Kennedy Stern Christian Suspense Complete Box Set (Books 1-9)

Turbulence-2-1

CHAPTER 1T minus 3 hours 57 minutes

“Thanks for the ride.” Kennedy gave Dominic an awkward smile.

He stepped forward. It would be the perfect time for a hug, but she knew better than to expect something like that. He cleared his throat. “Merry Christmas.” He glanced at Kennedy’s roommate Willow, who ran her fingers through her dyed hair. “Nice to meet you,” he said.

“Yup. Thanks.” Willow picked up her two bags without looking back and walked into Logan Airport.

Kennedy hesitated before turning away. “I better go.” She shuffled from one foot to another, hating herself for feeling as foolish as a seventh-grader at her first boy-girl dance. She glanced up.

Dominic smiled again. Over the past semester, she and the police chaplain had gone out for coffee twice, dinner once, and a picnic lunch on Boston Common, but they never used words like dating or girlfriend. Everything about Dominic was slow. Peaceful. Sometimes Kennedy wished she could be as relaxed as he was. Other times, she was certain the deceleration would drive her insane.

“Well, have a great Christmas.” He shut the trunk, and with his car effectively shielding them from any hint of physical contact, he gave one last wave. “Enjoy Alaska.”

Her roommate was already halfway to the electronic check-ins before Kennedy could catch up. Willow adjusted her braided fabric carry-on over her shoulder. “Say good-bye to lover boy?”

Kennedy unbuttoned her leather coat. “I’m kind of hungry. Let’s find our gate and then grab something to eat.”

Willow typed into her cell while she walked. “Whatever.” Her phone played a short electric guitar run. She stared at her incoming text. “Oh, my dad’s wondering if you’re a carnivore or not.”

Kennedy didn’t know how to answer. She’d never met Willow’s parents before, and as excited as she was for the chance to spend Christmas break with her roommate’s family in rural Alaska, she wasn’t sure how well she’d fit in. “How do the rest of your family eat?”

Willow scrolled down on her screen. “Dad’s a carnivore. Mom’s like me, basically vegan except we’ll have dairy if it’s from our herd. You can choose. Meat or not?”

Kennedy shrugged. “Sure. I guess.”

“All right. He’ll be glad to hear that.”

They were halfway to their terminal when the Guns N’ Roses riff sounded again. Willow stared at her screen. “Ok, now he’s asking how you feel about moose.”

Growing up, Kennedy had never paid much attention to the kind of protein on her plate. Meat meant any animal that wasn’t poultry or fish, but she was pretty sure moose had never made it on her palate before.

“I guess that’s fine.”

Willow wrinkled her nose. “I should warn you, it’s probably roadkill.”

Kennedy wasn’t sure she’d heard correctly. “Road what?”

“Roadkill. You know. Driver hits a moose, moose bites it, and nobody wants to waste that much meat.” She pouted at Kennedy’s raised eyebrows. “You’ve got a lot to learn about Alaska.”

Even though Willow was still typing into her phone, Kennedy had to hurry to keep up. “Maybe it’s best I don’t know where it’s coming from.”

Willow shrugged, but Kennedy thought she detected a smile hidden under her roommate’s rather bored expression. So far, she and Willow had enjoyed their second year together as Harvard roommates. Kennedy had gone into her sophomore year so terrified of falling behind that she actually ended up ahead. She’d finished her final paper for her Shakespeare class the week before Thanksgiving and handed in her fruit fly lab report to her biology professor a few days later. That freed up the last few weeks for her to spend extra time with Willow, who was never busy with anything unless it was memorizing lines for a play or attending theater rehearsals. The two of them had gone to the movies twice and even grabbed tickets to watch Mama Mia at the Boston Opera House as a fun way to kick off the Christmas season.

Or holiday season, as Willow and nearly everyone else on campus insisted on calling it.

The two girls found their gate and decided to kill time at a small coffee shop around the corner.

“Wait ’til you try Kaladi Brothers,” Willow told her. “It makes all the coffee from the Lower 48 taste like melted snow.”

Kennedy crinkled her nose at the comparison and breathed in the frothy steam wafting from her hot chocolate. She warmed her hands on the red and white cup, relishing the heat that coursed up her veins to her core, remembering how anxious she’d started out this semester. How terrified she’d been at the prospect of taking two lab classes at once. As it turned out, organic chemistry wasn’t nearly the nightmare she’d come to expect. Sure, it was a lot of memorization, but you’d do all right as long as you didn’t fall behind.

And if there was anything Kennedy learned at Harvard so far, it was how to stay on top of her work, no matter what was going on around her. Kidnappings, panic attacks, race riots, murder investigations — she had survived them all. And now she was about to embark on a brand new adventure in Alaska, land of ice and moose and glaciers. Willow had told her they might even get to see the aurora borealis. Kennedy had never witnessed the northern lights before and hoped they’d come out at least once on her trip.

While Willow texted, Kennedy stared around at all the people, the hustle and bustle of the crowded Logan terminal. So many people going home, visiting family, reuniting with loved ones. Last year, she’d spent Christmas break getting chased by a murderous stalker. Not the most festive way to get into the holiday spirit.

Now, her heart was as cheerful as Scrooge’s magnanimous nephew Fred. She’d made it through another semester with only one or two minor panic attacks on her record. She had every reason to expect a good report card, with all As except for a possible B-plus in organic chem lab. She’d worked hard, and now she was on her way to Alaska, which felt even more foreign than far-east China where her parents lived as missionaries.

The hot chocolate nearly burned her tongue as she took another sip.

She deserved this vacation. And she was going to enjoy every single moment of it.

CHAPTER 2T minus 2 hours 39 minutes

Kennedy and Willow boarded the plane early since they were seated in the very back row. As much as Kennedy hated the exhaustion and paranoia that came from flying in a pressurized cabin with hundreds of other germ-ridden strangers, she found planes to be some of the best places to people-watch. It was a good thing too, since for the next twelve hours, there wouldn’t be much for her to do except read, sleep, and stare at her fellow travelers.

Her pastor’s wife had given her a few books to take on her trip, missionary biographies Sandy thought she might enjoy. The Lindgrens were in the middle of a huge home remodel to give their adopted son more space and repair damages from a house fire last fall. Sandy was donating most of their books to the St. Margaret’s library or else passing them on to others, which was how Kennedy ended up with a backpack full of biographies about people like Hudson Taylor and Amy Carmichael, pioneers in the modern missions movement. She doubted it was reading her agnostic roommate would approve of, but Willow was currently obsessed with some high-def shooter game on her smartphone, so Kennedy didn’t think she’d care. Besides, Willow had spent twenty minutes flirting with a math teacher from Washington at the gate and was hoping to angle her way closer to him for at least some of the flight.

Kennedy was in the aisle, which gave her a clear view of the passengers as they boarded: A short, white-haired woman with spectacles that made her look like she should be in a tree baking cookies with the Keebler elves. Ray, the twenty-something teacher who flung a charming albeit somewhat awkward grin Willow’s way when he spotted her on the plane. A fat, middle-aged man in an orange Hawaiian shirt gripping the arm of a sullen-looking teenager. Her shorts might have been appropriate on a sunny beach but certainly not in the chill of Boston in December, and her Bon Jovi T-shirt was so faded it might have been as old as the band itself.

Many of the travelers appeared to be flying solo, a miscellaneous group ranging from single men in flannels and jeans all the way up to business women in heels, hose, and mercilessly pressed skirt suits. A balding man in Carhartt pants sat across from a younger one with an SVSU sweatshirt. Kennedy tried to figure out what the initials stood for.

Interspersed amongst the single travelers were a few families. A couple with four kids, none of them older than Kennedy had been when her family first moved to China, made their way toward the back of the cabin.

“I wonder if they know what century we’re in,” Willow muttered, raising her eyebrow at the mom’s head scarf and the long denim skirts the girls wore.

Kennedy tried not to stare. They certainly weren’t the type of family she was used to seeing around Cambridge. The mother sat across from Kennedy with two preschool-aged kids, a boy and girl, while the older daughters sat in the row ahead with their father, whose jet black beard reached to his shoulders.

“I didn’t think the Amish were allowed to fly,” Willow mumbled.

Kennedy couldn’t tell if her roommate was joking or not. All the information she knew about the Amish came from her mom’s love affair with historical romance, a genre Kennedy avoided as a rule whenever possible. Once a month or so back home, she had to sit with her mom and watch a sappy historical movie, usually about swooning heroines and sensitive heroes that more often than not made Kennedy want to barf. Some of the films were set in Amish communities. Others were on homesteads in the 1800s. It was hard for Kennedy to keep them separate in her mind.

“Actually, they’re probably Mennonite,” Willow finally decided. “Oh, well. At least the kids won’t be too bratty and scream the whole flight. Spare the rod, all that junk.”

Kennedy pried her eyes away to give the family a small semblance of privacy. She wondered if the children were self-conscious looking so different than everyone else. Did they care? Or were they so used to things being the way they were it didn’t matter?

A rustic-looking passenger in a Seattle Seahawks hoodie plopped into the row directly in front of Willow and Kennedy. The girls wrinkled their noses at each other at the overwhelming stink of body odor and cigarettes. Willow reached into the braided bag under her seat and pulled out two air purifier necklaces she’d purchased for their flight. She handed one to Kennedy, and they both slipped the small gadgets over their heads. If there was one thing Kennedy and Willow shared, it was their desire to breathe germless, stench-free air.

Kennedy unzipped her backpack. She was in the middle of a biography about Gladys Aylward, a London parlor maid who ended up traveling to China as a missionary. When war broke out with Japan, she led over a hundred orphan children to safety. The story was mesmerizing, exciting enough to turn into a major Blockbuster success. It would sure beat those farm romances her mom watched. Kennedy only had five or six chapters left. She could probably finish it by takeoff if she jumped right in, but she waited, relishing the fact that she had absolutely no reason to rush. The plane would touch down in Detroit in two and a half hours, let off a few passengers, take a few others on, and then it was a ten-hour ride to Anchorage. Besides calling her parents when she landed, she had absolutely nothing on her to-do list. She could read during the entire flight if she wanted to, or sleep, or try to figure out Willow’s silly shooter game in two-player mode. For the first time in four months, she had no lab write-ups, no research papers, no book assignments, nothing at all to worry about. She’d even promised herself not to jump ahead for her literature classes next semester. The only classic she had with her was A Christmas Carol, which hardly counted since she read it every December anyway. This break was all about relaxing. She still didn’t know what to expect from Willow’s family way out in rural Alaska, but she was ready for an adventure — an adventure she couldn’t enjoy if she burdened herself with tons of assignments and self-imposed deadlines.