She was fine. She was about to fly off on an adventure, and she was a thousand per cent fine.
And the roar of the propellors reminded her today wasn’t about her. She was on a rescue mission, and a young woman was counting on her. ‘Fuel gauge, oil gauge, tachometer,’ she said, chanting it like a good luck charm. ‘Fuel gauge, oil gauge, tachometer.’ She slipped the brake, cranked up the throttle, and cleared her mind of everything except the voice of the control tower operator in her ear.
‘Delta-one-six-eight-Charlie, you have clearance to runway one.’
That was good. That was excellent. As the B200 flung its way skywards, its speed pressed her deeper into her seat. There was no freaking way the curse of the Foxes was finding her up here.
Only … the curse did find her.
At least that was the one thought she had in her head forty-three minutes later when she brought the plane down in the rough red dirt and the starboard landing gear buckled beneath her.
Her head whacked a cockpit panel even as her hands fought for control, and there was a breathless moment while the worldwent sideways and six million dollars’ worth of aluminium and high-tech gear ground its way to a halt.
She blinked.
Engine off. Check fire. Check fuel leak. Check passengers.
‘Captain Fox?’
That was the newbie doctor behind her, bless him.
‘I’ll be right with you. Is everyone okay back there?’ She slewed around in her seat, but getting up was weirdly downhill and her ears were buzzing as though desert flies had taken up residence.
Wassheokay?
Maybe not, but she could worry about herself later.
As the buzz in her head cleared she heard yelling, but it wasn’t coming from her own mouth … she could work that out because hers felt like it was full of cottonwool.
She fought her way to the rear of the plane. Carys and the doctor had opened the door and evacuated—emergency landing procedure 101—and the empty cabin was a mess of strewn baggage and shrink-wrapped bandages and shortbread biscuits.
Okay, so the curse hadn’t totally messed with her. No-one was dead, but now the yelling had stopped, she could hear a female crying out in the paddock. She took a breath and hurtled down the stairs, only to be stopped by a large freckled hand gripping her arm.
Her arm.Right there, between wrist and elbow. Right where—
Her lungs seized. So, it seemed, did everything else, because her arms and legs and thoughts stalled.
‘How hard is it to land a fucking plane?’ yelled an angry voice in her ear.
She forced herself to get breath back into her lungs. She wasn’t a kid. This man was a stranger, not one of the loves of her mum’s life. People were relying on her, so she needed to pull herself together right this second.
She wrenched her arm away. The man with the angry voice wasn’t the rookie doctor; he was a big, sunburned fellow with an ancient felt hat and a mouth so grim it looked like it had been carved from concrete.
Shaun Ullrich, imminent father. Patient medical notes weren’t her purview, but she knew the basics of who she was here to collect. Janey Ullrich, thirty-five weeks pregnant, possible breech birth, high blood pressure.
Shit. The B200 wouldn’t be flying anyone out now. She breathed out as the farmer turned back to the utility parked beside the strip of red dirt where she’d landed.
Well. Crash-landed.
‘Kirst, honey? Can you give me a hand?’
Carys, the thirty-year nursing veteran who she’d flown with for the last four crash-free years, was kneeling beside a first-aid kit. Blood was gushing from a cut in her eyebrow.
‘Thank god you’re okay. How’s the doc?’
‘He’s fine, unlike our new father, who’s got himself in a bit of a state.’
The new father wasn’t the only one. Kirsty was feeling as unlike herself as she’d ever felt. ‘Understandable,’ she said, her voice quavering. Perhaps she’d damaged her throat in the landing. ‘Want me to grab you a bandage?’