The gaping portal filled with flight-suit-clad men pouring out and down the steps. They sprinted away from the craft while the fire trucks swarmed around.
An emergency? Or a part of the air-show events? Surely the crowd would be cleared for a problem with the plane. And not just any plane, but a C-17 from her old hometown. The tail art glinted, afternoon sun showcasing a blue palm tree and half-moon resembling the South Carolina state flag. No matter how far she ran, apparently her past dogged her heels.
Her fingers squeezed protectively around Kirstie's until her daughter squeaked, "Ouch, Mama, you're crunching my hand."
"Sorry, punkin seed." She smiled down, the late-spring sun beaming welcome warmth after a cold Dakota winter, bitter in more ways than one. "I guess I was caught up in the action."
"Those men don't look like they got hurt. So how come there's that amb'lence? Is there a doctor inside? Are they gonna get a shot?" Somber brown eyes peered up from behind Coke-bottle-thick glasses. "I don't like shots much."
Her daughter didn't like doctors, either, suffering a heartbreaking fear of illness and death since her father's murder in prison. Paige's heart pinched. She would do anything to bring back her daughter's smile.
Even face demons from her past by coming to an Air Force base.
"They're as healthy as Waffles's new litter of puppies. See how fast they're running?"
The three men, all her age or maybe slightly older, kept a steady pace away from the craft. She exhaled relief.
Fire trucks circled the plane as a fourth man filled the hatch. The aviator, younger than the others, thundered down the steps and made up the distance in seconds, overtaking, passing.
With a guitar case slung over his shoulder?
How incongruous, yet it broadened her smile and sprinkled relief over her fried nerves. If he'd stopped to retrieve the instrument, then surely this wasn't a real emergency situation.
Her gaze tracked the sprinting man abandoning the scene with heart-pounding athleticism.
"It's probably a part of the air-show demonstration, punkin. Or maybe they're practicing for when something really goes wrong." Too bad life didn't offer practice runs. Paige smoothed back her daughter's sweaty blond curls from her forehead. "But if you're scared, we could go look at something else."
"No, please. You promised we could see the planes. You promised. What if it rains tomorrow and we can't come back? Then you gotta work Sunday cause Uncle Vic's working Saturday and Uncle Seth hurt his ankle." Kirstie tucked her glasses back up for a better view. "And 'sides, I wanna make sure those men are okay."
"If you're sure." Easy enough to acquiesce when the small crowd blocked the exit, anyway.
"Totally sure." Kirstie stared back with wide eyes devoid of laughter.
Damn Kurt Haugen.
Damn him for dying. Damn him for the many lives he'd destroyed. Damn him most of all for stealing Kirstie's childhood joy. And while she was at it, Paige figured she deserved a good swift kick for believing in him right up to the point they'd locked his traitorous butt in jail.
A toxic mix of acid and horror scoured what little of her stomach lining remained. How could he have sold out his country by smuggling terrorist-supplied opium in his restaurant's shrimp trawlers? And how could she have missed that she and her husband were living far better than an up-and-coming restaurateur should?
Paige popped a Tums and bolstered her resolve. She was through being a gullible idiot when it came to charming men. Her daughter needed a strong mama with a good head on her shoulders, straighter than her perpetually crooked glasses.
The four men slowed, gathered, studied their aircraft, chests pumping for air. The oldest, a lumbering man, bent to brace his hands on his knees. Two others swiped their brows with a forearm.
Her gaze skipped last to the lanky guitar-carrying aviator who still stood tall, barely winded in comparison. His coal black hair reflected the sun's rays, some of the beams lingering to catch along the hint of curl in his close-cropped cut. Why couldn't she look away from him? She definitely wasn't in the market for a man now, if ever again. Kurt had singed her but good.
She frowned. Did the guy look familiar? Maybe that was what snagged her attention.
Except, she couldn't tell for certain from so far away. Maybe they all looked alike in those green flight suits.
Heaven help her if she actually knew him. It was bad enough that her husband had cultivated a couple of young service members with deep debts to help him track military-drug-surveillance flights. But then, he'd threatened others who wouldn't help him.
Coming to an Air Force base and facing so many reminders of her husband's deceit left her longing to dig deep in her purse for the whole roll of antacids. But there was precious little excitement around here to entice her child's playfulness back. The annual air show marked major goings-on in the area, right up there alongside the yearly State Fair and Rodeo.
Not that she was complaining anymore. Unlike during her teenage years, she now embraced the starkness of her home state. Nothing was hidden here. There wasn't even a respectable tree in sight for a good old-fashioned game of hide-and-seek. Definitely different from the verdant marshes of the South that had cloaked so much.
The guitar guy chose that vulnerable moment to glance her way. Dry lightning crackled overhead. Or at least she thought it did because her skin prickled, fine hairs rising with a warning that nature was about to unleash a storm.
What a ridiculously fanciful notion—and a dangerous one. Still her hand sneaked up to check the stretchy band holding back her own hair as blond as Kirstie's.