Wolf Tracks - Bianca D'Arc Page 0,28
in the pilot’s seat. “Just showing Helen around a bit,” she said brightly. Jim made way as Leslie moved past him, and Helen followed suit. Only, Jim didn’t really move out of the doorway, and Helen found herself brushing up against his tall, muscular body.
Was it getting hot in here?
She sidled past him, and the three of them exited the plane to stand on the hangar floor. Leslie looked at Jim expectantly.
“Did you do your walk-around yet?” she prompted him.
Jim shook his head. “Doing it now, captain.” He gave Leslie a jaunty salute before jogging around to the other side of the plane to begin some kind of detailed inspection of the wings and other moving parts.
Leslie smiled after him. “Don’t take this amiss. I’ve never met him before, but I can tell he’s one of the good ones,” Leslie said, turning the power of her golden gaze back on Helen. “Plus, my dad has told me stories about Arch Hanson all my life. If Jim is anything like his uncle, he’s hell on wheels. You hang onto him, if you can, Helen, and you won’t ever be unhappy.”
Ending those startling words with a wink, Leslie went to join Jim at the nose of the plane. Helen watched the two shifters, both tall and muscular, and so in tune with everything around them. Helen had never really been that way. She’d always felt a bit like a square peg in a round hole around her family. All of them, except Kiki, of course, could do incredible magic while Helen was just a healer. None of them held it against her, but they’d often left her and Kiki in the dust when they’d been off practicing how to conjure illusions and other fun stuff that Helen just couldn’t do. Her power didn’t work that way.
Leslie waved to Helen as she left, and Jim finished his walk-around. He motioned for her to precede him into the plane, and she hopped up the stairs into the cabin. All the stuff she’d brought on board was already stowed, and Jim didn’t have anything much with him, just a small bag he’d taken from the back of his truck that he placed behind the pilot’s chair as he went into the cockpit.
He started flipping switches and put on a headset. “Why don’t you keep me company up here for a bit?” he suggested.
Helen joined him, sitting in the co-pilot’s seat. “I’ve never been up front in a plane before. It’s pretty cool.”
“It’s about to get even cooler,” he told her with a grin. “Here, put on this headset so you can listen in on the radio.” Properly outfitted, he plugged her in, and she could hear some people talking about runways and wind speeds. “There’s a charter inbound,” Jim told her. “That’s the tower talking to them on approach. We’ll taxi out to the runway once they touch down, and be in the air before they even stop rolling.”
The great doors to the hangar were standing open. Leslie stood at one corner, manning the controls of the power-assisted doors. She made some hand signals, and Jim responded. A moment later, Leslie was moving toward them, pushing a lawn mower shaped thing.
“She’ll move us out of the hangar so we don’t have to get the props spinning in here,” Jim explained.
“What is that thing?” Helen asked as Leslie disappeared beneath the nose of the airplane.
“It’s a motorized tug. Basically, powered wheels with a handle that’s strong enough to pull the plane out of the hangar,” Jim explained.
Helen felt a bump, and then the plane, started moving forward, out of the hangar. Leslie was walking backward, holding the handle of the tug, directing it. She moved the plane out of the large bay doors and onto the strip of tarmac in front, turning it to position it just so.
“She’s moving us into a position so that when I spin up the props, we won’t kick a few pounds of dust and debris into the clean hangar,” Jim said with a smile, waving at Leslie as she walked away with the tug apparatus behind her. “Now, for the fun part.” Jim hit some switches, and the propellers sputtered to life, one at a time.
Helen had never been in such a small plane, and the noise of the propellers surprised her. It was loud!
Jim started the plane rolling toward the big white lines painted at the end of the runway. As Jim positioned their plane at the end of