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  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Copyright © 2018 by Sandra Brown Management, Ltd.

  Cover design by Anne Twomey

  Digital illustration by Elizabeth Stokes

  Photographs of man and woman by George Kerrigan

  Cover copyright © 2018 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  Hachette Book Group supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture.

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

  Grand Central Publishing

  Hachette Book Group

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  First Edition: August 2018

  Grand Central Publishing is a division of Hachette Book Group, Inc. The Grand Central Publishing name and logo is a trademark of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for.

  ISBNs: 978-1-4555-7216-8 (hardcover), 978-1-4555-7212-0 (ebook), 978-1-4555-7215-1 (large print), 978-1-5387-4687-5 (signed edition)

  E3-20180710-DA-NF

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Violet

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Violet

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Violet

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Violet

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Violet

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  Discover More Sandra Brown

  Novels by Sandra Brown

  Chapter 1

  9:42 p.m.

  No. Not doing it.”

  “When I called, you were Johnny on the spot.”

  “But I didn’t know then about the weather. It’s socked in solid, Dash.”

  “Fog ain’t solid. You can fly through it, you know. Like clouds. Or didn’t your online flight school teach that?”

  The young pilot rolled his eyes. “They closed Atlanta. Closed it. How often does that happen? It must be bad, or the airport wouldn’t have been shut down the night before Thanksgiving. Be reasonable.”

  Dash pressed his beefy hand over his heart. “I’m reasonable. I’m the soul of reason. The client, on the other hand…He don’t care the airport’s shut down. He wants this box here”—he slapped his hand down on top of the black metal container sitting on the counter behind him—“to get there”—he pointed in a generally southern direction—“tonight. I guaranteed him that it would.”

  “Then you’ve got a customer relations problem.”

  He was called Dash, first because the few who’d ever known his real name had forgotten it, and, second, because the name of his charter and airfreight company was Dash-It-All.

  Older than he owned up to being, Dash had a potbelly that served the same purpose as a cowcatcher on a locomotive: Little could stand in the path of his stomping tread. Always under a deadline, his singular expression was a scowl.

  As menacing as that glower was, however, thus far it hadn’t fazed the pilot who was resistant to taking off from Columbus, Ohio, for Atlanta, where, for holiday travelers, the weather was screwing with tight schedules and well-laid plans.

  And if airfreight was your business, satisfaction guaranteed, it was screwing with your livelihood.

  Frustrated, Dash clamped down on an unlit cigar and worked it between his stained teeth. Smoking was prohibited in the fixed base operator. His rules. But also, his cigars. So he gnawed on one whenever somebody was giving him a hassle he didn’t need. As now.

  “No real flyer would get squeamish over a little fog,” he said.

  The pilot gave him a look.

  Okay. Only to himself, Dash conceded that it was more than a little fog. It was the likes of which no one alive had ever seen. People along the Atlantic seaboard had awakened this morning to find their cities and towns engulfed. The fog had created traffic hazards and general havoc over the eastern third of the United States and showed no signs of lifting.

  The Weather Channel was getting a ratings boost. Meteorologists were practically giddy over the phenomenon, which one had described as “biblical,” and another had called “epochal.” Dash wasn’t sure what that meant, but it sounded grim. What the blasted fog meant to him was lost revenue.

  At Hartsfield-Jackson and other major airports in a double-digit number of states, passenger flights and cargo carriers had been grounded on this Thanksgiving eve when it seemed that everybody in the nation was trying to get from wherever they were to someplace else. Dash figured it would take till Christmas for the carriers to unsnarl the mess, but that was of no concern to him.

  His concern was keeping his fleet of airplanes in the air, shuttling stuff that people paid to have shuttled in the shortest amount of time possible. Birds nesting in the hangar didn’t make money. He needed this pilot to grow a pair, and quick, so he could back up the guarantee he’d made to his client, a Dr. Lambert, that this box would reach Atlanta before morning.

  Hoping to shame the young aviator into taking off, Dash looked him up and down with unconcealed scorn. “You could make it fine if you wanted to bad enough. Scared of the fog, or scared you won’t be back tomorrow in time for your mama’s turkey dinner and pumpkin pie?”

  “I’m waiting it out, Dash. End of discussion.”

  The pilot was on the shy side of thirty. Even at this time of night, he was clean-shaven and smartly dressed in black slacks and white shirt. His eyes were clear, like he hadn’t violated the FAA’s bottle-to-throttle minimum of an eight-hour abstention from alcohol before flying, and also had gotten that many hours of sleep.

  Dash had years of experience sizing up flyers of every caliber, from top guns to crop dusters. He gauged this one as an uptight stickler who flew by the book and wouldn’t know an aeronautical instinct if it bit him in the ass. He abided by the rules no matter what. All the rules. All the time. No exceptions.

  Dash wanted to strangle him.

  Curbing that impulse, he tried again. “You’ll be jockeying the Beechcraft. Just had it overhauled, you know. All the latest tec
hnology. New seats. Cushy as they come.”

  The pilot stood his ground. “When the weather in Atlanta clears, and the airport reopens—”

  “A decade from now!” Dash interrupted in a shout. “If they reopened right this minute, it’d be hours before they work through the stack-up. By then your tuna fish sandwiches will have spoiled.” The client had agreed to pay for a catered box lunch for the “crew.” It had been delivered wrapped up all nice in a white pasteboard box. It, too, sat on the counter behind them.

  In an ominous mutter, Dash added, “They’ll have spoiled or been snatched.”

  He cast a look across the lobby toward the sofa against the far wall. The couch was an eyesore. Its turquoise-and-tan plaid upholstery was lumpy, stringy, greasy in spots, and stained with not even God knew what.

  But its condition seemed not to matter to the man stretched out along it. He lay on his back, hands linked over his stomach, a years-old aviation magazine with curled pages tented over his face while he slept.

  Dash came back around to the pilot. Still speaking in an undertone, he said, “We get all kinds passing through here, you know.”

  “I’ll guard my lunch until I can take off.”

  Dash exhaled with agitation. “It’s not like your cargo is a rodeo bull.”

  He had actually flown one such snorting mean bastard from Cheyenne to Abilene in a DC-3. Damn thing had bucked all the way there. The bull, not the plane, which had been a sweetheart. That was 1985, if he was remembering right. Back when he was young and wild and thin. Well…thinner.

  He sighed with nostalgia for the good ol’ days then resumed his argument with the pilot. “All you’ll be carrying tonight is this fancy tackle box.”

  “The airport is closed, Dash.”

  “The big mama, yeah. But—”

  “And so is every FBO in a two-hundred-mile radius of Atlanta.”

  Dash shifted the cigar from one side of his mouth to the other, then held up both hands in surrender. “Okay. You win. I’ll cut you in for a larger share.”

  “I can’t spend extra pay if I’m dead.”

  Dash bit off the soggy end of his cigar and spat the wad into the trash can. “You’re not gonna get dead.”

  “Right. Because I’m not flying until the fog dissipates and the airport reopens. The plane is fueled and ready to roll when we get the thumbs-up. Okay? Can we drop it?” He pulled himself up taller. “Now, the crucial question. Is the popcorn machine still busted?” With that, the pilot turned and followed the odor of scorched corn kernels toward the hallway that led to the pilot’s lounge.

  Dash’s cell phone rang. “Hold on. Maybe this’ll be your thumbs-up.”

  The pilot stopped and turned. Dash answered his phone. “Yeah?” When the caller identified himself, Dash held up an index finger, indicating that it was the call he’d hoped for. It was his counterpart who’d brokered the charter at a private fixed base operator attached to Hartsfield-Jackson.

  “Yeah, yeah, he’s ready. Good to go. Chomping at the bit,” he added, skewering the pilot with his glare “Huh? Divert to where?” His frown deepened as he listened for another half minute. “No, I don’t think that’ll be a problem.” Even as he said that, he knew better. “No PCL system? You’re sure somebody’ll be there to turn on the lights?”

  The pilot flinched. A pilot-controlled lighting system would have enabled him to turn on the runway lights from his cockpit.

  “Okay,” Dash said. “Email me the particulars. Got it.” He clicked off and said to the pilot, “We’re in luck. There’s an FBO outside a small town in northern Georgia. The client will meet you there. He’s leaving Atlanta now by car. It’s a two, two-and-a-half-hour drive, but he’s willing—”

  “Northern Georgia? In the mountains?”

  Dash made a dismissive gesture. “Not big ones. Foothills.”

  “Is it controlled?”

  “No. But the landing strip is plenty long enough for this aircraft if you, uh, set down at the very end of it, and the crosswinds aren’t too strong.” Reading his pilot’s dubious expression, he snapped his fingers. “Better idea.”

  “I wait for Atlanta to reopen.”

  “You take the 182.”

  The pilot sputtered a laugh. “That bucket? I don’t think so.”

  Dash glowered. “That bird was flying long before your daddy was born.”

  Which was the wrong thing to boast because the pilot chuckled again. “My point exactly.”

  “Okay, so it’s not as young and spiffy as the Beechcraft, and it’s seen some wear and tear, but it’s reliable, and it’s here, and you’re going. I’ll gas her up while you file your flight plan. Name of the place is—”

  “Hold on, Dash. I signed on for the Beechcraft, flying into a controlled airport, not chancing it in uncontrolled airspace over mountainous terrain, in pea soup, and landing on a short strip where there’s likely to be strong crosswinds. And hoping that somebody will be there to turn on the runway lights?” He shook his head. “Forget it.”

  “I’ll pay you triple.”

  “Not worth it. I’d have to be crazy. Up to you to head off the client and make him understand that nobody can deliver tonight whatever is in that box. He’ll get it when the weather improves. I’ll continue to monitor it and get on my way as soon as I can.”

  “You pass on this, you’re history with my outfit.”

  “Not so. You need pilots too bad.” He picked up the boxed lunch and took it with him as he crossed the lobby and headed down the hallway.

  Dash swore under his breath. He’d issued an empty threat, and the smug son of a bitch knew it. He needed pilots rated for several categories, classes, and types of aircraft who could climb into a cockpit and fly at a moment’s notice.

  This one was an asshole, but he was a bachelor and therefore more available than the men with families. He was eager to chalk up hours that he could eventually peddle to a commercial passenger carrier.

  And, truth be told, to fly into that backwoods airfield under these more-than-iffy conditions, he would have to be altogether crazy. He wasn’t. He was a levelheaded pilot who didn’t take unnecessary risks.

  Dash needed the other kind.

  He looked across the lobby toward the sofa, shifted his cigar again, hiked his pants up beneath his substantial overlap, and took a deep breath. “Uh, Rye?”

  The man lying on the sofa didn’t respond.

  “Rye,” Dash said more loudly, “you awake?” The sprawled form remained motionless, but Dash continued. “I’ve got a situation here. Rotten kickoff to the holiday season, and you know that’s when I make half my year’s income. This guy’s turned pussy on me, and—”

  Dash stopped talking when Rye Mallett lifted the old magazine off his face. He rolled up and swung his feet to the floor. “Yeah, I heard.” He stood, tossed down the magazine, and reached for his bomber jacket and flight bag. “Where am I flying?”

  10:21 p.m.

  Rye had opted not to take the Beechcraft for the reasons cited by the other pilot, whose name he didn’t know and couldn’t care less about. Dash had put the Cessna 182 through its preflight check while Rye accessed a computer in one of the waiting areas. He’d gone onto a website that provided aerial photos of airports.

  He’d studied the bird’s-eye view picture of the Howardville County Airfield, made note of the lay of the land and how the FBO fit into the landscape, then printed out the photo to take with him.

  He called flight service and filed his flight plan using instrument flight rules. He would be relying on instruments from takeoff to landing. Nothing unusual about that, but the fog was.

  Wanting to get the skinny, and not from someone in a TV studio with capped teeth and cemented hair, he’d logged on to several flight-related blogs to see what the chatter was. As expected, nearly all the messages posted today had been about the fog and the hell it was creating. The pilots who’d flown in it were warning others about vast areas of zero visibility.

  Typing
in his user name on one of the sites, Rye had posted a question about Howardville. He’d received a flurry of replies, the first of which was, “If ur thinking of flying into there tonight, what color flowers do you want on your casket?”

  Another: “Beware the power lines. If u make it as far as the landing strip alive, brace yourself. That bitch is a washboard.”

  Similar posts had followed, words of caution spiced with graveyard humor and the irreverent quipping that was universal among aviators who didn’t wear uniforms. The upshot of the online conversation was that one would be wise not to fly into Rye’s destination tonight.

  But Rye often received such warnings, and he flew anyway.

  Even Dash had seemed uncharacteristically concerned. The only thing Rye had ever seen the older man get sentimental over was a three-legged cat that had hobbled into the hangar one day. The animal was emaciated and flea-ridden. It hissed and scratched at anybody who went near it. But Dash had taken a shine to it and had fed it until it was strong enough to hobble off. Which it did one night, never to be seen again. When Rye asked after it, Dash had told him with noticeable gruffness in his voice, “Ungrateful bastard run off.”

  Rye had gotten a glimpse of Dash’s well-hidden softer side then, and again now as Dash escorted him out onto the tarmac where the Cessna workhorse sat ready.

  Dash grunted as he bent down to remove the chocks from the wheels and, after grumbling about his damned trick knee, said, “The box is buckled into the copilot seat.”

  Rye nodded and was about to step up into the cockpit, but Dash cleared his throat, signaling that he had more to say. He removed the cigar from his mouth and regarded the unlit tip of it. “You know, Rye, I wouldn’t be asking you to fly tonight except that it’s the start of the holiday season and—”

  “You already said that.”

  “Well. And, anyhow, you’re the best pilot for this type of flying.”

  “In lieu of flattery, how about a bonus?”

  “Besides,” Dash continued without addressing the mention of a bonus, “I doubt it’s as bad as they’re letting on.”

  “I doubt that, too. It’s probably worse.”

  Dash nodded as though he also feared that might be the case. “After you make the delivery, don’t worry about flying right back.”