Page 2

CHAPTER 2

Above the eroded stone pillars, pinyons and sycamores of the Chiricahua massif, a helicopter hovered under the control of Diana Reid’s strong, capable hands.

“That’s B6 on the search grid cleared,” she said to the man in the seat beside her, who nodded and marked the map on his knees. “Base, B6 clear, moving on to B7.”

“Negative, Rescue 22.” It was Caroline on the radio, Diana’s favorite dispatcher out of the Cochise County sheriff’s office. “We have a report of smoke sighted in D9. Could be nothing, a hiker, who knows, but you’re the nearest. Check it out.”

“Roger, Base.” Diana switched to private intra-helicopter communications on the headset and turned to her copilot. “Luis, hand me a water bottle and a granola bar. It’s been a while since lunch.”

Luis made a show of shock. “You’re staying hydrated without me having to nag you? Where’s Di and what did you do with her?”

Diana snorted. She set her course and planted the bottle between her knees. “Got a hot date tonight, if all this works out for the best. If not, I need to keep my strength up.”

“You still dating that asshole over at the SCB?”

“Hey!” Diana said. Her annoyance was genuine. She got to carp about Costa not keeping up his end of the strange deal they’d made years ago, but it was like making fun of family; you didn’t let other people do it. “He’s fine. I’m fine.”

“I’m starting to think you made up this boyfriend just to keep the single guys at the station off your back.”

That hit too close to home. “I wouldn’t want to steal you away from Alvero,” she said, naming Luis’s husband. “Costa might try, though. I can bring him in one of these days and introduce you. He’ll get along great with the rest of you shitheads.”

Luis flipped her off and tore open the granola bar wrapper for her so she could eat without needing both hands.

Luis was a paramedic, a middle-aged former biker with a competent air of “been there, seen it all” and a no-nonsense attitude that made him one of her favorite partners for this sort of work. He was 5’5”, shorter than her, but built like a tank; she had once seen him wrestle a delirious six-foot hiker to the ground, throw the guy over his shoulder, and haul him to the helo.

And he was a shifter, which could also come in handy. When it was just the two of them on a callout, they could be completely candid discussing the possibilities—should an S it’s down a gully. Luis says he sees something that might be wreckage. Investigate on foot? Over.”

The radio crackled, breaking up as the mountain peaks interfered. “You want to wait for backup?” the dispatcher asked as the static cleared.

“Is it close?” In situations like this, with possible severe injuries, every minute counted.

“You see anywhere nearby someone could land a plane?”

“Not at all,” Diana said.

“Then no. The only other ‘copter we have available today is working the grid north of you, near Mt. Graham. Probably an hour, two hours before we could have someone down there. Maybe more.”

“Then no,” Diana told her. “We’ll go in on foot. We’re going to be out of touch for a bit, but if we don’t check in, let’s say in twenty minutes, call in the cavalry.”

“Copy, Rescue 22.”

Diana moved in for a light touchdown in the clearing. It was less nerve-wracking than many landings she’d made before. She shut down, and the rotors beat their way to stillness. The echoing silence of the mountains filled her ears, along with the pings of the cooling engine.

“You could stay here,” she began.

“Hell no, you may be the boss of me in the field, but I’m not letting a lady go out there alone.”

As she was probably meant to, Diana rolled her eyes and shot him a sneer. She climbed out of the helicopter and got her bearings. The ravine was below them. It was chilly this high in the mountains, not yet spring as it was in the desert beneath. There was still snow on the high peaks. She zipped up her jacket and pulled a baseball cap over her thick dark curls. It was easy to sunburn quickly at this latitude and altitude, even though she was perpetually tanned from all the time she spent outdoors.

“Got reception?” she asked Luis, who was holding his phone up. Her voice sounded loud to her in the stillness.

“No bars, doesn’t even look like it’s able to do emergency calls. We are isolated .”

“And the radios won’t be much good in this,” she muttered, looking down at the twisting ravine and the mess of broken rocks, hills, and gullies below them. According to the helicopter’s altimeter, they were at about 5,000 feet. That was a lot of rough ground, steep cliffs, and deep holes to swallow a signal.

Luis had already started down, his movements sure and competent. Diana followed him.

The ravine quickly closed out all visibility except a slice of cloudless blue sky above them. The air, although cool, was fragrant with pine and crisp, dry brush that snapped underfoot.

“Smell that?” Luis murmured.

She started to ask if he meant the pine, then realized what he did mean. There was a faint smell of smoke in the air, acrid and garbage-y rather than the clean scent of woodsmoke. As they descended further into the ravine, she began to catch petrochemical whiffs.

“Gasoline?” she asked.

“Aviation fuel, most likely. Could be you’ll get that hot date after all.”

His tone was light, in the blackly funny way that all first responders had of dealing with the life-and-death situations they dealt with every day. But Diana’s stomach tightened. There were lots of options for what might be ahead of them, and many of those were nasty.

“Think we should sing out?” Diana asked.

“Call and see if there’s someone alive down there, you mean? Dunno. How likely you think, if there’s someone down there, that they’d be friendly?”

Yeah, that was the problem. They were too far off the beaten path and it was too early in the season for backcountry hikers. They were both quiet for a moment, considering the options: gangs, drug runners, angry survivalists.

“They had to’ve heard us land,” Diana pointed out. “Sneaking up on somebody hostile is just gonna make us more likely to get shot. Better if we give them time to get away, if that’s what they want.”

There were times when her job might involve investigating a suspected drug camp or illegal grow operation, but this wasn’t one of them. She just wanted to find the accident site and locate survivors.

“I’d better yell out, then. Don’t want ‘em to think a woman’s up here alone.”

Diana glared at him and bellowed, “Hello down there! We’re here to investigate a plane crash. Can anyone hear me?”

As the echoes of her voice died away, she heard small rustles in the brush. A couple of birds burst from cover and took off down the ravine, their wingbeats fading in the distance.

“Good lungs on you,” Luis said.

“Just for that ‘woman alone’ crack, I really am going to introduce my boyfriend to Alvero.”

Another few moments of climbing down the increasingly steep ravine, and the fuel smell became stronger.

“No passengers, right?” Luis asked, confirming for form’s sake what they both already knew.

“Right. Just the pilot.” According to the company, the plane had been flying out empty to pick up a cargo of live chickens in Alamagordo.

Luis cupped his hands around his mouth. “Hello! Anyone alive down there?”

He shook his head when there was, once again, no answer. Diana pointed up to a snapped-off pine branch just above their head height. The yellow wood gleamed, and the scent of pine sap was fresh.

“Crash site,” she murmured.

“Or something. Big storm, maybe.”

But it was swiftly clear that something violent and dramatic had happened here recently. When Diana clambered over a boulder, she sighted the tangled structure of an airplane just below her, nose down in the ravine, wings broken and crumpled.

“Sonuvagun,” Luis muttered. “We found it.”

He started forward, paramedic training taking over, but Diana touched his arm to stop him. She took a moment to look at the site. There were no obvious dangers. The smoke was gently twisting up from the engine, which had been half ripped out of the nose of the plane, but nothing was actively on fire—though recent crash sites with spilled aviation fuel were always dangerous, especially in a confined area like this with nowhere to run. She saw no one moving.

“Hello?” Diana called.

There was an abrupt flurry of motion from near the plane, under one wing. It sounded more like an animal than a person, something thrashing around in the brush.

“I’ll investigate the cockpit,” Luis said quietly. “You check that out.”

He was taking the harder job, Diana knew. But unlike the half-playful, half-protective chauvinism that her male coworkers indulged in, this really was his job, just like flying the helicopter was hers. She had first responder training, but Luis was the one who worked with drug overdoses, suicide attempts, ugly ranching accidents, and domestic violence four days a week. Whatever he found here, he was capable of dealing with it both professionally and emotionally.

So Diana crawled beneath the crumpled airplane wing, seeking the source of that furtive fluttery movement. “Hi there,” she called soothingly. Was it a pet? A wild animal trapped by the crash, maybe injured?

She glimpsed a quick flash of something moving, and felt an odd twist in her gut.

A shifter?

Shifters could recognize each other, but there was no scientific explanation for how they did it. For most people, it was visual, but Diana, like everyone else she’d talked to, couldn’t narrow it down any more than “you just know.” Some people spoke of it as a tingling feeling or a kind of adrenaline rush. For Diana it was more nebulous, a vague sense she couldn’t put her finger on. And she thought that might be what she was feeling now.

“Hello?” Diana called softly. She squirmed under the wing. It had crumpled like a sheet of paper in the force of the crash, folded up accordion-style and wedged against a boulder. She had to fight her way through a brush-choked crevice in the rocks, the bulk of the airplane above her.

It seemed unlikely that anyone had survived the crash. But she’d encountered odder things. It could be a kid, or, as she’d thought a moment ago, a panicked and possibly injured shifter trying to flee. An escaped pet, a smuggled exotic animal—it could be a lot of things.

But when she finally fought her way free of the brush, picking twigs out of her hair, nothing could have prepared her for what she saw.

“Oh my,” was all Diana could say.

It was a baby.