Airborne Emergency

For now it seemed he was getting hell.

“You’re not Vidal Santiago!”

Cassandra heard the choking words, realized she’d said them. It was a miracle she could speak at all. This had to be a nightmare. He had to be lying. This woman back there had to have made a mistake. Another victim of Vidal’s hypnotic powers.

“We can stand in this tube all morning or we can board and talk about this later.” He took her arm and she shook him off again. He sighed. “All right. Here...” He reached into his jacket’s inner pocket, produced his pass and held it up inches from her eyes. His photograph, even grimmer than reality, but him. And the name beneath it. Vidal A. Santiago.

“You can’t be Vidal Santiago. Your name is—”

“Was Arroyo Martinez—both my father’s and mother’s family names, in the Spanish tradition. I changed it.”

“How? When? Why?”

“Through legal paperwork, a few years ago. That’s how and when. As for why, I didn’t think I owed it to either my father or mother to carry their family names. Satisfied?”

He’d asked that question before, in utmost incredulity. It was her turn to be incredulous. He’d changed his name? How come her father hadn’t mentioned that? Did he even know? No, he probably didn’t. Oh, he always said Vidal kept in touch with him, always tried to make excuses for him. But here was proof that he didn’t. Her father would have known of his name change if he had. And because he didn’t, there she was, with Vidal as her boss. She was going to see him every minute of every day for the next three months!

“Oh, no, you can’t be my boss.”

“Well, I am. And, believe me, I share your horror. But the solution to this mess is all in your hands.”

“My hands? What are you talking about?”

“If you take the first flight back to Los Angeles, all this will be over.”

“Why don’t you take the first flight to—to Geneva or Dubai or any other scenic location where you usually stay?”

“Because I’m the mission leader. Without me there’d be no Jet Hospital maiden voyage.”

“And without me you’d be minus your chief surgeon and second in command.”

“I’m willing to give up the luxury of both.”

“You know you can’t. And I’m not willing to give up this mission just to make you more comfortable.”

“You’d be more comfortable, too. And you don’t have to worry about the mission. I’ll find a replacement.”

“You mean you have surgeons of my qualifications falling over themselves to volunteer for this mission?”

“Not really, but—”

“So when do you expect to get someone else? A week before the mission’s over? Or do you intend to postpone it until you do?”

“A day’s delay costs tens of thousands of dollars...”

“So there will be no postponement, will there? If I leave, you go out there short-staffed, boss.”

His neutral glance turned dark. Forbidding. She shivered and looked away, refusing to let him see how he rattled her. “So we’re trapped, aren’t we?”

A moment’s silence, then he exhaled. Without volition, her eyes went to his. They’d emptied again. When he spoke again his voice was as vacant. “Seems so. And since we are, let’s not make much out of this. It was really too silly. So, whatever you were putting me in my place for, I hope it’s out of your system now.”

He didn’t know what for? He didn’t remember? Probably. He must have had a thousand similar incidents in his life. Not that that incident had been what had driven her to lead him on. Her loathing had ceased to be personal long ago. She had endless reasons, family-related as well as professional, to despise Dr Vidal Arroyo Martinez, a.k.a. Vidal Santiago.

He didn’t wait for an answer. He just turned and walked away. In a minute, he disappeared through the door of the aircraft. Feeling stupid and very, very small all of a sudden, Cassandra followed, reality sinking in with each step.

Please. Let me wake up screaming, in a cold sweat and in my seat.

She didn’t. And wouldn’t. This was one nightmare she’d have to live through.

* * *

“Come in Dr St James,” Vidal said when she stood hovering at the door of the cockpit, his voice and his face expressionless. So, that was how it was going to be from now on, huh? She should have felt relieved, but she only ached with disappointment. Losing that fierce hunger that ate her up, made her soar with giddy gratification... “Meet Captain Harry Styles.”

Giving herself a mental shake, she shook the captain’s hand. Vidal went on. “Harry is our operations manager and the best pilot on planet earth.”

The tall blond man guffawed. “That’s right, Dr St James. And Vidal can tell no lies.”

Nice man. A few years older than Vidal, open, with loads of positive energy. Not like the debilitating electricity Vidal generated. She liked him at once. Her smile warmed, tension seeping out of her. “Cassandra, please. Dr St James is a mouthful.”

“With pleasure, Cassandra. Lovely name for a lovelier lady. My opinion of surgeons is fast changing.” Harry winked at Vidal.

Some intensity entered Vidal’s blank expression as he looked at his friend, yet there wasn’t even the shadow of a smile to answer the man’s wide grin. The Vidal she’d known hadn’t been given to smiling. Come to think of it, he hadn’t smiled at her at all so far. Not even when he’d been intent on seducing her. He’d scorched her to the bone with his blatant desire, but no smiles.

“It would have been scary if you found me lovely, Harry.” Vidal’s dry answer brought another guffaw from Harry. Vidal’s lips twisted. She couldn’t call that a smile either. “So, Cassandra, I presume you’ve met everyone?”

She shook her head. “No. I boarded the Jet after a six-hour wait in Los Angeles airport and fell asleep the moment I hit my seat. I woke up when we landed in New York then went right back to sleep the rest of the way to Madrid. I haven’t gone over the Jet either. Just studied the schematics and leafed through my job description.”

“That’s what mission leaders are for. We’ll go over everything in detail together, the technical matters as well as the mission specs.” Vidal turned to Harry. “How about introducing your flight crew to Cassandra now?”

“Sure,” Harry said, and picked up the mike.

She stopped him with a hand on his arm. “Please, no. Let me get to know them during the trip, one by one. If you line them up and fire names at me, they’ll just spill out of my other ear.”

“Sounds like a good plan.” Harry grinned at her.

“Realistic at least,” was Vidal’s dry rejoinder. “I’ve met only a few here, too. So, what would you advise, Harry? Should I brief everyone and lay down the ground rules now, or later after take-off?”

“You go ahead now. It’ll be another half-hour before take-off,” Harry said.

“Call everyone for me, then.” He turned those cool eyes on her. “After you.”

Smiling a goodbye at Harry, she preceded Vidal out of the cockpit, almost bumping into the man entering it in her haste to move away from him. Murmuring a greeting to Sean McMahon, the co-pilot she’d already met, she almost shouted for Vidal to keep away from her. But he was away now, a few footsteps from her. Yet his aura was all around her. She finally flopped into her seat, the one she’d chosen in the third row, shaking with relief at having put a few meters between them.

By now, Harry’s page had brought the flight’s medical volunteers and all other personnel flocking to their seats. Vidal stood in the left aisle, beside the huge screen facing the seating area.

He started immediately. “Good morning, everyone. For those who don’t know me, my name is Vidal Santiago. I’m your mission leader and I’m what everyone likes to call a plastic surgeon. I don’t know why—I haven’t operated on any dolls yet. I prefer the label of reconstructive surgeon, but who am I to argue with common opinion?” He paused as chuckles rose, then went on. “Before I give you a quick run-through of our mission and our facilities, let me thank each and every one of you for being here today. You could have been somewhere else making money, or at least sleeping in your own beds every night.”

He nodded to Louisa, the nurse Cassandra had spent the hours at the airport with, and she handed him a baton and nodded to a flight attendant.

The lights dimmed and the screen lit up, turning Vidal into a towering silhouette. The sight thumped in Cassandra’s chest, making it hard to breathe, to understand a word he said.

She tried harder, heard him saying, “I’m sorry for all the time you lost and the confusion over your roles and the mission’s schedule. The mess-up and the last-minute changes are all my fault, I’m afraid. But you have an idea about the mission and now I’m going to use this slide show to recap everything, make the transition from the theoretical to the practical and give you a clear overview of what this mission entails.”

He unfolded the baton to its two-foot telescoping length, rapped it onto his other palm, held it there like a principal addressing his third-graders.

“First, some boasting. No matter what other agencies tell you to the contrary, our Jet Hospital is the largest, fully equipped, self-contained airborne hospital ever built. We’re a one hundred per cent non-religious humanitarian effort and our mission is unequivocal: we’re citizens of the world and the Jet Hospital will be available to help the sick and needy of any nation.” He paused, then drawled, “Do inform me if I’m boring you to tears. My bite is worse than my bark, but, then, you’re all brave people or you wouldn’t be here in the first place. No contenders? Hmm—the kind of team I like to lead.”

A ripple of laughter echoed. Cassandra bristled. Mostly because she found her lips twitching, too. So the man had a sense of humor. When had he grown one? Or had he had it grafted?

“OK, after that back-patting we’ve all yet to earn, let’s get down to some hard facts. Louisa?” The first slide flicked on the screen. A cut-through diagram of the Jet Hospital. “I’ll be predictable and go from front to back. Behind the cockpit, the Jet has the crew transportation-educational center we’re currently in, which has a seating capacity of ninety. We’re below that number now, but as we land in our target countries and patients and local medical personnel join us on board, we might have to break out the folding beach chairs. I hope you brought your own.”

Another ripple of laughter. He didn’t wait for it to die down and went on, commenting on each slide as it came up. “These are the dental, ophthalmology, ENT—ear, nose, throat—stations. Here’s the trauma-triage area, the minor surgical-examination area, the pre-operative and recovery area with fourteen hospital beds. And last, in the back, the four surgical suites. Our facilities are state of the art, with the latest technology in diagnostic equipment, laparoscopic and arthroscopic surgical equipment and a complete pharmacy.”

“You mean we have a CT machine beneath all those covers?” Joseph Ashton, the mission’s head anesthetist, whom Cassandra had met briefly before boarding, asked.

“Give us a break, will you, Joseph? We’ve got everything, apart from CT and MRI machines— space limitations, you understand.”

“And how complete is the pharmacy?” a man she didn’t know asked.

“As complete as they come.”

Get to the important stuff, she was about to scream. She wanted this little reconnaissance over and Vidal out of her sight. And earshot.

“Are we going to talk about the mission details?” She was aware of everyone turning to look at her. She lowered her voice, injected neutrality in it. “Up until yesterday, there hasn’t been a definite itinerary. And what about the case load and distribution of responsibilities?”

He turned his eyes on her in the semi-darkness. Did they glow or was she hallucinating? Probably both.

“After Casablanca we go to Muscat, Oman; Hyderabad, India; Tashkent, Uzbekistan; and Baku, Azerbaijan. As for our case load, those have been preselected by our partnering medical facilities in each of these countries, on the basis of complexity and unavailability of proper treatment options locally. So your guess is as good as mine. Among us we do have enough expertise to handle anything they throw at us. As for responsibilities, those will have to be flexible. Each of you will still be in the position you signed on for, but I’ll work out a list of daily chores, then you will make sure everyone knows where to be and what to do on each given day.”

“Where to be? You mean in the different stations in the Jet?”

“No. To get the most done, whenever possible we’ll work in partnering hospitals and offsite clinics, even set up tents in auxiliary areas to treat medical conditions that don’t require the Jet’s facilities.”

“Is the training-teaching side of our mission still on? I heard it was off because of time constraints.”

“Then you heard wrong. We will be training local medical professionals in the latest medical and surgical procedures. Either on their turf or on ours, either by direct attendance or tele-medicine—broadcasting on-board surgeries in this miniature theater. There’ll be lectures, too, which each of you will contribute to.”

A general murmur of unease went through the audience.

“C’mon, folks. Stage fright never killed anyone. Start thinking of the most recent and effective procedures that benefit you in your specialty and write something comprehensive. Anyone needing any reference resources, we have two computers with a complete medical library.”

He waited until they settled again. “So...I expect you to get to know one another. Those I haven’t met, come later, one at a time, please, and introduce yourselves. Now, problems! When they’re medical, you report to me. If I’m unavailable, you report to Dr Cassandra St James. If it’s anything else, I advise you run to Harry, or anyone from our management team, consultants or logisticians.” He stopped, his eyes panning over the crowd. “Hi, there, Ashley.” Cassandra heard Ashley’s splutter. He moved his focus at once but Ashley’s distress didn’t end that easily. “OK— questions?”

No one said anything. What was there to say? He’d said it all.

So the man had rhythm, focus, and clarity of communication. He’d make a hell of an instructor.

He snapped the baton closed and sighed. “I see I’ve put you to sleep. Good, you’ll need it in the coming months. In fact, I advise you to grab every moment of rest you can. And don’t eat anything you don’t recognize. We don’t want any of you on our patient lists. Anyone interested in going over the Jet for real, follow me.”

The light came back on and she blinked. He passed by her seat, not even looking at her. Her every hair stood on end nevertheless. She rose, followed the line that had formed in his wake. All the women were in that line.

She gritted her teeth. His harem had already formed. The worst part was she knew why. She’d gotten a first-hand taste—and touch and scent—of his influence, hadn’t she?

But it wasn’t only that roiling inside her. Her mind was tangling over his contradictions. His multiple personalities, more like. Which was the real him? The Vidal who’d rushed to save the little boy, who was heading this most ambitious humanitarian mission? Or the Vidal who’d treated the people who loved him like dirt, who’d made a staggering fortune combining his surgical talents with the tricks he’d perfected through his years as a con artist and a thief?

CHAPTER THREE

“HAVE you made up your mind yet?”

Chocolate cake went down the wrong way. A second later one sound thump between Cassandra’s shoulder blades saved her from choking.

“Did I startle you?”

Vidal came to sit beside her and her coughing intensified, tears running down her face. “No, it’s a hobby of...mine,” she choked. “Inhaling... chocolate cake!”

Dispassionate eyes watched her until she settled down and back in her seat. “Ask a stupid question. Care to answer the one that startled you so much?”

She squinted at him, wiping her tears. “If it made sense, I would.”

“I did ask you at the end of our tour of the plane, before take-off.”

“You asked if I intended to bring anything personal, real or imagined as you put it, into our work. I already said of course not.”

“I know what your lips said, but it doesn’t seem your mind is co-operating. You’ve been close to hostile with me so far.”

She didn’t answer straight away. His accent was suddenly back. Its absence when she’d first met him had been one of the things that had thrown her off track. Although he’d been born in the United States, he’d grown up in an almost exclusively Spanish-speaking community. He’d had dodgy English until the age of fourteen and an accent until the day she’d last seen him. He didn’t any more, but now it was back again. Weird.

“Well?”

“I’ve been totally professional. And if I made a short comment or two, they were for your ears only.”

“You know what big ears people working together have. And living in such close quarters, believe me, they’ll be picking up the vibes sooner rather than later. Having their so-called leaders at odds with each other won’t be conducive to a good working environment.”

“Vibes? Not much I can do if we enter the realm of the metaphysical.”

“Just tell me this—what are you so resentful about? I’m the one you made a fool of. Just what do you have against me?”

“You really don’t know?”

“Por Dios, you’ve always been on my case, even after I got out of your life, and I’ll be damned if I know why you hate me so much. Was today payback for that day you suddenly decided I made good target practice for your budding feminine wiles?”

“I don’t hate you, Vidal. I don’t do destructive emotions. You’re not on my list of favorite people, that’s all. And, really, today had nothing to do with the incident you refer to.”

“The incident? In the singular? I seem to remember a string of disasters. Ending with me drenched in cocktail in my so-called moment of glory, with palm imprints on both my cheeks, two women calling me names I’ve yet to know the meaning of, accusing me of things I never even imagined, in front of a hundred people. And all captured on video. I even made it to some gossip column. Complete with photographs.”

She’d been sixteen and what everyone had described as wild. At least as far as extreme sports, hobbies and fashion went. And she’d been reeling with the discovery of the secret from which her parents had protected her and her siblings so well. It had been Vidal who’d told her, erasing the knight’s image she’d superimposed on his true character, rewriting history, her very memories, making her feel lost and agonizingly foolish. So she’d retaliated. Surely such a big, bad man could handle being made to look foolish, too?

She’d invited his last two discarded girlfriends to the graduation party her father had thrown for him in their home, knowing what harpies they were. And he had been there sporting his latest conquest, the girl who’d taken the state beauty-queen title from both of them. It had just been a matter of waiting for the fireworks to start. She couldn’t have anticipated they’d be so violent, though.

Things had gotten ugly, fast. But funny, too. The women had been so over the top, while Vidal had been so immovable, so unresponsive in the middle, it had turned into a farce. Her lips twitched at the memory.

An intimidating sable eyebrow rose in irony. “So you’re still enjoying the joke. The old, or the new? Both, no doubt. To be expected really. You were always a pain in the—”

“Is this any way to talk to an old friend?” She couldn’t hold back. A chuckle escaped.

“You were right the first time, Cassandra. We were never friends.” His voice was as bored as his eyes. “We stayed in the same house and you harassed me from the first day I set foot there until I stopped giving you the chance.”

Stayed in the same house? That was how he viewed living in her home, her parents equally his, till he’d walked out of their lives, never to look back? And “harassed” him? That was how he viewed her misguided hero-worship? The man was as cold as they came.

“Then I went and gave you another chance today.” He leaned closer. Not improper close, but she still felt trapped.

Trapped. Like that night of the party. He’d chased her to her father’s study, trapped her against the wall, his muscular arms on both sides of her head, the bars of a prison she’d been desperate to escape—desperate never to escape. He’d stood there above her, the cocktail still dripping from his hair and glasses, his fury lashing her, everything about him making her weak, dizzy, scared—elated. She’d stared at him, trying to reconcile the image she’d held of him all her life with what she’d discovered. He’d stared down at her until time had warped and stopped, then he’d sworn in Spanish and exploded out of the room, out of the house. He’d never returned.

“Fourteen years pass and the moment I see you again you play another dirty trick on me. Tell me, Cassandra, is this the only way you get your kicks?”

“Believe it or not, you’re the only one I ever played those tricks on.”

By way of explanation or peace-offering, that stank.

Those impressive eyebrows rose again, made it clear he agreed with her thoughts. “Oh, I’m honored. But just in case you feel tempted to pull this kind of trick on someone else, remember—most men wouldn’t just let it go.”

Was he telling her he would? She met his steel eyes. He was. She noticed something else, which had been niggling at her since she’d first laid eyes on him again. Beyond the magnificent looks and the innate power, there was that...depletion, that dimming. He’d said he wasn’t back to normal, had been coughing, mentioned resistant strains. He’d been sick, seriously so.

Suddenly the agitated resentment that had had her in its grip since she’d realized his new superior position in her life evaporated. She felt sick with the drain, sick at her behavior. Her behavior had been inexcusable, even before she’d known the full truth. She was being childish now.

It was pure defense. Instinctive, unreasoning. His very nearness fried her self-restraint. Memories of his lips tapping her lifeforce, drinking deep, buzzed in a loop in her mind, scrambling her logic pathways. And she’d thought she’d been laying a trap for Vidal. He’d climbed out unscathed.

What had she been thinking? Why had she done it? To punish him—for what? Betraying every ethic and value and tie she held dear? Using his gifts not to benefit humanity but to amass wealth and power? Being indiscriminately promiscuous? Hurting her father, the man who’d snatched him out of hell? Or was it for his continuing hold over her father’s heart and, worse, his faith, when Vidal had never done anything to earn them, let alone keep them?

Well, here he was, seemingly doing his bit for humanity. His sex life had nothing to do with her. And her father was capable of settling his own scores, and free to love and believe in anyone he pleased—her approval wasn’t required.

No matter what she thought of Vidal, personally or professionally, leading him on had been stupid, not to mention bitchy. If she’d had time to think about it, if she’d been capable of one clear and rational thought back then, she would have probably backed off.

No matter now. It was time to start again. At least try to.

He was getting up, ending this.

“Vidal...” She grabbed his arm. His sculpted, hair-roughened arm. He sagged back heavily and she jerked her hand away.

Stop being ridiculous. Just get this over with.

She took a deep breath. “I was out of line. I should have told you who I was the moment I recognized you. Believe it or not, I didn’t recognize you at first either.”

His eyes narrowed on her face. This must be how it felt to be hooked up to a lie detector. “You didn’t?” She shook her head, mute. His probing deepened. “Then when did you?”