Her sigh was an admission of defeat. She couldn’t fight this. She might have lasted amazingly so far, given the distance they had already covered, but she couldn’t continue to keep this time together totally impersonal and safe. She had no choice but to face up to whatever emotional fallout eventuated. She had to deal with it and survive. She could do that. She’d done it before, hadn’t she?
‘So, when did you get your pilot’s licence, Jet?’
It was the first time she’d used his name. It curled off her tongue and hung between them like a white flag of surrender.
‘I didn’t.’
‘I thought you said you could handle a BK.’
‘I can. Through osmosis, to start with. Then I got to be mates with some army pilots. They were happy to bend the rules sometimes. And I learn fast.’
That was true enough. Of all the ‘bad boys.’ Jet had undoubtedly been the smartest. That was why he’d won the scholarship to attend an elite, private school in the first place.
‘The formal endorsement of the ability was a bit out of my price range,’ Jet added dryly.
Yeah … not only the smartest. Despite all those boys being sent to boarding school for reasons they’d had every right to resent, Jet had had the biggest chip on his shoulder about his background. The others, including Matt, had been there because they had parents who could afford to offload the responsibility of children they weren’t particularly interested in. It had been years before Becca had learned of Jet’s multiple foster-family background. That he’d thought of himself as a charity case. She’d never heard more than hints, however. It wasn’t a topic ever up for discussion, any more than the blatant disparity in financial advantages.
Was that why he’d thrown it at her now? As some kind of barrier?
It was ancient history, surely. He’d proved how well he could do relying entirely on his own resources. Becca had a lack of patience for people who blamed life’s disappointments on their backgrounds. If you let either the pain of the past or fear of the future dictate your life, you were just shooting yourself in the foot as far as ever being happy. When it came down to it, everybody had to be able to draw on personal strength, no matter what their childhood had been like. Maybe Jet needed to get over himself.
‘Med school’s not cheap,’ she fired back. ‘You managed that, no problem.’
‘Unless you count the past ten years I’ve spent paying the loan off.’ Jet was scowling but then he shrugged. His next words were barely more than a mutter, as though he was talking to himself rather than Becca. ‘Maybe I will get my licence now. It’s not as if I want to save up for a house or anything.’
‘Gypsy lifestyle, huh?’
Becca regretted her choice of words as soon as she’d uttered them. It was supposed to be a light-hearted comment, to finish the discussion without adding more substance to that ghostly barrier coming into view. To make his life choices seem desirable, even. But the idea of a gypsy was a little too apt. A man going his own way in life, according to his own rules. A bit dark and dangerous. Yes, she could picture Jet Munroe as a gypsy all right. Or a pirate. Or. This had to stop.
‘I know what you mean about the osmosis,’ she said hurriedly. ‘I reckon I could get an IV line in, if push came to shove.’
‘I should hope so. Didn’t you say you’d been with the ambulance service?’
‘I didn’t get quite that far with my training.’ Becca knew she sounded defensive but did he have to make her sound inadequate? Was he determined to make her feel younger and far less experienced than she was? ‘I work with a lot of intensive care paramedics who are brilliant at what they do,’ she added crisply. ‘My job is just to get them there.’
That seemed to score a point. Conversation ceased and they flew on with the engine noise filling the space. Like it had done a while back but this time it was different. It was like they were both unwillingly forced to be taking part in some kind of dance, Becca decided. They’d drawn closer. Touched on some level. And now they were wheeling apart. Circling. Knowing that they would be drawn in again and next time it would be even closer. Acceptance of the inevitability didn’t lessen the dread so Becca said nothing. She was hanging on. Trying to delay the inevitable.
Jet seemed to be in tacit agreement with the tactic. It became a challenge. Who was going to break first? The time stretched and the challenge grew. A distraction all on its own. In the end, it wasn’t either of them who broke it. The radio crackled and buzzed inside their helmets. Someone was trying to contact them but reception was bad. Becca switched frequencies and tested them.
‘Flight zero three three. Are you receiving me, over?’
On her third attempt, Richard’s voice was cracked but audible. They were clearly far enough away from base to be pushing the boundaries for communication and static was wiping out chunks of the speech they could hear.
‘.return to base.’
‘Please repeat,’ Becca said. ‘Message broken.’
‘.in seismic activity …’
Good grief, had the volcano erupted? No. Becca looked up from the radio controls to stare into the darkness ahead. They were easily close enough by now to see the glow from such an event in the night sky. A sky that was lightening perceptibly with a faint line defining the horizon. Dawn was not that far off and that was good. It would make landing on the island a lot safer.
‘.wind shear in the event of eruption,’ came the end of Richard’s latest broadcast.
So it hadn’t erupted, then. Even better.
‘.ash.’ The single word was another warning.
‘Message broken,’ Becca said again.
‘.pager.’ The word was a command now. ‘.mobile.’
‘Roger. Over and out.’
They flew in silence again for a minute. And then another. Becca was reluctant to follow the instruction. Even as broken as the communication had been, it was clear the mission was in danger of being aborted. And they were almost there, dammit. With no obvious cause for alarm.
‘You going to check your pager, then?’ Jet queried. ‘And your phone?’
‘Yep.’
Another minute passed. The sky was definitely getting lighter. Becca peered ahead. Was it too soon to expect to make visual contact with Tokolamu?
‘Any time soon?’ Jet murmured.
With a sigh, Becca unclipped the pager from her belt and handed it to her passenger. He activated the device and started scrolling through messages.
‘These seem to be old messages. When did you go to Cathedral Cove?’
‘Yesterday. About eleven hundred hours. Idiot teenagers diving off the cliff into some big waves. One of them mistimed it and got banged up on the rocks. Winch job.’
‘And south of the Bombay Hills?’
‘That was the job before Cathedral Cove. Motorway pile-up.’
‘Nothing new on here, then.’
‘I’m not surprised. Range for the radio should be better than the pager.’
‘Give me your phone.’
The reluctance to let Jet read any text message she might have was surprisingly strong but Becca shrugged it off. It wasn’t as if there would be anything too personal in there. Like a message from a boyfriend. She almost wished there was. She could be sure that Jet’s love life wasn’t a desert and her single status would probably be enough to count as another putdown. Or