The Color of a Promise (The Color of Heaven Series Book 11) (12 page)

“Listen…” I said, turning to him. “Thanks for that video you shot last night, and for sharing it with us. It’s going to be very helpful.”

“Of course,” he replied.

“It must have been terrifying,” I went on, “to have seen all that, right in front of your own home.”

“It was.” He inhaled deeply. “I’m still pretty shaken up by it, to be honest. I’ve seen a lot of things in my career, but that…” He gazed at me for a few seconds, seeming unable to find the right words to continue, and I nodded with understanding.

“And it’s my parents’ house, not mine,” he added, looking away, in an obvious effort to change the subject.

“Have they lived there all their lives?”

“Sort of. It’s a summer place. They still have their home base in Chicago where I grew up and went to school.”

“I see.”

I paused, watching his profile for a few seconds while he flipped a few switches on the video control panel. I couldn’t help but marvel at his looks. Strong jawline, nice lips and a perfect nose.
God
, he was unbelievably attractive. Impossible not to stare at. I wondered how old he was. Early forties, maybe?

I could probably google that, along with all sorts of other personal information about him if I wanted to—like whether or not he was married.

I glanced at his hand. He wasn’t wearing a ring.

Not that I wanted to date him or anything. I was already in a long-term relationship.

With Malcolm.

But even if I wasn’t, I was too busy to date. Too focused on my job. I was simply—for some reason I couldn’t explain—curious about Jack’s personal life, like some kind of voyeur. Maybe I wondered what it would be like to be him, so rich and famous.

“Which house do your parents own, if you don’t mind me asking?” I had to get my mind back on track, remember the investigation. “It would help us to know exactly where the camera was filming from, to determine angles, trajectory…”

“It’s the blue one right behind the Kettle Cove Parking Lot,” he replied. “We’ll fly over it in a few minutes. I’ll show you.”

“That would be great. Thank you.”

We sat in silence for a moment, waiting, and I had to work hard not to keep staring at him, which wasn’t easy. He was like some sort of human magnet for my eyes.

“Do you know anything about the arrival of the families?” I asked.

It was common practice for the airline to fly victims’ families to the crash location and put them up in a hotel somewhere nearby. Once they arrived, members of our team and other authorities would meet with them for daily briefings—which was never easy.

“A few are already here,” Jack said. “The rest are on their way.” He shook his head. “It’s going to be difficult for them over the next few weeks, and beyond.”

“Yes.”

His eyes turned to me, and I felt like a deer caught in headlights as he studied my expression intently.

Then he leaned forward to peer out the door, probably looking for the other reporter, who still hadn’t arrived. Jack sat back in his seat. “Mind if I ask how you came into this job?”

I shifted slightly in the seat. “It may seem a bit strange to you.”

“Now I’m intrigued.”

Something stirred in my veins. Maybe it was the way he was looking at me with those penetrating blue eyes.

I suddenly found myself struggling to keep a cool head when my entire body was responding to the nearness of him. It was as if there were some kind of electric current in the chopper, buzzing all around us. I’d never felt anything quite like it before. But then again, I’d never met anyone so famous.

Clearing my throat, I tried to get my thoughts in order to form a proper reply. “Well…” I cleared throat again. “I grew up with a terrible fear of flying, from a very young age. I don’t know why. By the time I reached university, I had no choice but to fly back and forth across the country if I wanted to see my boyfriend, who was in medical school at the time. He was in California while I was at Princeton.”

“What did you study there?” Jack asked.

“Structural engineering,” I told him, “but even then, I didn’t know this was where I would end up. I thought I’d be building skyscrapers or something. Sometimes I thought I might become an architect and build houses. That was my intention, originally, when I was younger, but then I got sidetracked by aviation.

“Anyhow, my brother happened to be a pilot, and he took me up in a private plane one summer to try and get me over my phobia. Oddly enough, it worked—
eventually
—and I ended up becoming a pilot myself. Pure stubbornness, I guess, to conquer that fear. Anyway, in my last year at Princeton, I got a summer job at the Safety Board, and that was that. I was hooked and I knew this was what I needed to do with my life.”

Jack nodded. “What happened to the boyfriend?”

I laughed nervously. “We’re still together, though we live in different cities. We don’t see each other all that often, but it works because we’re both addicted to our jobs and we work a lot of hours. He’s a surgeon now, and I do a lot of traveling.”

Jack was still watching me with interest, and I felt an inexplicable urge to explain further, even though I knew I was starting to ramble.

I waved my hand through the air. “A situation like this could mean we’re away from home, living in hotels for weeks at a time, maybe months. Even when I’m back in the office, I practically eat, live and breathe whatever investigation I’m working on. I’m kind of obsessed.” I paused. “But Malcolm’s the same way, putting in a lot of hours at the hospital, and I always knew he would never leave the West Coast.”

Jack stared at me with a furrowed brow, inclining his head slightly, as if he were still trying to figure me out.

Was he like this with everyone? I wondered. Maybe that’s why he was such a good interviewer. He had a curious mind.

I saw the other reporter jump out of the back of the news truck just then, and shut the doors. He stood for a moment, checking his phone, still keeping us waiting.

“It’s weird,” Jack said, staring intently at me. “I know we’ve never met before, but there’s something very familiar about you. I can’t put my finger on it.” His gaze roamed over my face, and he seemed to be hoping I would have something to say about that.

“Oh…” Unfortunately, I was speechless.

I couldn’t deny I felt strangely flattered by his interest in me.

“You’re familiar to me as well,” I finally said. “But I think you’re familiar to most people in America.”

He nodded, and gazed off in the direction of the crash site across the water. “Maybe we knew each other in a former life.”

I chuckled. “Yeah, maybe.”

The other reporter climbed into the chopper just then. “Sorry about that.” He took a seat next to the pilot in the forward cabin. “I was just reading my texts. They found one of the wings in the ocean.”

“Excellent,” I said. “What about the tail or the black box?”

“I don’t know about that,” he said. “They didn’t mention it.” He turned around and shook my hand. “Hi, I’m Joe.”

“I’m Meg. I’m with the National Transportation Safety Board.”

“I know,” he replied. Then he spoke to Jack. “I told the crew at the lighthouse that we’d get some aerial footage of them bringing it up. It’s quite a ways out, apparently. And they’re still working on collecting the rest of the floating debris.”

“They’ll be working on that for a while,” I said, knowing there must be body parts as well. But I chose not to mention that.

Someone outside the chopper shut the doors for us, and I put on my headset.

“Will you be analyzing the data from the black box when they find it?” Jack asked me.

“No, we have different specialists for that,” I explained. “They’ll take it back to Washington and look at it there, along with the cockpit voice recorder. And of course, the FBI will be involved.”

“Because it might have been a bomb,” Jack said, studying my face.

“We don’t know that yet,” I said firmly. “It’s far too early to form any conclusions. Explosions can be caused by all sorts of things, so it’s very important that we examine every inch of the wreckage and explore all possibilities in order to determine the true cause. It’s crucial that we don’t make premature assumptions that might lead us or the public down the wrong path.”

Jack nodded. “Okay,” he said firmly. “I get what you’re saying.”

That was easy, I thought.

The pilot started the chopper engine, and it was very noisy beneath the spinning rotors. I had to speak to Jack through the headset.

“We’re going to need some time to put all the puzzle pieces together,” I added. “We can’t rush it.”

He was listening to me carefully. I felt that he was reading my expression through my eyes, listening to the nuances in my voice, even though he could only hear me through the wire.

The helicopter lifted off the ground just then, and I jumped at the sensation.

Jack touched my arm and regarded me with concern. “Are you okay?”

I nodded, embarrassed. “Yes. I’m fine. I just wasn’t expecting it right at that second.” I had come to realize a long time ago that although I had “conquered” my fear of flying, I hadn’t actually gotten rid of it. I’d simply taught myself how to cope. “And I guess I’m a bit jittery today. The first day at a crash site is always…” How to put it? “
Difficult.
”

We rose into the air, flew over the sandy beach and across the water toward the crash site, where I had been working near Jack’s parents’ house.

He leaned over me to point out the window. “It’s the blue one, right down there.”

I turned my head to look at him. His face was very close to mine, mere inches away, and I was extremely aware of his nearness…the stubble on his jaw, his thick, dark, wavy hair, and the way he smelled—like very expensive men’s musk. Everything about him affected me physically, which was strange, because I wasn’t single, nor was I interested in flirtations of any kind. I was perfectly content with Malcolm and passionate about my work.

I swallowed hard to try and get my wits together.

Forcing myself to turn my attention back to the window, I studied the crash site from the sky and searched the surrounding area for other missing pieces of debris that needed to be recovered. I was still hoping we would find the other wing, and of course, the tail and black box.

“I don’t know about you,” Jack said, “but seeing something like this always makes me want to go straight home and hug my loved ones.”

“Me, too,” I said with melancholy, briefly meeting his gaze.

Then we both set to work, focusing on the task of taking photographs from the sky and searching the surrounding area for more wreckage. Jack had plenty of questions for me along the way, but he was fairly knowledgeable already, having covered airline disasters before.

He was an incredibly intelligent and fascinating man.

o0o

An hour later, back at the Crescent Beach parking lot, the helicopter touched down. I checked the time. It was nearly 3:00 p.m. and I wanted some more time at the crash site before our team meeting at 6:00 p.m. at the hotel in Portland where we had set up our command headquarters.

Following that, there would be a debriefing for the families, followed by a press conference an hour later. All of this would take place in the ballroom of the hotel. The FBI would be the lead agency, but we needed to be present as well.

The pilot shut off the engine, and the noise of the rotors died down. Jack checked his phone while I removed my headset.

When he finished reading his messages, he removed his headset as well. “Are you heading straight back to the crash site now?” he asked.

“Yes. I still have a lot of work to do over there.” I gathered up my gear bag and waited for Jack to open the chopper door.

“Would you mind if I shadowed you for a bit this afternoon?” he asked. “I’d like to see what you do, get a feel for how you approach things, so I can talk about that on my show tonight. I promise I won’t get in your way.”

I swallowed uneasily. “I’m afraid that part of the crash site is restricted for the press at the moment. I’d have to ask Carol, and she’d probably have to clear it with the FBI.”

Jack gave me a look that struck me as slightly apologetic. “Actually, I already asked her.” He held up his phone. “I hope you don’t mind, but she was able to clear it for me. As long as I don’t bring in a camera crew, or start broadcasting from there, she said it would be fine. I’m not due back on the air until later tonight anyway, after the press conference. Just between you and me, I’m supposed to be sleeping right now.”

“Ah. I’ve been up all night, too,” I told him.

“Running on pure adrenaline, I expect.”

“Yes.”

Someone outside the chopper opened the door and I started to get out.

“When will you be able to take a break?” Jack asked, hopping down behind me.

“I’ll sleep for a few hours after dark,” I replied. “I don’t want to waste any daylight hours.”

He waved at a black car that was parked on the opposite side of the lot, waiting for us, apparently.

“You’re very dedicated,” Jack said as it drove toward us.