They were going to have to land soon. Either that or run out of fuel.
The word crash came to mind, but Arden didn’t voice it. She didn’t want to speak into the silence. She was afraid of what she might say.
She’d told Kane as much as she could. Probably more than she should. There were other things—things that she suspected and still hadn’t been able to prove—that she wouldn’t say. Not to him or her brothers or to the FBI. Even if she said them, no one would believe her.
But she knew what she’d seen: an email exchange between Dale and his boss discussing concern for the security of an unnamed research program. Dale had thought an insider was behind the backdoor he’d found—that someone may be trying to steal GeoArray’s research for their own gain. His boss had agreed.
Now they were both dead.
Logic told her they’d been right. Arden just needed to prove it.
It didn’t take much digging for her to find that GeoArray had been awarded a groundbreaking United States government contract to develop a self-improving weapons control system. Arden suspected the research for that system might be concealed under the layers of encryption surrounding the files she’d taken. In her experience, people didn’t bother placing that level of encryption around their data unless they were protecting something significant.
Someone had been transferring files outside GeoArray’s secure network. Someone was behind Dale’s death.
But while she believed that someone was Marcus Emory himself, she couldn’t prove it. Yet. As CEO of GeoArray, he definitely had the access and resources to orchestrate the crime. But that alone didn’t make him guilty. She needed solid evidence before she could come right out and accuse him, and possibly others in the company, of espionage.
She needed to decrypt the files fast. If she was right, the nation’s weapons systems could be compromised and the nation left vulnerable to attack. But it was all speculation. She needed the truth. She needed proof.
Yeah. Running had been her best and only choice.
Taking Sebastian with her had been her mistake.
She scratched him between his soft ears and felt him purring against her chest. If they died, they’d do it together. Cold comfort, and not really any comfort at all.
She needed to finish what she’d started, and then she needed to get home. Jace had to be severely wounded if he was returning from the Middle East. She knew her brother, and there was no other way he’d come home in the middle of a tour. Though he’d never ask for help, she wanted to be there for him.
But the muted roar of the plane engine, the flashing warning lights and Kane’s silence were making her wonder if she’d ever see home again. Kane made another adjustment to the panel, and the plane shuddered.
“What was that?”
“We’re descending.”
“You’ve found a place to land?”
He didn’t respond, and she knew exactly what that meant: he hadn’t.
“If you don’t have a place to land, why are we descending?” She wanted an answer that would make sense, one that would make her feel better. One that would hopefully make her believe that they weren’t about to crash.
“The low fuel light just came on.”
“That isn’t the answer I was hoping for,” she said aloud, then bit her lip to keep from saying more.
Impulse control. It was a thing. Usually she possessed it, but when she got nervous, she tended to forget that.
He glanced her way, his expression grim. “Would a pretty lie make you feel better?”
“Tell me how I can help,” she responded, because admitting that she might have preferred a pretty little lie wasn’t going to solve their problem.
“Right now, there’s not a whole lot you can do.”
“There has to be something,” she responded, eyeing the control panel and wondering if there was a user manual somewhere inside the cockpit. If so, she might learn some information that could help. She might be terrified, but she wasn’t giving up.
There’s a solution to every problem. Pray about it, look for it and be willing to accept it when God finally reveals it to you. Her mother had told her that dozens of times when Arden was a kid—gawky and awkward and too tomboyish to ever fit in with most girls her age.
Following her mother’s advice had been easy enough to do when she was a tween and teen. It wasn’t so easy to do when she was sitting in a plane that was running out of fuel.
“Is there a user manual somewhere?” she asked, desperate for action.
“You think a user manual is going to solve our problems?”
“It might.” She glanced out the window. It seemed like the ground was getting closer, the dark outline of trees visible through the snow.
“How about we stick to my plan instead?”
“I’m willing to consider it. If I knew what your plan was,” she managed to say, her heart pounding so hard she thought it might jump out of her chest. They were definitely descending. Just like Kane had said. Only there didn’t seem to be any place to land.
“According to the GPS, we’re closing in on Berlin, New Hampshire. If memory serves me, there’s an abandoned airstrip about ten miles east of town. If we can find it, we’ll land there.”
“If it’s abandoned, it might not be safe to land on.”
“It’s safer than flying a plane that’s running low on fuel. Keep an eye out for lights, okay? We should be approaching the town soon.”
It was busywork. The kind teachers had once given to keep Arden from asking questions and being annoying while other students were finishing their assignments.
She needed the distraction, so she stared out the window, trying to see through the snow. All she saw was gray-black night and swirling flakes.
Please, Lord. Help us find a place to land. Please, get us out of this alive. Please, get me back home to my family.
She felt like a child begging for favors. A child who’d spent a little too much time going her own way this past year. How many times had her parents asked her to attend church service with them recently? How many times had Grayson?
She’d always been too busy with her budding computer consulting business or too tired.
At least, those had been the excuses she’d given.
The reality was, she hadn’t wanted to go, because she hadn’t wanted to see her ex-boyfriend, Randy. She was afraid if she did, she’d be tempted to call him a lying, thieving fraud. She didn’t think that would go over well in the middle of Sunday service. Plus, she hadn’t told anyone in her family exactly what he’d done. She’d been embarrassed that she’d fallen for his act. Believed he cared for her when all he really wanted was her brainpower.
When she’d told her family she’d broken it off, they’d all been sympathetic and understanding. She knew that they’d also been secretly relieved and happy about the breakup. Her parents had never clicked with Randy. Her brothers hadn’t, either.
She’d met him just before she turned twenty. Having taken university courses while in high school, Arden had already earned master’s degrees in both math and computer science and had been invited to the university’s cutting-edge research program while she worked on her PhD.
Randy was nearly eight years older, intelligent and heading up one of the university’s most prestigious projects. He was just beginning to make a name for himself in the field and she’d been so impressed by his credentials she’d pushed aside her parents’ concerns. They’d dated for just about three years, the entire time they worked side-by-side on innovative research projects for the university. She’d thought they made a good team.
Even now, the truth was hard to swallow. Randy was arrogant and self-absorbed. He loved making other people feel stupid. If she hadn’t been so enamored with the idea of falling in love, she’d have seen that long before they became a couple.
Too late for self-recrimination, and much too late to go back and change things. She’d learned a valuable lesson from Randy—she wasn’t the kind of woman men fell deeply in love with. She was the kind of woman they used.
She scowled, leaning closer to the window, determined to find lights and a place to land, because she did not want to die in this tiny excuse for a plane.
“There!” Kane exclaimed, motioning to the left. “See that?”
“What?” She leaned closer to him, trying to achieve the same line of vision. Just ahead and to the east, tiny lights glimmered through the snow. “Is that the town?”
“Yep. It should be Berlin.” He maneuvered the plane carefully, trying to adjust its trajectory. He shifted the controls, and the plane shuddered before quickly stabilizing.
“Are we going to make it to the airfield?” she asked, her voice shaky. She hated that. She also hated that she couldn’t help. That she was just sitting there like a ninny while Kane tried to save both their lives.
He didn’t respond. He reached past her, his arm brushing her cheek as he pushed a button on the instrument panel and zoomed in on the navigation system.
She caught a whiff of leather and outdoors. It made her think of childhood and the camping trips she and her family had taken. It had been too many years since she’d slept under the stars and listened to the night’s music—crickets and owls and leaves rustling in warm summer breezes.
She’d lost her way somehow. She’d gotten offtrack and forgotten that her work wasn’t the most important thing. Randy had been part of the reason for that. Dating Randy had been easy. He never complained about her work; in fact, he’d encouraged it.
And of course that all made sense now.
She’d broken it off with Randy when she suspected he’d taken her code and sold it to the highest bidder. Some of that code had ended up embroiled in a child-trafficking case Grayson had worked on. She couldn’t prove Randy was behind it then, but if she survived this plane ride, she was certain Randy’s hands would come up dirty this time—his operational signature was all over the application she’d taken from GeoArray.
The plane shuddered again and every thought of Randy fled.
Below, lights sparkled, barely visible through the swirling snow. Then the town was behind them, and the area below was dark again.
The engine sputtered, and Arden’s heart seemed to sputter with it.
“Are we out of fuel?” she asked, the panic she’d been holding at bay threatening to spill out. She could hear it in her voice, and she was certain Kane could, too.
“No.” He sounded calm. He looked calm, his movements confident as he eased the yoke to the left.
“Are we about to crash?”
“I prefer to call it controlled impact,” he countered, obviously distracted by the sputtering engine and listing plane.
They were dropping in altitude. She didn’t know much about flying planes, but she knew how to read gauges and instrument panels. She’d always been fascinated by mechanical things, and she’d studied airplanes like she’d studied everything. She might be afraid to fly, but she wasn’t completely ignorant of how it worked.
“We’re going to die,” she sighed, the statement popping out before she could stop it.
“Everyone dies,” he responded.
“That’s obvious.”
“It’s the truth. If it makes you feel any better, I’m not planning on either of us dying tonight.”
“There are three of us on board.”
“Cats have nine lives. Your kitty will be fine. We do have a problem, though.”
“One?”
He glanced her way, what looked like the beginning of a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. “A few, but the one I’m currently worried about is our altitude. I can’t descend any more quickly without risking the engine stalling. At the speed we’re going, we’ll overshoot the landing field.”
“You’re right. That is a problem.”
“It’s good that we’re finally agreeing. That will make things easier when we land.”
Probably not.
As much as she appreciated what Kane was trying to do, there was no way she could go back home until she had the proof she needed. And he’d made it quite clear that’s what he wanted. Of course that would only be an issue if she and Kane made it out of this alive.
She mentally corrected herself. When they made it out alive, she was going to find a way to go off the grid again. She’d been close to decrypting those files. A few more days. That’s all she needed. If she could have that, she knew she could get justice for Juniper and Dale, prove her innocence and possibly uncover a plot that could put national security at risk. Then she could go back to Maryland, turn the proof and the files over to Grayson, and let him take it from there.
* * *
Kane hadn’t missed Arden’s lack of response. He was pretty sure she was still planning to run as soon as she got the opportunity. He could have told her that would be a waste of their time, but he had other things to worry about.
They’d already passed the airfield, and the plane was running dangerously low on fuel. He maneuvered the Cessna carefully, trying to adjust its trajectory slowly without stalling the beleaguered engine.
He peered out the window into the darkness below. The abandoned airfield would have been the perfect place to land. Or as perfect as any place could be for a plane in the Cessna’s condition. Now that that wasn’t an option, he had to reconfigure his thinking, try to come up with another solution to the problem.
The engine sputtered, and Arden nearly jumped out of her seat. She probably would have if she hadn’t been strapped into it.
“Relax,” he said, keeping his voice calm and even. One of the things he’d learned in the military was that panicking never did anyone any good. Clear precise thinking; clean precise action. That was the way to get out of a deadly situation.
“Relax? You’re a funny guy, Kane. I didn’t realize that about you.” Her voice wavered, but she was trying to stay calm. He’d give her credit for that. Her hands were fisted around the arms of her seat and she was leaning forward, staring out the window. But she wasn’t screaming, she wasn’t crying and she wasn’t getting in his way. And blessedly, she wasn’t singing, either.
“I’m full of surprises,” he responded automatically, his focus on the approaching ground, the trembling engine and the listing fuselage. He angled the plane slightly, trying to keep it steady for landing. The plane shook and dipped, protesting even the most subtle of adjustments.
It wasn’t a good situation.
He needed to land the plane now before the fuel tank emptied. He scanned the ground, looking for a clearing that would give him the best chance of landing safely.
Arden took a heaving lungful of air.
“You okay?” he asked, not taking his eyes off the approaching ground.
“I forgot to breathe.”
“That’s never a good thing,” he said drily.
Apparently, she didn’t catch his sarcasm.
“You’re right,” she agreed. “You stop breathing and you tense up. It’s always best to just relax and ride the punch.”
“Right,” he responded, only half listening.
He glanced at the GPS, and his pulse jumped. A narrow blue line curved near the top right edge of the map. He eased the aircraft in that direction, fighting the broken flaps and the weather. The riverbanks in places like this weren’t easy to land, but he’d navigated worse. He’d flown many rescue missions in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan. The circumstances of those landings hadn’t always been the best, either.
“It’s physics simplified.” Arden was still talking, spewing facts like she was on a game show trying to win a prize. “In a collision, an object experiences a force for a specific time period that results in the mass of the object changing velocity. That’s the basic theory supporting airbags in cars—they essentially minimize the effect of the force by extending the length of the collision. In boxing, it’s called riding the punch. When a boxer knows he can’t stop a punch to the head, he’ll relax his neck and let his head move backward on impact to minimize the force of the blow.”
“Arden?” He’d finally managed to fight the plane onto the correct course.
“Think about it this way.” She just kept talking. “If you were to—”
“What I’m thinking about is landing the plane. How about you do the same? With both of us focused and paying attention, we have a better chance of walking away from this.”
That seemed to do the trick.
She stopped talking, her silence as loud as her voice had been.
He almost felt guilty for cutting off her nervous chatter. Everyone had his or her own way of dealing with nerves. Apparently, when she wasn’t singing, she was spouting facts.
“It’s going to be okay,” he said, trying to reassure her.
“You can’t know that. Statistically—”
“Sometimes you have to forget statistics and just trust that God always works everything out for His good.” That was a truth Kane had always struggled with. It had taken years to accept that God cared and that He was there. Even in the hard times. Even in the ugliness. And there’d been plenty of that in Kane’s younger years. He’d had two deaths on his conscience before he turned eighteen. He’d been the ringleader that night, egging Evan on. The party had been Kane’s idea. If he hadn’t pressed the issue, Evan would have been watching his little sister more carefully. Lexi would still be alive. Evan, too. Two families had been shattered by that one lapse in judgment. He wouldn’t be responsible for shattering another.
“You’re right. I know you are.”
“So let’s focus, okay? There’s a river straight ahead of us. I should be able to land there.”
“On a river?”
“Do you have a better idea?” Kane pulled back slightly on the controls, forcing the nose of the plane up as he struggled to level it. The landing lights illuminated treetops that rushed toward them at breakneck speed. The effect was dizzying.
Just then, he spotted an opening in the trees almost directly ahead.
The river.
Wide and dark, it loomed ahead. Their only hope. A slight adjustment had the plane angled perfectly, lining up with the flow of the water. The river was wider than he’d hoped, the banks blanketed with more than a foot of snow—remnants of an earlier storm. If they were fortunate, the snow would help cushion their impact.
Reducing the Cessna’s speed further, he peered through the falling snow, past the range of the landing lights into the darkness, and prayed for an ideal spot to attempt a landing.
Finally, he saw it. A lazy curve in the river that would allow him to skid the plane over the water. The drag would hopefully bring them to a stop on the banks just before the tree line.
Arden had gone completely silent. No gasping breaths, off-key singing or spouted facts. He could feel her tension, and he could feel his own, the weight of what he was about to do, the responsibility of it, making his muscles taut.
Stay calm.
Stay focused.
That had been pounded into him when he trained as part of the Night Stalkers helicopter regiment.
Pulling back on the steering column, he angled the Cessna’s nose up slightly, dropped the aircraft lower and further reduced the plane’s speed. The Cessna bumped along the river as its landing gear skimmed the water, bouncing away, then skimming again.
They were moving too fast, the damaged flap making the fuselage list dangerously. He tried to compensate, but they were already down, water spraying, the engine choking. He thought he heard Arden scream, but the sound was masked by the screech of metal as the hull of the craft scraped against low-hanging branches.
They slammed into the riverbank, the explosion of sound deafening, the jarring impact stealing his breath.
Get up! Gather supplies! Get out!
He could almost hear his commanding officer yelling the orders. With the faint scent of fuel spurring him to action, he unbuckled his straps and was up and moving before the metal carcass of the Cessna settled into silence.