Drew reached for his car keys. "Have you called the police?"
"They"re on the way." Her breaths were labored, as if she were running. "But the streets are flooded. It could be a while. I told them I couldn"t wait."
"Where are you?"
"On my way to the salvage yard."
"I"m on the way." He started for the door. "Try to stay calm, okay?"
"Oh, G.o.d, Drew, he"s all alone. There"s a ca.n.a.l that runs parallel with the road. The water"s deep. He"s taken swimming lessons, but..." Her voice broke with another sob. "Oh, G.o.d, there are alligators. I"ll never forgive myself if something happens-"
"Don"t go there." Stepping into the rain, he locked the door behind him and sprinted to his truck. But he knew that every danger she"d mentioned was an all-too-real possibility. Multiply the odds with the risk of an asthma attack and they had an extremely serious situation on their hands. "I"ll call Seth. He"ll give us a hand. Emma can wait for the police at your house." Holding the phone at the crook of his neck, Drew threw the truck into gear and tore out of the parking lot. "I"ll be there as soon as I can."
Neither of them said it, but Drew knew that with flooded streets he might not be able to make it at all.
"Please tell me he"s going to be all right," she choked.
"He"s going to be fine." He pulled onto the street, but instead of making a right toward Alison"s house, he turned left toward Water Flight Tours. He"d only been to the Brewer Salvage Yard once, but knew it was on a ca.n.a.l. He knew the ca.n.a.l was deep enough for a barge. If it could accommodate a barge, it could d.a.m.n well accommodate a seaplane.
Five minutes later, Drew was on board the Mallard, strapped into his seat and taxiing toward his takeoff point. The water in the marina was choppy because of the wind. Visibility was poor. Flying conditions were horrendous, but Drew had flown in worse. After a final instrument check, he pushed the throttle forward, knowing he would need to take off fast and climb quickly.
A sudden gust of wind rocked the seaplane as it began to move across the water. The rough surf battered the floats, sending vibrations through the plane. Drew administered full throttle, building speed, holding the nose down.
The floats left the water with a jolt. An unstable tremor ran the length of the plane as it became airborne. Drew maintained full throttle, pulled back on the elevator, forced the plane into a blood-chilling climb and headed due north.
He"d known the climb through the rain bands and low clouds would be turbulent, but he hadn"t expected the violence that met him. Layers of unstable air sent the plane soaring upward and then plunging down. A sudden gust of wind from the west sent the left wing tip dangerously high. Drew reached for the yoke and delivered full aileron deflection.
At two thousand feet, visibility plummeted. He turned his attention to the instrument panel and its glowing, artificial horizon, and tried like h.e.l.l to ignore the jitter of nerves rippling through his body.
Six miles south of the Brewer Salvage Yard, he began a b.u.mpy descent. Around him, the twin engines blared in unison with the storm. He watched for landmarks: the sodium vapor lights surrounding the salvage yard, the L-shaped building, the wide swath of ca.n.a.l that ran inland from the Intracoastal Waterway. But as the plane pitched and dipped downward, he knew a safe landing would be nothing short of a miracle.
Until that moment, Drew hadn"t had time to think about his own safety. He"d had his hands full, wrestling with the turbulence and wind shear and rain. Now, as he prepared to touch down, he found himself faced with the most treacherous part of his journey.
He radioed the Kendall-Tamiami Executive Airport control tower west of Miami and told them he would be making an emergency landing in the number seven ca.n.a.l. The tower tried to deflect him to Ft. Myers to the west, but Drew explained the situation and the tower cleared him.
Soaked with sweat, mouth parched, he watched the altimeter drop. Six hundred feet. Four hundred feet. The entire plane shook violently as he plummeted through a layer of clouds. At three hundred feet, a wind shear slapped the plane toward the ground like a giant hand. Drew delivered full throttle. The craft shuddered. The engines screamed. Drew caught a glimpse of treetops to his right. A wide swath of gray water dead ahead. An instant later, the jet thumped hard and skidded wildly across water fraught with whitecaps. The nose dipped precariously, throwing a rooster tail of water twenty feet into the air. The landing gear groaned. The impact threw Drew hard against his belt.
The plane came to an abrupt halt ten yards from a copse of tangled mangroves. Drew blinked through the windshield, incredulous that he"d pulled off such an impossible landing, and struggled to get his bearings. Twisting in his seat, he spotted the Brewer Salvage Yard sign on the other side of the ca.n.a.l. He thought about Kevin, alone and wandering in a very dangerous place, and a new sense of urgency burned through him. Turning the plane, he started toward the docks.
Drew shut down the engines the instant the floats made contact with the protective row of tires along the pier. With shaking hands he unbuckled his safety harness and stumbled into the pa.s.senger cabin. He unlatched the hatch and flung it open. Wind and rain pelted him, but he pushed himself into the maelstrom and prayed he found Kevin before something terrible happened.
Alison barely felt the rain and wind pelting her as she climbed over the chain link fence and jumped to the other side. Brewer Salvage Yard was as deserted as a ghost town. She didn"t know if it was because of the hurricane or because it was Sunday, but there wasn"t a soul around to help her. She knew her son was there-she"d seen his tracks in the sand-and come h.e.l.l or high water she was going to find him.
The rain was coming down sideways when she stumbled past the ramshackle building that served as the office. A stubby palm outside the front door flailed wildly in the wind. Several pieces of roofing had torn loose from the roof and snapped like tin blankets on a clothesline. Ahead and to her right, the skeletons of a dozen aircraft were lined up like the fossilized bones of long-extinct dinosaurs.
"Kevin! It"s Mommy! Honey, can you hear me?"
Mud and sand sucked at her ankles as she sprinted along the row of planes. Rain stung her eyes, but she barely noticed as she searched for Kevin. Her only focus was finding her precious child, and there was no force on earth that could have stopped her.
Cupping her hands on either side of her mouth, she screamed his name. "Kevin!"
A flash of blue in her peripheral vision snagged her attention. At first she thought the tiny form huddled beneath the belly of an old jet was a piece of debris. Then she recognized the blue jacket, and her heart simply stopped.
"Kevin!" She sprinted toward him. "Kevin!"
Halfway there she realized he wasn"t moving. Fresh terror flashed through her. "Oh, G.o.d. Oh, G.o.d!" Please let him be all right. She silently chanted the words as she sped across the sandy path.
But her son didn"t move.
On reaching the plane, Alison dropped to her knees and crawled beneath the fuselage. A cry escaped her when she reached him. Her hands shook uncontrollably when she pulled him close and gathered him into her arms. "Kevin? Honey, are you all right?"
"Mom..." he said, but broke into coughing.
She could feel his little body trembling. He felt cold and listless. Her worst nightmare came true when she realized he was wheezing, struggling to get air into his lungs.
"I"m here, honey," she said. "Everything"s going to be all right. Are you hurting anywhere?"
"Can"t...breathe...right."
Her blood ran cold when she turned him toward her and saw his face. He was deathly pale. His lips were turning blue. She lifted his little hand, saw that his nail beds were dark. She shoved back a paralyzing wave of terror.
Jerking her cell phone from its clip, she punched 911. "This is Alison Myers! I"ve found my son. But he"s having a severe asthma attack. I need an ambulance! Now! Please! Send someone!"
The dispatcher said something, but Alison couldn"t hear over the roar of wind and rain. "Send an ambulance! Right now!" she cried. "I"m at the Brewer Salvage Yard on Cypress Creek Road. Please, send someone. Hurry!"
"Ma"am, we"ll get someone there as soon as possible, but the streets are flooded because of the hurricane. We"ve got a lot of emergencies this afternoon. Is there any way you can get him to help?"
"I don"t know!" She looked around wildly, panic and terror clawing at her like a ferocious animal. "I"ll try."
"Okay, I"m going to do my best to get a paramedic and an ambulance out there, okay? Is the patient breathing?"
She looked down at Kevin, felt a sob tear from her throat. "Yes, but he"s having difficulty."
"I want you to sit him up and keep his airway open. Can you do that?"
"Yes!" Alison knew the drill and already had him sitting up.
"Can you administer his medication to keep his airway open?"
She looked around wildly, spotted his backpack a few feet away and crawled over to it. She ripped open the flap and emptied the contents onto the ground. His teddy bear tumbled out. A half-eaten chocolate bar. A pair of socks. A sob escaped her when she spotted the inhaler. s.n.a.t.c.hing it up along with the s.p.a.cer, she crawled back over to her son.
Because she needed both hands, she set the phone down with the connection open. "Kevin, honey. Mommy has your medicine. I want you to open up and let me help you, okay?"
"I"m s-scared," he said, wheezing.
"Don"t be afraid, honey. Just open up for me, okay?"
Kevin"s mouth opened, and she gently inserted the s.p.a.cer. "Okay, honey, that"s good. Now close your lips around the s.p.a.cer like you always do."
He continued wheezing, a terrible sound that reminded her of a dying animal.
She expressed some of the inhaler, but most of it escaped without being inhaled because he hadn"t closed his lips. "Come on, sweetie. You can do it. Just like we practiced, okay?"
When his bluing lips sealed around the s.p.a.cer, she quickly expressed a generous amount of the inhalant, then lifted his shoulders slightly to help him take a breath. "Take a deep breath for me, honey, okay?"
Kevin closed his eyes with the effort, but Alison thought he inhaled most of the vapor. "Oh, that"s good, honey."
By the time she got back to the 911 dispatcher, she"d lost the connection. Knowing every second counted, she jammed the cell phone onto its clip and looked down at her son. She could hear him wheezing, feel his little body straining for each breath. Tears trickled from his eyes. She could see that he was afraid. The attacks were terribly frightening for him, but she could also see that it was taking every bit of his concentration just to take his next breath.
A terrible sense of helplessness surged through her that there was so little she could do to help. "I"m here, sweetheart. The ambulance is on the way, okay? You"re going to be just fine."
Holding him against her, she tried to warm him with her body. He"d lost one of his sneakers at some point and his sock was muddy and wet. She looked around, listened for the wail of the ambulance, but could hear nothing over the wind and rain.
In the back of her mind she wondered if she should try to carry him all the way back to the house, put him in the car and drive to the nearest hospital herself. He would get wet. She wasn"t sure if she could lift him over the six-foot-high chain link fence.
She didn"t know what to do.
"It shouldn"t be too long now," she said. "The ambulance is coming. And I called Drew, too, honey. He"s on his way. Just hang in there and someone will be here soon. Okay?"
But when she looked down at her son, she saw he had lapsed into unconsciousness.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN.
"Alison! Kevin! Answer me!"
After tying the seaplane to one of the cleats, Drew left the pier at a dead run. The storm seemed to be worsening by the minute. The wind tore at his clothes. Rain slashed like spears. He barely noticed either of those things. The only thing that mattered as he sprinted toward the row of defunct planes was finding the woman he loved and the little boy he"d come to think of as his own.
"Alison!"
He didn"t understand why it had taken something like this to make him realize how precious they were to him. To make him realize he"d been wrong to push them away. Alison was everything he"d ever wanted. She was generous and kind and s.e.xy as h.e.l.l. She made his heart light. Made him smile. Made him whole.
He loved her. Dear G.o.d, he loved her more than life.
The truth shattered him. Tore down everything he"d ever believed about himself. The need to hold her close, to know that she and her little boy were safe ate at him like acid. He refused to consider the possibility that he was too late. That something terrible had happened.
"Alison!" he screamed.
Drew"s heart surged when he spotted the small patch of blue beneath a vintage Cessna turbo prop. He changed direction and splashed through a deep puddle. "Alison!"
"Drew! Over here! Help us, please!"
His heart plummeted when he saw her crawl from beneath the belly of the plane with a semiconscious Kevin in tow. Her face was bone pale. Both of them were wet and muddy, but it was the stillness of the boy"s body that shook him to his core.
"He"s having an asthma attack!" she cried.
Drew crossed to her and reached for the child. It was hard to a.s.sess him in the pouring rain, but he could plainly see the bluish tinge of his lips and fingernail beds. Fear coiled around him and squeezed. But the steely resolve that he wasn"t going to lose this precious little boy bolstered him.
"Did you call nine-one-one?" he asked.
Alison nodded. "The ambulance will get here as soon as it can."
Drew lifted Kevin"s shoulders slightly to help keep his airway open. "Did you try the inhaler?"
"Twice. I"m not sure if it helped. He doesn"t seem to be responding." She touched Kevin"s face with violently shaking fingers. Tears streamed down her cheeks, but she didn"t acknowledge them. "It"s okay, sweetheart."
Turning abruptly away from him, she put her hand over her mouth as if to smother a cry. "I"m scared," she whispered.
"I"m not going to let anything happen to him." Drew glanced toward the seaplane bobbing in the lagoon twenty yards away. "I can get him to the clinic in ten minutes if we take the seaplane."
"What about the storm? The wind? Can you do it?"
He glanced down at the little boy in his arms, realized he would lay down his life for this child. "It"s a risk, but I don"t think he can wait." His eyes met hers. "It"s your call. The ride will be b.u.mpy, but I can get you there."
"I"ll do anything to save him, Drew. Anything."
Shielding the boy as much as he could against the driving rain, Drew carried him toward the plane at a jog. The plane tugged and wrenched against its moorings, but the cleats held fast. On the pier, he swung open the hatch for Alison. Once she was inside, he pa.s.sed Kevin to her, then turned to untie the moorings.
On board the plane, he quickly strapped in and started the dual engines. In the pa.s.senger cabin, he could see Alison easing Kevin into a seat, keeping him upright in an effort to ease his breathing.
"Try the inhaler again," he said.
"All right."
Whispering a prayer that he wouldn"t encounter any debris during takeoff, Drew turned the plane around and taxied away from the pier. Once he committed himself to takeoff, there was no way he would be able to stop if he spotted an obstruction in the water.
At the far end of the lagoon, Drew administered full throttle. The dual engines screamed. The floats slammed through swells and banged into small debris. The seaplane left the water like a clumsy seabird, less than a yard from a downed palm. Seeing the treetops loom dangerously close, Drew pulled back on the yoke and took the plane into a death-defying climb.
Wind lashed at the plane with a violence that had sweat popping out on the back of his neck. But he never took his eyes off the instrument panel. And he never stopped praying.
Once the plane was stable, he radioed Kendall-Tamiami Executive Airport air traffic control and told them he was going to make an emergency landing on the east/west ca.n.a.l just north of the Waterton Clinic. The controller advised against such a landing, but Drew explained that he was an EMT and had a medical emergency on board. The controller cleared him for an emergency landing, then charted the course, using a combination of coordinates and landmarks recognizable during low visibility.
In the pa.s.senger cabin, he could hear Alison speaking quietly to Kevin, trying to rouse him.
"How"s he doing?" he asked. But he could hear the boy wheezing even above the roar of the engines.
"He"s really tight," she said.