Souls On Board

By Susan Egner

Marketing guru Casey Click takes early retirement in hopes of traveling the world with her husband. When the economy impacts their retirement fund, Casey returns to work as a flight attendant. A bomb onboard, a coworker's disappearance, and an attempted murder propel Casey and her friends into an adventure that goes well past the last exit to what she thought would be pleasurable excitement.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Susan Egner
• Release date: Nov 16, 2012
• ISBN: 9780971171169

Susan Egner

Minnesota Author Susan Egner followed her father’s footsteps into the life of a newspaper reporter before turning her pen to fiction. Her father, Lou Egner, was the well-known photojournalist for the Florida Times-Union and the former Jacksonville Journal. Now married and living in Burnsville, Minnesota, a suburb of Minneapolis, the mother of two and grandmother of four, fondly recalls, “Daddy gave cameras to my two sisters and me when we were still in elementary school saying, ‘Wherever you go, always remember to take your camera.’ He felt a story could unfold anywhere and he wanted us prepared. That training resulted in my writing about female photographers.”Encouraged by friends after hearing the stories she made up for her own children, Egner wrote and published her own children’s book series, Has Anyone Seen Woodfin? She has made multiple guest appearances with costumed characters in seven states and Shanghai, China; appearing in bookstores, elementary schools, children’s hospitals and the Mall of America. Her work was featured as one of ten programming initiatives at a gala event held in Chicago’s Field Museum by PBS affiliate, WYCC.Egner’s previous writing experience also includes writing and editing for the Dakota County Tribune, a weekly newspaper. In addition, she was a freelance writer for the Dayton Hudson Corporation Santa Bear series.Egner made the transition to e-B­­ook publishing in 2012 with her five-star rated novel, Scotoma. A gifted storyteller, Egner’s characters face challenges and often undergo personal transformation as they confront issues in contemporary society. Her stories are about ordinary people who find themselves in adverse circumstances that could face any of us. The choices each makes—and the resulting consequences—weave a tapestry of mystery, intrigue, and romance that will keep the reader wholly absorbed until the last page.Susan Egner proudly supports Operation eBook Drop, which provides free access to uniformed men and women deployed in service overseas. Learn more about Susan Egner on her website, EgnerINK, on Google+, and on Facebook.

Book preview

Casey Click Series

Souls on Board

Ground Stopped

Flight into Oblivion

IROP: Irregular Operating Procedures

Ice Flight

Destination Unknown

Drawing Down the Moon

Coming Soon - Mask Of Lies

Murano Light Trilogy

Murano Light

Sun Compass

Ben Warren

Lucy Ruediger Series

Chemistry for Revenge

Wingman Killer

Coming soon - Outrageous Claims

Other Novels

Scotoma

Out of Focus

Beneath the Sleeping Giant

Children’s Books

Woodfin’s Colors (the Prequel)

Has Anyone Seen Woodfin

Souls On Board

Copyright © 2012 by Susan Egner

Smashwords Edition

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without the author’s written permission.

Cover design by Mike Seale

Thank you for purchasing this Susan Egner eBook. To Learn more about Su visit her website at EgnerINK, or follow her on social media: Facebook, Pinterest, Linked In and Twitter.

We welcome your review at the website where you purchased your ebook or visit EgnerINK to contact Su by email.

SOULS ON BOARD

From the Author

The men and women of the commercial airline industry perform their duties with professionalism and unselfish devotion to the well being of the flying public, so much so that their efforts largely are taken for granted. I especially want to acknowledge the flight attendants at Mesaba Airlines, for 68 years the longest operating regional carrier in America. Mesaba, a name derived from the Ojibwe language to mean Soaring Eagles, fittingly describes the dedication to service and passion for excellence of these men and women. This novel is dedicated to you.

Table of Contents

Other Susan Egner eBooks

From the Author

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Five

Chapter Thirty-Six

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Chapter Forty

Chapter Forty-One

Chapter Forty-Two

Chapter Forty-Three

Chapter Forty-Four

Chapter Forty-Five

Chapter Forty-Six

Chapter Forty-Seven

Chapter Forty-Eight

Chapter Forty-Nine

Chapter Fifty

About Susan Egner

Chapter One

The apparition of Jack Soul sat in the window seat, row one, aircraft right.

Casey Click stifled a cry of surprise and shifted her brilliant blue eyes from the impossible image to passengers as they boarded the aircraft. Men, women and children filed down the aisle, stopping at their assigned seats to stuff carryon items into the overhead bins. Others waited on the jet bridge.

As the only Flight Attendant aboard the small, regional carrier, Casey greeted each new arrival, keeping her eyes intentionally averted from the unfeasible image seated in the first row. She glanced at her watch, concerned that the boarding process, slowed by the extra baggage, would cause a delay. Required to close the door three minutes before the listed departure time, she could expect the unpleasant experience of a call from her In-flight Manager if she failed to meet the deadline. The airlines’ decision to charge for checked bags had created chaos for boarding as more and more people resisted additional fees by checking their bags at the gate and, of course, haul all they could on board. She sighed in frustration, knowing this was the new normal. Even with the opportunity to avoid the charge of checked luggage, she had recently read that the airline industry worldwide earned over a billion dollars annually for checked bags.

She picked up the handset and pressed the talk button. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome aboard Winterland Air, Flight 3430 to White Plains, New York. We’ll be working together to ensure an on-time departure. You can help by stepping out of the aisle as quickly as possible after placing your bags in the overhead bins or beneath the seat in front of you. Thank you. There, that should hurry them along.

Relax, Casey, you’ll close on time, spoke Jack Soul.

This can’t be happening, she thought, refusing to acknowledge his words or look in his direction. Jack Soul had been her college boyfriend when she was a freshman and he a senior, but they had parted company when he graduated mid-term and accepted a commission in the Navy. He’d asked her to marry and go with him, but she wanted to finish college. No way had she been ready to marry. He was now dead, killed long ago in the Vietnam War. Yet, here he was, dressed in the same classic attire as the last day she had seen him, gray slacks, a black sweater and black loafers. It had always been one of her favorite outfits on him and he knew it. This had to be some kind of stress-induced hallucination. What other reason could there be? Ghosts? She didn’t even believe in ghosts. She was positive, it had to be stress.

The last passenger boarded and took his seat. She picked up her passenger count form and slowly walked to the back of the aircraft, marking each occupied seat with A for adult, C for child or I for infant in arms while performing her initial compliance check.

Please push your bags all the way beneath the seat in front of you. It’s important that you have free access to the aisle, she said with a smile though she was thinking how panicked these people would be if they actually had to scramble over their own bags to make an emergency evacuation. They’d be falling all over the place because of the stuff they insisted on carting on board. She finished taking the count of passengers, or as the aviation industry called them, souls on board.

Souls, she thought, glancing over her shoulder, toward the forward part of the aircraft. A woman now occupied the seat by the window, perhaps thirty-five years old, blonde and petite. Not even a close facsimile to Jack Soul’s six-foot-four football player physique. She exhaled a relieved breath. The tension of the job must be causing these strange illusions. Casey had had other stressful jobs in her lifetime, all professional, managerial types of stress, but nothing like the intensity of this job. She had not expected this type of pressure when goaded by her two closest friends to apply to the airlines for, as they all thought, a glorified waitress job.

She’d been working for the airline for fourteen months now, but it still seemed new, and in some ways, unnerving. Though the job itself was not difficult, it had requirements that could mean the difference between life and death for her passengers; passengers she doubted ever connected the dots between their ability to keep breathing and hers to perform CPR. But that was beside the point. That had not happened, at least not so far. She’d had no emergencies, if you didn’t count a ghost from her past seated aboard her aircraft.

Chapter Two

Casey’s friends had dared, more like coerced, her into applying for this job. It had happened while they were gathered for coffee at Bonnie Durand’s house to relive their most recent joint vacation. Every year since graduation from college, the four women, formerly sorority sisters decades ago, shared a week-long vacation, leaving husbands and children, or in Bonnie’s case, a chocolate lab and a tabby cat, to fend for themselves during their absence. Kit was unencumbered with either children or pets. Following their return, they traditionally gathered to relive their glorious five days in Jackson Hole or Sedona or their latest trip, Playa Del Carmen, Mexico, as they sipped coffee and nibbled Bertie’s to-die-for pastries.

On this year’s trip, they had flown on a regional carrier that specialized in trips to Mexico and the Caribbean. The small CRJ-900 jet seated seventy-six passengers, cared for by only two flight attendants; one for first class and one for the main cabin. Casey, Bonnie and Bertie had luxuriated in the feel of a more private airline experience. Instead of the mainline carriers like Delta and United that accommodated several hundred passengers onboard a single aircraft, the regional carriers seated smaller numbers, with enough empty seats to make the flight seem privileged, as only celebrities experienced. But the more astonishing encounter had been with the flight attendants.

Accustomed to thinking of flight attendants as females somewhere between twenty and thirty years in age, sprightly of figure and little more than glorified waitresses, the women were surprised when greeted by male and female flight attendants, each well past thirty. In fact, well past forty. They’d never seen a male steward, as they still thought of them, much less one, who, like his female counterpart, showed his age with a headful of white hair.

The male flight attendant identified himself as Scott and informed them that they were seated in an exit row. He asked if they were familiar with the criteria for being seated there. When the four women answered him with blank looks, he pulled a safety information card from the seat back pocket and explained the requirements of exit row seating.

He’s pretty cute, said Bonnie, after he walked away, affecting a sexual snarl. Do you think he’s single?

Or gay? piped in Bertie, always ready to burst anyone’s upbeat bubble. Though they were accustomed to her cynical nature, it did chafe at times.

Oh, Bertie, he doesn’t have to be gay to be a flight attendant. I’ve read that it’s become the new glamour career for people who have taken early retirement, said Casey.

Where’d you read that? asked Bertie.

I can’t remember. In one of those magazines in the Sunday supplements, I think.

What else did it say? Kit asked as they watched the two flight attendants with fascination.

Well, if I remember correctly, the job, initially that is, doesn’t pay very well, which has always required young girls to share a crash pad.

Dreadful airline term, said Bertie.

It’s not what you think. It’s an apartment shared by about ten girls because they’re never all home at the same time. That way they can afford the rent and still have a life. After all, airline jobs do provide good benefits.

Like what, you mean health coverage and stuff? It was Bonnie again, dissecting the subject down to the nuts and bolts.

Yes, that, but also free travel. Anytime. Anywhere.

And lots of pilots to pick from, said Bonnie, slurring her words as if savoring a swirl of her favorite, chocolate mousse dessert.

Not necessarily, jumped in Casey. Many of the pilots today are female and though there are plenty of unattached pilots, the majority are two decades younger than their counterparts in flight attendants.

What’s this world coming to? grumbled Bonnie. Female pilots and male stewards.

Flight attendants, corrected Casey.

Flight attendants. Where has all the romance gone? said Bertie.

How old would you say the female flight attendant is? asked Kit.

Forty, guessed Bonnie.

Older, snapped Bertie. In unison, their mouths dropped open and their eyes swiveled to focus on the sprightly but definitely senior flight attendant. Her hair, cut into a fashionably short style, was white just like Casey’s. She had gorgeous blue eyes that crinkled with warmth every time she flashed a radiant smile. When she approached them, Bertie in her none-too-delicate manner said, May I ask your age? Her seatmates gasped but the flight attendant, whose name was Lori, smiled and replied, I’m sixty. Are you gals interested in a job? We have openings. Once more she beamed her mega-watt smile.

Wow, I’m impressed, said Casey. How many years have you been doing this?

Just two. My husband died suddenly. We lived in Superior, Wisconsin, and I felt like I’d be trapped there forever. There’s very little opportunity to meet men, unless you’re interested in merchant marines.

Did you move to Minneapolis?

Oh, no, I commute from Duluth for my trips. In the summer, that is.

What do you do in the winter? asked Bertie.

She smiled and there was no doubt that some eyes did twinkle. I commute from our home in Arizona. May I offer you ladies a beverage?

The three exchanged amazed and intrigued glances as she mixed each a Bloody Mary.

Did you work before? asked Bertie.

Yes. I was a teacher, but I was eligible for early retirement, so I took it. My husband left me a little, and with both homes paid for, I chose to do this. It gives me a chance to travel and meet people. I’m not sure I want to marry again, but if I change my mind, I’m certainly not going to meet anyone teaching third grade in northern Wisconsin.

Bertie and Bonnie snorted. Are they really hiring? asked Bonnie.

Yes, they are. Give it a try, ladies, you may be pleasantly surprised.

And that remained the topic of conversation their entire vacation. Bertie was uninterested, and Bonnie had a successful career as a paralegal investigator for a small St. Paul law firm that catered to the elite. However, they all agreed it could be the answer for Casey.

You should do it. You’d be great, said Bonnie. You’ve told us how concerned you are that you and Max are spending all your retirement money on the increase in healthcare costs. You said yourself that Medicare Part D was a joke when it came to Max’s prescription costs. This could be the answer you’re looking for, Casey, until the economy improves.

It was true. She and Max had been retired for only two years; Casey from a marketing position and Max in banking. They weren’t wealthy like Bertie, but they were comfortable. At least they were until the downturn in the economy hit their investments with a staggering blow. They were now using money they had faithfully salted away for vacation travel just to pay for their health insurance.

Casey was convinced. She had to admit that this might offer an answer to what she hoped was a temporary dilemma. Out of the blue, it was a lifeline of sorts. A job that, even though it didn’t pay well, offered some secure benefits that would greatly help them during this lean period. She felt compelled to at least give it a try. She applied to Winterland Airlines and, much to her astonishment, was immediately accepted for employment.

Chapter Three

Following her first week in class, Casey met her three friends at Caribou, their favorite coffee shop.

Tell us all about it, coaxed Bonnie, sipping a latte.

I have three more weeks of classes, five days a week from seven in the morning until five in the evening; sometimes extending as late as nine. Tardiness is a real issue. I can be dismissed if I’m late a total of three minutes for the entire month of classes, can you believe it?

Does makes sense, says Bertie, swiping some whipped cream off Bonnie’s drink with her finger. Can’t exactly operate an airline if the crew doesn’t show up on time.

I hadn’t thought of that, Casey agreed.

What else? asked Bonnie.

We’ll have exams almost every day and only two chances to pass each exam. We have to pass each with eighty percent correct; otherwise, we can take the same exam one more time but the second time requires ninety percent.

Wow, they’re not kidding around, are they? said Bertie.

To be honest, said Casey, I balked at the stringent requirements for such a low paying job and wondered about the wisdom of my decision. Even in college, we were given more time to prepare for exams. I’ve never encountered this type of pressure in any of my previous jobs. Have you?

Ignoring the question, Bonnie asked, Tell us about your classmates. What are they like?

Well, I have to admit, I was a little nervous on the first day. I arrived early…

Big surprise, hooted Bertie.

Casey blushed. Her friends considered it anal to arrive early for any event.

I took a seat at the back of the class.

That doesn’t sound like you, Casey. You’re hardly the shy type, said Bonnie.

Well, she said, glancing at her friends for support, I just wanted to check out my classmates. I mean, if nothing but twenty-year-olds showed up, I intended to escape first chance I had. She gave a sheepish grin.

"Well, you’ve been in it a week now, so that obviously wasn’t the case.

The first three women to enter were barely in their twenties with tiny figures.

And tiny brains, snorted Bertie. Bonnie put a restraining hand on Bertie’s arm.

Go on, Casey, what else?

We were instructed to dress in business attire the first day. These three nymphs’ idea of business attire suggested careers in some place other than an office. They wore mini skirts, sheer blouses with low cut necklines, even showing a hint of cleavage, would you believe, and long hair draped across their faces. I felt ancient.

What did you wear? asked Bonnie.

A tailored black suit with a blue silk blouse, black hose and low-heeled black pumps. Here, she said rummaging in her bag and pulling out her airport I.D. They took our pictures the very first day and gave us IDs.

Very professional looking, classic, said Kit, known to be the fashionista, with approval as she passed the picture I.D. to Bertie. So why did you stay?

To my relief, the rest of the classmates were much closer to my age. I was relieved to see quite a few gray heads, or at least hair that I knew was gray if not dyed.

So, you stayed, good girl, said Bonnie. What’s the first week been like?

"Hectic. We have three instructors, one male and two females. They were all flight attendants, each for more than ten years. Even the youngest is at least in her mid- thirties.

First, they laid out a syllabus for six weeks of study, as well as the dress code. We must conform to Flight Attendant dress codes. The younger set was not too happy about losing their ginormous earrings and shaggy hair, said Casey, fluffing her fashionably cut bob.

Of course, low cut tops and mini-skirts are verboten. It took a couple of reprimands before the twenty-year-olds got the message. The rule-of-thumb for skirt length is, kneel on the floor. If your skirt touches the floor, it is hemmed to the appropriate length. If it does not, it’s too short. The same holds true for skirts worn in class. You should have heard the grumbling.

Bonnie laughed along with Casey, but Bertie appeared miffed. "What standards do the men have