Chapter 21: Sentinel One

Bruce's POV

At eight o'clock Friday morning I walked up to Sentinel One in the Burbank hangar with Leonard's signature in my pocket.

The blue helicopter sat on its dolly under the work lights, polished until it threw the room back at me.

A mechanic in Sutton gray stepped in front of the door.

"Mr. Donovan, Sutton never took your resignation, and you're on leave. I can't release this aircraft."

"The airframe release is signed by the chief executive," I said. "Read it."

He read it.

He read it again.

"This is dated seven fifty-eight," he said.

"The board doesn't meet until nine."

His mouth worked.

He looked at the paper, and then at the woman beside me in a Dolan Air Rescue flight suit, with her wrapped hands loose at her sides.

"Ma'am, are you..."

"Raven," Gianna said. "I'm his copilot."

"The one from the video?"

"The one from the video."

He stepped aside.

He did it quickly, and I think he was glad.

I did the walkaround with her shadowing me.

She touched the skid and the rotor mast and the new fairing over the cockpit camera, and said nothing.

When we climbed in, she slid into the right seat without being told.

I ran the checklist out loud.

Her hands hurt on the controls, but she gripped the collective anyway with the gauze showing, and I did not say a word about it.

"Sensors?" she asked.

"The thermal screen. The radar. The ridge map. They'd have shown a house on fire at four in the morning from fifteen miles out."

She looked at the dark glass of the display.

"They would have."

"They worked fine," I said. "Nobody was looking."

We lifted off at nine fifteen with the cockpit camera dark and the tape in my chest pocket.

The launch was at ten.

We had forty-five minutes, and I had a route in my head that I had never said aloud.

"Gianna," I said, over the intercom. "I want to fly over the ranch first."

She turned her head.

Keep reading free with an account. Start He Sent the Helicopter for Her Dog, So I Took Back My Wings from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.