Page 78 of The Otherworld

I rush out the door before she can badger me any more.

My heart is pounding the whole drive to the port. I rap my fingertips on the steering wheel and ignore the speed limit completely, running stop signs with no shame. When I arrive at the port, I park my Mustang outside Adam’s hangar and jump out, sprinting to the docks like I’m competing in a one-man decathlon.

I complete the preflight inspection, then cast off the moorings and push away from the dock. Scrambling up the ladder and into the cockpit, I slam the door shut behind me. Shades down, headphones on. Propeller spinning, spinning. Come on, warm the hell up. My eyes dart over my checklist as I go through the pre-takeoff motions.

Once the engine is warmed up and purring like a kitten, I power out to the broadest part of the harbor and crank up the volume on my Walkman cassette player, blasting an AC/DC tape as I reach for the throttle. Sunlit waves blur underneath me as the floats skid over the water, faster and faster and—

Takeoff.

The world shrinks below me as I climb up, up, up into the vast blue sky. My heart is hammering harder than the day of my first solo.

Only minutes until I see Adam again.

Until I see Orca, too.

As the mainland shrinks behind my wings, I glance down at my compass and check the hand-drawn map I sketched last night. Based on Adam’s coordinates, Recluse Island isn’t super far away. An easy seventeen nautical miles, lying dead center of Victoria, Port Angeles, and Whidbey.

I start dropping altitude as soon as I spot the tiny island, scouting the coastline for a good landing spot. There’s a nice-looking cove on the east side, but it’s too far away from the lighthouse, which clings to the rocky northern tip of the island like a ship’s figurehead.

No docks in sight. I should have expected that—the dad’s a hermit. I guess that’s one way to keep visitors away.

Luckily for me, the water is about as calm as it gets. I push the yoke out and glide down to make a landing. Not as graceful as Adam, but I don’t care as long as I keep my floats, well, floating. My adrenaline is still rocketing as I ease the throttle down and coast over the skin of the water, slowing to a stop parallel to the beach.

I power up to the sand and kill the engine in the shallows, then hop out and grab my rope. The water is colder than it looks, but I barely notice it—too busy trying to rein the Beaver in like a lassoed mustang. The tide is high enough for my line to reach a convenient log of driftwood half-buried in the sand. I wind the rope around the log several times and tie a knot.

“Jack!”

I spin around to face the lighthouse. Adam is standing about fifty yards away at the top of a grassy slope, his arms crossed over his chest. Grinning in the sunlight.

I run to him. Slipping on wet rocks and springing over gnarled limbs of driftwood, I race across the beach and up the hill—crashing straight into him.

He laughs and lets out a roar of pain, and that’s when I remember his broken ribs.

“Oh, shit! I’m sorry—”

Adam shakes his head, still grinning. “I’m fine.” He grabs my shoulders and pulls me into a hug.

He’s alive.

God, it hits me so hard—a rush of emotion barrels into me with the force of a tidal wave. I start crying like a wuss, clenching fistfuls of his shirt and burying my face in his neck. I’m half afraid he’ll disappear if I let go.

“I missed you, little brother,” Adam says, and I can tell by the way his voice cracks—he’s fighting tears too.

“You asshole,” I sob into his neck. “Don’t you ever put me through hell like that again, got it?”

Adam slaps my shoulder. “Got it.”

I step back to look at him, taking in the nasty bruises all over his face and arms. That resolute calm is still there in his eyes. Same old Adam.

“You look like hell,” I joke with a laugh—but he doesn’t look as bad as he could for someone who survived a plane crash. Damn superhero.

“I know,” he says. “You can thank Orca for taping me up.”

The mention of her name makes my heart rate skyrocket. I almost forgot she was here. I turn around, and there she is, standing ten feet away, smiling at me.

“Hello, Jack,” she says.

Wow.

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