Only Mine (Fool's Gold #4)(91)

She half expected her sisters to defend her, but they were both silent. Talk about truth in communication, she thought, both bemused and a little hurt. Then she reminded herself that it didn’t matter what anyone thought but her and Finn. They were the ones this was all about.

She knew what she wanted. She wanted a happily-ever-after kind of ending with the man she loved. She wanted to marry him and raise children with him. She wanted a house full of kids and dogs, with a cat or two and carpooling and soccer practice. She wanted a little of what her parents had, with a twist that made it all their own.

But what did Finn want? She knew that eventually he would figure it out and tell her. But was giving him the time he needed being mature or being afraid?

He’d heard her say that she loved him and that she was pregnant, but she’d never had the chance to tell him the rest of it. About how she saw their future and that being responsible wasn’t all bad. There were many wonderful rewards.

“I’m not going to wait,” she said as she slid out of the booth. “I’m going to South Salmon to talk to him.”

“There’s an Alaska Airlines flight out of Sacramento at six in the morning,” Nevada told her. “You connect with the flight to Anchorage in Seattle.” She pulled a piece of paper out of her pocket and handed it over. “I made a reservation earlier. You can pay for it when you get to the airport.”

Dakota couldn’t believe it. “You planned this?”

“We hoped,” Montana told her. “We were also arguing with Mom about who gets Hannah tomorrow night.”

Dakota felt tears filling her eyes, but for the first time in days, her crying wasn’t about being sad or having lost what mattered most. She waved her sisters out of the booth, then hugged them.

“I love you,” she said as she held them close.

“We love you, too,” Nevada told her. “Warn Finn that if he’s an idiot, we’ll send all three of our brothers after him. He can run, but he won’t be able to hide forever.”

Dakota laughed.

Montana kissed her cheek. “We’ll keep it all together here. Don’t worry. Just go find Finn and drag his butt back here.”

“COIN TOSS?” Bill asked.

Finn stared out the office window. The first storm had blown through, but there had been a second one behind it. This one was bigger and headed directly for South Salmon.

Storms out here weren’t like those down in the lower forty-eight. They were a lot less polite and plenty more destructive. Normally all flights would have been grounded, but a call had come through from a desperate father. His sick child needed to be flown out as soon as possible. The medical planes were all out on other calls. No one else could get there.

Now dark clouds rose fifty or sixty thousand feet into the heavens. There were wind shears and flashes of lightning. Flying in something like that was like daring the hand of God.

“I’ll go,” Finn said, grabbing his backpack and walking toward the parked planes. “Radio the family that I should be there in about three hours. Maybe a little longer.”

“You can’t go around the storm.” It was too big. There was no “around.”

“I know.”

Bill grabbed his arm. “Finn, wait. We’ll give it a few hours.”

“Does that kid have a few hours?”

“No, but…”

Finn knew the argument. People who chose to live outside the civilized world risked situations just like this. Most of the time, the gamble paid off. Every now and then, fate exacted a price.

“That kid isn’t going to die on my watch,” Finn said.

“You don’t owe them anything.”

He owed them trying. That’s what this job meant to him. Sometimes you had to take a risk.

He crossed to the plane and walked around the outside. The preflight routine was something he could do in his sleep, but today he took extra time. The last thing he needed was a mechanical problem complicating an already difficult situation.

By the time he was ready to take off, the first fingers of the storm were trying to grab him. Wind gusted and there were raindrops on his windshield.

The problem wasn’t the flight out. He would be heading away from the storm. It was getting to Anchorage that was going to be the trick.

Six hours later, he knew he was going to die. The parents and the kid were in the plane, the worried father next to him, the mother sitting next to her son. The winds were so strong, the plane seemed to be standing still instead of moving forward. They were buffeted and tossed. A few times they were caught in a small wind shear and dropped a few hundred feet.

“I’m going to be sick,” the mother called to him.

“Bags are next to the seat.”

Finn couldn’t take the time to show her. Not when all their lives depended on him getting them safely landed.

Despite the fact that it was afternoon, the sky was black as night. The only illumination came from the lightning strikes. Wind howled like a monster out to get them, and Finn had a feeling that this time the storm might win.

He watched his warning lights, checked the altimeter and made sure they were on course. Without wanting to, he found himself mentally drifting to another flight very much like this one. A flight that had taken his parents and changed his world.

There’d been a storm, dark and powerful. The lightning had flashed around them, dangerous shards of destruction. Finn remembered one cutting so close, he’d been able to feel the heat. He’d been flying, his father in the copilot’s seat. The wind had growled and thrown them around like a kid with a softball.