Mirror of My Soul by Joey Hill (book club recommendations .TXT) 📕

employer, but she thought this one might be more than a handful when crossed. She liked him, though. Not only liked the way he looked at M, but how he looked after her. And how M acted around him. So she figured she’d take the risk of getting fired, play dumb if M asked her why she spilled the scoop over something very few other than her staff knew about her Thursdays.

“Today’s her jump day.”

“Excuse me?”

“M’s a serious skydiver. Has a standing appointment on Thursday of every other week.”

Tyler put down the sampler, having stopped it two inches from his lips. “She jumps out of airplanes.”

“Yes. Hey.” Chloe was concerned at the look in his eye as he rose, tossed some bills on the table. “I told you that you don’t have to pay for that. Seriously. And she’s really good. There’s nothing to worry about. In fact, she does it every other Thursday because they use her video stream to help teach the classes they hold that day.”

“Where?”

When she hesitated, Tyler’s expression changed and her mouth opened before she could stop herself, a reflex of self-preservation. “Oconee Airfield.”

As he nodded and left, she shook her head. “M’s going to kill me. Kill me, then fire me.”

* * * * *

She was already in the air. The staff at the front desk encouraged him to go sit in on the advanced class that would be watching her video stream live.

113

Joey W. Hill

Tyler took a seat, nodding to the class instructor who looked as if he had served in the military. His class of six or seven students ranged in age from twenty to forty. They were mostly men, adrenaline-seekers he guessed. Only one woman, a thirty-something who looked like she was doing it to break her out of the mediocrity track. In the back near Tyler two men sat in flight suits with the airfield’s logo, indicating they were also instructors assisting in some manner with the class.

“Marguerite is truly one of our exceptional jumpers,” the instructor was saying.

“She’ll be demonstrating the Atmonauti method we’ve been going over today. In a few minutes, you’ll watch her exit.”

Tyler’s gaze turned to the wide-screen television behind them. At that moment, the screen flickered and they had a picture of the inside of the plane, the camera holder obviously moving to the open doorway.

The camera tilted and Tyler blinked, his stomach dropping at the free-fall effect of seeing the ground thousands of feet below and the tips of the cameraman’s shoes as he stepped on the small platform just outside the door.

“Now the difference with Atmonauti is you’re flying at about a thirty degree angle to the horizon and you can vary that about fifteen degrees in either direction. You’re looking for a certain zone and wanting to hold it. You control the speed with your legs, move them wider to slow down, arrow them together to go faster. You can fly more efficiently and do more things because you’re working with the airflow.” The instructor went to the chalkboard where he’d diagrammed stick figures, angles and figures on velocity and ground covered. “She’ll be going a hundred miles an hour in the right heading. You can go slower with this method, prolong your dive. She’ll go about 1.5

miles out and then use her chute to bring her back to the DZ, the Drop Zone.” He glanced toward Tyler, acknowledging his presence and apparently taking him for a potential new diver auditing the class.

When hell freezes over, Tyler thought with grim humor. On several missions he’d been forced to jump out of plane, in such less than ideal circumstances that it had been added to the list of things he would never do if he had any kind of choice. Jump out of an airplane, cut off his genitals with a rusty knife…

Marguerite was at the opening in a white diving suit that covered her from head to toe, her body clearly defined, smooth and sleek as a seal. Her goggles were down, but he’d know those soft lips anywhere, the way she tilted her head, apparently listening to something the cameraman was saying to her. She nodded, reached out, clasped his hand. Drew back, adjusted her goggles and then leaped.

Tyler’s chair scraped as he stood up, unable to stop himself. Fortunately, the instructor and class were too riveted on the screen to notice his involuntary response.

“She chose a forward exit. Notice how quickly she orients herself, finds that angle we talked about. You can do a head down or a backward jump as well. In fact, she’s likely to roll in a few moments…there she goes…now she’s on her back, which is an outstanding view. Just blue sky, folks, nothing up there but you and God. The beauty of 114

Mirror of My Soul

the Atmonauti jump is, because you’re at that angle, you find silence. No noise, no air rush, no disruption…”

“Well, except for John and his camera,” an instructor near Tyler quipped.

“God, she commands the air,” one of the students said, awe in his voice.

“You don’t command the air,” the teacher reproved. “You learn to work with it, respect it. She does, on all levels. She’s part of it.”

Tyler noted the man did not take his gaze from the screen as he added, “Marguerite is poetry up there. She’s the best of Walt Whitman with some of the darkness of Edgar Allan Poe thrown in.”

“Yep.” The staffer who’d made the original quip gave the class a wink. “For a lot of guys, it’s a beautiful girl carrying a six-pack of Budweiser, but to Kyle here, it’s a woman who looks like that and is a hell of a diver. What more could he want?”

How about jaw replacement surgery if he doesn’t stop salivating over her? Tyler quelled the territorial surge. She WAS beautiful. Even the woman in the audience was riveted, as if they were all watching an angel, something not quite one