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      For Jim, the strongest and kindest man I know.

       And for the good people of National Airlines.

      ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

      The commercial airline industry is close to my heart. My husband has spent over twenty years as a pilot and executive in the business. He is now with his fourth airline—and two of them were start-ups. It is a business so competitive and unpredictable that it takes very special, very courageous people to get an airline off the ground and keep it flying.

      The people in this edgy, exciting industry are nothing short of awesome. They can vie for each other’s passengers with cutthroat enthusiasm, but when there’s an emergency or disaster, this is an industry that becomes a small town in which everyone helps everyone else. You can count on airline people.

      Needless to say, I have had the privilege to know the brightest and the best in the industry—my friends for life—so everything I needed to know to set a story against the backdrop of this fabulous industry was at my fingertips. I’ve taken a few liberties with minor details for the sake of storytelling, and the characters are all entirely fictional, but hopefully this world of a start-up airline rings true enough.

      There is one gentleman I’d like to tell you about. Michael J. Conway, president and CEO of the former National Airlines, and before that America West Airlines, is one of the most remarkable leaders I have known. I watched him take money out of his own wallet to give to a ramp worker who was waiting for a paycheck before buying his required steel-toed boots. “Buy them now,” Conway said. He encouraged a vice president to send his secretary home to take care of her desperately handicapped baby and paid her salary for whatever work she could manage at home. Mike Conway pulled strings to send a flight attendant to spend twenty-four hours with her soldier husband in Kuwait during Desert Storm, arranged free passage for veterans to Washington, D.C., for Memorial Day remembrances and was the creator of the policy of sick leave that went like this: You’re sick? We’ll pay you till you’re well, no matter how long it takes.

      But the events of 9/11, unsurprisingly, brought out his best. National Airlines, once profitable and successful, had been feeling the strain of a troubled economy and rising fuel prices. Dealing with a country terrified to fly, Mike Conway put the seats on sale for $1.00 one day a week for a month. Getting the country back in the air was the most important thing, because it was the right thing to do. He was not discouraged, nor did he change his plans when the chairmen of other commercial airlines refused to participate. And on every single one of those flights—full flights—Mike Conway and all of his corporate officers flew along, one on every flight, and thanked the people for being there, for supporting the commercial aviation industry and the United States.

      Contents

      Chapter One

      Chapter Two

      Chapter Three

      Chapter Four

      Chapter Five

      Chapter Six

      Chapter Seven

      Chapter Eight

      Chapter Nine

      Chapter Ten

      Chapter Eleven

      Chapter Twelve

      Chapter Thirteen

      Chapter Fourteen

      Chapter Fifteen

      Chapter Sixteen

      Chapter Seventeen

      Chapter Eighteen

      Chapter Nineteen

      One

      Nikki stood at the grave of her ex-husband and thought, This is the last way I expected to get custody.

      Beside her was her fourteen-year-old daughter, April, quietly weeping. On Nikki’s other side, eleven-year-old Jared stared straight ahead, stoic. Nikki could sense her father, Buck, towering behind them. He would be scowling, she knew. Buck had hated Drake Cameron and probably considered his death just one more thing Drake had screwed up. Next to April stood Nikki’s mother, and Buck’s ex-wife, Opal, seriously soaking a hanky. Tucked into the crook of her arm was her fluffy white poodle, Precious, who was not. Opal had liked Drake very much; she probably thought marrying him had been one of the few things Nikki had done right. Opal was one to appreciate money and pedigree, both of which she believed Drake had.

      Only forty-seven, Drake had appeared to be at the peak of health. Nikki couldn’t remember when he’d last had a head cold. Yet April had come home from school and found him facedown on the floor in his bathrobe, apparently dead since morning. The medical examiner’s preliminary finding was massive coronary.

      About fifty mourners gathered at the cemetery in the quickly rising heat of a late May morning in Phoenix. Most were lawyers and secretaries from the firm that had employed Drake, a tax law specialist. The only one of them Nikki knew was his secretary, Mona, who had been with him for at least ten years, long before the divorce. Nikki had had to tangle with her every time she tried to make arrangements with Drake regarding the kids. A most unpleasant woman.

      A couple of teachers from April’s school had also come, as well as Jared’s principal and one of the soccer coaches. A small knot of teenagers—April’s friends—stood slightly off to one side, trying not to get too close to the adults.

      It was not a big crowd. Like Nikki, Drake was an only child. His parents were deceased, and his rigid, domineering nature meant he didn’t have a lot of friends. It was hard to cozy up to someone who insisted on control at any price. And then there was that business about grudges. Drake’s anger had great stamina; he could stay mad forever.

      Somewhere in the gathering were Nikki’s two closest friends, Dixie McPherson and Carlisle Bartlett. Both were flight attendants at Aries Airlines, where Nikki was a pilot. They had worked together for the past ten years, starting when the company was still fairly new and small, and over the years there had been many times they’d have been lost without one another. Like now. Although Dixie and Carlisle were both involved in serious relationships, Nikki had been on her own since the divorce. Oddly, as she looked down at the black earth that would cover her dead ex-husband,