Page 68 of Distress Signal

Plus, this wasn’t the first time we’d set off on a mission like this. In the Rangers, there had been a time when three of our team members had gone MIA. Our team only contained six total, so the remaining three—me, West, and a guy we’d nicknamed Spike—were responsible for locating them, extracting them, and bringing them back to our basecamp safely.

And that was precisely what we planned to do with Lainey. We only had to find her first.

Once I ran through my checklist, we loaded up and locked in, taking off once the air traffic controller confirmed all was clear. Our little airport was too small to have its own, so when I made an impromptu flight, we relied on the guys at the Boise airport to help us out.

We’d taken off toward the east, so I swung us around and headed west, toward the first quadrant.

“Alright,” West said through the headset. “Remind me what exactly we’re looking for.”

“Maple, oak, and birch trees. Fields with mountains nearby. Reagan seemed to think this was some sort of old farmhouse,and she said the mountains weren’t particularly tall, but it was difficult to judge because of the distance.”

“So likely somewhere near the end of the range,” West mused.

“That’s what I’m thinking.”

The first square we’d fly over fit the bill perfectly.

The tallest mountains in the state sat more northerly and centrally. Boise, for example, was located right on the edge of the Northern Rocky Mountains, which dipped down into the Columbia Plateau. But smaller ranges cropped up all over the state, and there was one located right at the edge of our county—the ideal place to begin our search.

I cut across the area until I reached the southwestern corner of Idaho, then tipped it back toward the east, flying along our border with Nevada. The plan was to note anything that looked promising from the air before passing our findings along to Lane.

There was no denying my brother was a great sheriff and a hell of a cop to boot, but West and I agreed we weren’t going to bring him in on this until we had a more complete picture of the area and something concrete to share. Better to ask forgiveness than permission.

Besides, we weren’t doing anything illegal or interfering in the investigation in any way.

If anyone asked, we were simply taking a joy ride—missing it from our days in the service.

There was nothing better to me than being in the air, anyway. Up here, I could think clearly and breathe more freely than I could on the ground.

Sometimes, though, these trips to the sky hit a little too closely to memories that ought to stay buried. Flyovers of decimated towns, bodies blown apart and strewn in the streets. Racing against the clock to save a comrade, only to arrive too late—a recovery, not a rescue.

I’d gotten good over the years at accepting the things frommy past I couldn’t change, but that didn’t mean the memories didn’t still assault me with all the finesse of an AK-47 now and then.

“Do you ever have war flashbacks?” West asked softly, as though reading my mind.

“Yeah.” Sidelong, I glanced at him. “You?”

“All the time. Nightmares too.”

“More like night terrors,” I muttered. “At least nightmares are figments of our imagination. But the shit we’ve seen?”

“Yeah.Real.”

“I’m always here for you, brother,” I said, lifting my fist, which he bumped. “And I won’t judge you if you need to talk to someone else. Seems to be working well for Crew.”

West nodded, his knuckles resting against mine for a fraction longer than necessary.

Right back at you, he said wordlessly.

The longer we flew, naturally, my thoughts turned to Reagan.

I wondered if I could talk her into taking a ride with me. I wanted so badly to show her this side of me, to experience my favorite thing with her.

As if he could sense where my mind had gone, West asked, “You gonna tell her about this?”

I shook my head. “Not yet. I don’t want to get her hopes up, and there’s no guarantee we’ll find anything. Hell, there’s no guarantee that dream meant anything.”

“You and I both know it meant something,” he said.