Stranded (12 page)

He ran a finger across the opening, then moved aside so Nate could take a look. They took a few more pictures before kicking their way to the top of the plane. Alex studied the cracked and broken windshield for a moment, then peered through the open door he’d used to escape what could so easily have been his tomb.

He noticed his red leather-bound logbook on the Cessna’s floor and signaled to Nate that he was going inside. The space was cramped and difficult to maneuver in with an aqua lung strapped to his back and a million of his own bubbles blocking his view. He was extremely careful not to get tangled up in the wreckage as he reached down and snagged the book.

Nate tapped him on the shoulder and Alex twisted around to find Nate pointing at the cabin floor. Alex looked. He didn’t see anything noteworthy and attempted a shrug in an effort to ask Nate what he wanted.

Nate held his hand up to his mouth and made drinking gestures, then pointed at the floor again. All Alex could see down there were three or four unopened bottles of his favorite water. He twisted around to pick one of them up and held it toward Nate who took it from him and moved away from the opening so Alex could exit.

They swam away toward the surface without looking back. The FAA would pull the Cessna from the lake for their investigation, but Alex knew he might never see it again.

* * *

“J
ESS
?”

Jessica opened her eyes, stunned that she’d actually fallen asleep. Alex was on his knees inside the shelter, right beside her. A wave of guilt washed through her as she looked into his eyes.

She started to sit up. “I’m so sorry—” she began, but stopped as she caught the look on his face as he scanned his humble sleeping space. “I should have waited for you,” she finished.

He sat down next to her. He was dressed again, but his hair was still damp and he smelled like cold, fresh water.

“Where are Nate and Sarah?”

“Back on the shore. Sarah built a fire. I told them I wanted to come find you by myself.”

She nodded as she blinked sleep away. When he spoke again, his voice sounded contemplative. “It all seems like a bizarre nightmare,” he said as he looked around the small space.

“Did you find anything on the plane?”

He told her about the hole in the oil-tank plug. “I also found my logbook and took that. The FAA might quibble with me about it, but as far as I’m concerned it’s part diary, as well, and I don’t want a bunch of strangers reading it.”

“I don’t blame you,” she said.

“Nate had me grab a bottle of my water, too,” he added.

“Why?”

“He’s convinced they were tampered with. I don’t see how. I bought a six-pack of them the night before and stowed them on the plane myself. There was nothing about them to suggest they were anything but what they appeared to be. Still, we’ll get it tested. I’ve learned to pay attention to Nate when he has a hunch.”

They fell silent for a minute until Jessica leaned her head against his shoulder. “I like the way you decorated the place,” she said, glancing up again at her own image, drawn in charcoal on a rock face.

They both lay down and looked up. She rested her head on his arm. “I can’t tell you how many hundreds of dreams I had about you while I was sleeping right here on this bed,” he said. He kissed her brow and squeezed her. “Some of them were pretty damn erotic.”

“I bet they were.”

“Yeah. And some were terrifying.”

“How were they terrifying?”

“I’d dream you were in danger and I couldn’t get to you. Once I dreamed you’d fallen through the ice into the freezing water below and I was grabbing for your hand, but you kept drifting further and further away and you never said a word or even struggled.”

She pressed herself closer to him.

“But the worst one was when I walked into our house after miraculously getting home and it was empty. No furniture, no nothing, especially, no you.”

“Oh, Alex,” she said softly.

“Because you see, I thought for sure I’d blown it and that even if I was rescued or managed to get out of these mountains, you would have moved on with your life...you would have let me go.”

“But I didn’t,” she said. She closed her eyes for a second before adding, “I want to tell you something.”

“What? Are you all right? Is the baby okay?”

“Yes, I’m fine, it’s nothing like that. It’s about something I did while you were away.”

He looked up at the drawing he’d made of her, then over into her eyes. “I know about the Facebook page.”

She took a deep breath. “Oh.”

“Dylan mentioned it.”

“When?”

“Days ago.”

“But you didn’t say anything to me.”

“There didn’t seem any point.”

“I could have tried to explain,” she said.

He pulled her closer. “You don’t have to explain,” he said.

“Yes, I do,” she mumbled. She took another deep breath. “You can’t imagine what it was like to find out I was pregnant right on the eve of your disappearance. I’d dreamed about telling you that news a million times, but then you were gone, and I couldn’t bear it. Not just because I loved you, but because this was something you wanted as much as I did and you might never know.”

“I understand,” he said.

“Do you? I’m not sure I do. It was crazy to think you’d run away from me, but it was also comforting because it meant you weren’t dead. If you’d just gotten sick of me, then maybe you were living somewhere and maybe if you were alive, you would think of me sometimes and then perhaps you’d check out my Facebook page. So I wrote that if you could, you should call me. No questions asked, no problems, there was just something you needed to know. In a way it made a ringing phone easier to handle because it might actually be...you.”

“I’m so sorry, Jess,” he said, kissing her face.

She ran a hand over his cheek, smoothing his hair away from his brow. His eyes glowed as he looked down at her.

“In my head I believed you were dead,” she whispered. “In my heart I wanted you alive, somewhere, anywhere. I told myself you didn’t have to come back to me if you didn’t love me, but you should know about your baby.”

“Why didn’t you tell me all this when I got home?”

“I was ashamed of myself.”

He held her tighter. In a way she wished they could stay in that camp together, just the two of them. “Why were you so reluctant for me to see this place?” she asked after a little while.

“I’m not sure. I guess I just wanted to forget how miserable and unhappy I was most of the time. Having you see it made me feel like it would all seem too real.”

“But it is real, Alex, and now that I’ve seen it and shared it with you, it’s more real than ever. And it’s remarkable you managed to survive with so little, that you got out alive, that we have a second chance to be together.”

He wiped the tears off her cheek. “Until now,” he whispered, “I wasn’t sure we were together, I mean in a way that would last. But we are, aren’t we?”

She nodded as he kissed her, as he ran his hands over her body. “So, where do we go from here?” he asked, his voice as soft as silk against her neck, warm like honey.

She put her hands on either side of his face and looked right into his eyes. “We go home. We find out who killed Billy and Lynda Summers—”

“If they were both murdered—”

“Of course they were both murdered. We find out who did it and we stop them from killing anyone else.” She paused for a second as she ran a finger across his lips. “Especially you.”

“Especially us,” he amended, wrapping both arms around her and touching her lips with his.

His breath was warm and fresh, his kisses intoxicating. She reached up and tugged on his shirt. “How’d you like to make some new memories on this bed of yours?”

“What kind of memories?” he whispered.

“This kind,” she said, and slowly started unbuttoning her blouse.

He took over the unbuttoning process. “Are you sure?” he asked. He followed this question with a dozen kisses along her throat.

“I’m sure,” she said softly. Those were the last words uttered for quite some time.

Her clothes came off in a hurry, and then she helped him with his. There was something so natural about lying in this bed made of boughs with sunlight glinting through the woven branches, the quiet afternoon ethereal and complete. Only their breathing and the rustle of the dried leaves and twigs broke the silence as they touched each other in all the ways they’d learned over the years brought pleasure, pausing once to just stare at each other in a sense of amazement.

When they were both stripped, he fondled her breasts and kissed them, his mouth hot and intoxicating. She closed her eyes, only to open them when she felt both his hands on her abdomen. He leaned down and kissed her right beneath the belly button, then moved lower. Flames leaped inside her at the touch of his tongue and she frantically reached for him, delighting in the silky smoothness of his body, groaning in pleasure as his fingers ran over her contours.

He entered her when they both reached the point of absolute no return, when to delay another second would be unimaginable. His thrusts were gentle in a way she’d never experienced from him before, as though he was afraid he would hurt her or their baby, and she quickly dispelled him of such thoughts by pushing down on his rear and raising her hips to meet him. She could tell the moment he was lost to reason and she willfully and gladly followed him, swept up in his responses and her own body’s greedy need for him.

They lay still afterward, and then dressed each other slowly, with kisses and smiles, both realizing they stood at the cusp of a new beginning in their lives together.

It seemed to Jessica that all they had to do was survive the present and the future was theirs for the taking.

Chapter Ten

By the time they flew back to Blunt Falls and landed on John Miter’s lake, the day was drifting away. John met them at the dock where Alex taxied.

John was a good-looking guy of sixty or so with a full head of silver hair and a permanent tan. With a knowing glint in his gray eyes, he helped Sarah and Jessica disembark. “You guys find what you were looking for?” he asked.

“And how do you know we were looking for something?” Jessica asked with a smile.

“I just have a feeling,” he said. “Well?”

“I’m not sure. Alex, what in the world is this?”

As she spoke, she lifted the recovered bottle of Vita-Drink whose label had long ago disintegrated. It was still damp although it had been laying in a towel. When she hefted it, her fingers must have slid on the accumulated goo that had attached itself to the outside. The compression of her grasping it produced a tiny spurt of the purplish fluid to hit her on the arm.

“It’s one of your drinks,” she said, using the towel to wipe away months of slime.

“Is it open?” Alex asked.

She started to twist the cap. The pressure from her fingers released another tiny spout of fluid. “The cap is on tight,” she said, “but it’s got a leak.” By now they were all standing close to each other staring at the Vita-Drink. “You think this was drugged?” she added. “But the cap is still sealed.”

Nate took his key ring out of his pocket and separated a tiny flashlight from the keys. He shined it on the bottle. “Squeeze it again, Jess.”

She did so and yet another squirt shot through the air and hit Alex in the middle of the chest. “There it is, see? A tiny hole, up high on the shoulder of the plastic bottle.”

“Maybe it deteriorated under the water,” Jessica said, though her voice hinted that even she didn’t believe that.

“That’s the kind of hole a hypodermic needle makes,” Sarah said as she peered intently.

“You were drugged,” Nate said, gripping Alex’s arm.

Again Alex stared at the fluid. It looked so innocent.

“Who knew you drank these when you flew?” Sarah asked.

It was Jessica and Nate who laughed. “Everyone who knows him knows he’s addicted to these things.”

“I wouldn’t exactly call it an addiction,” Alex said, but he knew his fondness for them was common knowledge at work, at home, at the airport—everywhere.

Alex gently took the bottle and looked at the liquid through the clear plastic. “But I didn’t notice a different smell or taste.” He lifted his shirt and sniffed the spot the liquid had hit. He could detect no strange odor.

“We need to have it tested,” Jessica said. “The police lab—”

“No,” Alex and Nate said in tandem.

“I don’t want to advertise I took anything off the plane,” Alex explained.

“What about your logbook?” Jessica asked. The book was sealed inside a plastic bag.

“That’s personal,” he said. “I left all the flight information for the feds to find. I don’t know if any of the log is readable anymore but like I told you, I don’t want some government lab worker going through my daily entries. Nor am I going to admit I took the drink. We’ll have to find an independent lab.”

He’d been so quiet they’d all but forgotten that John Miter still stood nearby. He spoke up now. “I’ll get it analyzed if you want.”

Alex looked him in the eye. He might not know a lot about Miter’s past—or frankly, anything at all—but he did have a good gut feeling about the guy. “You know of one?”

Miter smiled. “Yes.”

“How?”

Miter laughed softly. “Leave it to me,” he said.

Nate caught Alex’s gaze and Alex could see he was unsure. After all, Nate didn’t know John. “I want a sample of it to take back to Arizona,” Nate said. “It’s better if we split it up.”

“I agree,” Alex said.

Jessica found a couple of small bottles of seltzer in the ice chest in which they’d packed their lunch, and poured out the contents. Alex transferred a third of the old vitamin drink to one empty bottle, a third to another, and handed them to John and Nate respectively.

“You don’t quite trust me,” John said, his eyes glinting.

“I don’t quite trust anyone,” Alex said, “though I deeply appreciate all the help you’ve been.”

Miter’s gaze was direct and intense and, truthfully, intimidating, and then he smiled and took the sample. “Smart man,” he said, and laughing, checked the twist top.

* * *

A
FTER
THEY
DROVE
Nate and Sarah to the airport, Alex and Jessica continued on to the Machi house. It had been a long, emotionally draining day for both of them, full of highs and lows and discoveries. And yet Alex felt connected to his life in a way he hadn’t in longer than he cared to remember.

He wasn’t as certain as Jessica that Lynda Summers’s death hadn’t been an accident. It didn’t seem to him the woman knew much about her son’s life even though he lived in her house. What threat could Lynda have posed for anyone unless she was into something herself that Alex knew nothing about? Why would someone murder her?

Had she seen or heard someone that night Billy went missing?

The coroner had said Billy was unconscious when he met his death. There was no proof Billy had ridden his bike to the drive-in. Tomorrow, Alex planned to drive the road between Billy’s house and his own, looking for someone who might have seen Billy late that night. Maybe he’d met his attacker along that road. Or maybe he’d made it all the way home and gone out back to the shed without checking in with his mother who it appeared slept in front of the television every night. Maybe Lynda had heard her son’s abductor.

“I’ve been wanting to ask you what the chief said when you called him this morning and told him you weren’t coming in today,” Jessica said as they pulled up outside a modest house in a forty-year-old subdivision. A few toys lay scattered across the front lawn while a couple of cars and a truck were parked in the driveway.

“I told him I wasn’t feeling well. I admit I didn’t like lying to him. Frank Smyth isn’t as bad as I thought he was. I just had to do this today.”

She smiled at him. “You don’t sound much like the job-first-at-any-cost cop I married, you know.”

“Maybe I’ve finally grown up. There is nothing more important to me than you and our baby.”

“I know,” she said softly.

“But it’s even more than that,” he admitted. “Seeing my plane, listening to Nate, well, you know, the big hits the country has taken from foreign terrorists are terrible and frightening. But somehow, we rally afterward, we declare a common enemy, we convince ourselves, over time, that we can prepare ourselves, protect ourselves.” He stared straight ahead, then glanced at her.

“This is different. These people aim lower and closer to the belly, if you know what I mean. Their goal isn’t massive loss of life, it’s loss of well-being, of the safety of doing mundane things or observing traditional events. It’s Americans going after other Americans. It’s power hungry people manipulating innocents into thinking with their adrenaline instead of their heads, listening to their fears instead of their consciences. They have to be stopped.”

“I know,” she said softly. They were silent for a moment before she added, “Your friend John Miter is a little spooky.”

“I know.”

“I’m glad you didn’t give him all that Vita-Drink. If I had to choose someone who might be in on a plot of some kind, I guess he would come to mind.”

“He does look the part, I grant you that. But remember, I met him way before Labor Day last year and the fact that Nate and Mike and I got involved in that mall shooting and subsequently everything else was pure chance. Nate and I went to a mall because of a delayed flight with nothing on our minds other than finding something to eat in the food court. Mike told us he was there because he needed new jeans and they were having a sale at one of the stores. It was just chance.”

“I’m still glad Nate took some of the water with him.”

“And we have the bottle. Okay, let’s go talk to Tony.”

Tony’s wife, Noreen, insisted they sit at the table and have a piece of strawberry pie, an offer neither Alex nor Jessica felt inclined to refuse. She was as friendly and generous as her husband, balancing kids and home like a seasoned pro.

Alex took out his camera, and while they ate pie, downloaded his pictures onto Tony’s computer. While Jessica helped Noreen clear away the dishes, Alex and Tony studied the photographs.

“These are pretty clear,” Tony said, scanning the images.

Alex used the tip of a pencil to point at the screen. “This is the cap,” he said.

“Holy hell!” Tony murmured, leaning closer to study the image. “The safety twist wire is completely gone. And what’s that hole? Do you have a better picture?”

Alex scrolled until they found one taken from a different perspective.

“Yeah,” Tony said, touching the screen. “That’s the hole right there. Straight through the plug. Damn, I wish you could have brought it to me.”

“I do, too.”

Tony sat back in his chair. “Someone drilled the center out of the plug and replaced it with something else,” he said.

“I know. What I don’t understand is why it lasted so long before it blew. If it was secure enough to get the plane in the air why did it suddenly give way?”

“Maybe it was some kind of wax,” Tony said.

“Wouldn’t it just melt when the engine got hot?”

“Yeah, but it might take a while. Once it melted away, though, that would be it. The oil would leak out, the engine would seize—”

“Which is exactly what happened.”

“And they might have mixed in some other product that would delay the melting of the wax. There may be residue on the plug. If there is, the FAA will find it.”

“But, Tony, how did the plug get there? You did the maintenance yourself and it’s not exactly an easy spot for someone to tamper with out on the field.”

Tony ran a hand through his thinning hair and shook his head. “The FAA looked through all my stuff, checked inventory lists, the whole nine yards. There wasn’t anything missing that should have been there and that includes those plugs. I’d just received a shipment of five in that size, you know the Airtop brand in the red-and-yellow box. I’d used two of them, one on your plane and one on Vic Miller’s. The other three were all where they were supposed to be, just like everything else. I’ll have to review my records to see where they were all installed and make sure they weren’t tampered with, too.”

Alex stood behind Tony, who sat in front of the computer, and stared at the images on the screen. He was still staring at them a moment later when Jessica slipped her hand into his.

“Could Billy have switched plugs while you were eating lunch?” Alex finally asked. He felt Jessica’s grip tighten around his fingers.

Tony swiveled in his chair and looked up at him. “What do you mean?”

“Think about it for a moment. Could Billy have taken out the plug you put in after the oil change and replaced it with this one?”

Tony turned back around to the screen, studied the photographs, then turned back. “If you mean could he have physically switched out the plugs, I guess, sure, maybe. Let me think. I did that part of the checkup, took a break, came back and finished the maintenance.”

“Does that include refilling the oil tank?”

“It would have to. If anyone had tried to switch the plug after the oil was already installed, there would have been a big puddle on the floor.”

“I can’t imagine Billy could do all that,” Jessica said softly.

Tony looked back at her. “It’s not really that hard. He would have had to snip the safety twist wire is all, then take out the good plug and put in the drilled out one.”

“So someone would have had to give him the doctored plug and pretty clear instructions?” Jessica said.

“Yes.”

“And instructed him exactly how to exchange it?”

“Yes. All they’d have to do is Google it.” He swore under his breath. “He was acting odd that day. I should have known something was wrong.”

“And just so we’re clear,” Alex continued, “if this is the way it happened, it’s possible you wouldn’t have noticed the switch when you came back after lunch, is that right?”

Tony was quiet for a second, and then he shook his head. “No, I wouldn’t have noticed. I imagine the plugs looked exactly alike unless you were really looking for a difference and I was already finished with that part of the job.”

“But how would someone have known exactly what plug your engine took?” Jessica asked.

Tony answered the question. “Most of the Cessna 180s like Alex’s came with Continental engines. That would mean drains and equipment would differ from one year to the next. But if someone knew what year Alex’s plane was built, the rest wouldn’t be hard to figure and with the N-number on the tail, checking it out would be pretty easy.”

So it could have been almost anyone,
Alex thought as Jessica leaned her head against his shoulder.

Tony once again ran his hand through his hair. “I can’t believe Billy would do this. He knew whose plane we were working on.” He looked back up at Alex. “What in the world did the boy have against you?”

“I don’t know,” Alex said, then added, “Probably nothing.”

Tony shook his head again.

* * *

B
LUE
P
OINT
R
OAD
didn’t have a whole lot of residences within view of the highway. Places out here tended to sit back from the road a bit, some with heavily wooded areas between the houses and traffic. And one side of the pavement was nothing but a steep fall into a gorge.

Working their way toward the Summers house, Alex and Dylan drove down five driveways. No one was home at two of them, one man had absolutely nothing to offer and the elderly couple at the fifth went to bed every night by nine o’clock, rain or shine.

The last house looked as though it would present another no-one-is-home moment. The road was densely covered with arching trees and Dylan swore under his breath as some of the limbs hit his car. “I just got it back from the shop,” he complained. “Cripes, doesn’t anyone around here prune stuff?”