Read Emily Locke 01 - Final Approach for Free Online Page A

climbed into the plane and Scud followed close behind. He gave two hard slaps on the back of my container and said, “That’s gonna weigh the whole plane down.”
    “Shut up.”
    “I love it,” he said. “She already sounds like a wife.”
    ***
    We got eight points, or made eight separate formations, on that dive before breaking off at twenty-five hundred feet. Considering Scud was on the dive and none of us women had weight vests, I thought we did a decent job matching fall rates. At break-off, Scud held onto my wrist a beat longer than he should have. He snuck a kiss pass. Before turning and flying away to open his parachute, he kissed me. If the girls noticed, I thought we might get flack for it on the ground. Then I realized any girl who jumped with that clown got kissed.
    My ride under the Manta was pathetic. A lightweight jumper like me was nothing under its huge surface area. I buried my right toggle, pulling it fully down to my hip, even wrapping some steering line around my hand to get more pull—a maneuver that would have put me into an aggressive spiral under my Sabre—but the Manta only responded with a slow, flat turn to the right. I gazed toward the Gulf of Mexico only a few miles away, and remembered my student jumps under a Manta. Huge parachutes didn’t bother me then. I was too excited about skydiving to notice how slow they were.
    Back then, I was in college. My boyfriend broke up with me because I spent more weekends at the DZ than I spent with him. I figured it was better in the end; any man who understood me would take the whole package, parachute and all. The summer I graduated, Jack signed for the whole package.
    When Annette came along, I quit. It was bad enough missing time with her while I was working. I wouldn’t miss our weekends too. That was five years ago. Last year, I finally started jumping again. Missing my husband and daughter, I’d returned to my surrogate family at the drop zone.
    A gust pushed me forward and snapped me back to what I was doing—setting up to land. The Manta was docile when I turned into the wind. Once there, I got almost no forward penetration. Slowly, I sank toward the grassy landing field. I missed the higher speed, swooping landings I got with my own gear. When I touched down, I scooped what seemed like acres of canopy nylon into a bundle and made my way toward the hangar.
    The cameraman I’d seen earlier loafed at the picnic table with his buddy, smoking. They held their cigarettes away from my gear when I got closer.
    “Rick says you’re another space geek,” the cameraman said.
    I smiled. “Small world.” I gave my name and new-in-town story, none of which seemed news to him.
    “I’m Hank, but around here they call me Big Red. You a contractor or civil servant?”
    It certainly hadn’t taken long for the NASA lie to bite me in the ass.
    If I answered contractor I feared he would ask which one, so I told him I was a civil servant and tried not to sound edgy.
    “On-site, then. Which building?”
    I’d clicked past a map of the center on-line, with its myriad of buildings and roads, but I hadn’t thought to study it.
    “I was only there once, for my interview. Can’t even remember the building.” I gave him a puzzled look, not entirely fabricated, and tried to remember the pictures I’d seen. “It was kind of impersonal and bland…with hardly any windows.”
    Big Red laughed. “That’s half the buildings at the center. The place is huge.”
    I imagined so.
    Big Red’s rat-like friend watched our exchange, expressionless. I wondered if a personality waited, dormant, beneath his flesh-like exoskeleton.
    “Well, my last name’s Powell. Hank Powell. When you get settled, look me up on the Global and maybe we can meet for lunch. I’m in Building Fifteen.”
    I promised I would, and continued into the hangar, wondering what a Global was.
    ***
    Later, I made two more jumps with the same group. When Beth went home, I jumped a three-way with