The Color of a Promise (The Color of Heaven Series Book 11) (17 page)

Heads bowed, neither of us spoke for a few seconds.

“I know that
you’ve
lost people close to you,” I said. “In Afghanistan.”

“Yes,” he replied, “and I also lost a good friend when I was thirteen. Which is why I wanted to talk to you.”

Curious, I inclined my head.

“First off,” Jack said, “Thank you for the advance warning about the press conference this morning. That was a doozy. Reg Harrison…”

I nodded. “The FBI is all over it. They’re looking into his business affairs, while my team is helping them investigate the airline’s safety procedures. We’re checking up on how well they’ve been adhering to FAA rules and regulations—among other things.”

I realized Jack and I were still holding hands, and he was stroking my knuckle gently with his thumb. Maybe it was inappropriate—considering we were professionals working separately on an important investigation, and we barely knew each other—but I didn’t care. I couldn’t believe how good it felt. I didn’t want him to stop. I just wanted to sit there all night long, and keep doing this.

“Will this news affect how you do your job?” he asked.

“Not really. I mean, of course I have to keep it in mind, but I’m a structures specialist, so I have to stay focused on what’s in front of me—the wreckage in the hangar. But if other teams have specific information to relay, it might help me zero in on certain areas.”

Jack continued to hold my hand in his. “Well, I don’t know if this will be any help to you at all, but I just spent the past few hours reading an accident report from 1984.”

My brow furrowed with a mixture of interest and concern. “Really? Which one?”

I was well aware that the NTSB accident reports were published on our website and made available to the public. We had been working steadily over the past number of years to publish older reports.

“It was a Marquee-Goldman crash that happened in Arizona,” Jack explained. “I have a personal connection to it because my best friend and her whole family died in that crash. I was thirteen at the time.”

“I’m so sorry. Was that the friend you just mentioned?”

He nodded and didn’t say anything for a few seconds. Then his eyes met mine. “I never knew much about the particulars back then because I was just a kid and information wasn’t as accessible as it is today. All I knew was that there was a fire that caused an explosion just before the plane landed. For a while, there was some thought that it might have been a bomb, but later, my mother told me it was an accident—that something in the cargo hold had caused the fire. I never knew what it was at the time. She never said.”

“It was oxygen tanks,” I told him.

I knew this because I had studied most of the major airline crashes over the duration of my career, even the ones that occurred before I was born.

“That’s right,” Jack replied. “According to the report, they were loaded into the cargo hold without proper precautions because the airline had a habit of blatantly disregarding safety procedures. The crash was blamed on human factors. Evidently, the delivery guys from PineTech—the oxygen supplier—and the baggage handlers weren’t properly trained. They were cutting corners, trying to save time.”

“Yes,” I said, as the details of the report came back to me. “If memory serves me correctly, the person responsible was nineteen, and his only work experience had been a summer job mowing lawns. They paid him minimum wage and gave him half a day’s training. He didn’t secure the canisters like he should have.”

“So you’re familiar with that crash,” Jack said, seeming suddenly energized.

“Yes, but I wouldn’t have thought about it if you hadn’t mentioned it. And it was almost a decade later that Marquee-Goldman went out of business because they were constantly lax in their safety procedures and they failed to implement our recommendations. They just didn’t seem to care. It was criminal, if you ask me, that two more crashes had to occur before they were finally grounded and forced out of business.”

“Yes, it
was
criminal,” Jack agreed.

“So why are you telling me this?” I asked. “Do you think there’s a connection between that accident and this one?”

“I don’t think anything,” he replied, making it clear that he wasn’t throwing accusations around or speculating like the so-called “experts” on the Internet, who had their own theories about the crash, without ever seeing the evidence for themselves.

“And maybe,” Jack continued, “if the FBI has begun digging into Reg Harrison’s business affairs, they already know what I’m about to tell you, but I wanted to bring it up just in case. You can pass the information along to the right people if you think it’s relevant.”

I sat forward slightly. “What information?”

Jack reached into his jacket pocket and withdrew one of his own business cards and a ball point pen. He wrote something down on the back of it and handed it to me.

“In 1984,” he said, “the company that supplied the oxygen tanks that caused the fire was called PineTech. They went out of business after what happened to that flight in Arizona. But this afternoon, I had some of our people do some research, and it turns out that PineTech was a subsidiary of another of Harrison’s umbrella corporations, and that same corporation—which still exists and is based in Switzerland—now operates another oxygen supply company called Oxy-GeoTech. Interestingly, they service a number of the major European airlines, and also sell oxygen supplies to hospitals.”

I took the card and flipped it over to see what Jack had written on the back:
Oxy-GeoTech
.

“I think I see what you’re getting at.”

Jack slipped the pen back into his pocket. “I have no idea if this same company supplies oxygen to Jaeger-Woodrow Airways, or if oxygen had anything to do with this crash, or if it was another case of improper storage of something in the cargo hold that caused the plane to go down, but it might be worth looking into. If Harrison is still operating an airline without giving a hoot about safety, I’d hate to think history has repeated itself. If that’s the case, he really needs to be stopped.”

“I agree.” I touched my finger to the card. “Thank you for this. I will definitely mention it to the FBI and the rest of my team, and get them to find out if there were any canisters on board that came from this company.” I slipped the card into my purse. “I’m really sorry about your friend. I know it was a long time ago, but something like this must bring it all back.”

“It does,” Jack replied, rising to his feet as I stood. “Reading that accident report made me think about her and imagine what her last moments must have been like.”

We regarded each other intently, and I felt a heated wave of desire course through me. It was not just a physical desire…although I did feel an incredible physical attraction to him. But it was more than that. It was a need to continue this conversation. I wanted to keep talking to Jack about his friend who had died, and so many other things—his childhood, his life experiences, his work. I wanted to know everything about him.

I wanted to sit close to him, lay my head on his shoulder, curl up against him and tell him about my conversation with Malcolm that morning and how it had frustrated me. I wanted to ask Jack what he thought I should do. I wanted to hear him tell me again that there was more to life than work.

Although clearly, I already knew it.

Nervously, I cleared my throat. “I should probably get back now.”

“Of course.” We began to walk out of the lobby together, but we were interrupted by a young couple who approached Jack. They told him they were “huge fans” and wanted to have their picture taken with him. Jack graciously agreed, and they posed while I snapped the picture on the woman’s phone.

A moment later, Jack and I stood outside the hotel, under the overhang at the entrance. The roar of an airplane taking off on the runway nearby was thunderous in my ears, and I looked to the left to watch its ascent toward the sunset.

Jack waved to his driver, and I waved to mine. Both cars pulled up.

“What time will you be finished tonight?” Jack asked.

“I’m not sure,” I replied. “Probably not until sometime after midnight. Then Gary will insist that we all go back to the hotel and get some sleep. How about you?”

“I have my show to do,” he replied. “Then I’ll probably head to my parents’ place.” His driver approached, but Jack turned to look at me before he got into his car. “The offer still stands if you want to have a drink later, or any time. Or if you just want to call and chat for a bit. It doesn’t matter how late it is. And I’m not trying to get the inside scoop from you. I promise.”

“I wouldn’t think that,” I said, as my driver pulled up behind Jack’s car.

Jack walked me to it and opened the door for me. He was such a gentleman. I felt a little breathless as he stood there, so handsome in the glow of the summer twilight, his gaze roaming all over my face.

“Can I ask you a really weird and totally inappropriate question?” he said.

I was momentarily taken aback, and very curious about what he wanted to ask. “Go ahead.”

“How old are you?”

My head drew back in surprise, because it
was
a strange question, not at all what I had expected. “I’m thirty-one. Why?”

He shook his head, as if embarrassed, and looked down at his shoes. I found myself staring at the top of his head—the thick, wavy dark hair blowing in the breeze.

“No reason,” he replied. “I don’t know. I was just curious. That was stupid.”

“It wasn’t stupid,” I replied, “because I’d love to ask how old
you
are, except I already know. You’re forty-five.”

His eyes lifted, and they were intense and penetrating. “How do you know that?”

“Because I googled you,” I explained with a sheepish grin. “Don’t be freaked out. I’m not stalking you or anything. I was just curious, too. I don’t know why. You’re an interesting person.”

Electricity sparked in the air between us, and this time, there was no doubt in my mind. I knew it wasn’t just me. He was feeling something, too. That awareness caused a commotion in me…an intoxicating thrill.

Although it was long past time for me to get into the car, I hesitated because I didn’t want to say good-bye to Jack. I just wanted to keep standing there, to remain in his presence a little longer.

It was a fierce, inescapable desire, and it made me think of Malcolm again—but not because I felt guilty. To the contrary, this was making me realize how little Malcolm truly meant to me.

And how little I meant to him.

It was the same for both of us. Our relationship had become a habit. A safe, easy habit, with no passion or longing or thoughts about the future. When we were apart, it was simply “out of sight, out of mind.”

“I wish we were meeting under different circumstances,” Jack said quietly, as if to hide our conversation from my driver.

“Me, too.” All thoughts of Malcolm vanished from my brain as I continued to stand there. All I could think about was what it would feel like to kiss Jack. I couldn’t take my eyes off his lips. I just wanted to step into his arms.

“I should go,” I said, feeling a critical need to bolt before something actually happened between us, because I didn’t want to be a cheater.

I got into the car. “Good luck with your show tonight,” I said. “Maybe we’ll talk later.”

Jack closed the door and stepped back.

As my driver pulled away, I laid a hand on my belly, where a gazillion butterfly wings were flapping wildly, causing a rush of heated exhilaration in my veins. I couldn’t seem to stop my heart from racing, and it aroused an unexpected euphoria in me.

How was a feeling of euphoria even possible under circumstances like these? When I was in the middle of a crash investigation?

My emotions were spinning out of control. It wasn’t something I was accustomed to because, out of necessity, I had honed my ability to detach.

This scared me.

A lot.

Chapter Thirty

Jack

As I stood on the curb outside the airport hotel, watching Meg head back to the aircraft hangar, I told myself to get a grip.

Don’t be crazy, Jack
.
Just because you’re hot for the smart female crash investigator doesn’t mean it’s anything more. You’re attracted to her because she’s beautiful and there’s some chemistry there. This sort of thing happens all the time, especially under intense circumstances like these.

It doesn’t mean she’s Millicent.

I started walking to my car and got in, lounged back on the leather seat and tapped my finger on my knee.

“Let’s head back to the hotel,” I said to Curtis, knowing I’d have to contact my producer soon about the show. But I needed a minute first. A personal minute.

I raked both my hands through my hair, feeling frustrated as I looked out the window at another plane taking off into the sky, its engines deafening in the peace of the early evening. The sunset was incredible and the clouds were lit up with splashes of pink and red. It was a beautiful sight to behold, yet I felt like I was losing my mind.

Why was I so wound up?

Probably because there was no way to know if it was true—if Meg Andrews was actually the reincarnation of my friend, Millicent. What proof did I have to even suppose it?