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As Moe approached the hospital, he slowed and followed the emergency room signs. Several people emerged from the building dressed in scrubs. One held what appeared to be a medium-sized cooler in his hands.
Moe shifted into park and stepped out of the borrowed SUV.
Within less than a couple of minutes, the team had the documentation scanned and instructions relayed. The man holding the cooler settled it on the backseat floorboard.
As soon as the container was secure, Moe hopped into the SUV and drove to the airport with Bea sitting silently in the seat beside him. He wondered what was going through her head but didn’t have time to worry about her when his first priority was the precious cargo he’d been entrusted with.
He parked at the Fixed Base Operator building that serviced the general aviation needs of the airport, hopped out and grabbed the container from the back floorboard.
Bea met him at the door to the building and hurried to keep up with him as he passed through the building, waved at the desk clerk and stepped out onto the tarmac.
He’d had the fuel topped off before he’d left the airport earlier. All he had to do was perform his preflight check and quickly file the flight plan he’d preloaded earlier.
Within minutes, he’d stowed the cargo in the cabin, completed his preflight check and handed Bea up into the plane. Once seated, he passed a headset to Bea and slipped his over his ears. “Buckle up. They’ll have us moving before you know it.”
Moments later, Ground Control had them taxiing to the end of the runway. When Moe received permission to take off, he eased the throttle forward, sending the little plane racing down the runway. Their speed inched upward until they were going fast enough to take off. Moe eased back on the yoke, and the aircraft lifted off the ground.
Once the Air Traffic Controller vectored them onto a southern trajectory, Moe drew a deep breath and let it out slowly. He glanced back at the box he’d strapped into the seat harness. Finally, he glanced at Bea. “Hanging in there?” he said into his mic.
She nodded, her lips moving, though he couldn’t hear her. He reached across and adjusted her mic to fit in front of her mouth, his knuckles brushing her soft lips. A shock of electricity ricocheted across his nerve endings. He jerked back his hand as if it had been scalded and returned his attention to the instrument panel and the sky around him. “Talk to me,” he said.
“Can you hear me now?” she asked, her voice even sexier over the radio. How was that even possible?
“I hear you,” he said. “You might as well sit back and relax. Take a nap if you want. We’ll be in the air for a couple of hours.”
Bea turned a little in her seat. She didn’t appear too worried about being in a small plane.
Moe could feel her gaze on him without even looking in her direction. “Have you been up in a small airplane?”
“I have.”
He looked. “Oh, yeah? What kind?”
“I’d like to say I know something about airplanes, but the truth is I know next to nothing. Other than they have wings and fly.”
His lips twitched. “Was it the same size as this plane?”
She frowned. “Bigger. It had ten seats, not counting the pilot and copilot.”
“A much more expensive plane,” Moe commented. “Had your business chartered it for an event?”
She shook her head, staring out the window. “No, they owned it.”
“Nice.”
Bea shrugged. “Some think owning more property will make them happy. But owning property means being owned by your responsibilities toward that property or corporation. You get so busy you forget you have a life outside the entity until your child is grown and gone and all you have left is a corporation and no family.” Bea gave him a wan smile. “Sorry. That was too deep for a flight through the stars.” She gazed out the window and sighed. “The sky is amazing up here, away from light pollution and the noise of cars and trucks rumbling by.”
“We rarely have bumper-to-bumper traffic out here,” Moe said. “I like that I don’t get road rage, and I can land almost anywhere. It’s a great way to travel.”
“Do you fly for any commercial airlines?” Bea asked.
“No. I’m not interested in driving a glorified bus or arguing over who got the chicken cordon bleu and who got the veggie plate. I fly to get myself to different places, but mostly because I love it. What about you? Why would someone try to kidnap you and then trash your place? It’s not like a random occurrence. They knew you got off work at that time. They also had to know when you wouldn’t be home and how long, giving them plenty of time to destroy your home.”
She stared straight ahead, her jaw tight, her lips pressed into a thin line. “All I wanted was to live a normal life, like everyone else in the world.”
His hands tightened on the yoke. “What do you mean?”
She looked down at her hands in her lap. “I thought that if I could start over somewhere no one knew me, I might actually have a chance at living the way I want to live, not having my life mapped out for me by someone else or being chased by the media.” She turned toward him with a watery smile. “And it was working. For a few short weeks, I was Bea Smith, a waitress at the Tumbleweed Tavern in Bozeman. I was paying my own rent on an apartment I furnished with thrift shop finds on my tip money.”
