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Cage’s expression softened. “Go to Lobster Island. Remember how to work together. You’re the best team I’ve got, and it’d be a shame to let that go to waste.”
“And if I still want to be reassigned after it’s over?” she asked quietly, not looking at Dale.
“Then I’ll reassign you.” Cage sighed and stood. “But I hope it won’t come to that. HFH needs you both. Together. Do we have a deal?”
His exit left a hollow gap in the conversation.
“Fine,” Tansy said after a moment. She stared at one of the empty strippers’ cages rather than at Dale. “E-mail me a list of equipment you want loaded on the plane. I’ll meet you at the hangar tomorrow afternoon.”
They’d had the same conversation a hundred times before, in a dozen different countries, but there was no sense of impending adventure now. There was only a sense of impending doom.
Tansy on Lobster Island. It was the last thing Dale wanted, but if he didn’t agree, she could lose her job. And really, what did it matter if she found out about his past?
She already hated him.
On that thought, he drained the last of his beer and felt none of the alcohol’s punch. “I don’t want you with me.”
She jerked her chin down. “Yeah, you’ve made that clear. Don’t worry, the feeling is mutual. Too bad we don’t get a vote.”
She slipped from the booth and marched out on Cage’s heels, leaving an aching hole in Dale’s gut. “Damn.” He pressed the empty beer bottle to the center of his forehead, wishing he’d chartered a plane and gone on his own. He hadn’t been back to the island in fifteen years, since his parents were lost at sea and he’d run away from his Uncle Trask’s brutal grief. He didn’t want to go back now. And he certainly didn’t want to bring Tansy with him.
Scowling, he reread Mickey’s message. Six people were sick. Three had already died from respiratory failure, though the disease shouldn’t be fatal. And although she was one of the best investigators in the business, Dale wished he could leave Tansy safe on the mainland.
Because people were dying on Lobster Island. Again.
HEADPHONES CLAMPED OVER her ears, Tansy slapped the throttle open and braced herself as the little prop plane surged down the runway, eager to be on its way. She’d gotten her pilot’s license when she first joined HFH, nearly three years earlier. God, she loved to fly.
But not today. Today, the man brooding in the copilot’s seat kept her from enjoying the sky. Arms folded across his broad chest, Dale made no move to touch the second set of controls. He merely sat there, sullen and angry.
Well, the hell with him. The breakup hadn’t been her idea. She’d wanted to work on their relationship. He’d bailed.
She glanced at him out of the corner of her eye and tried to ignore the way the afternoon sunlight gilded his white-blond hair and accentuated his pale skin, which never tanned, even when they’d spent a month in the Serengeti. Long-legged and powerfully built, he had the hard body of a laborer and the graceful hands of a surgeon. His very presence filled the small cockpit, almost suffocating Tansy with the memories she’d tried so hard to avoid.
Both fair and blue-eyed, fit and wellborn, she and Dale resembled each other on the surface. But underneath, they were polar opposites, and those differences had been the problem. He wouldn’t let her into his guarded, private corners, and she hadn’t wanted to settle for less.
She glanced over again, and their eyes met. Heat flared in her midsection. After almost three months, she still woke up reaching for him, and despised herself for it. She was no better than her mother.
When they reached the shallow cruising altitude that would take them to a lobster-shaped speck off the Maine coast, she slid the headphones off one ear and broke the silence. “Want to tell me why we’re investigating a tiny outbreak of PSP?”
Paralytic shellfish poisoning was a serious, though rarely fatal, condition that was usually handled on the local level. From what little Cage had told her, there was no reason for HFH intervention. But she knew Dale well enough to realize he wasn’t going to volunteer any information. He was too committed to his bad mood.
After a long moment he sighed and uncrossed his arms. “It doesn’t look like typical shellfish poisoning. The reactions are too severe, and there hasn’t been a red tide in the area. Besides, the islanders fish for lobsters, not mollusks.”
“And lobsters, being scavengers, don’t usually absorb enough of the toxin to be a problem.” Tansy nodded, glad he had at least answered her. Though it hurt to sit near him and know there was no hope for their relationship, she would be okay if she focused on the job. Always the job. Her work had gotten her through the last three months. It would get her through the next few days.
Besides, they usually got along fine when they were in the field. It was his behavior in Boston that had driven her crazy. When they were at home base, he withdrew, became unavailable. Toward the end, she’d wondered whether he had another woman in the city.
Know your man inside and out, and you’ll never be surprised, baby. Her mother’s words came to her across the years, along with the memory of sitting in the car while Eva Whitmore cruised their ritzy neighborhood in search of her husband’s vehicle.
Feeling the familiar tightness in her stomach, Tansy clenched her teeth and concentrated on flying, as the sun sank towards twilight. She’d make it through this one last assignment with Dale, and then she’d leave. She couldn’t stand seeing him every day. Not like this. Though in the end she’d been the one to walk away from their relationship, he had pushed her there.
He simply hadn’t cared as much as she did.
“We’re almost there.” The voice was thick from the silence. The rough timbre heated the back of her neck with memory, and she stared harder out the cockpit window. The shadow of an island appeared, black against the gray sea. The granite claws arced around a central harbor at one end. The subtle curve of tail at the other end completed the illusion and created a second harbor.
She craned her neck to follow the rocky contours as she flew past and came around to face the northernmost claw. “Damn. It does look like a lobster.”
“That’s why they call it Lobster Island,” Dale muttered as they began their descent.
Frustrated by his mood and his nearness, she snapped, “This trip wasn’t my idea, you know.”
“Wasn’t mine either,” he growled in return. “I tried to leave you home.”
Tansy compressed her lips and concentrated on flying. Maybe she should’ve refused the assignment and risked her job. But part of her had wanted this one last trip with Dale. Away from Boston General, she knew she would see the man beneath the brittle upper-crust charm. The man she’d fallen for. In the field, Dale Metcalf was a bit loud and a bit rough. Exciting. Almost uncivilized. More at home in the slums of the small, hot country of Tehru than the Theater District of Boston.
But the moment they returned to the city, that man disappeared and was replaced by someone else. She didn’t like the other Dale much, nor did she trust him. There was something…false about him in the city.
She darted a glance at the pale, perfect features of Boston General’s most eligible bachelor. His square jaw was tight with tension, the lines beside his mouth deeper than she remembered. Though they were headed into the field, he had avoided his usual attire of bush pants and a cotton shirt. Instead, he wore a monogrammed shirt from England and lightweight wool trousers.
He was wearing his Boston clothes, Tansy realized. Not his field clothes. She felt a strange, unexpected stir of fear. Her mother had taught her that if she knew everything and understood everything, she’d never be out of control. That had made medicine a perfect career choice. Tansy understood illness, understood health. But as the little plane dropped through a scattering of clouds and shimmied in a slap of crosswind, she realized she didn’t know everything about this assignment.
And she knew even less about the man sitting beside her.
Worried now, though for no good reason, she side-slipped the plane to lose altitude and radioed her approach to the Lobster Island tower. The response was slow in coming, and informal, but the parallel row of lights sparkled in the near distance, outlining a runway that was much longer than the blasted dirt strips she was used to.
“Almost there,” she murmured, more to herself than Dale.
“Great.” He bit off a curse and she felt another flash of annoyance.
“If you’re going to snarl at me every time I open my mouth, this is going to be a very long investigation, Metcalf.”
“This from the woman who’s called me a ‘slimy toad’ whenever she’s seen me for the past three months?” His knuckles whitened. “You wanted happily ever after. I wanted to be friends. The two don’t mix, Tansy.”
It still hurt that their breakup hadn’t crushed him like it had crushed her. Then again, that was part of the problem. “Never mind,” she snapped. “Forget I was about to suggest a truce. Let’s just keep biting each other’s heads off and hope the patients don’t notice.”
The little plane dropped down through the last fifty feet of air and the rocky bulk of the island flashed beneath them. Their airspeed bled from a hundred miles per hour to eighty, then slower.
Dale sighed heavily and reached out a hand as though to touch her, but he didn’t. “Tansy, I’m sorry. I don’t mean to fight with you. But this is…awkward for me.”
The first of the runway lights glinted below the plane and Tansy brought it down expertly, letting the wheels kiss the smooth, shadowed tarmac. “It’s awkward because of me. Because of us.”
“No.” He shook his head. “Or at least, not entirely. It’s the island. You see, I was born—”
Crack! A horrendous jolt yanked the control yoke from Tansy’s fingers. Her body slammed against the shoulder harness and the plane bottomed out, hard, on the runway.
“Christ!” Dale yelled, grabbing for a handhold. “Hang on!”
No time. There was no time for hanging on. Sparks flashed by the windows, brighter than the sunset. Metal screamed.
“Dale! The landing gear’s collapsed!” Fear grabbed Tansy by the throat. Control. She was out of control.
The little plane slid sideways down the runway at almost fifty miles per hour. Metal ground against asphalt, and sparks spewed higher against the dusky sky. She fought the useless yoke for a few seconds before letting it go. She glanced out the cockpit window. There weren’t any buildings to hit at the end of the runway, thank God.
Then her stomach dropped. “The runway ends!” she shrieked. “Dale! The ocean!”
“Hang on, baby. Hang on!” Somehow, their hands twined together. Their eyes caught and held as the plane slid over the end of the runway and tilted down.
Metal howled. The plane slammed against something. It twisted and fell, bounced, and continued to fall until they hit bottom, hard.
Tansy’s head smacked into the side window.
First, she saw watery stars.
Then she saw nothing.
Chapter Two
The endless moment of freefall was sickening. Dale’s stomach lodged in his throat, then dropped when they hit bottom and Tansy’s head cracked into the side window. She sagged against her safety belt.
“Tansy! Tansy, stay with me. I need you to stay with me!” The words were rote, the feeling beneath them anything but. Panic roared in Dale’s ears. Then he realized it wasn’t just panic.
It was the sound of waves breaking on the plane. They’d fallen into the bay. And Tansy was unconscious.
“Damn!” He yanked free of his belt and struggled to his feet, hunching down in the small cockpit space. The cold, salty water of Lobster Bay splashed around his ankles. God, he hated the ocean.
The floor tilted by degrees as the weight of the engine pulled the front of the plane down. Heart pounding, hands shaking, he glanced out the forward window. In the crimson of twilight, he could see wavelets and greasy, gray water edging up the nose of the plane.
How long until the tower sent help? How long would the little plane float?
Working quickly, he checked Tansy’s vitals. “Tansy! Tansy, sweetheart, wake up. We need to get out of here, baby.” The endearments slipped out, though he’d rarely used them when they had been a couple. At least not out loud.
How deep was the water just past the landing strip? He didn’t remember. He hoped it was shallow. Lobster Bay was tricky that way. But even four feet of water would be too much if he couldn’t get them out of the plane before it flooded.
Tansy stirred, and relief rattled through him. He could get her out. He had to get her out.
“Flotation,” he muttered, knowing that HFH stocked their planes with life jackets as well as the standard cushions. He bypassed the field equipment crammed in the back and yanked the jackets from their compartment. His hands were still shaking. What was wrong with him?
“You’ve worked outbreaks in Tehru and terrorist bombings in the Middle East,” he reprimanded himself. “Two people in a sinking plane should be a piece of cake.” He stilled his hands by force of will, but he couldn’t stop the lurch of his heart when he returned to Tansy’s side and she opened her eyes.
The knowledge hit him like a fist to the gut. This wasn’t a stranger in Tehru or the Middle East. This was Tansy.
And that made all the difference.
“Dale? What—?” Pain and sudden comprehension clouded her eyes. “We crashed. The landing gear broke.” She turned her head towards the storage space and winced. “We’ve got to grab the field kits and get out of here.”
“Put this on first,” he ordered, helping her into the jacket over her protests. “We’re in the water and I don’t know how long we’ll float. Forget about the equipment.”
“The hell I will. We have an outbreak to work.” Listing to one side as the plane sagged beneath her, Tansy stumbled to the cargo area. She fumbled with the straps securing their instruments. “The cases are shockproof and rigged to float. We’ll get as many as we can out the door before we jump.”
The floor tilted even further and water surged up to cover most of the cockpit window, blocking out the bloody light of dusk. Dale cursed under his breath. “There’s no time for the equipment, Tansy! Let’s get the hell out of here.”
“We’ve got time. Help me with this,” she demanded.
He clenched his teeth. Stubborn. She’d always been stubborn, and more concerned with the patients’ safety than her own. At times it scared him and drove him crazy. Other times it made him proud.
This was one of those crazy times.
“We’re getting out. Now.” In the near-blackness, he looped an arm around her waist and dragged her to the door, grimacing when the floor tilted beneath his feet and metal groaned sickeningly.
The plane was rolling in the water.
“Get the door!” she yelled, finally ready to abandon the equipment. “We’re going down!”
“Hurry!” Dale yanked his jacket over his head and tried to help her crank the door release. In a flash, he imagined sinking to the bottom of the ocean with Tansy, trapped in the half-open cockpit. Drowned. Like his parents. “No!” he shouted, and jammed his shoulder against the door.
It cracked open, followed by a gush of water.
“Dale!” Tansy grabbed for him when he lost his footing and went down between the angled seats.
He bobbed up and spat a mouthful of cold, salty water. “Go! Get the hell out of here.”
“Not without you,” she yelled back. “Come on, we’ll jump together and swim away.”
Dale knew there’d be suction when the plane went down. They had to get away, and fast. He scrambled to the door, kicking a pair of floating equipment cases out of the way, and boosted Tansy out the door as a wave crested over the plane and swamped the cockpit.
He choked, spitting more seawater. God, he hated the taste.
“Dale, come on. Hurry! I don’t think it’ll float much longer.”
He hauled himself through and jumped. His foot slipped on wet metal and he landed almost in the plane’s shadow. The water was cold and harsh.
Like coming home.
Striking out hard, he saw Tansy paddling for all she was worth. Not fast enough.
He was a strong swimmer. He’d had to be, growing up on an island with one of the highest lost-at-sea rates in the Northeast. He grabbed Tansy’s jacket and struck out for the beach, hauling her along over her feeble protests. The lights on shore slowly grew closer, though part of him wished they wouldn’t.
Halfway there, he heard the unforgettable hiss-chug sound of a lobster boat’s engine. He tamped down the memories and lifted an arm to the shabby-looking vessel that slowly approached out of the twilight. “Over here!”
“’Hoy there, did everyone make it out?” The man’s voice was muffled by wind and wave, but it sounded familiar.
If he weren’t already freezing wet, Dale might have shivered as childhood ghosts crammed his brain in a sudden rush. He blinked against them and focused on the cold, hard water and the woman beside him. He raised his voice and called, “Yes. Everyone’s out.”
It was a lucky thing, too, he thought as the last slice of wing disappeared into the oily, black sea. The water just beyond the runway must be deeper than he remembered, or else the tide was running high. He felt a twinge of remorse for the field kits that had seen them through so many tough assignments, so many exotic locales. The cases were waterproof, but he doubted they were that waterproof.
“Hang tight,” the helmsman shouted over the noise of the waves and the motor, “we’ll have you out of there in a jiffy.” The near-derelict boat lurched through the surf and Dale could just read the faded name on its bow. Churchill IV.
The name brought a twist of guilt. Dale had promised his parents’ friend, Walter Churchill, that once he left the island he’d make a new life for himself and never look back. Well, he was back, and so far it had been a hell of a homecoming.
