She motioned forward and looked him straight in the eye. “Keep going!” The heavy pendant swung free from her blouse.
The plane still had momentum enough so that it needed hardly any coaxing to pull it back up into the air.
Jael scanned the ground, peering back at Zlo, then looking ahead.
Hitch craned his head around to see what had happened to Zlo.
Either Jael hadn’t kicked him all that hard after all—or Zlo had an iron chin. He was up and running, his ragged coat spread out behind him. He didn’t run like a man panicked—more like one who was determined to get someplace and get there in time.
Hitch scanned ahead. Nothing. He leaned sideways to see around the front cockpit.
Ahead, the cloud had dropped almost to the ground. Wind rolled off it and plastered another round of rain against his goggles.
Not good. A fog like that meant zero-zero: no visibility, no ceiling. Wind and rain only made it worse. He had to get the Jenny back on the ground and fast. He threw the stick hard to the right and pulled the plane around to head in the opposite direction. For that one moment when his momentum and direction were matched up just right with the wind, he heard Jael’s cry.
Halfway up the wing, where her weight was a little easier for him to balance, she had stopped and braced her back against the crossed guy wires. She stared toward Zlo, and once again she curled her hand around the pendant.
Hitch shot a look over his shoulder.
At the bottom of the cloud, the elevator car had emerged. It was a square metal basket, the sides open except for a cross-hatch of iron. A man, wearing a red coat and dark goggles, stood inside. The basket dropped the last few feet to the ground, then bumped back up, and dropped again. The oscillation of a cable cut swathes through the haze above it. The man in the red coat swung open one of the basket’s sides and beckoned with both hands.
Zlo had said he was going home. This must be his ride. But how had he signaled for it? Radio or something?
And what was up there to go home to? Hitch stared up at the cloud. What did that cable have at its other end?
A flash of lightning lit up the inside of the cloud. Thunder clapped immediately, loud enough to block the noise of the motor. Hitch flinched in spite of himself.
Zlo reached the basket, slammed the door behind him, and started waving his arms. The cable jerked tight, and the basket jumped off the ground so fast it nearly capsized the red-coated guy.
The eagle flew over their heads, spiraling around the cable.
Zlo peered up at the bird, then past it, to the Jenny. He tilted his head to his companion, speaking to him, then looked straight up and circled his finger in the air.
Jael’s weight on the wing shifted fast, shaking the plane.
Hitch muscled the Jenny back under control and shot Jael a glare.
She leaned toward him, over the last X of wires and shouted. Judging from the way the cords in her neck were standing out, she was bellowing with all she had. But the wind still whipped away everything but the ghost of a sound.
He rapped a fist against his helmet-covered ear. “I don’t know what you’re saying! What do you want?”
She pointed at the cloud in front of them, which either meant go there! or _don’t go there!_—one or the other.
And he’d thought they had a communication barrier before.
He shook his head.
She stopped hollering and bared her teeth, obviously frustrated. The wind howled past her, whipping her loose blouse and ripping through her short hair. The red kerchief had come off somewhere along the way. She stared at the cloud, and her eyes streamed tears into the wind.
Then suddenly, she was turning again. She swung herself under the wires, so they were at her back. Nothing lay between her and the front edge of the wing except air.
She didn’t yell this time. She just jabbed her finger at the ground.
Now she wanted him to put it down? He looked. Too many hayricks. He couldn’t land without running into one of them.
She pointed again, more insistently.
Maybe the hayrick was what she wanted. She was poised, like a diver, knees bent, shoulders forward. If he flew close enough to one of those piles of hay, she was going to jump straight into it. The trick wasn’t unheard of. He and Rick had pulled it a couple times, when they’d wanted to thrill an audience with the old “scorning a parachute” gag. But except for that plunge into the lake the other night, Jael had no experience with either jumping or planes. If she missed, he’d have another busted-up body to take to the sheriff.
Another glare flashed inside the cloud. The glow grew bigger and bigger, and then, with a static crackle, the lightning burst out. It sliced sideways across the sky, seeming to come straight at the Jenny.
Hitch jerked the stick, reflexively. It was a fool move, since he could hardly dodge a lightning bolt.
The shot of electricity crashed past him before he even finished seeing it.
That sideslip took him right over the top of a hayrick. On one side of him, the lightning started another build-up inside the cloud. On the other, Jael jumped.
The plane ripped on past the hayrick, and he swiveled around in the cockpit to see.
Hay puffed from the top of the twenty-foot mound. She’d hit it then, right in the middle. Lucky her. At the speed he was going, one hesitation would have crashed her into the ground.
In a flurry of limbs and hay, she scrambled to her feet, face raised to the clouds. She snapped her pendant free of its chain and held it up in her fist. Her mouth formed a round hole, the wind tearing away her yell.
At least she was safe—and off his wings—for now. All he had to do was put the plane down before the storm got any closer. Summer storms never lasted long around here. He and Jael could weather it out inside that hayrick. He started to face forward again.
The bolt of lightning that had been building inside the cloud streaked past his cockpit. A clap of thunder chased in its wake and rattled everything from his teeth to the instrument panel to the floorboards under his feet. The lightning zoomed straight for Jael’s upstretched hand.
A gust of wind hit the plane, and the Jenny yawed to the side.
Hitch struggled to bring it back to level. All the while, he turned his head around as far as it would go to see over his shoulder.
The lightning slammed into Jael’s upraised hand. It split around her in a blinding nimbus that, for a second, shrouded her from head to toe. The light faded out in a drizzle of sparks, and the hay at her feet burst into flames.
For one more moment, she stood there, staring in shock. The next, she dropped like she’d been brain shot and rolled down the hay mound to the ground.
The clouds let loose the rain and doused the flames.
Hitch froze, open-mouthed. That’s what that stupid pendant did?
Under his slack hand on the stick, the Jenny pitched her nose toward the ground. He twisted back around and pulled her up. In the turbulence—and now the rain—she was bouncing around like a half-deflated ball.
He did an about-face and zoomed low over where Jael had fallen.
She was out cold—or worse. She lay with her arms splayed above her head, the pendant a dull wink of metal just past her fingertips.
He’d seen people hit by lightning before. They’d all died. But it hadn’t exactly looked like she’d been hit.
He squinted back up at the cloud. The elevator had disappeared.
Zlo had done this to her. Somehow, some way or another, he had brought this storm.