “You’ll
be in the river. I’ll help them piece together exactly what
happened.”

As he forced
her from the living room toward the darkened patio, the last thing
she saw on the TV screen was a still shot of Deke Stockard standing
next to his T-38, a look of amused annoyance captured by the
photographer.

* * *

To Deke’s left,
Janine Harmon floated up from the middeck, a worried look in her
eyes.

He shook his
head to indicate he couldn’t talk to her as he listened to Mission
Control read the coordinates on the orbital maneuvering system.

“Roger that,
Houston,” he responded. “Your OMS coordinates match our redundant
system. Ready to fire.”

Deke glanced
down at her, then back to one of the nine displays he’d been
studying. “We’re still on one backup computer system, Doctor.” The
backup had lasted long enough to get them undocked and headed back
to earth.

An
instruction
from Houston
crackled in his headset.

“Roger,
Houston.” Deke reached forward and set his finger on one of
twenty-eight switches on the panel to his right. He knew the
correct one by feel.

“Fire thrusters
on,” he said. “Fire on five, four, three, two, one.” He pressed a
button and the orbiter jerked to the left, its steel frame
creaking.

“OMS and
thrusters positioned, Houston,” Kurt Muir reported from the seat on
Deke’s right.

Momentarily
relieved, Deke leaned back from the stick and looked at Janine.
“How is he?”

“Bad. Way worse
than we were led to believe. He’s not responding to the
anticoagulant. How long until we land?”

“
We’re
not far from the reentry orbit headed to Kennedy and should touch
down in less than two hours.” He turned to his co-pilot, now
struggling with the new computer readings. “If the redundant
computer holds out. If it doesn’t, we land manually or we abort and
bail
out.”

Janine floated
higher, her eyes wide. “I’ve trained on the new escape system. It’s
a bear. I’m not sure Micah would survive it.”

Deke resisted
the urge to say what he and Kurt both knew. None of them would
likely survive it.

“If we abort,”
Deke told them, “we’ll go into autopilot glide, then depressurize
the cabin to equalize outside pressure and jettison the hatch.” He
swallowed hard at the thought. “Starting with you and Micah, we’ll
each hook up the parachute harness to the escape pole and jump out.
Remember to use the pole for the trajectory to take us below the
left wing.”

“At what
altitude?” Janine asked softly.

“Thirty
thousand feet.”

She paled.
“He’ll never make that jump, Commander.”

Deke knew she
was right. Petrenko looked closer to death than they’d expected.
Deke had met him a few years ago and remembered the vital young
Russian with sparkling green eyes and nearly platinum hair. His
eyes had no light in them now; his skin was as pale as his blond
locks.

“We have forty
minutes to make a decision and watch this computer. God willing,
we’ll land with it. If not, we can land the old-fashioned way. On a
wing and a prayer.”

The three of
them shared a look.

“But just in
case we decide to abort, suit up now and get everyone in jumping
gear,” he instructed.

Silently,
Janine floated back down to her patient and Deke and Kurt rose to
help each other into the orange pressure suits.

After he was
suited, Deke returned to the cockpit and listened to Kurt quietly
discussing his calculations of trajectory paths and readings with
Houston. Deke peered into the blackness of space soaring past him.
He closed his eyes to the stars and let his imagination go where he
longed to be.

Jessie. He
could see her face and hair, hear her infectious laugh, inhale her
flowery scent. The will to survive nearly jolted him.

He didn’t want
to die without holding her again. He didn’t want to die without
telling her he loved her. He didn’t want to live… without her.

The screech of
an alarm broke his reverie. “Auxiliary power unit one is failing,
Commander,” Kurt announced. “Wing flap and landing gear moving to
aux power two.”

Good God, they
blew a fuel cell in an auxiliary unit. “Remove the panel and
override it,” Deke barked to Kurt, then into his headset, “Houston,
we’re moving wing flap and landing gear to aux power two.”

Forget the
wing. Now they’d have to land on just a prayer.

Chapter
Twenty-six

Bill kept a
hand clamped on Jessica’s mouth and twisted her arm so viciously
that flashes sparked behind her eyes, the only light on an
otherwise pitch-black evening.

“Don’t make me
stab you, Jess,” he warned. “Get in the water and give up. You are
about to kill yourself.”

He was a
madman. He had no plan. He was insane and would panic any
minute.

She could
outsmart him. All she needed was… a creative idea.

He jerked her
head toward the sky, but from memory of the dozens of mornings
she’d jogged this path, she knew exactly where she was. Past the
queen palm that she used for leg stretches. She automatically
lifted her foot, knowing a rock jutted out on the path. Bill
stumbled over it and cursed.

Oh, yes. Her
advantage. She knew every inch of this path, even in the dark. Many
mornings she’d run before sunrise, to clear her brain and work her
body. Every time she made it past the stand of oaks at the
half-mile point, she’d start counting the steps until she reached
Deke’s dock.

Deke’s dock
. If
she could escape Bill, she could lose him and hide on the boat.
Maybe even sail it away.

Her
property ended in a mass of mangrove and pepper trees, a jungle of
roots and branches that blocked direct access to the river. He’ll
never get through it, she thought.

“One word,” he
warned as his grip over her mouth loosened. “One word and this
knife goes straight through your back. I’ll weigh you down so
you’ll rot at the bottom of that river and they’ll never find
you.”

He let go of
her mouth and she gasped for air. He twisted her arm with his left
hand. With the knife, he whacked at a mangrove branch. Leaves
fluttered and he tightened his grip on her and swore in
frustration. They took a step into the roots and she felt the cold
water lap against her bare feet.

The knife
thwacked another branch and Bill pushed her
farther
in
to
the water, now lapping at her knees. They were
trapped in the mangroves and he took another angry swing at a
branch, then another. In his determination, she felt the grip on
her arm loosen. Ever so slightly. One more swing and he almost let
go of her.

As the
blade sliced a branch, she tore
her arm out of his grip and
took off,
stones and roots
stabbing at her bare feet, the wind whistling in her ears the
minute she found her footing and started to move.

“God damn you!”
he called with a flutter of leaves and a grunt. She hoped he
tripped and got caught on the roots, but didn’t turn to see. With
every stride, she stretched her legs farther, willing herself to
get to the boat before her enemy caught up with her.

She
reached the dock, stealing a look down the path as she struggled
with the latch of the wooden gate. She heard a twig snap in the
distance, but couldn’t see Bill. She had to take the chance,
praying it was dark enough to sneak to the end of the Deke’s dock.
The latch slid and Jessica stepped on the wooden boards,
hoping
they didn’t give her
away and remembering to lock the gate behind her
so he
wouldn’t notice it open when he reached the dock
.