The Color of a Promise (The Color of Heaven Series Book 11) by Julianne MacLean Page B

my desk. It was Gary. “We have a government plane waiting for us on the tarmac,” he said. “Grab your bag and tell the others. It’s time to go.”
    “I’m on it.”
    With all the chaos in the office, I realized I hadn’t yet called Malcolm to let him know I was leaving town. I felt guilty for a moment, for not thinking of him right away, but then I brushed that off because he rarely called me either, when things got crazy for him at work.
    Sometimes I wished it were different between us, but this was the way it was.
    At any rate, I was relieved when I called his number and it went straight to voicemail, because I didn’t have time to chat.

Chapter Nineteen

    The flight from Washington to Portland would last about ninety minutes, and Gary insisted that all members of the team try and get some sleep. He was a stickler about that and believed none of us would be any good to the investigation if we couldn’t think properly because of sleep deprivation.
    Knowing that I would have to hit the ground running, I tried to close my eyes after takeoff, but couldn’t—because despite the fact that I had conquered my fear of flying and had logged nearly 2000 hours as a pilot myself, my heart still raced whenever I felt an aircraft pick up speed on the runway and lift off the ground.
    So instead of relaxing and falling asleep, I found myself discreetly opening my laptop and slipping my headphones on to watch Jack Peterson reporting from the crash site.
    It was odd, how he always reminded me of Kyle, my first real boyfriend in college. Jack had the same dark hair and similar facial features, the same muscular build and physical charisma. He even sounded the same when he spoke.
    But that’s where the resemblance ended, because Jack Peterson was an extraordinarily intelligent man with class and sensitivity. There was something mature and worldly about him. He was the polar opposite of Kyle in every other way.
    Beauty is only skin deep. It’s the soul that matters.
    Sometimes I wondered whatever became of Kyle after graduation. Maybe he eventually grew up and stopped tipping over mail boxes. It was just college after all—a time for us to spread our wings, experiment a little, and figure out who we truly were.
    That’s what I had done. I came out of my shell and figured it out.
    Maybe one of these days, I would look Kyle up on Facebook, just out of curiosity.
    But not today. There were other more pressing matters on my mind.
    I watched Jack Peterson for the duration of the flight, and just before landing, I felt a sick knot in my belly as he spoke about a teddy bear he found in the wreckage, not far from the burned body of a young child.
    At that point, Jack paused, swallowed hard, and turned his face away from the camera. He bowed his head and exhaled sharply, cleared his throat and then collected himself, faced the camera again, and continued.
    Something in me broke apart in that moment, and I swallowed over a jagged lump of sorrow that rose in my throat.
    The female anchor at the news desk at the CNN station was sympathetic. They took him off the live feed and switched to another reporter at the Portland Head Light Museum, where a number of news vans were set up to report on the search over the water. Helicopters circled overhead, shining lights on the black ocean. Local fishermen and yachtsmen had also volunteered to aid in the search.
    I felt for Jack Peterson, because I knew exactly what it was like to work on a crash site where you had to force yourself to detach emotionally from the stressful, disturbing reality of what you were seeing—because you had a job to do. An important job.
    But every once in a while, something hit home, and it would crush you.
    I was fully aware that Jack Peterson was a man who had witnessed his own share of trauma and disaster. We’d all watched him recover from that near-fatal bombing in Afghanistan. Ever since that day, he’d become one of America’s favorite sons and a prominent host