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ALSO BY LORRAINE ADAMS

Harbor

Title Page

Dedication

For Zoe Adams

The Infinite does not burn the eyes that are lifted to him.

EMMANUEL LEVINAS

POTOMAC   SEPTEMBER

1.   WE ARE SHADOW

She heard the air. It sounded like her Mustang on the Interstate. She’d push its tat engine hard for the on-ramp. Dash would vibrate. She’d check mirrors. Trucks were there, scaring her sideways to the shoulder. She’d strain up to speed in the slow lane, flip the blinker to join the faster ones, relax into the drive, and only then would she realize the radio was a ruffle of lost words because the windshield was whistling on high. Air that loud was normal on the ground. Here in the cockpit, it was a sign.

Solar bands, raw dawn beauty, were hours away. Clouds blocked stars. Moon was gone. As for her visor, its night vision just fine on the ground, it’d frizzed out. Green light had gloomed to black. This night, Mary had no horizon.

She checked the head-up display. It said she was at thirty-five thousand feet with her nose tilted two degrees down. So what was the noise?

She toggled up attitude detection. She was pointed to ground at seven hundred miles per hour.

They couldn’t both be right. She moved the stick. Head-up stayed; attitude changed. She was an arrow straight for earth at the speed reserved for sound.

Her forgetting hands went to the grips to eject.

Some checklist came in time to save her. Gloves: she took them off. Helmet. Second was the helmet. Wait. Should she take her helmet off? She strained. Helmet was on, wasn’t it? No. Hadn’t somebody got a face sheared because the helmet was on? Off, would something she’d forgotten to batten blind her? Faceless or blind. Faceless or blind? Blind. Helmet stayed. She pulled out the oxygen, held on to her breath. Store it, store it. Into the compartment under the seat, she shoved and locked tubes. She released the survival gear in the seat kit. That would have broken her back.

She could not find the four-line release for the chute. Fingers and palms were mumbling all over the surfaces near where the release should have been. It was here. It has been here. Here. Here. She was at twenty-five thousand feet. Belts were flapping all over her chest. She hooked. Another she pulled off, couldn’t, and tied it down instead. She tightened the Koch fittings.

If she couldn’t get the four-line to deploy she would never make it. No, sometimes you make it. The odds were just bad. You could make it. Flailing, that was the thing that could kill you.

She pulled down on the grips.