Читать книгу Hurricane Hannah - Sue Civil-Brown - Страница 10

HANNAH WAVERED between wanting to strangle Buck Shanahan, and wanting to like him. He was as prickly as a pear cactus and seemed to have taken her in instant dislike. Other than ruining his poker hand (and she still did not believe that so many people could be insane enough to determine the fate of their island with a poker game) during her landing, she couldn’t imagine why. Well, she had been a little…upset when she deplaned, but any person with a half-ounce of common sense would understand what she’d just been through. Adrenaline tended to make you that way.

Still, he fed her. He didn’t invite her into the inner sanctum behind his office, nor did she especially want to go there, but when he emerged a half hour later he offered her cold potato salad, cold fried chicken and a healthy serving of steamed broccoli. All of it was savory. She gave him marks as a cook, if not as a mechanic or human being.

“That was wonderful,” she said when she’d sucked the last bit of meat off the bone. If it hadn’t been rude, she’d have licked the plate, too.

“Thanks.” He sounded gruff. Then he took their plates into the back, leaving her alone to look out at what was now getting to be a very dark night. She could see a portion of the earth’s shadow on the highest clouds, an arc of darkness moving toward zenith now, the red winking out behind it.

She supposed she ought to go out to the plane before it got any darker, but she felt strangely reluctant to move. So instead, she helped herself to another cup of coffee, and settled back in the chair.

She expected Buck to remain in his hermitage, but to her surprise he returned and sat on the far side of the counter from her. She could just see his head above the countertop.

She decided to try being sociable. “How long have you had this airport?”

“About eight years.”

“And before that?”

He looked at her. “Top Gun.”

She sat up straighter. “Really?”

He scowled at her. “Why would I lie about that?”

“I can’t believe you could give that up!”

That made him smile for the first time since she’d met him, and oh, what a smile it was. It transformed him completely.

“Eventually my back had enough of the g-forces. And I had enough of the Navy.”

“But you must miss it.”

“Yeah,” he admitted reluctantly. “Once in a while.”

“This must sometimes seem pretty tame.”

He cocked a brow at her. “Not when people try to take my head off with their wings. It reminds me of that Samuel Johnson quote. ‘Nothing concentrates the mind like the imminent prospect of being hanged.’”

She nodded, wondering if there was more to a man who could quote Samuel Johnson, but said only, “I wondered if I’d have to ditch her.”

He shook his head. “Not a good thing, ditching. Planes tend to fall apart in all the wrong ways.”

“So I’ve heard.”

Silence fell between them for a few moments. Then she asked, “Where did I land, anyway? There are so many small islands out here, and while I have a general idea where I am, I’m not sure which lump of rock I’m sitting on.”

He rotated his cigar to the other side of his mouth. “This lump is called Treasure Island.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Nope. The first person known to have settled here was One Hand Hank Hanratty about eighty years ago. He was a fan of Robert Louis Stevenson, I hear.” The cigar bobbed as he resettled it. “Rumor has it the alligator bit off his hand.”

“The alligator?”

“Yeah. Apparently Hanratty brought him as a pet. Says something about the guy’s character. Anyway, Buster, the gator, is still around. Hanratty isn’t.”

“Well, if he brought only one gator, I can understand why the thing bit off his hand. Buster must be lonely.”

Buck shrugged. “He goes to Bridal Falls sometimes and scares the tourists when they’re having a tropical wedding. Mostly he just keeps to himself. Nobody wants to get him a mate, though. This isn’t his native habitat, and we don’t want the place crawling with gators, either. It’d scare the tourists.”

Hannah nodded. “What do tourists come here for?”

Apparently she’d asked exactly the right question, because Buck suddenly grew expansive. “Well, now, there are really cheap cruise lines. They like to pull into harbor here and let their passengers gamble at the casino. They market it as tropical charm, but what it really is is a bunch of big tiki huts with games, slots and a couple of bars. I guess it impresses people who come from way up north.”

Hannah nodded, envisioning it. “It would have a certain kind of charm, I guess.”

“If you’ve never been to Vegas or Reno, yeah. Anyway, they pull in for a day of gambling, and sometimes passengers will get married by the captain at Bridal Falls. I don’t reckon anyone knows who was the first person to do that, but it’s become a bit of tradition in these parts. Townfolk will attend to make it festive.”

“That’s nice.”

“It’s downright stupid, if you ask me.”

She felt herself bristling at his attitude, but tamped it down. She needed this idiot to repair the plane. She also needed to use his radio or phone or something to let her buyer know she would be late. Although after this he might not want the jet at all. She smothered a sigh. “What about the mountain? It looks like a volcanic cone.”

“It is.”

“Active?”

“That’s the story.”

Gloom began to settle over her. Could it get any worse? “How active?”

“It shrugs from time to time. Been awhile since the last eruption, though. Maybe five hundred years.”

“How often is it supposed to erupt?”

He suddenly grinned at her over the countertop. “Getting nervous, Sticks?”

“Absolutely not!” She had the worst urge to bean him with his cigar. Purposefully irritating, that was what he was. “Do you ever light that thing?”

He took the cigar from his mouth and studied it. “Why would I want to do something that stupid?”

“Then what is it doing in your mouth?”

He grinned again as he looked at her. “I have this oral fixation.”

To her horror, she blushed beet red. Quickly she looked away, out the window, hoping the last bit of red light would hide the blush.

“I’m going to bed,” she announced, rising quickly and putting her mug on the counter.

“Good idea,” he agreed. “You want to get some sleep before the storm hits.”

That froze her in her tracks. “Can we check the weather?”

“Sure. I’ve got a feed.”

She was relieved to hear it. At least this godforsaken airport had moved that far into the twenty-first century.

He turned behind the counter and flipped a dial. Soon a mechanized voice was reading the forecast. Then he flipped another switch and a fax machine began to print out a weather map.

Interested, as all aviators were interested in the weather, Hannah forgot her embarrassment and leaned over the counter, listening and watching.

“Tropical Storm Hannah has developed wind speeds in excess of sixty-five miles per hour. The storm has stalled at its current location and appears to be strengthening, with the barometer steadily falling….”

“Hell,” Buck said. Moments later he ripped the fax off the machine and stood up, putting it on the counter so they could both look at it. Their heads came close to knocking.

“Cripes,” he said, “look at those isobars. It’s tightening up.”

“Do you have an earlier map?”

He turned and pulled a sheet of paper off a shelf. “Here, see?”

Indeed the lines that measured barometric pressure were drawing closer together, around a circle that could swiftly become the eye of a hurricane.

“It doesn’t look good,” she said reluctantly.

“No, it doesn’t.” He took the cigar from his mouth and tossed it in the trashcan. “If she’d just kept moving, we’d have had a tropical storm. No big deal except for the casino. But if she stalls out there long enough, she could become a real beast.”

Hannah nodded and met his blue eyes. “I don’t like this.”

“Me neither. You might be here awhile, Sticks.”

“Is this place safe?”

“I built it to be. I didn’t want to lose everything every couple of years.”

“Well,” she said hopefully, “maybe even if it becomes a hurricane it won’t go past Category One.”

“We can hope.” He sighed. “Come on, I’ll walk you out to your plane. I forgot you don’t know your way around.”

The late evening was perfectly still, and growing darker by the second. The land had not yet cooled below the temperature of the surrounding water, so nothing moved. Later there would be a breeze, but right now the night was quiet and balmy. The air, full of moisture, felt soft to the skin. Hannah thought prosaically that in a climate like this, there’d be no need for moisturizers.

Buck opened the door to the hangar, letting her pass through first. He’d left a light on near the computer, so the cavernous space wasn’t completely dark. The printer was still humming, although the computer had gone into screensaver mode. Reaching out, he threw the switch that turned on the lights above Hannah’s plane. Then he went to look at the progress on the schematics.

He moved the mouse, and the progress bar appeared. “Nineteen percent. This is unreal.”

Hannah looked at the long stream of paper that was folding up on the floor. “No kidding. That’s my fuel system?”

“One and the same. And that’s less than twenty percent. We’re going to have our work cut out for us unless we find something obvious.”

“Well, it had to be some place the fuel could leak from fast. I didn’t have a whole lot of time.”

He nodded. “We’ll find it. In the meantime…”

“Yeah, get some sleep. You’ll wake me if things start to get worse?”

“Sure, why not? Worrying is a useful thing to do.”

She scowled at him. “I don’t want to worry. I want to enjoy the storm.”

“Enjoy?” He looked at her like she was crazy. “You’re kidding.”

“I love storms. Always have. I’d like to be awake for this one.”

“Well, if it decides to move this way,” he said almost sarcastically, “I doubt you’ll miss it.”

She cocked her head and put her hands on her hips. “Were you born a boor?” Then with a toss of her long red hair, she strode away through the dimly lit hangar to her plane.

“Wait a minute,” he called after her. “You have to lock the bar on the inside of this door after I leave.”

Annoyed that her high-dudgeon exit had been interrupted, she stomped back to him. He went to the door and pointed to a lever. “Throw this to the right. The bar will lock in place. Even Buster won’t be able to get in.”

Then he was gone, leaving her to fume. She threw the lever, glad to lock him out, then started back to her plane.

Not even Buster would be able to get in? All of a sudden she felt creeped-out. Why would he even mention it? Did that alligator actually sometimes come into this hangar?

Nervously she looked around as she hurried toward her plane. It was a relief to ascend the stairs, then pull them up behind her. Alone at last, she tumbled onto the bed in the tail without even pulling off her flight suit.

Enough was enough.