“Good. Good.”
“She arranged for the bird. Come on.”
They went back to the helicopter, bending to make it under the still whirling blades, and then it took off, another pilot, not Ray, at the controls. Ray was there, though, shaking their hands and giving them headsets so they could communicate.
He picked up a radio transmitter and spoke into it. “Hello, there. I’ve got good news for you. Your boss and the lady are aboard.”
Marcia’s voice came over the radio. “Whew! That’s a relief! Welcome back! Listen, they’re going to take you to a hotel so you can all get some rest.”
“My parents?” Camilla asked. “Do they know?”
“I’ve taken care of everything. We’ll talk when you land.”
The helicopter traveled east until a short while later buildings and water came into sight. They landed on a helipad next to a small Mounties station and climbed out. A sign in front read Dartmouth, Nova Scotia.
When they got inside, no more than a few desks and uniformed police around, Mason looked at the screen of his cell phone. “I have service now. I’ll call Marcia on my cell. Are you going to call your parents?”
She glanced at her phone, also receiving service, and saw no missed voicemails or messages. Maybe they hadn’t even learned of the incident. The large handed clock by the Mounties’ desks said it was close to three. “I don’t want to worry them if they don’t actually know. Marcia said she’d taken care of everything, but I’m not sure what she meant by that. Can you ask her if she called them? That’s the only way they’d find out, I think, unless they left me a message I didn’t answer, which it doesn’t look like they did.”
She saw a ladies’ room. “I’m going to clean up for a minute. You go ahead and speak to her.”
Warm water and some paper towels under her armpits did wonders, but there was nothing she could do about her makeup, or lack thereof. She hadn’t brought that along in their survival kit of course. She thought about the long trudge through the woods, the bear, the temporary shelter. Mason had been so sweet, so protective…so hot. All she needed to survive as it turned out was her new boss.
Her lover.
She put the thought away, not sure how to deal with it just yet, and took care of some other necessary business—toilet paper was a marvelous invention, leaves not half so convenient—and emerged from the rest room a few minutes later.
Mason was over pacing by the window, still on the phone with Marcia.
“Is that all there is?” he asked into it when she was close enough to hear. “You’re sure? Maybe we should go on all the way into Halifax.”
A faint smile as he listened and then he said, “I’m just asking. Don’t get all huffy. If that’s it for tonight, then that’s it. Just text me the address so I can plug it into the GPS, and we’ll get there…what? Oh, okay I’ll tell her.”
He hung up and the faint smile became a big one. “You look a lot better,” he said.
“Thanks. I feel better.”
They stood there awkwardly and he added, “Marcia’s got us rooms for the night at the closest hotel so we can all get some rest.” He nodded over at the pilots, one of whom was answering his cell. “She’s calling them now about that and some other things. Logistics for coordinating with Halifax on getting another jet. We should be on our way tomorrow best-case scenario.”
She doubted there was a best-case scenario for her now that it was sinking in that they were back to the real world. She had a lot to think about. And she sure as hell didn’t want to get on another plane for five hours. She supposed driving to the UK was out of the question, but it was almost how she felt. She knew she had to get back up on the horse, but was glad she wasn’t facing that until she got a good night’s rest. If she never had to fly in a plane again for the rest of her life, that would be fine with her. Unfortunately, until they invented teleporting, which probably wouldn’t be less fraught with potential danger anyway, that wasn’t practical.
Of course she was probably quitting this job anyway. So why bother to go to the UK at all. Screw the two week’s notice thing. Could she drive from Nova Scotia, wherever the hell that was, back to the office so maybe she could see it, her actual office, that is, before she had to turn in her resignation and start looking for another job?
She almost forgot. “Oh, what about my parents?”
He frowned and she knew he had neglected to ask Marcia. “She didn’t say anything. Oh wait, she did say—”
One of the pilots came up. “There’s a van that’s going to take us to the hotel if we want to head out front.”