Page 102 of Sexy as Sin
A flash of white light above, and below them, corrugated blue filling her vision, bright as a jewel. The sea, meters below, but the balloon was rising fast.
She looked up. It was... on fire. Burning like a love letter held in your hand, after you lit the match. And Amanda screamed.
It only took a second, and it wasn’t a choice. She leaped to her feet, pulling Jamie with her, and shouted, “Jump!”
He stared at her, his blue eyes like marbles, looked down blindly, and pitched himself up and over the side while Willow was grabbing Amanda.
It felt like ten seconds. It was probably one. Amanda moaned, “No,” and Willow said,“Yes,”and threw her over the side. Then she threw herself after her.
Falling without a parachute. Twisting so she’d hit feet-first, so she could go in like an arrow.
Who can swim?she thought. And waited for the impact.
Brett watched the balloon lift off the ground. He raised a hand, but Willow wasn’t looking at him. She had a smile on her face that he was sure she wasn’t even aware of.
He said quietly to Dave, who’d climbed out of the car at last to watch the ascent, “She’s loving it. Why don’t I?”
“Because it’s weird,” Dave said.
Brett wasn’t sure what he meant. This had seemed like the perfect idea. A treat for Willow, who loved treats so much, and good for his business and her own. But something was making the hair rise at the back of his neck.
A few yards away, Crystal and Tom climbed into the van, and Tom backed and turned the van with its trailer attached. Dave glanced at them, then at Brett, and said, “They’ll be following along with a GPS. Somebody has to pick everybody up at the end. We could follow along behind them.”
“Good idea.” Brett had brought binoculars, but the balloon was already over a hill and out of sight. He headed to the car and climbed in. Without the cane, now, which was something. He was seeing the surgeon tomorrow. He’d felt this past week like he had his life back, and better than before.
Just not right now.
Dave bumped through the pasture behind the trailer, and Brett thought about Nourish’s books. Last week, he’d called the restaurant-supply company Willow hadn’t recognized. A man had answered, had given him information about pricing and location readily enough—“Out of a shed on the boss’s property. It’s not a shop.”
“Where?” Brett had asked.
“Surfers’ Paradise.” Which jibed with the information on the invoice.
When Brett had said he was calling from Nourish, the answers had become guarded, and when he’d asked about the order for the missing patio heaters, the man had said, “I don’t know about that. You’d have to ask the boss.”
“Can you look it up in your books?” Brett had asked.
“Above my pay grade, mate.” The accent had gone more Australian, surely: flatter, and with the vowels more drawn out. “I’ll leave a note for the boss, shall I?”
“Please,” Brett had said, but the call hadn’t come, and a second and third call and two voicemails had yielded nothing more. Once he finished his meeting this afternoon, he was taking a drive to Surfers’ Paradise with Dave and checking out “the boss’s property.” But first, he was spending some quality time with Willow. He should have figured out something they’d both enjoy doing, instead of this. Horseback riding on the not-beach, maybe.
He was sitting up front with Dave. They could see the balloon now, and the green van ahead of them, tracking behind and inland. When Brett used the binoculars, he could see the dots of heads in there. The balloon looked absolutely serene, wafting over the countryside about five hundred feet up, the rainbow stripes gorgeous in the early-morning light. It was going to be great footage, and it was only an hour. After that, Dave could drop them at his place, and Brett would get the benefit of all Willow’s excitement. Nobody did “excitement” like Willow. Just the thought of it was working him up. There’d been a lot to miss this past week.
Dave said, “I’m wondering, mate. If the bloke driving the van is married to the sheila in it, why did I see him with the other one?”
“What?” Brett asked.
Ahead of them, the green van sped up, then took a right turn onto a secondary road at speed, the trailer nearly fishtailing. Brett asked again, “What?”
Dave was frowning. “They’re coming down, looks like. This isn’t Ballina. Not even Suffolk Park. What’s that fella playing at?”
Brett could see it, too. The balloon was dropping much more quickly than it had ascended, then abruptly rising again. Dave had his foot on the gas, keeping up with the van. He said, “Bloody hell. That’s a transmission tower. They’re going to hit it.”
Brett did his best to hold the binoculars still. His heart was beating harder, but the rest of him, as always, was slowing down. Binary form. Yes/no answers. He focused in, and saw it. The flash of silver towers, the balloon lurching upward, nearly vertically. A bad moment when he thought surely it would hit the tower itself, and then tip, because that was what happened when a wicker basket hit an unmovable object at speed.
It seemed to nearly graze the top spike of the tower, but then it was past, and descending again, and Brett told himself,Breathe.
Dave took a left. The van was flying now, then Dave was slamming on the brakes as the road ended in a clump of trees.
