Chapter One
What a perfect morning to fly, Megan Walton thinks as she watches a gas jockey pump fuel into the high-winged Cessna 210N she’ll be piloting on a city sightseeing tour on this, the last morning of her life. The robin’s-egg-blue aircraft, which is emblazoned with the scarlet Windy City Sky Tours logo, glistens in the September sunshine on the tarmac at the Chicago Executive Airport. Megan pops a stick of Juicy Fruit gum into her mouth and pockets the foil wrapper. The smell of the gum is a welcome antidote to the acrid odor of the avgas, especially with her stomach still roiling from last night’s party. She’d woken up just after seven with a jackhammer headache and not enough sleep, having gotten back into town from her cousin’s Labor Day weekend wedding in St. Lucia a little after two o’clock this morning. What a party! Cousin Emerald’s parents had chartered a Gulfstream G280 executive jet to fly select wedding guests to and from the Caribbean. Now, there was an aircraft, complete with a uniformed flight attendant who catered to Megan’s every whim, be it for booze or eats. Someday, Megan plans to be flying Gulfstreams instead of a Cessna.
The mechanics Uncle Jonathan hired to service the Windy City aircraft are working on a little plane beside hers. Megan meets their eyes and looks away without acknowledging them. She forgets their names, not that it matters. They’re just hired help. Megan, a pretty twenty-three-year-old dressed in tight designer jeans and a form-fitting red company polo shirt, knows she looks good. Guys like these two, dressed in oil-stained coveralls and grimy baseball caps, can gawk at her all they want, but they’ll never touch what they’re pining after.
Megan tucks her long, glossy blond hair into a ponytail while she watches the refueler disconnect the fuel hose from the Cessna and wind it back onto his truck. As soon as he departs, she shepherds the four waiting guests toward the six-seat Windy City aircraft. Leading the way is a cute tyke of four or five wearing jeans, a miniature New York Yankees jersey, and little sneakers that light up with every step. His smiling mother is close behind as he bounds along with unbridled excitement. She’s an elegant woman wearing a canary-yellow sundress and sandals. A single strand of pearls the size of marbles circles her throat. A beaming, well-dressed older couple, no doubt Grandma and Grandpa, bring up the rear.
After her customers climb into the passenger compartment, Megan shuts the door behind them, pulls the chunky, black-and-yellow rubber wheel chocks away from the tires, and tosses them aside. Then she walks around the nose of the plane, climbs into the pilot’s seat, straps herself in, and fires up the single-piston-powered engine. The initial roar blasts a burst of blue smoke into the air before the engine settles into a pleasing purr, just as it should. As she releases the brakes and begins to roll toward a taxiway that leads to the runway, one of the mechanics starts running across the tarmac while frantically waving to her. She looks away. Whatever he wants can wait until she gets back. Megan just wants to get this flight over with so she can unwind a little and maybe sneak in a nap before her eleven o’clock tour.
Five minutes later she’s flying into the sun, passing over Navy Pier and out over Lake Michigan, happy to let the rich bitch in the back narrate the sights for her kid and the old folks. It’s not easy to keep the thirty-minute flights interesting, especially three or four times per day. Too bad the woman’s high-pitched voice is so damned grating.
“Ferris wheel, Mommy!” the kid squeals.
Shut him up! Megan pleads silently.
“Fast boat, Mommy!” the little noise box shouts while a speedboat races beneath them.
Megan winces. It’s going to be a long half hour. The pounding in her temples won’t quit, not even after she downed a handful of Extra Strength Tylenol with the Venti-size Caramel Brulée Latte she’d scored at Starbucks on her way to work. A second cup rests in a cupholder tacked onto the armrest of her seat. Probably shouldn’t have had that second glass of champagne on the Gulfstream, she thinks as her lips curl into a devilish grin. Or the third, fourth, and fifth glasses—hell, she’s not sure the bubbly is completely out of her system even now. What the hell, it was a party flight. Thank God she’s wearing a pair of Bvlgari sunglasses to keep the blinding sun out of her eyes… and to keep her bloodshot eyes out of sight. That was $600 well spent. She’d given herself an extra spritz of perfume to mask any hint of hangover seeping from her pores. The Juicy Fruit should mask any unwelcome odor escaping her curdling stomach.
The back seat falls blissfully quiet as Megan flies out over the lake at a height of 3,020 feet at a ground speed of eighty knots. That’s a little too fast, so she eases back on the throttle. She plans to travel a couple of miles offshore before turning south to let her passengers ogle Chicago’s iconic skyline for a few minutes. Then she’ll loop around downtown on her way back to the airport.
“I wanna see the Ferris wheel again, Mommy!”
Jesus Christ! Shut the damned kid up already! Megan fumes as she glances in the mirror. The kid’s seat belt is off and he’s bouncing on the rear seat. Did she check that he was strapped in before they taxied? Screw it, she isn’t gonna fight with them about it now… or tell them to shut the fucking kid up. After all, they’re apparently Very Important People—politicians or something. She’s already forgotten the family name they seem to think is so impressive. Probably the types who will kick up a stink if Megan isn’t the polite little lackey they’re treating her as. She knows about people like this. Her mother, for example.
Megan had enrolled in the aviation associate degree program at Parkland College on a whim, mostly because the guy she was interested in at the time had done so and it looked like fun. Her affection for the boy fizzled soon enough, but her love for flying blossomed. After she graduated, her parents poured a small fortune into rental aircraft so Megan could build the hours she needed to get her commercial license. When Uncle Jonathan and his friends bought Windy City Sky Tours to mess around with, Mother had put the heat on her brother to give his favorite niece a job… and when Mother wants something, Mother gets it. It was turning out to be a good gig that kept Megan in pocket money for parties and shopping. The hours were reasonable and she was generally able to milk the family connection to avoid early-morning shifts, leaving her free to stay out late and party—the whole point of living at her age.
BAM!
“Mommy!” the little kid exclaims while a shudder passes through the aircraft.
The engine backfires again. What the hell?
“Miss?” the old guy in the back asks uncertainly.
Megan shrugs her shoulders nonchalantly and replies with an airy “Just a little backfire” to shut the guy up. Then she digs into her foggy mind, struggling to remember what she knows about backfires. It’s been forever since flight school and all the boring shit about stuff like this.
Megan’s stomach lurches when the engine coughs and dies with a final convulsive shudder. What the hell do I do now?
From the back comes a screeching “Mommeeee!”
“That’s enough, Pumpkin,” the man in back tells his grandson in a soothing voice. “Let’s get you strapped in.”
“No, Grandpa!”
“Shush, sweetheart,” he purrs to the kid. “Let the pilot do her job.”
Bless you, Gramps, Megan thinks gratefully. Okay, so now what? She runs her eyes over the bank of gauges and dials on the khaki-colored instrument panel in front of her. Altitude 3,105 feet. Airspeed seventy-three knots. Okay. She has a little time to work things out.
The mother and kid start whimpering while Megan tries to organize her thoughts.
Restart? Yes. There’s a checklist for that. Her eyes dart around the cockpit. Where the hell is it? There’s plenty of crap tucked away here and there but no sign of the engine-restart checklist. Okay, then. How hard can it be? She fiddles to reset the fuel mixture, hopefully to the correct mix. Then she cranks the ignition switch and pushes the throttle forward. Nothing. She tweaks the fuel mix and tries again. Still nothing. Shit!
“Shouldn’t we turn back, Miss?” the old guy asks.
Not a bad idea at all, Megan thinks as she gazes through the windscreen at the flat blue expanse of Lake Michigan stretching away into the distance. It’s strange and unnerving to see the scimitar propeller blades locked into place at eleven, three, and seven o’clock. Something about their appearance bothers her, but whatever it is remains just out of reach. Whatever. It’s probably just seeing them stopped in flight. She relaxes her death grip on the control wheel while struggling to recall something that might get her out of this mess. At least I’m flying a Cessna, she thinks. Cessnas glide pretty far. How far? They’d joked at school that a small aircraft would glide pretty much forever without power, but the 210N is bigger than the pissy little planes they’d trained on at school. It wouldn’t glide forever, but she had time. They couldn’t be more than a minute into the emergency.
“I’m scared, Mommy!”
“Turn back!” the woman in the back shouts. That sets the kid to wailing again.
Megan glances in the mirror at the kid’s tear-stained face and his mother’s enormous, panicked eyes, then tunes them out while she studies the airspeed and altitude indicators: 2,800 feet; sixty-eight knots? Already? What the hell was the sink rate of this damned plane? Megan tries to work out her next steps, but nothing comes to mind. She squeezes her eyes shut and fights to control the rapid, shallow breathing that presages one of her panic attacks. How the hell had she gotten herself into this mess? Flying was fun but she hadn’t bargained on a morning like this. Her uncle greasing the palm of a pliable flight instructor had seemed like an inspired move when she struggled a bit to master the 210N rating qualifications, but it wasn’t looking like such a good idea at the moment. Sure, she can fly well enough, but this is a bit more than she can handle with her limited experience—especially while severely hungover.
Fragments of her training finally float into her mind. She takes a deep, cleansing breath and lets it out slowly, taking stock of the situation and tapping the tips of her French-manicured fingernails on the edge of the wheel as she thinks. The first thing she needs to do is get the damned plane headed back toward Chicago. She’s only what—two miles offshore? Maybe three?
“Miss?” the man in the back ventures. “Maybe we should radio for assistance?”
The radio can’t help them now. It’s up to her. “I’ve been gathering my thoughts,” she tells Grandpa in a bid to shut him up. Her eyes drift across the instrument panel. Fifty-eight knots, 2,200 feet? What the hell is going on? They weren’t going anywhere if she kept losing height and speed at this rate. The altimeter drops to 2,100 feet, and another knot bleeds off their airspeed in the time it takes her to process the thought. Should she radio for help? And look like an ass? No.
“Turning back now,” she mutters over her shoulder as she banks the Cessna into a tight 180-degree left turn to get back to safety. If the damned plane isn’t going to fly, she needs to get closer to shore before she sets it down in the water. She’ll be okay then—she was on swim team in high school.
“Miss!”
“Mommy!”
Megan doesn’t register the panicked chaos in the back seat as the wing loses lift and her aircraft drops nose first out of the turn. She’s now fully absorbed in her own horror as the surface of Lake Michigan fills the windscreen of the plummeting Cessna.
Fuel starvation? Megan wonders as she finally starts to make sense out of what’s happening. No fuel reaching the engine would explain things. Did I bleed the tanks? She doesn’t remember, but she suddenly realizes that she didn’t feather the prop after it shut down. That’s what bothered her when she was looking at the blades. With the flat surface square against the wind instead of turned edge on, they’d been acting like a speed break. Then she notices the Gear Down indicator light glowing green by her right knee and the landing-gear handle locked in the down position. She even forgot to raise the landing gear after taking off. No wonder the damned plane was sinking like a stone when it should have been gliding. Her final mistake was not using the rudder to make a longer, flat turn back to shore to preserve lift under the wing.
Megan adds her own screams to those coming from the backseat. She pins the wheel to her chest in a futile bid to defy the laws of gravity for the thirty seconds it takes the Windy City Sky Tours September eighth morning flight to complete its death dive. As they plunge into the cold depths of Lake Michigan, Megan finds the silence she’s been craving over the final fifteen minutes of her young life.
