Sue Civil-Brown - Hurricane Hannah

And anyone would do.

ON THE TARMAC below, Buck Shanahan’s adrenaline was also surging. He peeked at his hole cards again, though he didn’t need to. The two black Sevens were right where they’d been last time. Coupled with the Seven of Hearts on the table and the two Jacks on the table, that gave him a full house—three Sevens and two Jacks—and a chance to even things with the man who sat across the table from him.

Bill Anstin had become Buck’s nemesis. Treasure Island had been so perfect before Anstin moved here with his high-stakes dreams about turning the island into a major casino resort. Buck liked it just the way it was: sleepy, peaceful, an ideal place to hide from the world.

Each had a constituency. The old islanders, offspring of castoffs from neighboring islands and the earliest white settlers, tended to side with Buck. Anstin’s backers were the new arrivals, most of them Wall Street wizards on the run from the SEC and their investors, looking for a place to hide and launder their ill-gotten gains.

As with every controversy on Treasure Island, it was litigated at the poker table, the “Court of the Green Felt.” Buck versus Anstin, heads-up, no-limit Hold’Em, best two out of three games. Last week, at his casino, Anstin had hit a lucky flush to win the first match. This week they were playing on Buck’s turf, at the island’s small airport. And Buck was about to take him down and even the match.

When the jet came screaming in over the airport, Buck and Anstin and their audience instinctively ducked low and covered their ears. It passed right over their heads, the jet wash sending cards flying all over the tarmac, before the pilot circled back around and hit the runway with a screech of rubber and the roar of twin jet engines on full reverse thrust.

Craig, Buck’s mechanic, stared wide-eyed at the plane as it screeched and roared farther down the runway. “What the hell?”

Buck stood up and bit on the end of his unlit cigar tight enough to make his jaw hurt. “Idiot. Flying jackass!” He watched, somewhere between fury and fear as the pilot of the jet struggled for control, the tail fishtailing a bit as if the reverse thrust weren’t distributed evenly between the engines. In his heart of hearts he believed his runway wasn’t long enough.

“Get the fire fighting equipment,” he barked at Craig Thomas, and started trotting down the runway. “This is one pilot I want to save so I can strangle him.”

The list of offenses was long. Not radioing ahead to request permission, not checking landing conditions, not being sure the runway was long enough…. Not to mention scaring the hell out of him. And—by far the worst of the violations—scattering Buck’s winning cards.

The jet finally rolled to a stop, within twenty feet of the end of the runway. Behind him, Craig caught up in the golf cart that was their only fire engine. It wasn’t like they were a major airport. Buck caught the rail and bounded up, standing on one foot as they drew close to the plane.

The engines were winding down. Then, with an awful choke, one of them just stopped. Moments later the other choked, too.

Buck heard that sound and felt his heart slam. Okay, so maybe he wouldn’t kill the pilot. The guy had come in on fumes. But then his anger surged again. What the hell was he doing flying on fumes anyway?

What if he hadn’t found Buck’s airfield?

Worse yet, what if that jet had rolled off the runway and over the lip of the plateau?

And why couldn’t he have waited until Buck finished the hand?

HANNAH LAMONT SAT at the controls, her hands still frozen on the yoke. Ahead of her, just a few feet from the end of the runway she had almost run out of, spread a beautiful view. All of it sharply downhill. All of its tropical glory shouting: “Death!”

She actually wasn’t sure she was alive until she realized her hands hurt from gripping the yoke. Prying her right hand free, she reached for the throttles and pulled them back, shutting down the already silent engines.

Then she started shaking like a leaf in a hurricane. Adrenaline, which had carried her this far, fled like a rat off a sinking ship, leaving her all too mortal and filled with aftershocks.

It wasn’t that her life had never been on the line before. When you flew smaller aircraft, you often had a lot of near-misses. But this one was different somehow.

Different, she realized suddenly, because it never, ever, should have happened.

Anger sparked in her again, renewing the strength in her limbs. Unclasping her harness, she rose and stomped back behind the pilot’s cabin and hit the button that opened the door and dropped the steps. The hydraulics, working like a charm, hissed as the door opened from the top and descended, turning the steps right-side up.

She was just about to step on the first one when a golf cart carrying two men raced up.

She didn’t like the look of the guy who was standing on one foot and hanging onto the rail. He looked like an afternoon thunderstorm that had sprouted the stub of an unlit cigar. Handsome, yes, but angrier than an alligator that had missed dinner.

“What the hell,” he shouted, “did you think you were doing?”

“Choosing life,” she shouted back. “I suppose you’d have preferred I ditched it?”

“Radio,” he said. “You have heard of the concept?”

By this time he was off the cart and standing at the foot of the stairs, glaring up at her.

“It went out on me. Half an hour ago. Then I started losing fuel.”

“And you were idiotic enough to take this piece of crap into the air?”

That did it. The rats returned to the sinking ship and brought more adrenaline along with them. She stomped down the stairs, stopping on the bottom one so she could look this jerk in the eye.

“It wasn’t a piece of crap when I left. You got a problem, take it up with my mechanic. I sure intend to.”

Then she pushed past him and started striding back up the runway, going she knew not where, just needing to be away from this idiot until she had sorted through the last half-hour and decided just how she was going to kill Len, her mechanic.

“Where do you think you’re going?” the guy demanded. “This is my airport and you can’t leave this garbage on my runway.”

She turned and faced him, hands on her hips. “Just how do you propose I move it? There’s a leak in the fuel line somewhere, and there aren’t enough fumes left to taxi her. Maybe, Mr. I-own-the-airport, you can tow it? I’ll pay.”

Buck watched her storm away, and the funny thing was, all he noticed was the beautiful red hair and the way her rear end swayed. A beautifully shaped rear end, cased snugly in her green flight suit.

“Dammit!” he swore.

“Come on, Buck,” Craig said reasonably. “Let’s get the trash off the runway before someone else tries to land. Then you can argue with her some more, ’cuz she sure as hell ain’t going anywhere.”

Buck was in no mood to listen to reason. He bit down so hard on the end of the unlit cigar that his teeth cut through it. Swearing, he spit the pieces out and glared toward the woman’s retreating back as if she had caused it to happen.

Hell, she had caused it. If he weren’t so damn mad at her…. And who the hell did she think she was anyway? The Queen of England?

“Come on, Buck,” Craig said impatiently. “We gotta get this thing off the runway. It’s a hazard.”

Grunting, Buck hopped up on the golf cart and the two of them zoomed—well, as fast as they could in a golf cart, anyway—back toward the hangar.

She was a woman, he reminded himself sourly. A woman. God had put women on this earth to make life hell for men. They were trouble on two feet. Headache and heartache and every other kind of ache. He should have known there was a female at the yoke of that plane. It should have been obvious from the moment she zoomed over his head.