LITMIR.BIZ

      PROLOGUE

       THIS day just kept getting better, Sara Wittman thought wryly as one of the morning headlines caught her eye.

       Three people killed in medical helicopter crash.

      She hated reading news like that—it was a horrible way to start her day—but morbid curiosity and a healthy dread drove her to read the few facts listed in the article.

       En route from the University of Oklahoma Medical Center in Oklahoma City to Enid, the A-Star 350 helicopter went down in an open field thirty miles outside its destination for unknown reasons. The three people on board, pilot James Anderson of Dallas, Texas, Nurse Ruth Warren of Tulsa, Oklahoma, and Nurse Lilian Gomez of Norman, Oklahoma, died at the scene.

       According to statements released by AirMed, the company that operates this flying medical service, the circumstances of the crash are still uncertain. The incident is under investigation by the Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board.

      As a nurse assigned to the medical-surgical floor of Nolan Heights Hospital, she occasionally cared for a patient who had to be flown to a tertiary care center for treatment and consequently had met the dedicated staff who flew those missions. Although Nolan Heights used a different company for their flying ambulance service, the men and women who specialized in providing that type of medicine were a special breed who’d garnered her respect. These people would be missed, not only by their families but also by the medical community as a whole.

      “You’re looking rather glum this morning.” Cole, her husband of nearly three years, breezed into the kitchen wearing dark slacks and a rust-colored shirt—his usual attire for another busy day in his medical practice. He bussed her on the cheek before heading for the coffeemaker where she’d already poured a cup of the French roast she’d made strong enough to keep him running all morning.

      She savored his husbandly peck before rattling the newspaper. “I was just reading about a medical helicopter crash in Oklahoma. Two nurses and the pilot were killed on the way to collect a patient.”

      “That’s too bad,” he remarked as he sipped from his mug and slipped a slice of bread into the toaster. “No one we know, I hope.”

      “No,” she said, “although one of the nurses is from your old stomping grounds.”

      “Tulsa?”

      “For being gone most of the night because of a patient, you’re

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