Out of the Box 7 - Sea Change Read Online Free PDF Page A

themselves in her side of the plane, “this is Midwest 404. We are pretty much out of fuel and are going to have to try a landing soon.” She looked at Neil Ericson laboring at the controls and wondered if he was going to suffer a heart attack as well. She didn’t rule it out, based on the pasty look on the man’s face.
    There was a pause before Milwaukee tower responded. “Understood, Midwest 404. We have you on vector—what the hell was—” There was a crackle of static. “Midwest 404, are you still there?”
    Tara felt a chill run down her skin as she looked at Neil over in the pilot’s seat. The man looked stricken. It was getting to be a usual sensation for both of them. “Why wouldn’t we be, tower?”
    “Uh, sorry, Midwest 404 … saw a blip on radar moving toward you fast, thought maybe—never mind. We have you at five thousand feet, ten miles out, but your approach to runway one-zero-niner is a little off. Could you adjust and try again?”
    The frustration mingled with fear in Tara’s throat. They’d been trying for an hour now to line up properly, and Ericson couldn’t quite get the plane to do what he needed it to. “We’ll try, tower, but—”
    THUMP .
    “JESUS!” Ericson shouted, coming to his feet before he hit his head on the roof of the cockpit and slammed back down into his seat. Tara lunged for the co-pilot controls to steady the plane as Ericson came back down in his seat clutching his head, blood running down from beneath his hairline.
    “What is it?” Tara asked, wrestling hard against the controls. Disengaging the autopilot had been the start of the downward spiral. If you didn’t count the pilot having a heart attack or the first officer passing out.
    “Look!” Ericson said, his voice ten octaves higher than it had been even when it was panic soaked and exhausted a moment earlier. His finger pointed at the window, which Tara hadn’t looked out of for some time, since she was trying to talk with tower and make sense of the instrument panel in case of—
    Holy hell.
    There were two faces pressed against the front window, perched there like they’d been suction-cupped on like a Garfield cat on a minivan. Both female, both of them with hair blowing ridiculously hard in the wind. One of them, the terrified-looking one, wore the shoulder boards of a pilot, its golden tassels the same color as her hair. She was mouthing the words that Tara herself had been saying only recently, but inside her head.
    Oh shit oh shit oh shit oh please please please —
    The other looked calm and slapped a hand against the front window as her dark hair blew around her. “Is that …?” Tara blinked, staring out into the darkness above the Milwaukee skyline. “… Sienna Nealon?”
    “I think so?” Neil Ericson sounded like he’d fully crapped himself at last. He was just not up to the strain he’d been put under. “And is that a … who is that with her?”
    “It’s a pilot,” Tara said, the first breath of hope coming into her lungs.
    “Open … the … door,” Sienna Nealon said, rapping on the thick glass of the windshield, her voice inaudible.
    Tara jumped out of her seat and headed for the first exit she could find. paused, feeling scared witless, about to do something she’d never had to do before—
    Open the hatch mid-flight, five thousand feet above the world below—and save her plane from certain destruction.
    I will never fly again , Tara thought as she unlocked the hatch but did not open it, instead moving back and anchoring herself in the hallway. I will take the damned bus, even if I need to travel from Seattle to Miami. That European vacation I wanted to take? Hell, they make cruise ships for that .
    The hatch opened and the breeze blew hard into the cabin, not enough altitude difference to depressurize at this point. The lady captain was heaved in first, and Sienna Nealon came in second, wearing a dress barely hanging on by two shoulder straps.
    Sienna grabbed the hatch