CHAPTER 1 #3
“Fifteen hours.” Vic’s face went slightly gray.
“I’ve already taken two Dramamine. They don’t help.
Nothing helps. I once read that the most dangerous parts of a flight are takeoff and landing, which means a longer flight is actually safer since most of it is cruising, but somehow that doesn’t make me feel better at all. ”
“It’s statistically safer than driving,” said a voice from ahead.
Dakota turned. The dark-haired woman had glanced back, her expression somewhere between sympathetic and amused. Up close, she was even prettier than he’d registered before. Sharp eyes, the color of good whiskey. A small smile played at the corner of her mouth.
“I know,” Vic said miserably. “I know all the statistics. I’ve memorized them. It doesn’t help.”
“Try focusing on something else,” she suggested. “A book. A movie.”
Vic managed a weak laugh. “Thanks. I’ll try.”
The woman turned back around, and Dakota caught a whiff of something—jasmine, maybe, underneath the generic smell of airport and recycled air.
Their eyes met, and something flickered there—recognition, maybe. Interest. The kind of look that might have meant something in a different context, on a different day, when he wasn’t working.
She didn’t say anything. Neither did he.
He redirected his attention. Focus.
The line crept forward. Dakota watched a couple with matching luggage tags—European by the cut of their clothes and the way they stood too close together—approach the desk.
The man had military bearing, eyes that swept the room once before settling.
The woman wore a sundress and a straw hat, one hand resting on his arm.
Newlyweds, maybe. Or at least acting like it.
A British woman in white linen and statement earrings cut through the crowd, camera in hand, photographing the gate desk with the intensity of someone documenting a crime scene. She caught Dakota watching and lifted her chin. “Travel writer,” she announced, as if this explained everything.
“Congratulations,” Dakota said.
She sniffed and moved on.
Dakota stepped up to the desk and surrendered his bag with more reluctance than he’d admit. The agent slapped a tag on it and directed him toward the jetway.
He watched his bag join the growing pile of identical gray luggage and felt something in his chest tighten.
Aircraft seemed to shrink every time he boarded one, and this one seemed even smaller, bearing the sort of claustrophobic smell of a plane that had been pressed into service at the last minute because the real one had developed “mechanical issues.”
That made everyone feel just super, didn’t it?
Dakota found his row—an exit row, at least, which meant legroom—and stuffed his messenger bag under the seat in front of him. His tablet was inside, along with the critical files he’d synced from his laptop before surrendering the bag. Small victories.
He settled in and studied the emergency exit beside him. Standard plug door. The operating instructions were printed on a placard bolted to the wall, complete with diagrams that assumed everyone read them.
The aisle filled with passengers shuffling toward their seats, wrestling with bags that wouldn’t fit, apologizing as they clipped each other with backpacks and elbows.
Dakota watched them file past—the bird-watcher settling in somewhere behind him, the nervous guy (Vic, he’d said) clutching his armrests three rows back, the British travel writer asking for a cup of coffee before she sat.
The dark-haired woman stopped at his row.
Dakota looked up. She looked down. For a moment, neither of them moved.
“This is me.” She gestured to the middle seat beside him.
Of course it was.
Dakota stood to let her in, catching another trace of jasmine as she squeezed past. She dropped into the seat, tucked her messenger bag beneath the one in front, and pulled out her phone.
He sat back down. Retrieved his tablet. Tried very hard not to notice that her shoulder was approximately two inches from his.
The silence stretched. Around them, the plane continued to fill—a symphony of thumps and murmurs and the particular whine of overhead bins being forced shut.
She spoke first. “You read the placard.”
Dakota blinked. “What?”
“The emergency-exit instructions.” She nodded toward the door beside him. “Most people just sit in the exit row for the legroom. They never actually read the operating procedures.”
“You were watching me?”
“I was watching everyone. Occupational hazard.” She tilted her head, studying him with those whiskey-colored eyes. “I know what you’re up to.”
Dakota’s hand stilled on his tablet. His blood went cold for one sharp, irrational second—
“You’re trying to figure out whether you could actually deploy that exit door in an emergency.
” She nodded toward the placard. “The answer is yes, but it’s heavier than you’d think.
Forty-seven pounds. Most people can’t manage it under stress.
Their hands shake too much to lift and rotate simultaneously. ”
The tension in his shoulders released. He almost laughed. “You memorized the weight of the exit door.”
“I read a lot of airline safety manuals.” Her mouth curved. “Like I said—occupational hazard.”
“And what occupation requires you to memorize emergency-exit specifications?”
“I’m a hotel and travel inspector. I evaluate properties for hospitality companies.” She stuck out her hand. “Jayden.”
He took it. Her grip was firmer than he’d expected. “Dakota.”
“Like the state?”
“Family has a ranch in South Dakota.” He lifted a shoulder.
“You could have been named South.” She smiled.
And wow, she had a pretty smile, the kind that just zinged into him, ignited something warm inside him. Down, boy.
“So.” She settled back into her seat, tucking one leg beneath her.
A chain with a locket hung around her neck, and she touched it, moved the locket on the chain, like a nervous habit.
“What brings you to Sydney? Wait, let me guess.” She studied him for a moment—a quick, assessing sweep that he recognized because he did the same thing.
“Business, not pleasure. Something serious. You’ve got that look. ”
“What look?”
“Serious. And the way you scanned the cabin—like maybe you were looking for the one guy who might cause trouble.”
Dakota opened his mouth. Closed it.
She grinned. “Security consultant?”
“Close enough.” He shook his head, reluctantly impressed. “What are you, a reporter?”
“Close enough.”
“Most people don’t notice things—too stuck on their phones.”
“Like the woman with the toddler at the gate—she had no idea her kid was about to take a header into the floor. Good job, Spider-Man.”
“He tried to make a break for it too.”
“You prevented an airport tragedy.”
Oh boy. And then the smile again, and it moved something in his chest.
Fifteen hours with this wouldn’t be terrible.
The captain’s voice crackled over the intercom, announcing their departure time and cruising altitude and a whole bunch of other information that passengers ignored.
Flight attendants began their safety demonstration—exits here and here, flotation devices under the seats, oxygen masks dropping from above.
“You ready to deploy the exit door?” he asked. “You’re closest.”
“Always. Although no bets that if it comes to that I won’t be in the fetal position, so…just feel free to step over my body and rescue us all.”
Yeah, he liked her.
The plane began to taxi. Outside the window, the Hawaiian sun bled out over the ocean, painting the sky in shades of orange and pink that belonged on a postcard. The engines hummed. The cabin lights dimmed.
Somewhere behind them, Vic made a small, distressed sound.
Jayden glanced back. “Poor guy.”
“He’ll survive.” Dakota settled into his seat as the plane accelerated down the runway. “Most plane crashes happen within three minutes of takeoff or landing.”
“So, in four minutes he’ll be okay?”
“No, in four minutes I’ll be okay.” He winked at her.
“Do you need me to hold your hand?”
Was she flirting with him? Or maybe he was flirting with her?
Focus!
He was not on vacation. He needed to remember that, maybe.
The wheels left the ground. The plane banked, and Honolulu fell away beneath them—a sprawl of lights against the darkening Pacific, shrinking until it was just a speck in the vastness of the ocean.
“Fifteen hours,” Jayden said. “What’s your strategy? Movies? Sleep?”
Dakota pulled a worn paperback from his carry-on and set it on the tray table. “Reading.”
She leaned slightly to see the cover. “A River Runs through It.” Her eyebrows lifted. “Norman MacLean. The fly-fishing one.”
“That’s the one.”
“I didn’t peg you for literary fiction.” Her tone was light, conversational. The voice she used to put people at ease. “More Tom Clancy. Maybe Lee Child.”
“My grandpa was a fly fisherman. He left the book to me, and I keep trying to read it.”
“Trying?”
“Not a lot of down time lately.”
“What’s lately?”
“Six years?”
“Military?’
He considered her. “Separated about six months ago.”
“I grew up in a military family, so I get it.” She pointed to the worn spine. “It looks well loved.”
“My grandfather said MacLean understood something most people miss.”
“Which is?”
Dakota set the book down, turned it so she could see the cover—the river, the mountains, the light. “That some people can’t be helped. Can’t be saved. But maybe our saving them isn’t the point.”
She frowned. “What is the point?”
“Love. Our job is to love. Even when it’s hard. And even when it hurts. Even when they betray us.”
Oh brother. Less than an hour into the flight and he was getting philosophical. He lifted a shoulder. “Or maybe he just liked fishing.”
But Jayden was looking at him, her eyes on him a complicated brown with layers of gold.
The plane bumped, turbulence as they climbed, and it knocked her gaze away.
“Well, I’m going to read a story about woman nurses in Vietnam.” She pulled up her tablet and opened her reading app.
“Were there woman nurses in Vietnam?”
“There are always woman nurses in combat. But no one ever sees them.” She put her seat back. “It’s why they’re forgotten.”
The plane climbed into the darkening sky. Below them, the Pacific stretched endless and black.
She put on her headphones and opened her book.
He did the same.
And didn’t read a word.