“Why? From the sounds of it, folks up there haven’t been treating you too good.”
She jutted her chin. “Zlo was killing Nestor. And… someone has to give stop to him.”
Her determination was about as real as it got. But what was one woman—even one as apparently indestructible as she was—going to be able to do?
A thought occurred. “This all isn’t your fault somehow, is it?”
“No.”
But she was still headed back up there, sure as shooting. She’d get herself killed. People who could zap you with lightning weren’t people you wanted to be messing with. She’d be better off staying down here.
“Maybe you should back up a little,” he suggested. “Catch your breath. Most people would say getting hit by lightning is way above and beyond the call of duty.”
“I did not get hit. And this I must do. If Zlo is able to do these things he did today, it has to mean he has at least killed our _glavni_—our leader—and Enforcement _Brigada._” She raised her chin; her nostrils flared. “I will never be free, I will never be happy, if I leave my people in danger.”
He wouldn’t know about that. His people were only in danger so long as he was around.
“Being free is a harder thing to find than you might think.”
“Yes. But I will not ever gain it by running away.”
In his experience, life wasn’t in the habit of making things that clear cut. But he bit his tongue. “Who are your people? What are they flying around in up there?”
The glimpse he’d gotten from his cockpit had been of a legitimate _room_—plank walls and floors. And the people inside of it hadn’t exactly looked like crew. Their clothing hadn’t been familiar, but it hadn’t seemed to be any kind of uniform. That might mean they were closer to being passengers. But since when did passengers have to help with stowing the supplies?
The whole thing had seemed awful permanent. That explained her talk of it being “home” and the fact that people would be up there long enough to need burial rituals. Even still, flight and permanence didn’t exactly belong in the same sentence.
She shook her head, almost apologetically. “I cannot tell you. It is not for Groundsmen to be knowing.”
Right. He’d heard that one before. “Tell me this then—how do you figure on finding Zlo?”
She slipped a hand into her pants pocket and fisted it around something. “He will find me maybe.”
Ah, that wasn’t so good. After the airshow maybe he’d go hunting, just to satisfy his own curiosity. But right now, the last thing he or the airshow needed was a crazy madman in a cloud machine.
Truthfully, Zlo’s coming back to find Jael didn’t seem like the best thing that could happen to her either.
They looked at each other. From beyond the door, the bustle of the hospital filtered in.
His pulse beat a steady rhythm against his bruised forehead. His muscles all felt like they were starting to sag right off his bones. The excitement was almost gone, and all he was left with was a huge desire for his bedroll and someplace dry to unroll it.
She was probably wanting the exact same thing right about now. But she looked a far sight better than he felt.
He clucked. “Anybody ever tell you you’ve got some guts?”
She knit her brows and laid a hand on her stomach. “Guts?”
“Courage. Maybe a little more than your share of insanity too.” He offered a grin. “But then I’m hardly one to call the kettle black.”
The line between her eyebrows deepened.
He stood up from the door. “I’m just saying, you’re a brave and crazy person. Smart too.” Everything she’d done out there today had been calculated. She made her decisions—the right decisions, as things had turned out—and acted on them without a second thought.
For some strange reason, the image that flashed through his mind was of what Celia would have looked like if she’d been the one standing on the wings of his plane today. Part of him almost laughed. Celia had hated planes. Never wanted to go near them. Partly, she’d just been worried about her health—she was always worried about something. And partly, she’d been maybe a little jealous of them.
She’d never have been able even to dream of doing anything like Jael had just done.
He tamped the thought away. Celia’d been her own person, with her own strengths. She’d hardly been alone in not being able to count wing walking and lightning dodging amongst her foremost talents.
But Jael… There was something about her. She surely hadn’t been born for a life with her feet nailed to the ground. True, she didn’t know much of anything about anything. But she could learn. Earl himself had said she’d picked up the workings of the engine fast enough. With a little training, she might really be able to do something in the air that was worth watching.
He hauled himself up short. No, the last thing in the world he needed right now was another mouth to feed—especially a mouth belonging to someone who needed a heap of training.
Jael cocked her head and looked him up and down. “And you,” she said. “You are brave man too.” She pushed up from the bed and limped past him as he opened the door. She tossed him a half-teasing, half-knowing glance. “But not crazy.”
If that was her way of saying everything he’d seen up there in the storm wasn’t a hallucination after all, it was a sight less comforting than she probably meant it to be.
He could always pack up the Jennies and leave. But he didn’t scare that easy. Besides, where something smelled this funny, there was bound to be opportunities on the rise. He’d never been one to pass that up.
*
As it turned out, he wasn’t the only one who smelled an opportunity.
Back out on the street, people crowded around a white-suited man standing in the bed of a rusty truck. Livingstone. He was gesticulating—hat in one hand, walking stick in the other—and hollering something.
If anything, the storm would be bad publicity for the airshow, since the pilots could hardly be expected to fly if this weather persisted. As if Hitch’s stomach needed any more encouragement to be queasy.
He took Jael’s elbow and guided her over.
Matthew and J.W. stood behind the crowd.
As Hitch approached, Matthew glanced back. “Well, now, you two look a little worse for the wear.”
J.W. didn’t turn from watching Livingstone. “Don’t we all?”
“What’s the damage?” Hitch asked.
“Pretty much what you see,” Matthew said. “Downed branches, broken windows. Heard a tractor got flipped outside of town. Some woman got hit by lightning.”
Beside Hitch, Jael shifted.
Word was bound to get around, but nobody knew who she was, so if she wanted to keep it mum, she probably could. He nudged the back of her wrist as reassurance.
J.W. glanced over his shoulder and gave Jael a long glance, then he looked Hitch in the eye. “Something’s not right about all this. Storm like that, out of nowhere? And folks are talking. Lots of strange people seen in town today. Fallon Brothers and a couple other shops got robbed.”
“And you think these strangers caused the storm?”
J.W.’s gaze drifted back to Jael. Then he shrugged and faced forward again. “’Course not.”
“Well, something is going on,” Matthew said. “I heard more than one person say they saw these strangers rising into the sky, like angels on Judgment Day. After all these bodies they’ve been finding, it seems a mite too coincidental.”
Hitch cleared his throat. “I’m sure there’s a more practical explanation.”