Commander instincts overriding, Zach nodded, tapping the button on his stick. "Done.
Speak to me, Bronco."
"I received a call this week from an accident review board."
Zach forced his grip to stay loose on the stick. "And?"
"When did they re-open the investigation into Lance's crash?"
"About six weeks ago." Six weeks and three days ago, to be exact. Patrick Sinclair's birthday. "What did they want to know?"
"His state of mind at the time of the crash. His performance during the months leading up to the crash. All sorts of questions I sure as hell never wanted tossed my way. We scheduled a time to talk when I get back." Bronco shifted in his seat, his restlessness impossible to miss in the confined cockpit. "Sir, what am I supposed to say?"
Zach kept his eyes trained forward. "The truth."
"That he was one of the best pilots I've ever flown with, but yeah, his concentration was shaky? That his marriage was on the rocks, so maybe he wasn't up to speed?"
Zach's fingers clenched around the stick. At least the plane didn't bobble. All the same, he had to rein himself in. He'd never been one for emotional displays. A waste of time.
Relaxing's never a waste of time, Colonel.
Julia's voice drifted through his mind like one of those whispery clouds keeping pace alongside.
Tucking the plane's nose, Zach dipped below the clouds and abandoned games. He would leave emotional displays and front-porch relaxing to free spirits like Julia. He understood what he needed to do to keep his life in order. "If that's the way it happened with Lance, then that's what you tell them."
"Even at half speed, Lance could fly circles around most of the squadron. Except I know how those boards work and they won't hear that part."
Hell, Julia wouldn't want him hearing the part about her shaky marriage. But it was his job and as Pam would have bitterly reminded him, he always did his job. "What part will they want to hear?'
"That his wife was considering walking because he'd been seeing someone else. No way in hell do I condone the mess Lance made out of his personal life, but in the air...I know in my gut that crash wasn't his fault."
Zach's gut agreed with Bronco's.
At least he thought it did. Doubts didn't come often to Zach, but he couldn't help questioning his objectivity on this one because of his attraction to a sexy pair of legs, sparkling toenails—and winsome green eyes.
"Well, Colonel? What should I say?"
The pilot in him wanted to advise Bronco to blow off the board. The commander in him knew he couldn't.
And what about the man within him? He wanted to hang Lance Sinclair out to dry for hurting Julia. For giving her all the more reason to shut out reminders of the Air Force.
As always, the commander finished in first place. "Answer their questions. You don't have to hand them Lance on a silver platter, but give them what they ask for."
Bronco's exhale echoed. "Yes, sir."
The ping of a TACAN navigational aid locking in dragged Zach's focus back to work, where he intended to keep it until he landed. Only two hundred miles to the California coast.
In the homestretch, he would see Charleston again within six hours. Zach changed radio frequencies until he had California's Travis Air Force Base Command Post on the line.
"Reach one-two-two here, requesting landing weather for 2300 Zulu time at Charleston Air Force Base."
"Roger that, Reach one-two-two." Low static buzzed until the voice returned. "Charleston weather for 2300 Zulu. Ceiling, one hundred feet. Visibility, a quarter mile.
Thunderstorms in the area for at least five hours."
Thunderstorms. The homestretch lengthened. He wouldn't see home today. Or Julia.
His hand itched on the stick, trying to convince him to press on. He'd managed to fly through worse in battle conditions.