Free Touch of Darkness by Christina Dodd Page A

about the ultralight." Because the damned thing was the best, fastest way off the island, and he might be able to get himself away without being detected, but the two of them?
    No. She was right. They would have to fly.
    "It's a two-seater, a little heavier than normal. I can get us to the mainland."
    While he broke the oath he'd made as he'd stared at Jedi's broken, tortured body. The brightest young pilot he'd ever flown with . . .
    He rubbed his chest, the spot over his sorrowful heart.
    But maybe it wasn't so bad. Every day he ached to fly, and if he refrained from taking the controls, if he held back from the ecstasy of being the pilot, perhaps he still embraced the essence of his vow.
    "There." She brushed the loose hair off his shoulders, stood back, and inspected him. "I did an okay job, although you sort of look like—" She searched her mind.
    "A pecker head?" He ran his hands over his scalp, wincing at the abrasions, but pleased to find it mostly smooth.
    "Well . . . yeah." She shivered as the wind kicked up.
    Off in the distance, he heard the roar of an airplane. He glanced up; it was a seaplane, landing on the ocean, loaded with reporters or curiosity seekers or the police. Yes, the report of the explosion had gone out.
    "Get ready to go." He put on his dry socks, loaded his backpack, donned his belt.
    She did the same. "After we land, we'll have to walk a little to rent a car—"
    "No. I've scouted out a bed-and-breakfast. Out of the way. We'll stay there tonight,"
    "But if we drive all night, we can get to Aberdeen by morning—"
    "We don't want to drive at night. We don't need headlights on a winding, empty road at night in the middle of Scotland. It's darker than the ace of clubs out there, everyone's going to be hunting us, and the first guy that finds us will either kill us or interview us repeatedly." When she would have objected, he held out his hand. "You get us off the island. I'll get us out of Scotland alive."
    She looked at his palm, reluctance clear on her face.
    She didn't want to be with him any longer than required. Yet she knew he was right.
    "I'll hold you to that." She tried to make this a business deal. She tried to shake his hand.
    Instead, he captured her, opened her fingers, stared at her palm. At the pale, sensitive skin and the lines experience and fate had carved there. "Do you realize what happened today?"
    "What?" She watched him suspiciously.
    "You and I were reborn from Mother Earth, clawing our way out of the birth canal and into precarious life." Rurik stared down at her. "Together."
    He could almost see Tasya's hackles rise. "What does that mean?"
    "I don't know, but lately I've learned one thing— omens are not to be ignored." Tenderly, he brought her palm to his lips, and kissed the pad beneath her thumb. "I suspect that, soon enough, we'll find out what it means."

Chapter 8

     
    Tasya waited until they were airborne and over the ocean before calling back, "You never fly anymore."
    Rurik didn't answer. He sat directly behind her on the tiny seat, his body warm against her backbone. During preflight and takeoff, he'd been tense and uncommunicative, and she remembered all too clearly that her research had turned up Rurik's resignation from the Air Force following the accidental death of his copilot.
    She hadn't been able to get more information than that; her inquiries had made the Air Force tight-lipped and suspicious, so she'd dropped the matter. She couldn't afford to make them mad; a woman who traveled the world taking photographs never knew when she might need military assistance.
    But obviously Rurik had suffered some trauma because, except for taking commercial airlines, he hadn't flown since.
    The motor—small, compact—hummed loudly, but the breeze blew the sound away. His weight made the ultralight handle differently. His silence made her want to help him relax. She chatted, "My instructor told me I have a real sense for flying. I don't know if he was bullshitting