Chapter 29: Family Planning

32,000 feet over the San Joaquin Valley, California

March, 13, 2005

Jake settled back into the left seat and let the Avanti do what it did best—fly itself with more precision than most human beings could muster on their best day. FL320, smooth air, nothing but blue above him and the whole damn state of California crawling out beneath his feet. He was southwest of Fresno now; the Sierra Nevadas already fading behind him. Below, the farmland was waking up for spring—broad rectangles of green and brown and pale white stretching to the horizon. At thirty-two thousand feet he couldn’t see blossoms or petals, just the clean geometry of orchards and fields laid out like a quilt. Pretty, in that “I’m really high up and not breathing any of that pollen” way.

It was ... quiet. Too quiet. He wasn’t used to that. Usually Laura would be next to him, or Celia, or Caydee peppering him with enthusiastic questions about everything from air speed calculations to what kind of clouds those were to what color should we paint the baseboards in the guest rooms during the upgrade. Today it was just him and the airplane. He didn’t mind that—hell, sometimes solitude at altitude was the only time he felt like a functional adult—but still. It left his brain room to wander.

He wasn’t riddled with worry about Laura, but he wasn’t entirely Zen either. She was flying solo in the Mooney somewhere ahead of him, learning a new airplane on the fly—because in true Kingsley fashion, the best time to pick up a new machine was apparently “on the way to the party.” She was green, sure, but she wasn’t stupid. And she wasn’t unskilled. She had more hours in the Avanti off the logbook sitting right seat beside him than she had in her actual logbook. She flew clean. She listened. She didn’t overcontrol. She didn’t panic. She just ... did it.

He trusted her.

He just didn’t trust the universe.

His eyes swept the sky automatically—reflex old as his pilot certificate. Nothing. No traffic climbing or descending, just airliners in front of him, to the left of him, to the right of him, crossing him. All at different altitudes and at speeds that would ensure their paths never crossed Jake’s or each other’s. Afternoon haze muted everything below, and the top of the Coast Range was still a ways off.

A voice crackled in his headset. “Avanti Three-Five-Xray-Victor, contact Oakland Center on one-three-two point six-five.”

Still ZOA. Different sector. It was about time to begin bringing the beast back to earth.

Jake thumbed the PTT. “Over to one-three-two six-five, Three-Five-Xray-Victor.”

He pushed a button on the flight computer and it automatically changed the frequency for him. He checked in. “Oakland Center, Avanti Three-Five-Xray-Victor, flight level three-two-zero. IFR to KSBP.”

She already knew this, of course. They had him on the handoff feed long before he keyed up. She knew every line of his flight plan if she cared to look.

“Three-Five-Xray-Victor, Oakland Center, roger. Descend and maintain flight level one-eight-zero.”

“Down to one-eight-zero, Three-Five-Xray-Victor.”

He dialed 18,000 into the altitude select. The airplane thought about it for a second—just long enough to seem smug—then brought the power back and tipped its nose over into a three-thousand-foot-per-minute descent. Jake turned the autothrottle dial back to 275 knots indicated. Smooth as butter. No complaints.

And then, because descending through the teens was the perfect time for a little avionics voyeurism, he flipped his attention to the moving map.

God, he loved that thing.

It had been part of the big upgrade six months earlier, when he’d dropped the plane off at the Avanti shop in Denver for its major inspection. They’d torn the aircraft open like a biology-lab frog and spent weeks rooting around inside it. Since they already had half the panel gutted and the nose cone off, he’d figured, why not drop a small fortune into the newest, sexiest avionics he could legally bolt into a 1993 airframe?

And by “small fortune” he meant a number Jill had described as “verging on fiscal sociopathy.”

She hadn’t been happy. Not when she saw the cost of the major inspection itself, and definitely not when she noticed the avionics invoice sitting right underneath it. The major inspection and teardown had been a hundred and twenty-five grand. The avionics upgrade alone had been more than two hundred thousand dollars.

She’d stared at him over her glasses like he’d handed her a bill for a cocaine-powered space laser.

“Were you no longer able to fly the plane with the old system?” she’d asked, voice drained of life.

“No,” he’d admitted. “But the new system is badass.”

“Badass? You spent two hundred thousand dollars on something just because it’s badass?”

“It has a moving map and everything,” he’d replied.

He’d said it like a kid showing off a new toy firetruck. Jill had needed a full three seconds to decide whether she was actually going to kill him and by which method she had readily on hand.

The irony, of course, was that the same massive inspection and expensive avionics upgrade had somehow failed to reveal the one non-redundant component—the tiny bleed-air mix valve—that was quietly losing its will to live. The Denver techs had poked, prodded, tested, and blessed every system on the aircraft. And that valve had sat there like a perfect little suicide bomber, waiting for its chance.

Jake exhaled through his nose, shook off the thought, and zoomed the map out. Moving map or not, the universe still liked to keep him humble.

His altitude tape wound steadily downward, the bright little magenta bug marching toward eighteen thousand. He let his eyes sweep the panel again—habit now, disciplined and automatic. Ever since the depressurization event, one extra item had joined his mental scan cycle.

Cabin altitude.

He hadn’t been neurotic about it before. Now he checked it the way a man checks a suspicious mole—casually but with an underlying “don’t you dare.”

Eight thousand feet. Rock steady. No climb. No wobble. No surprises.

Good.

He eased back into the seat. The descent was smooth, barely a shiver in the controls. He let his attention drift back to the Avidyne, the moving map painting the air around him in symbols and data tags, a digital god’s-eye view of the next thirty miles.

Traffic everywhere.

Southwest 791—twenty-two miles ahead, eight thousand feet above, southbound. Probably coming out of Oakland or Sacramento. American 220—sliding east to west, fourteen miles off his nose, three thousand feet higher. A UPS freighter lumbering north, empty or damn near it this time of day, its groundspeed way higher than its size suggested. A King Air chugging along ten miles to his right, 2,500 feet below, minding its own business.

He couldn’t tell where any of them had come from or where they were going. Couldn’t even tell exactly what kind of planes they were—just transponder squawks, altitude deltas, and little arrows showing whether they were climbing, descending, or holding steady. And he could only see them if they were within nine thousand vertical feet of him—anything higher or lower simply didn’t exist on his screen.

He tapped the range knob with a thumb, widening the view. No sign of the Mooney yet.

Any minute now.

Laura had left Reno forty minutes before he had—enough of a head start that she’d felt bold enough to kiss him at the Mooney’s wing and toss a cocky, “Race you home,” over her shoulder before climbing in.

Cute. Doomed, but cute.

If she’d had an hour head start, she’d already be in the pattern at SLO, probably on final approach with her gear down. But forty minutes? Against the Avanti? No chance. She should be somewhere down there ahead of him, same general track, poking along at twelve and a half thousand in her rented machine, hauling ass by Mooney standards but still very much a slow-poke compared to the Avanti.

He wasn’t worried—well, not worried-worried—but he’d be lying if he said he didn’t want to see her pop up on this map. It would confirm she was where she should be. It would be a little reassurance that the universe hadn’t pulled any weird shit in the last forty minutes.

But mostly?

It would be fuckin’ cool.

He scanned again. Empty. Just airliners, cargo haulers, and a King Air that clearly needed to go faster.

“Come on, baby,” he murmured to the map. “Let’s see that class ass of yours.”

He never actually saw the class ass but two minutes later, just when he passed through FL215, a new blip appeared on the map.

A small white diamond, steady, level, moving southwest on the same basic heading as Jake.

Next to it, the tag populated:

MOONEY

-85

→

That was it. No tail number. No name. No helpful “hey Jake, it’s your old lady.” Just the cold, minimal language of 2004-era Mode S traffic.

MOONEY meant the transponder knew the airframe class—light single, type-coded.
-85 meant the target was 8,500 feet below him. The little horizontal arrow meant level flight, not climbing or descending.

And the fact that it was doing 170-ish knots on exactly the course he expected?

Yeah. That was her.

“There you are...” Jake murmured, a grin tugging at his mouth.

He zoomed the map in one click. The diamond jumped slightly closer, inching along its magenta course line like a low-flying ant, blissfully unaware a cheetah was about to smoke past above it.

He checked her relative position: Twenty-two miles ahead. Almost precisely where he’d estimated her to be.

“Hey, baby,” he said to the screen, like she could hear him. “You’re lookin’ good down there.”

He watched the numbers update—unhurried, steady.

The Mooney’s groundspeed wobbled between 178 and 183 knots, exactly what it should be at 12,500 feet on a cool March afternoon.

For the first time since takeoff, he felt something settle in his chest. Not relief—he hadn’t truly doubted she’d be fine—but a kind of satisfying click. Like the sky putting all its puzzle pieces where they belonged.

Now the game could begin.

He nudged the range out again, widening the view. The Avanti’s symbol sat near the top of the screen, descending, closing the gap fast.

“Forty-minute head start,” he said softly. “And you’re still mine.”

The closure rate ticked up. The distance number began to unwind. Twenty miles. Nineteen. Eighteen. He looked down below but caught no sign of her against the terrain.

Jake stretched his legs out, settling deeper in the seat, utterly content.

There was nothing quite like overtaking your wife at 320 knots while she was out joyriding in a Mooney.

The universe didn’t give him nearly enough moments like this.

He glanced outside again, letting his eyes drift to the higher flight levels above the windshield’s upper rim. A few of the airliners he’d seen on the map—Southwest, American, that UPS freighter—were carving thin, chalky contrails across the blue. Short-lived ones. The kind that formed clean, feathered out within a few minutes, and vanished like they’d never existed.

He was lower now, but not by much. Twenty-one thousand feet, slipping toward twenty. Plenty cold up here. Plenty dry. If they were leaving contrails, odds were good the Avanti had been painting its own white scar across the sky just a few minutes earlier. Probably still was, at least until he got down around eighteen thousand or so.

He couldn’t check. No rearview mirror in the Avanti. No way to see that far behind even if there were.

But he liked the idea.

He liked knowing Laura might be glancing up every so often, keeping half an eye out for him the way he’d been looking for her. He liked imagining her spotting a clean white contrail spearing southwest in her general direction and thinking: Yep. That expanding plume of aircraft flatulence is mine.

The thought warmed him in a way nothing else at altitude ever did.

Because that meant she knew. She knew he was up here. She knew he was catching her. She knew he was going to land first now.

Which means I fucking won, he thought smugly, settling one hand on his thigh and letting the grin widen across his face.

Neener-neener, suck my wiener.

Jake wrestled the tug forward, pushing the Avanti’s nosewheel into its groove like he’d done hundreds of times before. The sun was dropping toward the hills, the breeze coming off the ocean cool and clean, and the hangar smelled like home—Jet A, metal, and the faint citrus funk of the cleaning fluid Westin insisted they use even though he never set foot in here.

The Avanti rolled in smooth, centered on the stripe, perfect. He killed the tug, stepped down, stretched his back, and finally heard footsteps on the asphalt behind him.

Laura strolled up, flight bag over her shoulder, hair wind-ruffled from the walk across the apron. She didn’t look tired. She looked ... charged. Almost glowing.

Jake raised an eyebrow. “What took you so fuckin’ long?”

She didn’t miss a beat. “Shut your pie hole.”

He smirked. “Well hello to you too, mamacita.”

“You cheated,” she declared, jabbing a finger at him like she was cross-examining a hostile witness.

“Did I?” Jake asked, leaning against the tug. “How exactly does one cheat at racing airplanes?”

“Oh, don’t play dumb with me, Kingsley.” She dropped her flight bag with a thud. “The FAA, Oakland Center, and the entire European aircraft manufacturing cartel conspired to manipulate the air currents in your favor.”

Jake blinked. “The entire cartel?”

“Every last one of them,” she said gravely. “But especially Piaggio. Shady Italian bastards.”

“Is that so?”

“It is so,” she insisted. “And don’t think I didn’t see what the fuel guys were doing at Reno.”

Jake snorted. “The fuel guys?”

“Oh yeah,” she said, stepping closer. “They delayed me on purpose. ‘Hey, Teach, want a cigarette?’” She mimicked the hand gesture. “‘Want a hit off this joint of homegrown shit?’ Want to have a couple of beers with us? Complete setup. Took at least six minutes off my lead.”

“Six whole minutes?”

“At least six,” she said. “Possibly seven. Maybe eight.”

Jake chuckled. “Well, damn. An international conspiracy and college frat-boy FBO guys. You never stood a chance.”

She rolled her eyes, but her smile was sneaking through now, soft and pleased. He stepped toward her. She stepped toward him. Their arms slid around each other without effort.