Falls Like Lightning (21 page)

What was she doing? She’d put this behind her.

She shoved past trees. A branch scratched her neck. She pushed on, hurtling stones, clambering over boulders and weaving through the forest. Her route led her downhill, aiding the speed of her progress. Her jogging lagged into a stride and her stride into a hands-on-hips pacing. She fell to her knees in the mud by a stream. Her chest heaved for oxygen. She washed her neck wound and splashed the liquid across her burning cheeks, watching the water fall.

She lifted her head, cool drops tracing down her face. Beyond the opposite bank, sunlight reflected off a jagged piece of fin-sized white metal protruding from the dirt.

Elle rose. She stepped through the creek without taking her eyes off the object. Scores charred its top edge. Painted numbers lay across its face, veiled by the soil. Her hands trembled. She knelt and pulled on it. Fissures etched in the dirt around it. She shook the metal and yanked it from the ground. Dust fell from its sides. She brought it to her lap, wiped away the debris and froze when her hand swiped clear the marking—
N288.

CHAPTER

34

T
ears streamed down Elle’s face.

He never made the clearing.

She clutched the vertical fin to her chest and squeezed shut her eyelids, shoulders heaving.

The metal felt cold and grimy. A chill traveled up her arm to her core. She quieted, jaw quivering, and rose. She climbed a craggy route to a vantage point. Along one end of the clearing, sheltered beneath a rock outcropping, she spotted what appeared to be the rest of the tail section.

She drew a deep breath.

The smoky sky muted the light, turning clouds different shades of graphite. Stones tumbled off her feet. She wove her way toward shaded the location of the plane.

It’s why she never saw it. It lay hidden. Sheltered. Entombed.

What remained of the hull became visible. Scorched, dirt and moss covered. The nose of the plane lay mashed against the cliff wall. The wings were missing, likely sheered off in the landing. She navigated the uneven ground leading to it, came beside the hull and reached out her hand. It, too, felt cold. Her eyes trailed over the wreckage, over the plane she’d spent countless hours searching for. The plane that held her father.

Her stomach turned. She doubled over and retched upon the ground.

She coughed and spat and ran the back of her hand across her lips. Her eyes turned toward the front of the plane. Toward what remained of the cockpit. Her stomach flip-flopped.

Elle balanced herself with her free hand on the aircraft and worked her way to the cockpit. The windows were blackened and warped. The mangled door hung outward on the one remaining hinge. She leaned inside, making out melted gauges and vaguely recognizable levers.

No evidence of a pilot. No clothing. No body. Just heaps of ash and char.

Elle straightened. She didn’t need to be here anymore.

She didn’t know what she had hoped to find. Perhaps just something personal. She looked at the fractured tailpiece in her hand. Something more than just a piece of steel with her father’s aircraft markings on it.

She turned to leave, but a glint caught her eye. Amid all the dull black char in the cockpit one tiny object vied for attention. The light caught it again. Elle bent close and reached out for it. Her fingers found a curved piece of metal. The ash fell away, revealing a ring. A platinum wedding band.

The one her father had always worn—even long after her mother had died.

With a quick rub of her thumb she wiped clean the inside of the loop, bringing into view the engraved numbers inside of it.

Their wedding anniversary.

Elle clutched it in her palm. She leaned back into the cockpit and gently swept aside the piles of ash on the floor. She soon saw what she both hoped and feared she would find.

Her father’s remains.

She held the ring in a fist to her mouth. Her chest convulsed. She fought the sobs, heavy and labored.

After all her searching, all the tireless flying and searching . . .

She had to crash to find him.

———

The diffuse sunlight painted half of the canyon a greenish gold.

Elle heaved another rock onto the makeshift grave. Unwilling to let his skeleton remain on the floor of that cockpit, she had grimaced through the work of handling her father’s remains. She’d gathered every bone she could find, cradled them, and set them together, not in order or aligned, but in a pile, as though his essence somehow inhabited the fragments when they were congregated.

The knowledge of closure carried her. The ability to act empowered her, giving her the strength to do what needed to be done.

With the final rock in place, she set the broken tail fin between two stones at the head. She took several steps back and wiped her soil-stained brow.

She pulled her necklace out from her shirt. Her father’s ring now dangled beside the silver cross on it. Farther down the canyon, a whippoorwill let out its cry. A fitting dirge. Elle nodded and stared at the grave.

She bent to the ground and pinched soil between her fingers.

“Lord, bless him and keep him. Thank you for letting me find him. For letting me live.” She tossed the dirt over the rock pile. “Dust to dust.” She brushed her hands, and let out a breath.

A gun hammer cocked.

Elle spun around, heart racing. She stared into the wrinkled gray eyes of a whiskered old man, a double-barrel shotgun leveled her way. A set of blood-stained denim overalls hung from his bony shoulders. His ribs strained with each breath. He hacked a wheezy cough and bared an incomplete set of lower teeth.

“Evening, honey. Fancy finding you here.”

CHAPTER

35

S
ilas overlooked Crystal Lake from the ridgeline. A low smoky ceiling filtered the daylight. Bo stood beside him, the scent of soot strong in the air.

The wind flashed ripples at the water’s surface, refracting wheat and amber hues.

No sign of the plane.

No sign of Elle.

He didn’t know what he expected to see. His energies and emotions and entire drive from the moment he watched her plane disappear had been focused on finding her. He needed something. Anything.

Bo drew a deep, pensive breath. Perspiration dotted his temples. He pointed off in the distance. “You can’t see it with this smoke, but past that ridge there’s a draw where the gold bunker is.”

“Think they’ve made it there yet?”

“It’s only a matter of time.” He drew a pained breath. “Look.” He nodded to a tall splintered evergreen halfway down the hill.

Silas sighted it and descended the slope, weaving through thickets and digging his heels into deep duff. He dug his fingers into the bark of a tree trunk and let the cloud of dust around him settle. He glanced up at the broken tree above.

Bo approached, breathing heavily, and licked his lips. “We don’t know if she caused that.”

Silas scanned the forest floor.

“Maybe she set her down beyond here.”

Silas shook his head. “No. This was her best chance. Her only chance.”

“If that’s true, then Jumper 41 had to’ve—”

“Sank.” Even as he said the word, Silas wished he hadn’t. But it wasn’t a secret. It was the obvious deduction. “I’ve got to get closer.”

“Why?”

“To see.”

“See . . . what, Silas?”

“If she survived the landing. If she did, then maybe she made it to shore. If she made it to shore, then there should be some kind of evidence. Footprints. A fire pit. I don’t know. Something.”

Bo pressed his bottom lip up, eyes solemn. “All right.”

“I saw a slab of granite about midslope over the lake.”

“I seen it.”

“Should give a decent view of the shoreline.”

They wound farther down through manzanita and juniper bushes. Silas used protruding roots as handrails, burying his boots into the mountain to form step shapes for Bo right behind him. They reached the granite ledge. It protruded from the hillside like a vintage Chrysler hood ornament.

Silas dropped Bo’s pack where the dirt met the stone. He walked to the edge. It hung out over the water, the lake still far below, expanding out in parabolic perspective.

He studied the perimeter. Marshy reeds bordered the near left bank, thinning out about midway, revealing what appeared to be a decomposing deer carcass along the water’s edge. Its antlers looked sawn off, likely poached.

His eyes traced the near edge and followed across to the right. A host of midsized bushes surrounded a grouping of large flat rocks. Beyond that the trees towered toward the top of the basin.

The wind lessened. The water below looked dark and empty, transitioning in depth from a deep blue-green to a darkening plum. He searched for any indication of the aircraft.

Nothing but shadows and flickers.

———

Bo respected Silas’s need to grieve. He understood what it meant to be able to have closure. Silas needed that, right then and there, so the haunting
what if
s would not plague the man for years to come.

He decided to give the man some room. He wasn’t quite sure just how close Silas and the pilot were, but he suspected they were more than just acquaintances.

Bo stepped around a batch of pine saplings stretching from the dirt along the edge of the granite outcropping and walked along the hillside. A small game trail gave him footing over to a stand of aspens. Behind a larger one he paused to relieve himself.

A collision of thoughts occurred in Bo’s head. They’d let down their guard since reaching the lake. He knew he had held Silas’s pace back a bit. Last night’s struggle had taken more from Bo than he wanted to admit. Their hike had taken too long. He thought of the pistol resting in the pack. He shouldn’t have walked away from it. One of them should keep it on their person.

Bo set back toward the rock outcropping. He resolved not to be as sloppy in the future. They needed to keep vigilant. He said a quick prayer beneath his breath, “Lord, give me eyes to see how to save us from this—”

He halted in the patchy cover of the sapling stand. At the base of the granite, where their pack had been dropped, Sippi stood, arm outstretched with the pistol pointed at Silas’s back.

Bo was closer to Silas than he was to Sippi. He shouted.

Sippi swung the weapon toward him and fired. Bark splintered. Silas spun, shock in his face. Sippi returned his aim to Silas.

Bo leapt from the tree cover and barreled into Silas.

———

Silas grunted with the tackle. His feet left the rock. Another gunshot fired. He felt wind and a sudden water impact.

A cocoon of bubbles surrounded them.

Bo’s grip weakened. Silas felt warmth across his palm on Bo’s back. The water swirled crimson.

He tightened an arm around Bo and kicked for the air. He broke the choppy surface and gasped for breath, water slapping them in the cheeks.

No sign of Sippi on the rock outcropping. His boots weighted him like anchors. Bo’s head nodded forward. Silas swirled his legs to tread water, quadriceps burning and lungs taxed.

He lifted Bo’s head. The man’s eyes drooped, scant breath moving through his parted lips. Blood seeped through the front of his shirt. Silas held pressure on the wound. “Bo!”

Bo blinked and focused.

“You’re shot, Bo.”

Bo’s mouth moved.

Silas brought his ear to Bo’s mouth.

The voice was strained. “You got to help my sisters.”

Silas scanned the hillside again. “You can help them yourself.” They had to get out of sight.

Bo grabbed the back of Silas’s neck and leaned his forehead against him. “My sis—My sisters.”

“Okay. Yes. Yes, I will. We will.”

Bo coughed in a fit. Pink, frothy sputum oozed from his mouth.

Silas pulled for the shore. “Hang in there, buddy. Hang in there.”

Bo hacked again, blood trickling to his chin. “Silas . . .”

Silas kept paddling. “We’ve got to get clear of here.”

“Sil—” His head fell to the water.

Silas propped it back up and slapped his cheek. “Come on, Bo. Stay awake.”

Bo opened his eyes and found Silas. He fought back a coughing fit. “My treasure—” He hacked.

“You’re not part of that, Bo. Come on. I’ll get us to shore.”

“No.” He squeezed Silas’s shoulder.

Silas stared at him.

“My treasure—” He sucked a breath. “My treasure . . . ain’t here.”

His grip loosened.

“Bo?”

Bo’s eyes dilated.

“Bo.”

A shot fired, splashing in the water near them. Sippi plunged down the hillside below the outcropping.

Silas gulped air and pulled Bo under. They dipped below as gunshots echoed, thrusting bullets through the water in long thin spears.

Silas struggled for depth, yanking Bo downward.

The water grew murky. Everything fell quiet, cold and still. He pulled Bo close. Bo’s eyes were still open, pupils fixed and unreactive. Silas felt for a pulse on Bo’s neck.

Nothing.

He checked again, repositioning his fingertips.

No heartbeat.

His lungs burned. He glanced at the wavy gray-lit surface. The moment they surfaced, Sippi would shoot.

He stared again into Bo’s pupils.

You can see when their soul has left them
 . . .

Silas trembled. He put a hand across Bo’s heart, swallowed the last of the air in his cheeks, and pushed the heroic man’s body toward the surface.

Forgive me.

Bo ascended in a sanguine cloud.

Silas pulled himself sideways, swimming as fast and as far as he could, fighting the urge to breathe in the water around him. He stroked and kicked until he reached as safe a distance as he could bear. The water grew muddy and tangled with draping roots and algae. He surfaced in a bed of cattails and drew several breaths.

His head spun with lightness, but he took another fresh breath and slipped below, navigating the thicket of water reeds. He rose to the surface again and examined the immediate surroundings. He slowly exhaled. The reeds waved around him, and about thirty yards away by the shore below the granite outcropping, Sippi stood knee-deep in the water, his gun pointed at Bo’s surfaced body.