now that he had some ideas, he was itching to get at it. Where the hell was Craig? Was he planning to take Hannah on a complete sightseeing tour of this ugly piece of rock or what?
Rising from the desk, he stretched and headed outside to take a look at the sky. Over in the east it wasn’t pretty at all. Frowning, he went to the office to get a weather update. On his way, even from this altitude, he could see that the Caribbean was probably pushing twenty-foot waves or higher, with heavy chop. Today would not be a good day to be at sea.
Soon enough he was looking at isobars again, noting how they had tightened up. Noting that Tropical Storm Hannah had finally pushed up to hurricane status. Hurricane hunters were posting winds near the center at over eighty miles an hour. Glancing at the clock, he saw he’d have to wait another two hours for the latest update.
Not pretty. Not terribly ugly yet, but not pretty. He sat back in his chair and plucked a fresh cigar from the humidor, tucking it between his teeth. He loved a good hurricane. He just didn’t love a bad hurricane. At this point Hannah was a minor threat in terms of the island. Folks here had been battening the hatches for this kind of stuff for a long time.
And sitting on a volcanic cone like this limited the problems of flooding. The rivers would get high, the pools and ponds would overflow, but there’d be no serious mudslides, and the water wouldn’t stay on the island long enough to cause real damage. Well, except for storm surge. That would depend on how Hannah hit and where her cyclone was strongest when she hit.
Storm surge might wipe out the casino. That almost made him grin, the vision of all those tiki huts washing away.
You’re evil, Buck, he told himself. Shouldn’t wish ill on anyone. But Bill Anstin drove him nuts, as did the mayor, especially since they were determined to turn this island into another carbon-copy Caribbean casino resort. A Vegas-type operation. Complete with has-been headliners.
Hence the poker game he had been playing last evening against Anstin. Everything of import on this island was decided by poker. So the city council (all of whom held their positions by virtue of their final positions in the last island-wide tournament) had dictated that the decision about a new casino would be decided by a tournament. Finally, after several weeks of play, it had gotten down to Anstin and Buck, heads-up. The rules at that point said the winner would be decided by best out of three heads-up matches. The idea was to reward skill over luck.
Luck. Yeah. He’d had some and then that damn woman had come roaring in over his head on a wing and barely enough gas fumes to cause a person to cough.
But if that new casino ever came to pass, Buck was determined to find a different volcano to park himself and his airport on. Too much civilization would run him off faster than an eruption.
Not that they were going to have one. Edna had been trying to conjure an eruption for five years now. The mountain failed to cooperate. Her constant alarms had not only resulted in folks on the island utterly ignoring her for crying wolf, but the entire volcanology community apparently had written her off.
At last he heard Craig’s Jeep roar up and pull to a stop beside the building. Rolling his cigar around in his mouth, Buck moseyed outside, looking for all the world as if he hadn’t felt a wisp of impatience.
One look at the contents of Craig’s Jeep transformed him.
“What the hell is all of that?”
Craig, who was just climbing out answered laconically, “Hurricane supplies.”
“Hurricane supplies? We don’t need any hurricane supplies.”
“Horace took Hannah for a ride.”
Hannah, her head suddenly popping up as she climbed out, said, “Actually, I didn’t want to be a burden.”
Buck saw Craig roll his eyes in a yeah, right sort of way. He debated whether to push the issue or let it go. He knew Horace Hanratty; the man could sell snow to Eskimos. If he smelled a valid credit card, there was no stopping him. Hannah had to be excused from the label of idiot simply because she didn’t know Horace.
Or so he tried to tell himself. He snorted and rolled his cigar over to the other side of his mouth. Finally he said, “I’ve got so much water in my cisterns that if the storm knocks out the water system in town, folks are going to be coming to me for the stuff.”
“That’s what I said,” Craig offered, stepping into what he apparently viewed as a brewing storm. “But Hannah didn’t know that. And I told her whatever we didn’t need, someone would need after the storm, if it hits.”
Buck squashed the cigar between his teeth, reminding himself that a little civility was a good thing. Sometimes. “Okay, let’s get it into the hangar. Hannah is getting wound up tight out there. We’ll be lucky if she doesn’t blow up to a Cat 4.”
“Really?” The other Hannah’s eyes widened. Caribbean green. Gawd.
“Really. Isobar lines near the eye are showing a rapid drop in pressure. This is going to be a wicked one.”
Craig spoke. “I guess this will put paid to the poker game, huh?”
“Not on your life.”
Craig gave Hannah a pitying look, but didn’t say any more.
Buck went to get the big flat-bed hand truck he sometimes used to cart engines around, and together he and Craig loaded the supplies onto it. Hannah stood to one side, her hands in her pockets. Staying out of the way. Good. The last thing he needed was her getting any part of herself in his way. Especially those hips. Or those breasts he was just now noticing.
He didn’t think he’d ever seen a better package climb out of a flight suit.
Things were stirring in him, things he preferred to be in control of, not controlled by. Feelings. Needs. Wants. Sheee-it!
Tugging the heavy cart into the hangar and tucking it out of the way proved a welcome bit of exercise for him, taming the beast within. At least he thought of it as a beast; it was the kind of thing that got him into trouble, and seemed to have a mind of its own.
Once the supplies were out of the way, Hannah-the-pilot was right there asking about her plane.
“I got some ideas,” Buck said. He took the cigar from his mouth and tossed it in a trash can. “Things that could’ve happened that your mechanic wouldn’t have known could happen…especially if the maintenance logs were doctored.”
Hannah’s face darkened. “I had a feeling.”
“Before you bought that thing?”
“After,” she said sharply, taking his question as a criticism. Which he supposed it was, however oblique. “Afterward. Do you know how few people really do all the maintenance? I would have expected to find some oversights. Just a few. But there weren’t any.”
“Well, some of us do it all, but I agree, a lot of private planes don’t get all the attention they should. Either because the owner is a cheapskate or the mechanics cut corners.”
She nodded, for once agreeing with him. “Look at the major airlines.”
“Exactly. There’s a lot of reasons people run close to the edge. Anyway, I went through the schematics
