It’d been too easy. So easy, he felt guilty.
But she’d taken the bait like a starving rat. Gobbled it right up. Hopped in her plane and lifted into the skies … never to be seen again.
He wasn’t proud of what he’d done. Not really. She’d been a nice girl. Pretty, even. But she wouldn’t give up that fool notion of taking over TFAT. He needed that business. She didn’t. She wanted it, but she didn’t need it. Not the way he did.
She pushed me to do this.
Hadn’t even noticed the tampering he’d done. She’d get up there, think she was on some rescue mission, then … “Breaking news at six!” he exclaimed with a chuckle.
“Roger Bender.”
Over his shoulder, Roger saw the sheriff stalking toward him, one hand hovering over his holstered weapon.
Weightlessness coupled with deadly silence engulfed her. She attempted to restart the engines. Eyes glued to the rapidly slowing propeller that went from looking like a heat plume in front of the Otter to a slowing ceiling fan blade.
“Mayday! Mayday! This is November 5-6-2 Tango Foxtrot. Having trouble—”
A wind gust caught her. Threw her Otter sideways. With no engines she had no control. Panic thrummed against the silent scream.
“Mayday! Mayday! This is November 5-6-2 Tango Foxtrot—”
“November 5-6-2, this is Control. What is the problem?”
“I—” Deline bit off the sentence as she saw the sheer granite relief of Ruth’s Gorge storming toward her. “Oh, God, help!”
“November 5-6-2! Deline—talk to us.”
Hearing her voice name snapped Deline back to the present. “I … engines … something’s wrong. Losing altitude.”
And fast. The plane glided down … down … no control … right toward a ten-thousand-foot wall of granite. “Great Gorge … not—”
A loud moaning vibrated through the hull. Deline looked over her shoulder. The left wing sheared off. The plane canted.
Glacier and granite rushed up at her.
Pop!
Deline jolted upward.
Pain howled. She threw herself back with a scream, clamping a hand over her left leg. Her stomach threatened to heave against the agony and smell of fuel mixed with blood. Something pressed into her face—the headset. She pushed it off with a grunt. Feeling suffocated, trapped, upside down …
Her mind whiplashed as her awareness surged to the forefront. The plane … it sat tilted. The right wing propped against something. The weight of sitting at an odd angle—for however long she’d been here unconscious—proved painful. Her shoulder and leg pulsed a fresh wave of pain with each heartbeat.
Have to get out of here. Through the fiery shards and nausea, she groped for the headset that clattered against fiberglass and steel. “November …” It hurt to talk. What was she saying? Her code—ID—whatever. “This is … November 5-6-2 Tango Foxtrot….” She panted against the exertion.
Nothing. Not static. Not anything … why wasn’t it working?
She slumped back … sideways, bracing herself as she remembered what happened. The conversation with Roger Bender. His warnings that Logan had been badly injured, that Curt wanted her to fly up to retrieve him. That she had to get him off the mountain or he’d die. Of what happened.
Wet and hot, her thigh felt … weird. What …? She peered down and grimaced. Her breakfast came hurtling back up. She hurled to the right, all over the passenger seat that now lay crumpled and littered with glass.
Must move. Get out. She released her harness and tried to extract herself without falling. Gravity exerted its force. Her leg slipped. Fire lit through her muscles. And shoulder. She couldn’t give in to it. Had to get out. Carefully, she lowered herself.
Fire lit down her leg. And shoulder.
Her other arm collapsed.
She dropped. Pitched forward. Slid toward the back of the Otter.
She hit her head. So hard her teeth clamped. Cold pain shocked her body. Sent her reeling back into blackness.