Page 11 of Distress Signal

After tidying a bit and letting my foreman know I’d be taking off for the rest of the day, I walked toward the big house—the house we’d all grown up in—where Mama and Aria still lived. I poked my head in long enough to tell them where we were headed and chug a glass of water before West arrived.

Crossing the Lawless family ranch land from his dude ranch to my rescue ranch took five minutes on a good day, but West must’ve been desperate to get out of cleaning cabins, because he made it in less than half.

He’d barely pulled to a stop when I hopped into the passenger seat.

“Where to?”

“Airport.”

West nodded and stepped on the gas, peeling away from the ranch.

Owyhee County airport wasn’t a commercial affair. In fact,its small hangar only housed two aircraft—a Cessna 172 Skyhawk, which happened to be mine, and a Bell 429 search and rescue helicopter, which we’d be taking out today. There was no real runway, only a strip of hard-packed dirt cut into the field from years of little planes taking off and landing.

West pulled to a stop in the gravel lot next to the hangar, and we rounded to the bed where he kept extra gear stored for situations like this. We quickly suited up, easily shedding our ranch owner personas for the Rangers we’d been barely six years ago.

Though Lane made it sound as though this was nothing more than a routine recovery, I’d walked into too many “routine” situations only to have them go sideways to head into the mountains without my tactical gear.

“Hello, wee birdie,” I murmured to the chopper when we got inside, approaching it to do my checks while West opened the hangar door and loaded equipment, like ropes and harnesses, as well as EMS supplies like a rescue basket, neck brace, and various bandages, tapes, and gauze.

My brother wasn’t fazed by me speaking to the helicopter; he’d long since gotten used to my antics where aircrafts were concerned.

The sky was my happy place.

We’d been given numerous opportunities thanks to the Army, especially as far as what we did while we were enlisted went. I’d always known I wanted to be a pilot, and West hadn’t given a fuck what he did as long as he had a gun in his hands.

We were simple creatures like that.

Being able to get my pilot's license and provide aerial support for a number of highly classified government ops over the years truly wasn’t where I’d seen my life going, growing up in this small town. But I was grateful for the experience—even more so because, when we were ready to retire at the ripe old age of 28, the Army let us go with little fanfare and a lot of money in our bank accounts.

Money we put right back into Lawless Rescue & Dude Ranch.

Personally, I was happy to be free of the military, where, while we’d been paid handsomely after joining the Rangers, we were treated as little more than a set of numbers. Cogs in some great machine with no idea who pulled the strings.

I didn’t like the power those unnamed, faceless forces had over us, oftentimes turning us and our unit into contract killers to carry out vendettas that had no rhyme or reason.

Sometimes, though, I thought West was a little…listless without it. Many men and women made lifelong careers out of it, but that was never on my and West’s radars. Still, it had been the only thing we’d known from the time we’d signed on the dotted line at eighteen to the day we walked away a decade later.

The dude ranch was good for him. It gave him a place to channel his energy, to fuck around and act like his crazy, reckless self without causing too much damage.

And nights like this helped, when we soared off into the sky on a mission like the good old days.

Pre-flight checks finished, I gave West a thumbs up, and he climbed into the passenger seat beside me. We both donned our headsets, strapped in, and sealed the doors shut.

Then I ran through my next set of checks, including the pedals, throttles for both engines, emergency equipment and lights, communications systems, and a slew of other shit that was all muscle memory to me now.

When I’d first moved home and been asked to take over for the previous rescue pilot who was getting ready to retire, I’d had to certify in order to fly this specific helicopter, but I hadn’t minded. Any chance I had to get up in the air, I was taking it.

Once we lifted off and reached cruising altitude, I had West punch in the coordinates Lane had texted me. Our comms system was connected to the same channel as Lane’s sheriff’s satellite phone, and we’d been airborne for maybe five minuteswhen it crackled to life, our older brother’s voice coming down the line.

“Sheriff Lawless to N652AA. Come in. Over.”

West and I shared a look, more of a glare at our brother’s formality, before I opened the line and said, “Captain Lawless of N652AA here. What do you want,Sheriff?”

West’s chuckle resonated through my headset, cut off by Lane’s world-weary sigh as he opened up his end of the line again.

“What’s your ETA?”

I glanced down at the nav system, the topography of the Idahoan landscape speeding past, and calculated our distance from the scene.