Stranded AF (The AF Series Book 1) Read online

  He sat quietly and stared at me for so long that I grew uncomfortable. “Frank…” He shook his head and sighed.

  “My dad wanted me to have them,” I put in quickly. “Not her. You know that. And now I can get them. I already made the arrangements for the plane. I just need a pilot. So, you and I can go together to Australia on commercial flights, then we can go to the airfield, where they’ll already be loaded on a plane, and you can fly them right back home. With me.”

  “Something doesn’t sound right, Frankie,” he said, and he shook his head slowly. “Plus, I have my kids for the summer. I’m sorry, but…no.”

  I hated hearing the word no. “You can bring the kids with you! I’ll pay for their flights. Maybe go to the zoo or something while you’re there. Take them snorkeling. An outback adventure. It’s Australia, Scotty! So much to see and do. And I’d love to see your children again. It’s been so long. The years just keep slipping by…”

  “I don’t know,” he said slowly, shaking his head.

  “We can take the long way back,” I tried. “We can make a stop in England and show the kids all the places we visited that time we went backpacking through Europe. Don’t you remember how much fun that was?” We would have to stop for refueling anyway. We could just go west instead of east.

  He still looked skeptical. “What if she won’t give you the dogs?”

  I huffed. “Those dogs belong with me. I’d like to see her stop me from taking them.”

  “I don’t know, Frankie. As fond as you are of them, those dogs are still property, and those particular dogs are worth enough to make it a felony to steal them. You can’t just take them. Not to mention animal quarantine laws—”

  I waved that off. “I’ve got it all worked out. Trust me.”

  He scoffed. “Famous last words.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Would I lie to you, Scotty?”

  I would, and he knew I would. I knew I would. We both knew I would. I batted my eyelashes at him.

  “Frank,” he groaned, letting his head fall back.

  “Please, Scotty?” I wasn’t above begging.

  4

  SCOTTY

  “Can you tell us about the day the plane went down?” someone asks.

  I look at the attorneys and one of them gives me a subtle nod. I pull the microphone that rests on the tabletop toward me. “It was a Tuesday,” I say.

  Frankie lets out a nervous titter. I look at her, and she motions for me to continue.

  “We started in Australia,” I say.

  “What was your purpose for being in Australia?” someone else calls out.

  I look to Frankie because this is her arena. She explains, “I was moving two dogs from there to my home in the States.” She jerks a thumb in my direction. “He was flying the plane.”

  Someone chuckles. “We can assume you’re not talking about tiny little house dogs when you say you were moving dogs?”

  She shakes her head, as a grin tugs at her lips. “No, not house dogs. They’re a pair of Tibetan Mastiffs.” Her smile doesn’t fade. “Such beautiful animals.” No one asks what happened to the dogs and for that I am grateful. “We were taking the long way back, planning to make a stop in England where we wanted to stay for a week before coming all the way home.”

  “Can you tell us what happened before the plane went down?” another calls out.

  I see Frankie’s eyebrows pull together.

  “We lost fuel,” I explain. “We lost fuel quickly. All of a sudden, we didn’t have enough, and we couldn’t turn back.”

  “Tell us about how you felt before the flight. Did you have any worries? Or did you know you were setting yourself up for failure when you boarded a plane that hadn’t been serviced adequately?”

  The charter company’s attorney strides toward the mic. “There’s no evidence that the plane wasn’t serviced adequately,” he states.

  “Yet the plane went down in the Indian Ocean.” The reporter glances down at a paper in his hands. “The preliminary investigation cites a lack of fuel as the cause of the crash.”

  “Yes, that’s correct,” the attorney replies.

  “What actually was the cause of the crash?”

  He clears his throat. “We have no way of knowing that. We have not recovered the plane.”

  “When did you two know things were going to go wrong?” someone else calls out.

  I look at Frankie. “We knew as soon as it was too late to turn back,” I reply.

  She nods and stares at the water pitcher. “We thought we were home free. But we weren’t.”

  “I thought this flight was supposed to be on a real plane,” I muttered. It was supposed to be a small passenger plane with a large cargo area in the back. Instead, this was a Vietnam-era plane with most of the seats removed to make room for two large animal cages in the rear.

  “This is a real plane,” the representative from the charter company said as he passed me the preflight paperwork. He wiped a bead of sweat from his forehead. He’d sweated through his shirt in several places. “It’s just an older plane. Still safe. It’ll get you where you need to go.”

  “Frankie’s not going to like this,” I said more to myself than to him. I heard the clank of a door shutting and locking, and I looked over. “Good grief, are we carrying dogs or horses?” I watched workmen move two big cages, each with a pacing animal inside, into the belly of the plane. They fumbled and cursed, and Frankie kept correcting their actions with snaps of her fingers and muttered oaths. “Frankie approved this plane?” I asked the rep, sticking my chin out toward where Frankie stood giving orders, wearing a pair of jeans, hiking boots, and another colorful t-shirt with a band logo.

  “Frankie was willing to take what we offered, considering what she’s doing with it.” He sniffed and swiped his hand across the back of his sweaty neck.

  I frowned. “What do you mean?” He ignored my question, so I signed the last of the paperwork and did my pre-flight inspections outside the plane.

  “I hope she can handle those animals if something goes wrong,” he said.

  I grinned. “Nothing goes wrong on my flights.”

  He rolled his eyes. He caught Frankie’s attention and motioned her over. She looked toward the plane where the big dogs were now safely stowed, then at the charter rep. “What is it?” she asked. She glanced impatiently at her watch, her dark lashes falling against her cheeks.

  “I just wanted to wish you a safe journey—”

  Frankie completely ignored him and focused on me. “Are you ready to go?” she asked.

  “Are you in a hurry?” I tossed back.

  She looked at her watch again. “Actually, I am. The dogs are going to get warm back there.”

  “Ready when you are,” I replied. I dusted my hands together, even though they weren’t dirty. My phone rang in my pocket, and I pulled it out to look at the number.

  She glanced at my phone. “Do you need to get that?”

  I shook my head. “No. It’s just Gloria.” I did not need to talk to my ex-wife. We’d said everything that needed to be said last week when she’d left the kids with me for the summer. And none of it had been pleasant.

  “Let’s go, then, before the dogs get too hot.”

  We entered the plane, and she was startled only momentarily when she saw the two children sitting there in the front row. “Holy crap,” she muttered. “I completely forgot for a minute that they would be here.” She glanced from them to me and back.

  Frankie and I had ended up flying out here separately. Frankie came a week ago, since she said she had a lot of paperwork to handle before we could move the dogs. I hated that the kids had to fly so far, but I also wasn’t fond of leaving my kids at home just to do Frankie a favor when I didn’t get to see them all that often. So, the kids and I had turned this into an adventure. We’d gone to the zoo in Sydney, and we’d done a lot of sightseeing. The kids had a grand old time, and I was gratified that they were experiencing something new. With me.
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  “You still owe me for their plane fare.” Frankie knew I didn’t give a damn about the plane fare. I gestured toward the kids. “These are my kids, Tanner and Livvie. They’ve grown a bit since you last saw them.” Frankie had met them a couple of times throughout the years, but Frankie’s visits were just like Frankie—sporadic and spontaneous.

  So, it wasn’t like she was “Aunt Frankie” or anything like that, but the kids knew who she was. I jerked my thumb toward her. “Kids, you remember Frankie, right?”

  Olivia, who we called Livvie, at the age of eight, was still fun to be around. She lifted her hand and waved at Frankie, and Frankie wiggled her fingers in return. My son said nothing, which was pretty normal for him. He scowled and brooded and wandered around staring at his phone most of the time. At the age of fourteen, he pretty much hated my guts. My friends with adult children kept telling me that by the time they hit twenty-five, you started to like them again. I wasn’t so sure.

  “They’re spending the summer with me,” I explained to Frankie. “Remember, we talked about this.”

  She nodded. “Of course, I remember.”

  “Forced exile,” Tanner groaned.

  “You’ll survive,” I tossed back.

  What I wasn’t sure about was whether or not I would survive.

  The plane had two rows of seats, each with two seats side-by-side, in front of the cargo area. The metal cages took up the entire rear of the plane. One of the dogs growled as I walked around and made sure that the safety equipment was in place.

  “Are they yours?” Livvie asked Frankie, her voice quiet.

  “Yes, they are now,” Frankie said. “They were my father’s, and then he died.” She let out a breath. “Long story. I’ll tell it to you later.”

  “They can’t get out of there, can they?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “No.”

  “If they did, what would happen?” Tanner asked.

  “They’d try to eat you for dinner,” she said, deadpan. She looked toward the cages. “We didn’t feed them today because we were afraid they would throw up on the flight. So, they’ll be extra hungry.”

  I couldn’t tell if she was serious or not. Tanner grinned. He appreciated sarcasm in any form. But Livvie leaned closer to Tanner. I just shook my head and finished my pre-flight checklist. “Frankie, do you want to sit up front with me?” I asked absently, the same way I asked every passenger if the plane was almost empty.

  Her eyebrows shot up and I immediately couldn’t help but think that this woman could still carry on an entire conversation with those eyebrows alone. “Do you need me to sit up front with you?” she retorted.

  I shook my head. “Not particularly.”

  “Then I’ll stay back here.”

  “Tanner, do you want to sit up front?” I asked him.

  “No.” He stared out the window at nothing.

  I heaved out a sigh. “Livvie?” I asked. She shook her head. “Okay, then. Everybody buckle up.” I made my way to my seat. Frankie gave me a smart salute, which was more than a little irritating, before she sat down and did what I asked.

  I buckled up, put on my headset, got my take-off instructions from air traffic control, and we began to taxi.

  “Is this plane okay?” Frankie called out.

  “It’s fine,” I called back. If she’d wanted to talk, why had she sat back there?

  “But you do know how to fly this one, right?” she yelled.

  I bit back my smart-ass answer. “I wouldn’t be sitting here if I didn’t.” I turned to look at her, and saw her white knuckling the armrests, as the big dogs paced from one side of their cages to the other and back. “I’ll get you there in one piece,” I said. I winked at Livvie, who smiled back at me.

  “Have you ever flown a plane like this?” Frankie called out as we slowly turned to get into position to hit the runway.

  I didn’t answer.

  “He flew planes in the military,” I heard Tanner say when I didn’t answer. “He can fly anything.”

  I suddenly felt like a jackass, but I didn’t know why. Something wasn’t right about this flight, but I couldn’t put my finger on what it was. As we lifted off, I looked down to find the airfield filled with Australian police vehicles. I lifted us up just as I noticed a few officers pointing in our direction.

  “Frankie!” I yelled. She unbuckled and came to sit next to me.

  “Um, yeah,” she said. “About that…”

  “Frank!” I barked, turning to look at her face. “Please tell me you didn’t steal this plane.”

  “No, I rented it.”

  “Then why are the police here? Does it have anything to do with the cargo on this plane?”

  She bit her lower lip and said nothing.

  I glared at her. “I suggest you start talking.”

  “I rented the plane. I didn’t steal it.” She sucked her bottom lip between her teeth and chewed on it. And then she admitted, “But I might have stolen the dogs.” She winced.

  “You did what?”

  “I stole the dogs.”

  “Frankie…” I shook my head, gritting my teeth until my jaw ached. “You stole the dogs?”

  She nodded, gnawing on her lower lip. “I’m sorry,” she finally blurted out.

  “Frankie—”

  “I’m sorry, Scotty! I…” She waited a beat. “I thought we would be in the air before the step-monster realized the dogs were gone. I really did!”

  “Frankie,” I said, “why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I didn’t think you’d help me if you knew,” she admitted sheepishly.

  Damn right I wouldn’t. “You put my kids in danger, and I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to forgive you for that.”

  She unbuckled and went back to sit with the kids because I didn’t have anything else to say to her. After we stabilized, I turned to look back. She stared out the window at the open water. “Beautiful, isn’t it?” I heard Tanner say.

  “Beautiful and scary all at the same time,” she replied, raising her voice so he could hear her.

  It really was.

  5

  FRANKIE

  “I put the plane down on the water when I couldn’t keep it in the air any longer,” Scotty says into the microphone. The room goes silent.

  “Were you scared?” someone finally asks.

  “You’d have to be a f—” He stops when he gets a glare from the attorneys. “You’d have to be stupid not to be scared,” he replies. “We started losing fuel sometime after we were over the Indian Ocean. By the time I realized it, we were too far away to turn back.”

  “Did you call for assistance?”

  He heaves a sigh. “Many times.”

  “We can skip these questions,” one of the attorneys says. “You’ve all heard the recordings.”

  Scotty and I look at one another. There are recordings?

  “The recordings sounded like you weren’t even concerned.”

  Scotty shakes his head. “What good would it do me to panic? I had to put a plane down in the middle of the ocean, and I knew it would fill with seawater in a matter of minutes. I had to get my children and one passenger out of the plane and to safety. That was my priority.”

  One minute I was staring out over a sea of a color blue I’d never seen before, and the next I was clutching the armrests as the plane began to descend. “Scotty? What’s happening?” I called out. I’d moved back to my seat in the middle of the plane with the kids when I’d gotten tired of his stony silence and the sound of his teeth grinding together as he clenched his jaw.

  “We’re losing fuel. I need for everyone to buckle up,” he called back, his voice deadly calm. “Then I want you to reach down under your seat and get the life jackets that are down there. Put one on yourself, and then put one on each of the kids.” He was still calm as we continued to descend, getting closer and closer to the rough sea, which didn’t look as blue the closer we got to it. It looked greener. Darker. And not nearly as inviting.


  I reached under my seat and retrieved my flotation device, pulling it over my head as I blew into the small tube to inflate it. Tanner was already pulling his out, putting it around his neck, and buckling it tight. I reached for one for Livvie and pulled it over her head. “Everything is going to be fine,” I said, as I bent and blew up her life preserver. “You all set over there?” I asked Tanner. He nodded and stared out the window. I reached over and slipped my finger below the nylon strap around his waist, testing the life jacket’s buckle, just in case. He didn’t seem to notice. The water rushed up toward us, getting closer and closer.

  “Brace for impact!” Scotty yelled.

  We hit the water hard, bouncing as loose items flew around the cabin. Tanner slammed against the wall, letting out a cry. Livvie fell forward, her head smashing into the seat in front of her. I watched as a trickle of blood dripped down her forehead. Water sluiced by the plane’s windows, the spray violent as the plane torpedoed into the water and then righted itself. Then we skimmed across the surface of the water, and we stopped.

  Dead silence filled the cabin. Then I heard a terrified whimper from the little girl, Livvie. Her father ignored it, and so did I. But her brother reached over and unbuckled her using one arm, the other hanging limply by his side. He took her hand in his free one.

  “We need to get out,” Scotty said, as he jumped out of his seat and opened a cabinet, retrieving two large packages. “As soon as I open the door, the cabin is going to fill with water,” he explained. “It’s going to happen fast, so I need you to get out as quickly as you can.” He pointed toward three duffel bags. “Tanner, get those,” he instructed.