“But . . . I can’t leave my things behind! There’s thousands of dollars’ worth here!” Clothes, shoes . . . I had to pay two hundred bucks in overweight fees to get them here!

“If you want to fly with me, you’ll have to,” Jonah counters, his arms folding over his wide chest as if getting ready to stand his ground.

I stare at my luggage with growing panic.

“I’m sure we’ll have a cargo plane flying to Bangor tomorrow. I’ll get the bags on the first one that can carry the extra weight,” Billy offers in a placating tone.

My shocked gaze drifts between the two of them. What choice do I have here? If I don’t go with Jonah now, I’ll have to find a hotel room and stay in Anchorage until I can get a regular flight. Agnes said it’s high season. Who knows how long that will take? “Why didn’t Agnes send you here in a bigger plane?” I grumble, not really looking for an answer.

“Because the bigger planes are out making money. Plus, no one knew you were planning on moving here.” His voice drips with sarcasm.

I’m quickly getting the impression that Jonah doesn’t want to be flying me anywhere.

And that he’s a giant asshole.

I make a point of turning my back on him to face Billy. “Will my things be safe here?”

“I’ll guard them myself,” he promises, crossing a finger over his chest for added impact.

“Fine,” I grumble, tossing the track bag to the gravel, wishing that Billy were my pilot. Whether he can even fly a plane is of little concern to me at this point.

“And make it fast,” Jonah adds. “There’s heavy fog rolling in tonight, and I’m not getting stuck somewhere.” With that, he disappears around to the tail of the plane.

“By all means, feel free to leave without me,” I mutter quietly, because finding my own way to Bangor is sounding better with each passing second.

Billy scratches the back of his shaved head in wonder as he eyes the surly pilot. “He’s not usually this grumpy,” he murmurs.

“I guess I’m lucky, then.” Or maybe I’m the reason Jonah’s in such a foul mood. But what did I do to earn this hostile attitude? Besides pack too much, that is. I drop to the ground to begin rifling through my suitcases. Acutely aware of Billy standing over my shoulder, watching me as I consider my must-needs. This nylon bag is a weekender—just big enough to fit two or three days’ worth of clothing. Less, when I include my cosmetics and toiletries bags, along with all my jewelry. There’s no way I’m leaving any of that behind.

I glance up in time to find Billy’s eyes perusing my collection of lace panties.

He quickly averts his gaze. “Ah, don’t worry about Jonah. Something must have crawled up his ass.” Billy pauses. “Something big.”

“I hope he made sure to get its weight for takeoff,” I mutter, reaching for my running shoes.

Billy’s barking laughter carries through the cool breeze.

Chapter 6

“It’s gonna get bumpy on the way in,” Jonah announces from his seat in front of me, his deep voice through the headset competing with the roar of the plane’s engine.

“Worse than what we’ve been going through up until now?” Because my brain is rattling inside my head from the turbulence over the past hour.

“You thought that was bad?” He chuckles darkly as we cut through a low-hanging cloud. We may have taken off in blue skies, but on this side of the state a thick layer of gray drapes the horizon.

I tug my cable-knit sweater tighter around my body for comfort as much as to ward off the chill. Every jolt sounds clunky and hazardous, as if metal panels might pry right off the body of the plane at any moment.

Jonah probably wouldn’t be so amused if he knew that I fished out a plastic bag from my purse and have been holding it open in front of me for the past fifteen minutes. How I’ve kept down the chicken tacos that I devoured in Seattle this long is no small miracle, but they’re churning in my stomach now.

The plane’s nose suddenly tips downward. I brace myself and yank on my seat belt to make sure it’s snug. Then I concentrate on taking deep breaths, hoping that will soothe my frazzled nerves as well as my guts. What the hell was Agnes thinking, sending Jonah to get me in this death trap? I can’t wait to phone my mother and tell her that she was right, that I’m so not fine with weaving around mountains while packed into a tin can like a sardine. That no sane person would be fine with this, ever.

These Alaskan pilots are crazy to choose to do this.

“How much longer?” I ask, trying to keep my voice steady as the plane tilts this way and that.

“Ten minutes less than the last time you asked,” Jonah mutters. He radios the dispatcher and begins rhyming off codes and talking about visibility and knots.

And I glare at the back of his bulky frame, wedged into the pilot’s seat. If he’s uncomfortable in this tiny fuselage, he hasn’t uttered a word of complaint. In fact, he’s said barely anything to me this entire trip. Mostly “yups” and “nopes” and closed-off answers that stalled all attempts at small talk that I made. I finally gave up and instead focused on the frayed ash-blond wisps of hair that curl around the brim of his baseball cap and over the collar of his jacket, and not on the fact that just outside the thin metal walls and glass panels are thousands of feet through which we could plummet to our death.