Tempt Me If You Can

by Janet Chapman

  “Maybe Wayne’s running drugs, and he’s using this as a drop site.”

  Michael slowly nodded. “That makes sense. He would have the opportunity to run drugs, since he can roam these woods without suspicion.”

  “It’s a far-fetched idea,” Emma said.

  “But a brilliant one, Nem.”

  “Then where’s all the drug money? Wayne’s not exactly living the high life.”

  “He’s socking it away. One day he’ll just disappear, only to turn up with a new life in a faraway place.”

  Michael was clearly warming to the idea.

  “Okay, Sherlock. Let’s work out a scenario. How do the drugs get to this spot?”

  “An air drop. Which Wayne picks up and brings into town.”

  Damn if that didn’t make sense. “That would mean there has to be a road nearby.”

  Michael pulled out the topographical map from his pack and opened it, turning so the lowering sun would light it through the trees. “Here’s one.” He looked off to the east. “It comes in from the Golden Road, but according to the map, it’s old. It may not be passable by truck.”

  “So we find it and see if its been traveled,” Emma suggested, picking up Homer’s empty cage and heading east.

  Mikey folded his map, leaving the area they needed exposed as he fell into step beside her. “And if it has? What then?”

  Emma picked her way through the underbrush. “We could maybe have a talk with Ramsey. Tell him about our suspicions.”

  Michael snorted as he held a branch for her to pass. “He’ll laugh us out of his office. We have nothing for proof but some illegally gained coordinates marking nothing.”

  Emma stopped and glared at him. “We’re going to tell Ramsey our suspicions, and then we are dropping the whole thing. You are not going to look for proof, understand? You are not going to stick your nose into anything remotely dangerous.”

  “I wonder what Dad would think we should do?” he asked, knowing darn well that Ben would love to bring down a world of trouble on Wayne Poulin.

  “If you tell Ben, then you’re going to have to tell him we stuck our nose in this in the first place. How do you think he’ll take that news?”

  “He’ll lecture a bit, but then he’ll realize that maybe we can’t pass up the opportunity.”

  “Michael Sands, I’m going to lock you in your room for a year,” Emma said, pushing past him through the underbrush.

  She’d opened a can of worms with this little excursion, and now she didn’t know how to put the lid back on the damn thing. God help them all if Ben decided to get involved.

  They found the road a quarter of a mile to the east. As the map indicated, it was an abandoned old logging road leading up a mountain that hadn’t been harvested in over forty years. The bushes had grown in, but not enough to make passing impossible. Emma and Mikey stood in the middle of the old track, looking in both directions.

  “It’s passable here, but any number of old bridges or culverts could be washed out farther down,” Emma said.

  Mikey started walking toward the Golden Road, looking down as he went. “There’s been traffic up here since last spring.” He moved the bushes and checked their branches. “There’s broken twigs here, but they’re weathered.”

  “Any number of people like to see where these old roads lead,” Emma said, trailing behind him and studying the gravel. “That doesn’t mean it was Wayne.”

  They walked on in silence, looking for any signs of recent use. “Maybe this is no longer a drop site,” Emma said after a time. “Maybe it never was.”

  Mikey suddenly stopped and hunched down, touching the ground in front of him. “This track is fresh,” he said, looking around. He stood up and walked back a few steps. “And look. A truck turned here.” He grabbed a bush and fingered a broken branch. “This is new.”

  Emma walked up and looked at the tracks in the road. They were fresh. She looked in both directions and then up the forested mountain. For the second time that day, a chill brushed down her spine.

  “Someone was here today,” she said, continuing on until she came to a mud puddle with a tire track through it, the ground still wet from the splash of the truck passing. “Not long ago.” She turned to her nephew. “We’re going back to the plane, Mikey. I don’t like this.”

  “Aw, Nem. It’s just getting interesting.”

  “No, it’s getting creepy. What are the chances that two different parties ended up in this particular spot at the same time?”

  “We couldn’t have been followed. We flew here.”

  “But Wayne knew I had been in his desk. He might be checking to see if I discovered the coordinates and came here.”

  “He knew? How?”

  Emma felt her face redden. “I must have rearranged something in his desk. Or maybe he counts his stationery.”

  Mikey did his own scan of the area, suddenly looking worried. “If Wayne’s been using these woods to run drugs, then he knows them well. He’d know where we’d land our plane. Maybe we should head back and make sure it hasn’t been discovered.”

  “We’re going to check that plane out with a magnifying glass,” Emma said as she started up the road, searching for a game trail that turned off to the northwest. “And then we’re flying home and dropping this whole thing. It’s not worth our getting involved.”

  She was talking to the trees. Mikey was still standing in the road, staring at her.

  “Not worth getting involved? Nem, we can’t just do nothing. The guy could be running drugs.”

  “It’s not our problem. We’ll tell Ramsey, and let him decide what to do.”

  “But where’s your sense of citizenship?”

  “It’s hiding behind my sense of responsibility,” she countered, walking back to him. “Your safety and my safety come first. Drug dealers are dangerous and without conscience, and we are not going to put ourselves in the middle of this.”

  He simply started walking up through the forest until they came to the mountain, then turned south and skirted it.

  Emma walked quietly behind him. Well, she’d done it now. Michael Sands could be one stubborn, ugly dog when he got a bone between his teeth.

  She knew he would go to Ben as soon as the man got back, and tell him their suspicions and persuade him to do something about it. And she would have absolutely no control over what they decided.

  Michael Sands had apparently had enough of female guidance.

  Chapter Fourteen

  It took them half an hour to reach the plane, and it felt like the longest trek Emma had ever made. Silence can be such a wearing thing, especially when the longer it continues, the wider the void becomes. Right now there was a distance growing between her and Mikey nearly as wide as Medicine Lake.

  “It looks to be riding low on one side,” Mikey said as they approached the plane, speaking for the first time since they’d left the road.

  Sure enough, one of the floats was sitting on the bottom of the pond, making the Cessna look like a wounded bird with its wings spread out for balance.

  Dammit, someone was out here with them.

  And whoever it was didn’t want them leaving by air.

  “We’re going over every inch of it,” she said, remembering Ben’s tampered-with oil pan and lug nuts.

  Scrambling onto the still-floating pontoon, Emma opened the engine cowling and peered inside with a small flashlight. Running her light along the wiring and hoses, it wasn’t long before she found trouble.

  “He wasn’t a very imaginative saboteur,” she told her nephew as she fingered a severed hose. “He simply cut the fuel line in half.”

  “Then he doesn’t know you very well. You always shut off the fuel,” Mikey answered, unlocking the door to the plane and throwing their packs inside. Then he climbed up onto the wing. Emma heard him sigh. “He snapped off the radio antenna.”

  Emma walked to the back compartment of the plane and rummaged around in her toolbox. Mikey had more confidence in her
preparedness than she did. She doubted she had any fuel line, or anything else she could substitute. She always kept her plane in perfect flying condition, and the fuel line was not something one expected to break.

  “What’s the damage to the float?” she asked as she searched for anything resembling a hose.

  “It looks like he took an ax to it just below the waterline. Any luck with the hose?”

  “No, Mikey. I don’t have one.”

  “Are you sure?”

  She popped her head out and bent to look under the fuselage so she could frown at him. “The plane had its annual inspection just last month. Why would I need to carry around a bunch of spare parts?”

  “Maybe because you have this thing about always being prepared? So what are we going to do?”

  Emma looked around at the beaver flowage and the endless forest. “We walk.”

  Mikey looked around also. “Right into an ambush?”

  The sun chose that very moment to hide behind a cloud, adding its own warning.

  “Then we fly out,” she said with more confidence than she was feeling.

  “How?”

  “We conjure up some Yankee ingenuity and make this lady flyable. Here,” she said, handing him the pieces of hose she had removed from the engine. “Find a way to splice this while I check for other damage.”

  Mikey took the hose, they ducked into the back compartment and began to search for something useful. Emma looked at the engine again.

  Ten minutes went by before she felt a tug on her shirt. “Here. This is the best I can do,” Mikey told her as he handed up the repaired fuel line.

  Emma looked at it, then at her nephew. “Duct tape? What have you got stiffening it so it won’t collapse?”

  “I pulled some conduit out of the tail section. It was tight, but I was able to slide the severed ends of the hose over it and tape them together.” He hesitated, giving her an uncertain look. “It should hold long enough to get home. But even if it works, we still can’t fly with that hole in the float,” he added, glancing at the sunken pontoon.

  Emma smiled at him, nodding in approval and reassurance. The poor boy had been asked to do something that put both their lives on the line, and he didn’t like it. She worked the repaired hose back into place.

  “We’ve restricted the flow somewhat, but if it can get us airborne, then you’ve worked a miracle, Mikey. Now let’s see about floating this plane. Grab that bicycle pump and truck tire tube from in back, would you?”

  “But the float has a hole the size of a basketball, Nem. Duct tape won’t hold, and a rubber patch will never be strong enough to withstand the pressure.”

  “We’re not going to patch it. We’re going to stick that tube in the float and pump it up,” she told him, smiling as his eyes widened in disbelief.

  “What makes you think that will work?”

  “Remember Jack Frost? The guy who was here last summer?”

  He suddenly laughed. “Do I. He flew floatplanes in the Gulf of Mexico, didn’t he, servicing the oil rigs?”

  “Yup. And Jack told me that most of the pilots down there always stick a deflated truck tube in each of their floats. If they get a bad leak or damage one of them, they can pump up the tube to displace enough of the water to take off and land.”

  Her nephew looked more skeptical than impressed. “There’s got to be a lot of drag.”

  “It’ll work.” Emma jumped down in the water, wincing at the cold. “I got us into this mess, and I’m going to get us out. By air.”

  Michael hunkered down on the float above her and unscrewed one of the portals. “If anyone can do it, you can. And I’m sorry.”

  She continued stuffing the giant tube through the portal. “For what?”

  He took over the chore, not looking at her as he spoke. “For shutting you out this afternoon. For getting carried away by this whole idea of chasing down some drug runners. For being mad at you.” He finally looked up. “For forgetting that you love me, and that you were only worried about my welfare.”

  “Heck, I remember what it’s like to be young and full of dreams and curiosity and adventure.”

  “But you never got to fulfill any of your dreams, did you? You got me and Kelly to look after, a huge mortgage to pay, and a boatload of sports to babysit.”

  She squeezed his leg. “I got something a whole lot better. I got you. As the song says, I thank God for unanswered prayers. I wouldn’t trade my life with you for any of my childish dreams. I love you, and I love the life we’ve had.”

  “It’s not over, Nem. It’s just changing. For both of us.”

  “That’s right. And if you don’t want to discover what’s under your father’s civilized veneer, we’d better get ourselves out of here and home before he calls.”

  He quickly finished stuffing the tube in the float and pulled the stem up through the opening.

  They took turns pumping, a long, tedious undertaking since the bicycle pump had to lift most of the weight of the plane. While Mikey pumped, Emma used the duct tape to cover the jagged edges the ax had made in the pontoon. It took nearly half an hour before they were satisfied the float was riding high enough to taxi on.

  With a sigh of relief, Emma looked at her watch and then at the sky. “We’ll just make it home before dusk, thank God. I sure as heck don’t want to be landing this crippled bird in the dark. If we flip her, we’ll be fighting blindly.”

  Wiping her hands on her jeans, Emma looked at her nephew, who was scanning the woods and looking more worried than a mouse at a cat show. “It will be okay, Mikey. The fuel line will hold, and so will the pontoon. Turn us around and climb in.”

  He did as he was told, pushing them out into deep water, then climbing in the plane and putting on his headset. Emma turned over the prop. The Cessna sputtered alive and immediately began pulling them through the glassy water of the pond.

  Emma took her time taxiing, listening to the engine and watching her gauges. She gave it some throttle and felt the plane pull harshly to the right, the pontoon on that side plowing the water. Damn, she wished this pond was bigger—she’d like to have more room to ease the weight of the plane onto the left pontoon and into the air, not force it up at full power.

  But she didn’t have that option.

  She turned into the slight breeze and shoved the throttle forward. The plane immediately responded, thrusting them back in their seats as it attempted to rise onto the surface of the pond.

  It wasn’t a very comfortable—or graceful—journey skyward. Emma had to fight the controls all the way, praying the repaired hose would allow enough fuel through it to give them the power they needed. Water sprayed against the prop and the engine and Mikey’s window. The Cessna shuddered and shook, and finally came up on the step of the floats.

  Mikey let out a whoop as they lifted into the air, at the exact same time the window beside Emma shattered into a million spider veins. She instinctively ducked and banked the plane to the right.

  “The trees!” Mikey shouted.

  Emma eased back to the left just as the window behind her shattered and a bullet lodged into the ceiling. She pulled back on the yoke until the stall alarm sounded, then she forced the plane into another tight bank to the right, aiming at the narrow valley at the head of the pond.

  “Dammit, Nem! We won’t make it!”

  She pulled back on the yoke and the big, beautiful Stationair did the impossible as it clipped the tops of the trees in its struggle to fly.

  There was another sound at the rear of the plane, which Emma guessed was another bullet hitting the tail.

  “Someone’s shooting at us!” Mikey hollered, turning to look at the back of the plane. He twisted around and looked up at the ceiling, then at the window beside her. “We were shot at!”

  “Take the yoke. Now,” Emma ordered, lifting her right hand to her left shoulder.

  He grabbed the yoke with shaking hands, his expression stark with fear.

  “Keep climbing, Mikey
. And head for Greenville.”

  He looked over at her, and through the haze of tears nearly blocking her vision, Emma saw his eyes widen in horror.

  “You’ve been shot!”

  “I don’t think bad, but it burns like the devil. Take us to Greenville and set us down as close as you can to the shore.”

  “Jeez, Nem. Are you bleeding bad?”

  She carefully turned in her seat to open one of their packs. Her shaking hand was slick with blood as she worked the zipper and pulled out a shirt. She balled it up in her fist and put it over her left arm, gritting her teeth to stifle a groan.

  “Well?” Mikey asked, trying to divide his attention between flying and looking at her wound. “Can you stop the bleeding?”

  “I’m trying, Mikey. Give it a second.”

  He patted her knee. “I’m sorry, Nem. I just don’t like seeing you hurt.”

  “You never did.” She let go of the shirt long enough to wipe the tears from her eyes. “Remember when I fell on the dock and hit my head?”

  “I remember you bled like a stuck pig. Like you’re bleeding now. Maybe you’re a hemophiliac. You could bleed to death before we get to Greenville.”

  “Don’t go inventing trouble,” she said as she fashioned the shirt into a bandage, using her teeth to tighten it.

  “Is … is the bullet still in your arm?”

  “I don’t know.”

  He groaned, as if he were in more pain than she was. “Damn, I wish we had filled the woodshed today.”

  “Well, we didn’t. And we may still have to pay our dues for being curious. There’s Greenville. I’ll take the yoke. I want you to open your door and look down at the pontoon, Mikey. See if it’s still intact. We hit a few of those trees pretty hard.”

  His face went completely white, and Emma watched him uncurl his hands from the yoke as she took control with her right hand. He opened the door, having to force it against the wind, and looked down. When he closed it and looked at her, his face was even whiter than before.

  “The tube’s deflated and hanging half out. As soon as we land, that float’s going to drag us over.”

  Emma gritted her teeth. “We have two choices. The water or the trees. Which one do you want to land us on?”