then I’ll be down.”
Her mother eyed her for several more seconds and then gripped Sidney in
a massive hug, her small frame shaking. When she got in the car, her
round face was smeared with tears.
Sidney watched the car pull out of the driveway. She stared at the
backseat where her daughter clutched her beloved stuffed bear, a thumb
stuck firmly in her small mouth. In a few moments the car turned the
corner and they were gone.
With the slow, unsteady motions of an elderly woman, Sidney walked back
to her house. A thought suddenly struck her. With renewed energy, she
rushed toward the house.
Inside, she dialed information for the Los Angeles area and obtained the
number for Allege raPort Technology. Because of the time difference,
she had to wait to call. The hours went by with agonizing slowness. As
she punched in the number, she wondered why they hadn’t called when
Jason had not shown up. There had been no messages from them on the
answering machine. That fact should have prepared her for Allege
raPort’s response, but she wasn’t.
After speaking with three different people at the company, she hung up
the phone and stared numbly at the kitchen wall. Jason had not been
offered a vice presidency with Allege raPort. In fact, they had never
heard of him. Sidney abruptly sat down on the floor, drew her knees up
to her chest and wept uncontrollably. All of the suspicions she had
experienced earlier swarmed back; the swiftness of their return
threatened to dissolve her remaining ties to reality. She pulled
herself up and ducked her head into the kitchen sink. The cold water
partially revived her. She stumbled over to the table, where she
covered her face in her hands. Jason had lied to her. That was
indisputable now. Jason was dead. That, also, was incontrovertible.
And, apparently, she would never know the truth. It was with that last
thought that she finally stopped crying and looked out the window into
the backyard. She and Jason had planted flowers, bushes and trees over
the last two years. Working together toward a common goal: They had
conducted much of their married lives along that same theme. And
despite all the uncertainty she was feeling right now, one truth
remained sacred to her. Jason loved her and Amy.
Whatever had compelled him to lie to her, to climb aboard a doomed plane
instead of remaining safely at home doing nothing more daring than
prepping the kitchen walls for painting, she would find out what it was.
She knew Jason’s reasons would have been completely innocent. The man
she knew intimately and loved with all her heart would have been capable
of nothing less. Since he had been senselessly ripped from her, she at
least owed it to him to track down why he had been on that plane. As
soon as she was mentally able, she would take up that pursuit with every
bit of energy she could muster.
CHAPTER TWELVE
The airplane hangar at the regional airport was small. On the walls
were rows of power tools; stacks of boxes lay all over the floor.
The darkness outside was turned into daylight inside by a ceiling full
of overhead lights. Wind rattled against the metal walls as the sleet
intensified, clanging like buckshot against the structure. The interior
of the hangar was filled with the thick, pungent smell of an assortment
of petroleum products.
On the concrete floor near the front of the hangar lay an enormous metal
object. Bent and grossly distorted, it was the remains of the right
wing of Flight 3223, with starboard engine and pylon intact. It had
landed in the middle of a densely wooded area, directly on top of a
ninety-foot-tall, hundred-year-old oak, which was split in half by the
impact. Miraculously, the jet fuel had not ignited.
Most of the payload had probably been lost when the tank and lines had
been pierced, and the tree had cushioned some of the fall. The pieces
had been removed by helicopter and brought to the hangar for
examination.
A small group of men gathered closely around the wreckage.
Their exhalations formed clouds in the unheated air; thick jackets kept