AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Are you crazy?” Jack bursts out. “I’m not gonna let you go out there by yourself. Remember what happened last time?”
“Mom will kill me if you get hurt—”
“And I’ll kill you if you go off and crash again!” Jack crosses his arms, sitting back stubbornly in his seat. “I’m coming.”
I nod, wrapping my hand around the throttle. “All right.”
My pulse races in my ears as I ease the throttle forward, keeping the yoke straight. The engine roars as we rocket over the water’s choppy surface, leaving the safety of the harbor behind. I pull the yoke toward me, and we lift into the blackening sky.
I try to focus on flying smoothly, but it’s not easy when I’m staring down a thunderstorm. It looks even bigger as we gain altitude—a churning mass of shadow spreading over the water like a curse, flickering with cloud-to-cloud lightning.
Jack is right—we’re insane to be flying into deteriorating weather. But I have no other choice.
Orca needs me.
“You’re doing good,” my brother assures me through his headset.
I manage a dry laugh despite everything. “I’ve flown in better skies, that’s for damn sure.” I reach over to snap on the storm lights so I don’t get blinded by the lightning. “I’m going to try to fly around the worst of it, then circle back north to land.”
Jack gives me a thumbs up.
I watch my compass, fighting crosswinds, retracing my flight path to Orca’s island. Jack acts as my second set of eyes, but it’s hard to see anything when the rain is falling in violent torrents, pouring over my wings in a noisy WHOOSH that sounds like a thousand nails rushing over metal. A bolt of white lightning leaps out of the clouds, followed by a bellow of thunder that I can feel in my chest.
“Do you see that light up ahead?” Jack shouts, pointing out the windshield to a distant beacon piercing through the curtains of rain. “I think it’s coming from the lighthouse!”
I maneuver the yoke back to drop altitude. The sea below us is churning and frothing, a hungry monster ready to swallow us up.
I don’t look at it.
Instead, I focus on that light shining through the storm, guiding us to our destination. The island is coming up fast, but I need to descend slowly, or else the downdrafts will do my job for me—and crash us straight into the waves. I grasp the lever in the floor and pull it back to lower my flaps for a slower landing. White-capped swells roll underneath us, looking more like mountains as we come down on them.
“Brace yourself!” I yell to Jack, swallowing back my pounding heart as we land—hard.
I jolt forward, nearly smashing my face on the dash and grimacing as the yoke bites into my ribs.
Land rushes up on my port side, a tangle of evergreens swaying in the wind, then a long stretch of gray beach. The swells rock us around like a paper boat—building and crashing so violently I’m afraid we might capsize.
“Christ,” Jack says. “Turn, turn, turn!”
I bank hard to the left, cringing as the angry tide scoops up my plane like a surfer in a pipeline and spits us onto the shore.
Seconds later, I hear the shooooft of sand underneath us, and the plane lurches to a stop.
We’re beached.
We made it.
A stunned laugh rushes out of me. I turn to Jack, who looks just as amazed as I am. He curses loudly and rips off his headphones, slapping me on the shoulder.
“You deserve the pilot of the year award, bro.”
I shake my head. “Don’t say that till I get us back home alive.”
That’s when I see Orca racing down the grassy knoll to the beach, rain pouring down on her as she waves to signal us.
“Adam!” She screams my name the moment I climb down the ladder. “Oh god, I was so worried. The storm…”
I jump down to the sand and wrap my arms around her. “It’s okay, Orca. I’m here. Where’s your father?”
