“Ferris wheel, Mommy!” the kid squeals.
Shut him up! Megan pleads silently.
“Fast boat, Mommy!” the little noise box shouts while a speedboat races beneath them.
Megan winces. It’s going to be a long half hour. The pounding in her temples won’t quit, not even after she downed a handful of Extra Strength Tylenol with the Venti-size Caramel Brulée Latte she’d scored at Starbucks on her way to work. A second cup rests in a cupholder tacked onto the armrest of her seat. Probably shouldn’t have had that second glass of champagne on the Gulfstream, she thinks as her lips curl into a devilish grin. Or the third, fourth, and fifth glasses—hell, she’s not sure the bubbly is completely out of her system even now. What the hell, it was a party flight. Thank God she’s wearing a pair of Bvlgari sunglasses to keep the blinding sun out of her eyes… and to keep her bloodshot eyes out of sight. That was $600 well spent. She’d given herself an extra spritz of perfume to mask any hint of hangover seeping from her pores. The Juicy Fruit should mask any unwelcome odor escaping her curdling stomach.
The back seat falls blissfully quiet as Megan flies out over the lake at a height of 3,020 feet at a ground speed of eighty knots. That’s a little too fast, so she eases back on the throttle. She plans to travel a couple of miles offshore before turning south to let her passengers ogle Chicago’s iconic skyline for a few minutes. Then she’ll loop around downtown on her way back to the airport.
“I wanna see the Ferris wheel again, Mommy!”
Jesus Christ! Shut the damned kid up already! Megan fumes as she glances in the mirror. The kid’s seat belt is off and he’s bouncing on the rear seat. Did she check that he was strapped in before they taxied? Screw it, she isn’t gonna fight with them about it now… or tell them to shut the fucking kid up. After all, they’re apparently Very Important People—politicians or something. She’s already forgotten the family name they seem to think is so impressive. Probably the types who will kick up a stink if Megan isn’t the polite little lackey they’re treating her as. She knows about people like this. Her mother, for example.
Megan had enrolled in the aviation associate degree program at Parkland College on a whim, mostly because the guy she was interested in at the time had done so and it looked like fun. Her affection for the boy fizzled soon enough, but her love for flying blossomed. After she graduated, her parents poured a small fortune into rental aircraft so Megan could build the hours she needed to get her commercial license. When Uncle Jonathan and his friends bought Windy City Sky Tours to mess around with, Mother had put the heat on her brother to give his favorite niece a job… and when Mother wants something, Mother gets it. It was turning out to be a good gig that kept Megan in pocket money for parties and shopping. The hours were reasonable and she was generally able to milk the family connection to avoid early-morning shifts, leaving her free to stay out late and party—the whole point of living at her age.
BAM!
“Mommy!” the little kid exclaims while a shudder passes through the aircraft.
The engine backfires again. What the hell?
“Miss?” the old guy in the back asks uncertainly.
Megan shrugs her shoulders nonchalantly and replies with an airy “Just a little backfire” to shut the guy up. Then she digs into her foggy mind, struggling to remember what she knows about backfires. It’s been forever since flight school and all the boring shit about stuff like this.
Megan’s stomach lurches when the engine coughs and dies with a final convulsive shudder. What the hell do I do now?
From the back comes a screeching “Mommeeee!”
“That’s enough, Pumpkin,” the man in back tells his grandson in a soothing voice. “Let’s get you strapped in.”
“No, Grandpa!”
“Shush, sweetheart,” he purrs to the kid. “Let the pilot do her job.”
Bless you, Gramps, Megan thinks gratefully. Okay, so now what? She runs her eyes over the bank of gauges and dials on the khaki-colored instrument panel in front of her. Altitude 3,105 feet. Airspeed seventy-three knots. Okay. She has a little time to work things out.
The mother and kid start whimpering while Megan tries to organize her thoughts.
Restart? Yes. There’s a checklist for that. Her eyes dart around the cockpit. Where the hell is it? There’s plenty of crap tucked away here and there but no sign of the engine-restart checklist. Okay, then. How hard can it be? She fiddles to reset the fuel mixture, hopefully to the correct mix. Then she cranks the ignition switch and pushes the throttle forward. Nothing. She tweaks the fuel mix and tries again. Still nothing. Shit!
“Shouldn’t we turn back, Miss?” the old guy asks.
Not a bad idea at all, Megan thinks as she gazes through the windscreen at the flat blue expanse of Lake Michigan stretching away into the distance. It’s strange and unnerving to see the scimitar propeller blades locked into place at eleven, three, and seven o’clock. Something about their appearance bothers her, but whatever it is remains just out of reach. Whatever. It’s probably just seeing them stopped in flight. She relaxes her death grip on the control wheel while struggling to recall something that might get her out of this mess. At least I’m flying a Cessna, she thinks. Cessnas glide pretty far. How far? They’d joked at school that a small aircraft would glide pretty much forever without power, but the 210N is bigger than the pissy little planes they’d trained
