Page 7

CHAPTER 7

Diana left Costa feeding Emmeline, grabbed breakfast from a drive-thru, and drove at probably unsafe highway speeds to get home in time to change hastily and not be too late to the midmorning meeting to go over the crash information at the sheriff’s office. Luis was there; he gave her a questioning look, she shot back a thumbs-up, and he nodded.

Costa texted her that he had the all-clear to send someone to the crash site, was sending over some agents who ought to be there about noon, and where did she want to meet them? As if realizing that this was a very no-nonsense block of text, he followed it up with a picture of Emmeline, apparently sitting in his lap and playing with a stapler on his desk; all Diana could see was the top of her head.

I see finding someone to babysit is going great, Diana texted yet. Exploded any ovaries yet?

Why do women say that? He followed it up with an “ick” emoji and then added, There’s nothing sexy about exploding testicles.

Diana sent him a barf emoji and a thumbs down.

See?? he sent back.

Diana realized that she was grinning goofily at her phone, and hastily got her face under control. Have them meet me at the hangar for the sheriff’s dept helo. I’ll send you the maps link.

She got back a saluting-face emoji.

She got sucked into work and forgot to ask who he was sending, but when she finally pried herself away with the not-untrue explanation that another agency had her services for the afternoon, she found Costa’s agents already waiting for her. Agent Caine she already knew. He was dressed just as he had been last night and every other time she’d seen him, wearing a black suit jacket and black jeans, sunglasses hiding his eyes, perfectly closed off and inscrutable.

There were two women with him that Diana didn’t know, both of them giving off the slight tingle that meant they were shifters.

“You know we’re going to be scrambling around on a mountainside, right?” she said to Caine. “If you want to change into more practical clothes, you can probably borrow something from the guys here.”

“No,” Caine said.

Diana shrugged—if he wanted to be wildly uncomfortable all afternoon, that was his problem—and turned her attention to his companions. One was a college-age young woman, deeply tanned with a blotchy patchwork of freckles. She wore a short-sleeved plaid shirt, jeans, and practical hiking boots, as well as a floppy-brimmed canvas sun hat. At least one person here looked like they’d been hiking at least once in their lives, Diana thought.

The other woman was in her thirties and wearing a short pink sundress over white jeans, with a pink bow holding back her blonde hair.

“Hi. I’m the pilot, Diana Reid. And I am going to insist on sunscreen, hats, and hiking boots for everyone here. Are you both agents?”

“They’re interns,” Caine said. “We’re short-staffed. Jessie Boyd and Tiffany Dawes.”

“People call me Fifi,” the blonde said, holding out a hand. “I’m sorry. What was that about sunscreen?”

Diana provided a tube of SPF 50 and, while the women slathered themselves, found a spare pair of her own boots for Fifi, whose feet were within about half a size of her own.

“I’m fine,” Caine said, but after a hesitation he accepted the sunscreen tube from Fifi.

“You are going to wear a hat or you’re not going out there,” Diana said. “If you get bit by a snake or twist an ankle in those shoes I suppose that’s your business, but I will not tolerate preventable heatstroke.”

There were a lot of hats available, most of them very far from stylish. Diana picked out two practical fishing-style hats with a canvas drape across the back and handed them out. Fifi gave a little sigh and settled hers over her fluffy blonde hair. Caine put his on with an expression that suggested he was enduring a mild form of torture.

“Mine’s okay?” Jessie asked.

“Yeah, and since you’re the one person who came prepared, I’m going to consider you my backup if either of these two falls off a cliff or passes out from the heat.”

In truth, it wasn’t that hot even down here, a pleasant spring day of seventy-five or so. But it was easy to become dehydrated at the high elevations of the mountains, so in addition to her other precautions she made sure there was plenty of readily accessible water in the helicopter, along with the usual emergency supplies.

“One of you gets to be my copilot,” she said. “Who wants it?”

Caine looked as unexcited as every other time Diana had seen him, but Fifi and Jessie were both practically bouncing on their toes. Diana smiled.

“Okay, one of you gets it on the outbound trip, then you’ll trade coming back. Agent Caine, you’ll be in the back. Have any of you been in a helicopter before?”

She got eager confirmation from both women that they hadn’t, and a grunt from Caine. Diana handed around headsets and showed them how to use them, then went through a brief safety lecture, and they were ready to leave.

She slid into the pilot seat and texted Costa.

Headed to the crash site now. Cell coverage is spotty to nonexistent out there. Anything special you want us to look for?

He texted her back a moment later:

owrieutpw4eroijccx444444444

And then:

I think you can guess who decided to put her 2 cents in.

Diana stifled a laugh.

Before she could respond, Costa’s next text came in.

If there’s anything there, I trust you and the team to find it.

Her chest filled up with a whole swirling cloud of butterflies, and the buoyant feeling stayed with her so intensely that she barely registered her passengers’ reactions to the moment in a helicopter flight that most new passengers reacted to most strongly—the thrilling instant when they left the ground and began to hover.

I trust you, he’d said.

Inwardly, Diana shook her head at herself.

Yes, but we don’t work when we’re together, she told that hopeful inner voice. We tried it. And it didn’t work then, and it won’t work now, and we know why.

There was nothing to be gained by throwing both of their hearts off a cliff a second time.

* * *

Now that Diana knew where it was, the crashed red and white airplane could be seen in glimpses through the dense brush in the gully. She circled slowly to give her passengers a good look. Fifi, in the copilot seat, peered out of the helicopter’s plastic bubble canopy in fascination.

It was clear that the crash investigators had been on site. Some of the brush was cut back—Diana could see the exposed ends of branches and stumps where chainsaws had been used—and there were trampled trails leading in and out of the ravine. All of this was going to make it even harder to find anything useful.

“How are they going to get that out of there?” Jessie asked over her headset from the backseat.

“They may not,” Diana said. “After the investigation is done, the owners will retrieve any parts they want from the plane, assuming it’s not seized for evidence in a drug trial or similar. As for the actual wreckage, in a remote location like this, they’ll probably either try to sell it off to someone who’s willing to cart the pieces out, or just leave it.”

She had sometimes seen old wrecks on her flights, the remains of long-ago military or civilian aircraft left to slowly decay in the desert landscape. These days it was a lot less likely, between concerns about fuel contamination and the ready availability of salvage companies that could be found online. But this would be a difficult and expensive retrieval. There was no chance of getting road access anywhere close enough to truck it out.

The fact that Emmeline had survived, and survived in good shape, still seemed almost magical. Whatever the kid had gone through before she ended up on that plane, she had an angel watching over her now.

Diana found that the helicopter landing site was now marked with orange flags and a large survey tripod. She set down the helicopter in a scuffed and trampled circle. Crash investigators must have been all over the place yesterday.

Today it was deserted, as quiet and still as Diana remembered from her first trip with Luis. She shut down the helicopter, and they climbed out. Fifi blew out a breath as she stepped down and pressed her hand to her chest.

“Are you all right?” Diana asked her.

“Yes, I just—it’s very different from flying in a big jet, isn’t it?” She turned to look at the helicopter.

Diana reminded herself to be careful with the low circling and turbulence while carrying novice flyers. “Yes, it is. You all did great. Now, everyone grab your hat and a bottle of water. Yesterday my partner and I went straight down the ravine, but I saw a better way when we were flying over.”

She had noticed a number of animal trails leading into and out of the ravine. It looked like the crash site investigators had been using them rather than bushwacking. After a short scramble along the descending ridge, she glimpsed a flash of sunlight off the fuselage below them, and they climbed down to look.

As she had observed from the air, the brush was now cut back, and it looked like all the loose items had been picked up. The door of the plane was open, and Diana risked a quick peek inside to find the dead pilot gone and some loose wires dangling where the flight recorder had been. The interior of the plane, which she remembered had had quite a bit of random debris, had been stripped aside from a small amount of trash, including a dropped water bottle that she supposed had belonged to one of the investigators. Careless behavior if this was an actual crime scene, but she reminded herself that no one except the SCB had any reason to think so.

“Who has the evidence?” Caine asked in his soft, rasping voice, right at her shoulder. Diana jumped and nearly banged her head on the door frame.

“The Cochise County sheriff’s office, most likely, aside from whatever the NTSB investigators took. Quinn—that is, Chief Costa was working on getting the items transferred over to your bureau, I think, or getting you access if they can’t.”

Caine nodded. He still looked wildly out of place in his black suit, and the hat did not improve the picture, although it did make it considerably more hilarious.

“Where did you find the child?” he asked.

“There,” Diana said, pointing.

Caine nodded again. He began moving around the plane, looking at everything and somehow managing to fade into the background in spite of his incongruous appearance.

The interns, having received no instructions, stood around awkwardly.

Caine, Diana inferred, was not used to working with a team. Well, it wasn’t as if she was a stranger to either teamwork or crash site investigations, so she took the lead.

“Does anyone here have a good sense of smell in their shift form?” she asked the interns.

“I’m a capybara,” Fifi said eagerly. “We have a very good sense of smell.”

“Horse,” said Jessie. “We’re not bloodhounds, but we’re all right.”

There was no response from Caine, who was only intermittently visible on the far side of the wreckage. Diana decided to let him do his thing unimpeded. If he had a problem with her giving his interns instructions, he could complain to Costa about it.

“Well, I’m a roadrunner, so either of you is probably better than me,” she said. “What I want you to do is shift, spread out around the crash site, and sniff around.”

“For what?” Jessie asked, though she was already unbuttoning her shirt.

“That’s up to you. Anything out of place. There will have been a lot of people tramping around this wreck in the last twenty-four hours, so you might find things they dropped, cigarette butts or water bottles. But try to pick out anything unusual,” she finished weakly.

The instructions might be vague, but the interns, happy to have something to do, went to it with a will. They vanished in separate directions to undress, but soon Diana heard crashing sounds in the bushes and caught a glimpse of something large and brown moving through the brush. After holding still for a minute to be sure it wasn’t a wild animal, she made out a pink bow on top of its head and relaxed.

Leaving them to it, she leaned into the plane to have a better look. She had intentionally dispatched them elsewhere, even though the inside of the plane was the most likely to have actual helpful evidence, because she didn’t want to hand them the potential trauma of sniffing around where someone had died. They would probably have difficult cases later on. Better ease them into it. She smiled ruefully, remembering the first S in fact she saw what might be the entrance to several, although it was hard to tell the difference between a cave mouth and the inky black shadows cast by the desert sun.

“So, uh, you weren’t kidding about the need, but I don’t think the Dramamine had time to take effect yet,” Fifi said faintly into the headset.

Diana glanced at her and saw that she was white other than a reddening flush of sunburn across her nose. “Don’t worry, I’m going to set down as soon as I find a place.”

She spotted a figure waving at them from the top of the cliff. When Diana did a cautious fly-by, it turned out to be Caine. Diana had no idea how he’d made it across the valley that fast. Whatever he turned into must be speedy. She circled slowly around the clifftop until she found a flat-looking place without too much brush and settled down in it.

“No luck,” Caine said after the noise of the helo died away.

“I didn’t think so,” Diana said, helping a shaky Fifi out. “It looked like there might be caves.”

“There are. Too damn many.”

“Did you find anything at all?” Diana asked. She guided Fifi to sit on a rock, where the intern put her head in her hands. Diana handed her a bottle of water.

“No. Can’t tell where the shots came from, except that it was somewhere over here.” Caine sounded disgusted with himself.

“I think it’s time to head in and report.” Diana glanced around; the feeling of exposure was no longer quite so intense, but she disliked being this close to the former location of whoever had been shooting at them a few minutes ago.

“You go,” Caine said. “I’m going to keep looking.”

Diana frowned at him. His cheeks and nose, like Fifi’s, were starting to redden slightly in the sun, and he looked uncomfortable, blinking rapidly behind the dark glasses. “Are you sure? You know there’s no cell service or roads up here, right?”

“I’ll be fine. Tell Costa where I am.” He took a water bottle from the helo, and without another word, trotted down one of the animal paths leading down the cliff and vanished almost immediately from sight.