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“Turn over,” a distant voice said, as I struggled to regain my breath. “And we’ll do your front.”
Twenty-Eight
JENNA
The taco truck sat at the edge of town, one in a small row of food trucks that settled here daily. It was rumored to serve the best tacos north of the Mexican border. Which was quite a boast, considering we were a stone’s throw from Canada right now.
“Hot sauce?”
I chuckled and waved Jay’s hand away. “That’s not hot sauce.”
He and Tyler peered down at the tiny foil packet, then squinted back at me. “You sure? Because it says ‘hot sauce.’”
“Pretty sure, yeah.”
Luca elbowed me playfully from the side. “What is it then?”
“A bunch of water and chemicals masquerading as hot sauce.”
He laughed, then took another monster bite of his half-eaten burrito. He’d gotten two, of course. From the looks of things though, even that might not be enough.
“We used to come here two or three times every summer,” I said, glancing around. “The trucks are always different. They’re always changing.”
“Change happens,” Tyler winked at me.
I rolled my eyes, resisting the urge to point out that it took three of us to get him to move Aegean and thus, finally move on. Instead I focused on the beauty of the scene at hand. The Montana air was crisp and cold, the sky was clear save for the thump-thump-thump of a distant helicopter. It was one of those late fall days where you just wanted to be outside for the sheer beauty of it all, and this was the last week the picnic tables would be set up.
“So do you boys have a grand opening date yet?”
I’d been pestering them all week. I needed to make the announcement on Aegean’s Facebook page as soon as I could, to generate the largest crowd possible.
“Not specifically,” Tyler admitted. “Sometime late next week. Or maybe the Monday after.”
Jay groaned. “Mondayafter?”
The rumble in the sky grew louder. Almost annoyingly so.
“I know it sucks,” Tyler acknowledged. “But it is what it is. As much as I’d hate to miss the weekend, we need the final inspection as well as the CO before we can—”
He turned mid-sentence, to where the noise from the sky had become more of an all-consuming roar. My eyes rolled slowly upward. My stomach sank.
No.
The helicopter wasn’t just flying over, it was descending also. And not just descending, but coming in for a landing.
No way.
The empty field next to the line of colorful food trucks was deep and wide, stretching all the way back to the distant hillside. It was the perfect place to land a helicopter. Almost too perfect.
It can’t possibly be.
And then there it was — the sum total of all my fears. Not just scrawled casually, but emblazoned boldly upon the side of the aircraft in big, blocky letters, right beneath the registration number.
The word STRONG.
Fuck…
Paper plates and napkins flew everywhere, as the rotors’ backwash blasted the little picnic area with a sudden, violent whirlwind. By the time it wound down, the engine noise was a slow-fading whine. The aircraft’s door popped open and the pilot hopped out.
