It would have been nice if Meg had asked me in private to have Dillon talk to her when he got back. I mean, she wasn’t the only one who had questions. No, she’d just ordered. And what could I say or do?
“You did not even try to say anything,” Zari observed. She was still sitting up at the table, as if she were getting ready to eat.
“Thanks for support,” I told her as I stood up to go. Meg had left the room. Kyle was slowly packing things up.
I really wanted to go back with Colleen and RaeLynn and bounce ideas off of them but I had no doubt that Meg would find that more than a little irritating. Well, maybe that’s what made the idea so appealing. It wasn’t like I didn’t have a ton of other things to do.
I made it back to my office when I heard something in the front. I thought it might be Kaitlyn as she was supposed to be there by nine and it was now about nine forty five. However, I heard Kyle greet Dillon.
“Hey,” I said walking back into the reception area. Dillon carried a briefcase and wore a jacket. No doubt he was planning to head back to his office to stow the items before talking with any of us. RaeLynn was still there, putting something on the front desk.
“Hey yourself.” He looked a little tired but freshly showered.
“When you put your stuff away Meg would like to talk to you about the plane, in her office,” I told him. Wasn’t I a good messenger?
“I’ll be there in a minute.”
RaeLynn raised an eyebrow at me and tried not to smile. I shrugged.
“Umm humm.” She could have been talking to herself but I supposed there was some meaning I should attach to that sound.
I walked back to my office once more, but didn’t really settle. I fully intended to crash Meg’s meeting with Dillon. I gestured to RaeLynn so that she’d go down there with her paper and electronic notepads. After all, if there was something to look up, she’d be the one doing it. That way Meg wouldn’t think I was crashing her meeting alone. Okay so I’m a little nervous around the woman.
“A little doesn’t cut it,” Zari said. She was already in my office, making biscuits with her paws around the cat tree, preparing to settle in.
“You aren’t going to the meeting?” I asked.
She looked over at me, ears flat. “I can hear perfectly fine from here.”
“And you call me chicken,” I said. RaeLynn passed the office, closely trailed by Dillon. I decided I’d end the procession, except of course that Kyle must have seen all the little ducklings heading to Meg’s and followed as well.
“I wasn’t expecting everyone,” Meg said, looking annoyed as we piled into her office. She was at her work table. Dillon sat there with her. RaeLynn took a chair from in front of Meg’s desk and I sat in the other one. Kyle sauntered over and took the desk chair. Meg flinched more when I sat in the visitor’s chair than she did when Kyle sat in her office chair.
I watched him lean back and get comfortable. I wondered how much he was just being nosey. He’d been pretty involved with his own case yesterday.
“Don’t you have a case you need to work on?” Meg asked, looking over her shoulder at him.
“I’m doing some thinking. I keep hitting a wall and I’m stewing about what it means,” he said easily.
Meg didn’t respond to that but turned back to Dillon.
“So tell us about the pilot,” she said.
“He’s out under a bush about an hour from the edge of where Peter can go. Marcus says that it’s not that far as the crow flies, but he couldn’t see any way to make it through as a human. While I was following the trail, I noticed the man moved as if he thought he’d be tracked. At the plane he did such a good job covering his movements that I wouldn’t have picked up a trail at all if I didn’t have Peter giving me an assist.”
Dillon looked down at his tablet computer for more notes. “I started to see blood. I don’t know if he’d been bleeding and just started dripping when I found it or if he’d cleaned away all traces earlier on. If it was the latter, he was thorough because I didn’t find any blood and I was searching for it. I didn’t look at the plane that closely as the priority was to find him. Tracking became easier and towards the end of the trail. I think he was crawling rather than walking or running. I think he was hurt worse than he had first thought.”
“But why hide?” Meg asked.
Dillon pursed his lips and shook his head.
“Was there someone after him when he crashed?” I asked.
“What do you mean?” Meg asked. She almost managed not to snap.
“What if this guy thought someone was following him. Maybe he stole the plane and wanted to get away before they caught him?”
Meg raised an eyebrow. I could see her thinking about that, running it through her sense of whether that was something true.
“Anything else about the plane?” Meg asked Dillon. No one had any comments on my comment. At least I knew RaeLynn would file that away if other evidence pointed in that direction.
“As will I, which means Peter will too,” Zari purred from the other room.
“It seemed kind of odd. At first I thought you guys had the wrong plane but Peter was there with me and he said it was. It looked like your average recreational plane, until you see the nose, which looks more like nose on the stealth bomber. Even then, I have to admit I’m not a plane guy so I didn’t think that much of it. It wasn’t until I came back and looked closer that I saw it was outfitted with some sort of gun or something under the wings. I was also wrong about it being a two-seater. There were places for two extra seats behind the front. One was knocked over and one had fallen backwards so I didn’t see them at first. There was blood on the back of the pilot’s seat, like someone leaned against it. It’s possible there were other people there. This man may not have been the pilot.”
“Peter would have known about other people,” Meg assured him.
“What if they fell out mid-air, above Whisper or on the edges of it and landed outside the mountain?” Kyle asked.
Meg paused, considering. I wondered if she was getting information from Peter. “If they were outside the boundary when they fell, Peter might not have noticed. It’s too bad he didn’t think of that sooner. He could have asked Marcus to search. We still can, but it’s probably a little late now.”
“But if they fell out of the plane over Whisper but landed elsewhere, he’d have known?” Kyle clarified.
Meg hesitated a second before saying yes.
“So we have the probable pilot, maybe others, down outside the boundaries of Whisper proper. The pilot, or whoever the man was, is the only one to have come down where Peter can sense him. Well, the pilot and the plane,” Kyle summarized.
Everyone nodded.
“So that leaves us with who made the plane and what is the purpose of it? And who was the person on the plane was and why was he fleeing? And what if he wasn’t alone?” Meg tapped a pen against her desk as she spoke.
“What if he wasn’t the pilot,” RaeLynn said. “What if he was a prisoner of some sort and he wanted to make sure no one found him?”
“Of course, how did the pilot manage to leave the plane before it crashed?” Meg asked.
“Ejection?” RaeLynn said.
“The seats are still there,” Colleen said from the doorway. She wasn’t really in on the meeting but I was glad she’d followed us down.
“Well, that’s interesting,” Meg said. “I need to go up there. Plus we’ll need to bring the body out. Dillon, are you up to going back in?”
“Sure,” Dillon said. He enjoyed hiking and nature. He was probably as happy working out there as he was working in the office.
“Maybe Colleen can help. How much do you think the pilot weighs?”
“I think Colleen and you could trade off helping me carry,” he said.
“Great. Let’s plan to get going in about two hours. Does that give you enough time?”
“I can be ready.”
“Count me in,” Colleen said.
“Anything else?” Meg asked.
“I had a call from a Taylor and Sons, a machine shop in North Bend for security,” I said. “I got there and was told they hadn’t called and they sent me away. Today they called and asked why I hadn’t shown up. Mike Taylor, the person I kept talking to, sounded different on the phone than he did in person. And he admits he thought he was at his office all day but clearly wasn’t. The description I gave of the man I saw was clearly not him.”
“Well, it’s not related.” Meg decided.
“Someone had to work on that plane and if it’s a test flight, these machinists could easily be local. It might be connected, although it’s a stretch.”
I saw Kyle make a note, looking thoughtful. I wonder what that brought up for him.
Meg frowned but clearly thinking it through. “I think it’s a stretch but I suppose we should make sure the machine shop wasn’t employed by anyone we’re looking it.”
“Did you get a photo of the pilot?” RaeLynn asked Dillon.
“Just need to upload and I’ll send it.”
“I’ll get started on the pilot id. That might give us a starting place.”
Meg nodded at that, pleased.
“Are you sure you don’t me to go with you?” Kyle asked Meg as he stood up.
“Dillon said the three of us could handle it. Besides, if something else comes up here, I want to know I have someone I can trust.”
RaeLynn tried not to flinch at that. I didn’t, because Meg had made very clear that I wasn’t to be trusted. Kyle nodded but I could see by the tension in his body that he was debating saying more. Finally he sighed and left the room. I followed him out. Dillon paused to let RaeLynn file out behind me, so we left Meg alone in her office. No doubt she’d go running home to collect her hiking gear in a few minutes.
The good news, I supposed, was that although I wasn’t trusted, at least she wouldn’t be glaring at me while she was on the mountain.