Chapter 10 - THE HORIZON AT THIRTY-FIVE THOUSAND FEET
The evening sun was setting over the Atlantic Ocean, painting the vast floor of clouds below us in deep, glowing bands of orange, rose, and gold. At thirty-five thousand feet, the world was entirely quiet, the only sound the steady, powerful roar of the twin Rolls-Royce engines driving my Boeing 777 toward London.
I sat in the captain’s left-hand seat, my hands resting lightly near the controls, my eyes scanning the glowing primary flight display. Everything was green. The fuel burn was optimal, the tailwind was holding at forty knots, and the radar showed no signs of weather for the next eight hundred miles.
My first officer, a sharp twenty-eight-year-old named Chloe—ironically sharing the name of my oldest niece, though she had a far better sense of personal responsibility—looked over at me with a smile.
"Smooth air tonight, Captain," she said, checking her navigation log. "We’re actually twenty minutes ahead of schedule. We’re going to hit Heathrow right at dawn."
"That’s the way we like it, Chloe," I said, leaning back into the sheepskin seat liner. "No surprises. No holding patterns."
It was December twenty-fourth—Christmas Eve.
A year ago tonight, I would have been sitting in a loud, overcrowded living room in the suburbs, listening to Luke complain about his investments while my mother dropped subtle, cutting remarks about my failure to buy a larger house for the family to use on weekends. I would have been handed a bill for someone else’s broken furnace or overdue credit card before the first present was opened.
But tonight, my Christmas Eve was entirely my own.
When we landed at Heathrow, I would check into a quiet, luxury hotel overlooking the Thames. I had booked a reservation at a small, independent steakhouse three blocks away, and I had a new leather-bound book waiting in my overnight bag. There would be no frantic text messages at 2:00 a.m. There would be no spare keys floating around in hands that didn't respect my boundaries.
My home in New York was locked, secure, and completely silent, its digital deadbolt accessible only to the biometric print of my own right thumb.
I looked out through the thick cockpit window at the endless horizon ahead. The stars were starting to appear in the deep indigo sky above the cloud layer, tiny, silver points of light that had been burning for millions of years, completely unaffected by the small, noisy dramas of the earth below.
May you like
"Captain," Chloe said, her voice interrupting my thoughts as she adjusted the radio frequency. "London Control is clearing us for the direct route over the western coast. They're giving us the priority arrival track."
"Acknowledge the clearance, Chloe," I said, a slow, genuine smile spreading across my face as I watched the instrument panel glow in the dark cockpit. "Tell them Captain Collins is coming in clean, ahead of schedule, and entirely on his own terms."
