Page 84 of Air Force One (Miranda Chase #16)

The furor had been slow to abate and Miranda had done everything she could to hide. Living in an unmarked missile silo in rural Washington State had made that easier. She left only for the crash investigation call-outs that she couldn’t refuse.

The warm May had brought blossoms to the small grove of cherry, apple, and pear trees that she’d planted along the driveway. It also brought the spring birds to the feeders and fawns to romp through the meadows.

She’d watched each of her friends go through grieving after the crash and resolution of Air Force One…

but still didn’t know how she felt about it.

Yes, now and then she wished Drake would call with some impossible crisis.

Not because she wanted the crisis, but she did miss the sound of his voice and his patience with her.

This morning she sat with her back against a big-leaf maple, Meg asleep in her lap, and a book resting on Meg that she couldn’t seem to focus on.

Instead, her attention followed the breeze playing with the bright green new growth of the conifer woods that started along one edge of their property and continued far up the slopes of Tiger Mountain.

Mike and Holly were in Seattle investigating the downing of a Twin Otter float plane that had run into a houseboat to avoid a sailboat.

Andi was busy in her own vegetable garden, attempting to prove that she didn’t kill plants with her mere presence.

She still wasn’t allowed into Miranda’s garden past the bench she’d installed close by the gate.

Andi had yet to disprove Miranda’s hypothesis about Andi’s black thumb, though she remained determined to try.

As Miranda sat quietly, Meg’s ears twitched toward the nearby tall grass. Sure enough, the stalks began to weave about. Miranda had set out a handful of dried corn when she’d arrived and her rabbit friend soon emerged to nibble at it.

Except he’d changed. His coat was all matted down one side with dried blood. And he was definitely favoring his right front paw. One of his eyes had a big gash over it as well.

“Oh, you poor thing,” she whispered to it. It twitched one ear in her direction, but the other was badly tattered and must hurt to move.

The fawn-colored Eastern Cottontail had grown accustomed to her and ate the corn within easy reach. When Miranda brushed a hand over its fur, she could feel the shiver of muscles beneath.

“You need help.”

In answer, the rabbit finished its corn and began trying to clean its injured paw.

Miranda took off the floopy sun hat that Andi made her wear whenever they were outside and scooped the rabbit gently into the bowl of the inverted crown.

It watched her intently, but made no effort to escape as she cradled it in her arms. As she hurried back to the house, Miranda could feel it twitch whenever a wound was bumped.

She hoped that her apologies helped. Meg trotted along eager with curiosity at her heels.

“What do you have there?” Andi looked up from inside her fenced garden where the surviving plants were a quarter the size of the ones in Miranda’s.

“My rabbit friend is hurt. It looks like he got in a fight with another rabbit. A fox would have done more damage and a coyote would have killed it. Maybe he fought off a hawk.” She didn’t stop until she was inside.

She had assembled an animal medical kit to replace the one that had been burned up along with her island home but never had occasion to use it since their move here.

She rolled it out on the counter and set the bunny beside it on a clean towel.

Then, step by step, Miranda went through every needed procedure she’d learned on an isolated island filled with wildlife: trimming fur, applying Blood Stop Powder to deeper wounds, and antiseptic to shallower ones.

Binding his injured paw had required some negotiation, but they’d managed it together.

When Andi came to watch, she lifted Meg onto one of the bar stools.

Miranda had been so concerned for the rabbit that she’d forgotten that Meg would want to watch too.

As she moved from paw to rump to ear, Andi wandered away and Meg curled up on the stool to nap.

When she was done, she shifted the rabbit into Meg’s carrying kennel with several leaves of chard and a small dish of water.

He ate a little, nibbled at a bandage but without any real effort, and then went to sleep.

She followed the sounds of a screw gun out to the workshop. Andi was covered in sawdust but she was mounting a hinged door on a brand-new rabbit hutch.

“It looked as if that rabbit needs to stay safe for a while. I hope this is okay.”

Miranda hugged her despite the sawdust. “It’s perfect. You’re perfect.”

“Only on Thursdays.”

She’d learned this was one of Andi’s jokes and, after a bit of explanation, had decided it was funny, so she laughed whenever Andi used it. She hurried back inside to fetch the injured rabbit as Andi set the hutch under a blooming cherry tree. She gave it fresh spinach from her garden.

“Oh, she’ll like that. It’s so pretty here.”

Once the rabbit was situated, she and Andi stood with their arms around each other’s waists and watched it eat.

“Should I build another?” Andi nodded toward the hutch because she couldn’t mean the rabbit or the cherry tree as neither one required building.

“Why?”

“Are you going to start rescuing more rabbits?”

“If they need rescuing.”

Andi’s grip tightened about her waist in an encouraging way. “And fawns? And birds?”

“And abandoned fox cubs.”

“Lost ducklings.”

“Hurt elk.” A herd of Roosevelt elk often wandered across the property, which had required stout fences around each garden and orchard. Though she’d never noticed a hurt one.

“Injured raptors. The birds of prey, not the dinosaurs.”

“Right, because the latter are extinct. It would be illogical to try and rescue those.”

With each one they named, Miranda could see the property as if in double vision.

One, her childhood home on Spieden Island and all the wild animals that had been left behind from its brief time as a hunter’s game park.

The other, here, a home for animals that didn’t have a home or couldn’t survive in the wild.

“It’s as if all my years chasing air crashes were…” Miranda sighed. “I wish I was better at metaphors.”

“A side track?”

“Like a train that got on the wrong track and was stuck there? Yes, it was.”

“So what track do you want to be on?”

Miranda had to think hard about that one. The first thing outside her family that she’d enjoyed in a while had been helping the injured rabbit. “Enjoyed! Hey, I did enjoy that.” Emotions were so tricky.

“What was the last crash investigation you enjoyed?”

Miranda had to sit in the grass and stare at the sleeping rabbit for a long time while she sorted through them. There’d been hundreds in the twenty-two years since her first investigation. Yet…enjoyed? “Is one supposed to enjoy a plane crash?”

Andi lay down beside her and used a long piece of grass to tickle the back of one of Meg’s ears. “Well, maybe enjoy isn’t the right word. Fascinated by? Energized by?”

“I’m fascinated by whatever I’m working on at that moment.

It’s part of being autistic. Energized by?

” She again considered each of the crash investigations she’d worked on over the last twenty-two years.

Andi understood and waited for her to review the entire catalog mentally. “I can’t think of one.”

She’d been more energized by their belated trip to Chincoteague Island to see the wild horses than by the crash of Air Force One that had occurred just fifteen kilometers out to sea from there.

The fire chief on Assateague Island, who technically owned all the horses, had offered fascinating stories of the care of the ponies, the annual swim across the channel, and offered many insights into herd management and care.

“I was energized by helping our bunny.”

Meg twisted and managed to snatch the grass stalk from Andi’s grasp. As soon as she turned away, Andi plucked another.

“Would you be energized if we turned this property into a wildlife sanctuary?”

And her double vision of her childhood animal friends whom she’d studied so carefully and the lone bunny happily nibbling on his chard merged into a single vision on this property as if coming into focus for the first time.

Miranda managed a nod. She could imagine looking forward to each day tending those like her childhood friends.

Autistics tended to have a strong affinity for animals and she could feel the joy of dealing with them daily.

They weren’t like humans, always filled with a dozen conflicting emotions.

Instead there was a purity of simply being what they were.

Except she wasn’t alone.

“How about you, Andi? What do you want?”

Andi lay in silence for as long a time as Miranda had before speaking.

She didn’t even tease Meg’s ears. “I think Drake’s death was somehow one too many.

I lost my copilot to a Russian grenade in Syria.

I had lost teammates in Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, and other places before that.

I’ve been crawling around wrecks with you for almost five years and we’ve seen a lot of dead people.

I wouldn’t mind spending my time with things that are alive. ”

“Animals die too, you know.”

“Yes, I know. But that bunny,” she pointed her grass stalk at the hutch, “is going to live longer and healthier because of what you just did for it. I like that.”

She sat and Andi lay as the occasional pink cherry blossom fluttered down against the blue sky.

“What are you going to name it?” Andi asked after a while.

“Who?”

She pointed her grass stalk at the bunny.

Miranda didn’t have to consider. The bunny’s calm demeanor on what must have been a very trying day settled it.

“I’m going to call him Drake.”