42. CHANCE

“What are we going to do up here?” Sara asks as we climb the stairwell that leads to the roof of the building where Atlas’s offices occupy the seventeenth floor.

“I told you, you’ll see when we get there,” I say.

“I wish you’d told me about having to take the stairs the last three flights. I would have told you Sara don’t do that shit. Plus, you said you were taking me for dinner.”

We finally reach the door to the roof. The stairwell landing is dank up here, with no light except for a bare security bulb.

“How do you know I’m not taking you to dinner right now?” I ask.

She grins. “Dining al fresco? On the roof?”

I just smile back.

“I’d hate to be the caterer who has to lug all the food up these stairs,” she says, looking back down the way we came. “But I guess the view will be worth it.”

“Oh, I definitely think the view will be worth it,” I say as I press the crash bar and push the door open.

We step out onto the tar-paper and gravel roof to a 360-degree view of downtown Chicago’s Loop business district. The sun is sitting at about the halfway point in the western sky, about two hours from sunset.

“Wow,” she says, scanning the horizon. “This is impressive. But I don’t see a table or anything.”

“What we’re looking for is over here,” I say, taking her by the hand.

We round the corner of a maintenance outbuilding and her eyes pop as she finally sees what I’m talking about.

“Whoa,” she breathes. “Is that…?”

“That,” I say, pointing at the pea green behemoth parked on the building’s helipad, “is the company’s specially modified Sikorsky HH-60 Pave Hawk helicopter.”

We walk closer and Sara looks like a kid at an air show, inspecting the big bird from all angles.

“These are what the military used for search and rescue during Katrina in 2005,” I say. “They’re specifically designed to get people out of tight spaces under challenging conditions.”

She turns to me. “Challenging conditions?” she asks. “Does that mean what I think it means?”

“Live fire,” I nod, patting the armored door. “This baby has seen some of the roughest places in the world. But she always gets us back out again.”

Sara’s big blues are practically glowing. “This is so cool,” she says.

“I was hoping you’d like it,” I grin.

“So do you think you could take the boss into letting me ride in it sometime?” she asks, taking my hand.

“Why do you think I brought you up here?” I open the pilot’s side door and pull out a helmet. “We’re going to dinner.”

Her jaw drops. “You can fly this thing?”

“I’ve learned how to do a lot of things over the years.”

She gives me a leering grin. “One thing at a time, Tiger.”

* * *

“That’s it right there,” I say into the helmet microphone.

“What?” she shouts over the din of the Sikorsky’s rotors.

I point through the windscreen at the beach of the resort town of Grand Haven below us on the eastern shore of Lake Michigan. It’s a favorite of the Chicago yachting folks, who use it as an excuse to cruise across the lake. Or, in my case, an excuse to show off my helicopter.

“Grand Haven,” I say, a little louder. “Dinner.”

She smiles and gives me the thumbs-up.

A few minutes later and we’re descending onto a landing pad at the Coast Guard’s sector field office.

A woman in a Coast Guard uniform opens the door for Sara and helps her out of the Sikorsky as it powers down. I meet them a few feet from the chopper.

“We have a car waiting for you, ma’am,” the woman shouts over the whine of the engine.

Sara gapes at me. “A car?”

I shrug. “I called in a couple of favors.”

“Mr. Talbot is being modest, ma’am,” says the woman, a lieutenant named Gloria whom I’ve met a few times. “Atlas has been a great friend to the Coast Guard.”

A white Ford Expedition pulls up and the driver gets out to open the door for Sara. I climb in the other side.

“Anything else you feel like impressing me with tonight?” she asks as we pull away.

“Wait till you see what we’re having for dinner,” I say with a grin.

* * *

“Oof,” Sara breathes as she finally pushes her plate away from her.

I do a slow clap. “That was impressive.”

“Why did you bring me here?” she groans. “That burger had to have been 5,000 calories.”

“Don’t forget the sweet potato fries,” I remind her, wiping the last of the grease from my lips. “Easily another thousand.”

“Burpees,” she sobs. “Kelsey’s going to have me do a burpee for every calorie, I know it. I hate burpees.”

“Good thing you didn’t enlist, then. Burpees are what you do to celebrate that the workout is over.”

She sticks her tongue out at me, and I feel an obscene throb under my jeans.

Across the lake, the sun is setting in a riot of orange and indigo. Our table is on the beachside patio of Banana Cabana, a summer-only burger shack that I discovered a few years ago. It’s been a mainstay for locals and summer tourists since it opened in the ‘80s.

“I can’t blame you,” Sara sighs. “You can lead a horse to burger, but you can’t make her snarf it down like a pig at the trough. That was all me.”

“You loved it,” I say.

“Is it sick to admit I want to get one to take home with me?” she asks in a conspiratorial whisper.

“No sicker than the fact I flew a helicopter to bring us here.”

“That was pretty decadent.”

“What can I say? I had a girl to impress.”

She grins. “Mission accomplished, soldier.”

We sit silently for a while, watching the sunset and slurping the last of our Diet Cokes through our straws. Sara was right – it was pretty decadent to bring the Sikorsky for a date.

But something about being with her makes me want to show off like a peacock. It’s like I didn’t even realize I was rich until she came back into my life. All of a sudden, I’m like a kid showing his friend his toy room: I got this and this, and one of these, and my X-Box…

Sara leans in closer.

“How fast does that chopper go?” she asks.

“About 195 knots,” I say. “Works out to 200-plus miles per hour. Why?”

“I’m just wondering how fast you can get me back home. I need to work off that burger, and like I said, I hate burpees.”

The look in her eyes has me standing at full attention under my jeans now.

I reach down and pull her from her seat with one hand, tossing a hundred onto the table with the other. We practically jog across the parking lot to the waiting Expedition and our Coast Guard driver.