Hurricane Hannah. Sue Civil-Brown

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      CHAPTER FOUR

      HANNAH AWOKE in the morning to find herself eyeball-to-eyeball with a huge pair of reptilian eyes. For a few seconds, she was absolutely certain she was imagining them. Then the hair stood up on the back of her neck.

      The alligator seemed to be grinning at her, his mouth hanging open. She froze as still as a statue, hoping he would think she was dead, not sure if that would work for an alligator, wondering how the heck he’d gotten on her plane, wondering how the heck she was going to get off her plane.

      Then the alligator lifted his head and let out a deep, inhuman roar that seemed to bounce off the walls of the small cabin and shake her eardrums so hard it hurt.

      Oh, Lord, was that a threat? Did alligators roar before they attacked? She felt the most childish urge to pull the covers over her head and convince herself she was hallucinating this.

      Despite her best efforts not to move, a whimper escaped her and she pulled back. But, to her amazement, the gator didn’t leap at her in attack. No.

      Buster looked wounded.

      She shook her head, convinced her eyes were deceiving her, but nothing changed. The alligator looked hangdog. Hurt.

      “Buster?” she said cautiously.

      The gator’s head came up, and he eyed her with something that seemed like hope.

      Astounded, Hannah considered the possibility that this relic of the dinosaur era had learned something about human behavior. What other kind of behavior would he know, never having had another alligator to talk to?

      Cripes, she was losing her mind. Reptilian brains didn’t have emotions.

      Did they?

      Slowly, taking care not to startle the beast by moving too quickly, she pushed back the blanket she had pulled over herself sometime during the night. Buster watched, but made no move.

      Slowly, she stood on the bed, which had replaced a row of seats against the rear bulkhead, wondering if she could leap across him to the aisle before he could turn in the confined space.

      The option failed to excite her. She’d never been any good at the long jump, never mind jumping from a dead start.

      Buster cocked his head, watching her from one eye, then let out another deafening roar. At once she rediscovered her ability to jump…backward. Pressed against the rear bulkhead, she studied her nemesis while wondering what it would feel like to be devoured alive. Not pleasant, certainly.

      But once again Buster looked hurt, as if her moving away was not what he wanted. Well, of course he didn’t want it. The farther away she was, the harder she would be to catch and eat.

      Then he did something she would have thought impossible, something that nearly curdled the blood in her veins. He reared up and got his front legs on the bed.

      “Oh, God!” The prayerful words escaped her lips, and all thought of not being able to jump disappeared in a wash of adrenaline. Before she had another coherent thought, she ran across the bed and leapt over the gator, reaching the floor—and his tail—in a flash. She kept running up the aisle toward the door, hoping the hydraulics would open the hatch before Buster caught up.

      Another roar followed her, this one almost a groan. She could hear scraping as scaly skin began to slide around on the industrial carpeting.

      She slammed her hand on the emergency button and watched the hatch begin to lower. Hurry! Hurry!

      The sound of scraping alligator skin was growing closer. Afraid to wait any longer, the instant the stairs were halfway lowered, she climbed out onto them and then jumped.

      Her ankles stung as her feet hit the concrete floor. She wanted to keep running, but now that she was no longer confined, she couldn’t help but turn curiously to see what happened.

      Moments later, Buster’s head appeared in the hatch. If an alligator could have sad puppy-dog eyes, this one did. The sound that escaped him now was nothing like his earlier roar. It was, she thought wildly, the alligator equivalent of a whimper.

      Hardly reassured, she backed up. Lumbering as if stairs were unfamiliar, Buster began to descend the now fully opened gangway.

      Hannah backed up. Swiftly. If she had an ounce of common sense, she’d flee at once from this hangar and send that annoying Buck Shanahan in here to deal with Buster.

      Which, she decided, much as it might wound her pride, she was going to do.

      Then СКАЧАТЬ