Above her, the sky spread glorious blue for as far as the eye could see—except for the ominous cloud billowing up from the ground. A cloud that began to threaten her visibility as she came in close.

Nearly there now, she stole another peak at her stoic passenger, over six feet of pure heartache. “You okay?”

He took his gaze off the window to send a baleful stare her way.

Right. He still didn’t want to talk.

The smoke thickened even more. It’d been a while since her passenger had spoken. There was no sound in the cockpit except the drone of the engine. She squinted a little, as if that could help her see. No matter how many hours she had in the air, flying in conditions like this could mount tension faster than anything, and she mentally prepared for the inevitable difficult landing.

“Can you even see?” he grated out a moment later when visibility had gone down to next to nothing.

Not so much, no. But they were only a few miles out now. She could see the bright glow of the actual blaze. It was a horrifying sight, and she could hardly make out the land beneath, but she knew the layout extremely well. “Don’t worry.”

He let out a muttered response to that, but he didn’t understand. Flying was her life. Some women her age had husbands, or kids.

She had this.

Up here she controlled her destiny; up here she was free as a bird, and just as content in all this wide open space, no matter what the challenge. This would be a difficult and unwelcome challenge, but she wasn’t in over her head—yet. She made a sharp bank to the right to accommodate the stunning landscape beneath her—and for one quick moment, visibility deserted her entirely. Nothing but dark, thick, choking gray smoke in every direction. She blinked rapidly but didn’t see even a crack in the smoke. She let out a long breath and carefully checked her instruments, decreasing their altitude.

“We’re going down?”

One way or another, but, concentrating on her instruments—all she had at the moment—she didn’t answer. Still no visibility. She dropped them even lower in a last-minute attempt on her part to clear the smoke. “Damn.”

“What?”

“The wind’s picked up to thirty knots.”

“Too high?”

Well twenty would have been mildly challenging, forty would have been deadly. “Hopefully we’ll miss any crosswinds, so really, it could be worse.” Again she had to adjust their altitude, this time going higher to miss the craggy, sharp mountain she knew was there even if she couldn’t see it. The rocky turbulence threw them around for a moment but she fought for control and maintained it, barely. Even her stomach pitched.

Only a few more minutes.