by Alice Sharpe
The last time she’d seen him he’d asked her to marry him. After her enthusiastic yes, they’d made love and somehow it had been different, more profound, perhaps, more meaningful than ever before. Afterward, they’d talked for hours about the kind of house they’d build. Looking at this cabin, it was clear he’d channeled his vision from this very spot.
“Goodbye, my love,” she whispered with her fingers against the glass.
“It’s time, Chelsea,” Bobby said. She took off the headset, craving solitude. The chopper moved away from the cabin toward the river. Was someone inside the cabin, watching their departure and wondering why they’d been subjected to this noisy intrusion? No matter, the chopper would be long gone before anyone had a chance to complain.
She unclipped the straps that held her in her seat, scooting forward a little to slide open the window as the wind immediately whipped her long dark hair across her face. The river below flowed in endless rhythm and she pictured a young Steven, fishing pole in hand, walking the grassy banks.
Was she angry with him? Yes. He’d omitted key facts about himself, been cagey, maybe even dishonest, and that went against everything she’d thought she’d known about him. But mostly, she just felt alone and cheated and sad.
Loud voices yanked her attention back to the front of the helicopter. She could only see Bobby’s face and he looked livid. A sudden jerk was quickly followed by a distinct shudder, and now they made a slow turn back toward the meadow. Her stomach rolled. In her rush to find something to hold on to, the roses fell from her grasp and slid across the floor. Peering between the front seats, she saw Smith’s hand close around Bobby’s wrist as he clutched the control stick. The shouting between them continued while the chopper’s erratic movements became even more pronounced.
She scooted back in her seat, refastening the buckles with shaking hands. The headset slid toward the door with the roses. She hooked it with her foot before raising her leg and grabbing it. She pulled it over her ears and winced as the shouts became unbearably loud and heated.
“You just had to circle the damn house, didn’t you?” Smith roared. “You idiot.”
“Get your hands off me. What the hell is wrong with you?”
“Land this damn thing,” Smith insisted.
“Now you want to land? I thought you were so hot to trot.” There was a moment of tense silence. Smith released his grip on Bobby’s wrist. A second later, Bobby swore.
“Are you kidding me? Put that gun away.”
A gun!
“Land the helicopter,” Smith said and now Chelsea, too, saw he held a dull black revolver and it was pointed at Bobby.
“You’re going to get us all killed,” Bobby bellowed.
“You’re overshooting the meadow,” Smith growled. “Land in the meadow.”
Chelsea glanced out the window. They were moving over the trees now. Green tops swayed just a few feet below but at least the chopper seemed stable. But why did Smith want to land? Wasn’t his whole point speed? And why in the world did he carry a gun?
Bobby suddenly lunged toward the armed man as though trying to grab the weapon. A shot reverberated in the small cabin, deafening, terrifying. Bobby grabbed his right arm as blood oozed through his fingers. “You—you maniac!” he yelled.
“Land this damn thing,” Smith repeated as he jabbed the air with the gun. As if sensing Chelsea’s horrified gaze, he turned to face her, pinning her to the seat, his once mournful eyes now cold and menacing. Chills raced along her spine as he turned his attention back to Bobby.
The helicopter moved sideways like a flying crab, tilting slightly on its left side. A sudden crash came from behind them, immediately followed by a rolling shudder that vibrated through the metal hull.
“We lost the rear rotor,” Bobby gasped.
“Land!” Smith demanded.
“It’s too late for that. Get that gun out of my face!”
The chopper spun, the nose lower now, and plummeted down through the greenery as Bobby obviously worked to accomplish a life-saving landing. His labored breathing played in her headset like a dirge. Seconds passed in blinding speed. Chelsea held on to the straps, her thoughts moving from the drama in the front, to the love she’d lost, to the future now slipping through her fingers.
A microsecond later, the skids hit the forest floor and all the cargo behind her shot forward like missiles, flying at her head and shoulders and at the backs of the two seats in front of her. She had a moment to assess the fact that she was still alive and then they were moving again, this time tearing through the underbrush, what remained of the blades crashing against tree trunks, skids catching on undergrowth, branches protruding through Chelsea’s open window then snapping and breaking, flying into the chopper, aimed at her. Everything came to a sudden, grinding halt. The windshield shattered as the forest invaded the front with the finesse of a bulldozer, pushing the passenger and pilot seats back toward Chelsea. The baggage that had bombarded her from behind now flew into her face, burying her.
Steven! her heart shouted as she lost consciousness without forming another cognizant thought.
Chapter Two
Adam Parish took off his black-rimmed glasses and set them aside, pulled his shirt over his head and faced his image in the mirror. The bullet wound on his left shoulder looked better than it had. There would be a scar, but it wouldn’t be the only one on his thirty-two-year-old body, and at this point, who cared?
That sentiment—who cared?—had been his calling card for so long it had become a second skin. It had turned him cynical and suspicious—not suspicious enough as it turned out, but there was no denying his mother’s sweet, trusting little boy hadn’t made it into adulthood.
Except for a brief moment when everything had changed.
But like most miracles, his had come and gone like the sweep of a clock’s hands and he was back to square one.
He applied a clean bandage to his shoulder and taped the gash over his eye. His short beard softened his jawline while the spikey blond hair on his head always struck him as comical. He had one week to go before he cleared out of here and then he’d—
A thumping noise outside lifted every hair on his arms. Even before he separated the blinds above the bathroom sink and angled his head to peer outside he knew what he would see. A low-flying helicopter approached the cabin from over the meadow.
Oh, no...
Within seconds, he grabbed the glasses, shrugged on his shirt, rescued his gun from the top of the toilet tank and stuffed it into his waistband. He ran to the back door and snatched the loaded rifle he kept there, then let himself out and moved to the northeast corner of the deck, where he could track the helicopter.
One thought drummed in his head: they found me.
He expected the aircraft to land in the meadow, close to the house. He expected an army of men to disembark, guns blazing, Holton’s revenge swift and lethal.
He didn’t expect the helicopter to look so ancient. It wasn’t his adversary’s style. Was this flyby simply a matter of a stranger’s harmless curiosity about the old house or was it more than that? Had Holton employed mercenaries?
The helicopter didn’t land and that left Adam relieved and yet confused. It flew toward the river, gently descending above the water, where it remained for a minute or two. Then the aircraft tilted suddenly—that had to throw the passengers around a little. He stepped around the corner of the house to see better. The chopper moved away from the river, briefly hanging over the meadow, then it climbed eastward toward the forest, its movements jerky and unpredictable.
Engine trouble? Trouble of some sort, that was for sure, including trouble for him. Even if it disappeared over the far mountains, the fact that it had circled the house meant that it was time for him to clear out. It might have been reconnaissance for a ground-based unit who even now could be advancing via the only road connecting this cabin and the
nearest town. He’d rigged a sensor down at the beginning of his twisting lane. Once activated, it would beep the monitor in his pocket and he would know he had about ten minutes to disappear.
A sudden noise caught his attention and he turned to see the helicopter’s aft rotor tangle with the top of the tallest tree. Parts went flying. The aircraft seemed to stall. Nose down, it disappeared into the forest. He jumped off the porch, the rifle still clutched in his hand. While his brain told him to get the hell out of there while he could, his heart said he had to see this through.
Crashes and thuds echoed from the forest. A fiery explosion seemed inevitable, but none came, just the continuing cacophony of breaking trees and mangled metal. He vaulted the rock wall and sprinted across the meadow, ever wary of a sniper but growing more convinced by the moment that what had happened was an accident and that lives were in danger.
And this meant other people would be coming, as well. Friend or foe, this crash would be investigated and that would bring killers and cops right to his doorstep. Turn around and go back—get out of here now. He ignored his own warning.
After the full light of the meadow, the forest seemed dank, dark, secretive. He’d been away from Arizona, his home state, for more than a year now, and never more than at this moment did he miss the open desert terrain and the warm, dry air. The underbrush was difficult to traverse. His own crashing noises echoed in the dense closeness as he headed in the direction he figured the chopper had gone down. There were few other sounds.
He finally emerged into a clearing of sorts, but that quickly erupted into a battered, mowed-down trail of broken branches and flattened saplings. It had to be at least thirty feet across, lined with scarred trees and pieces of metal strewn about. The faint smell of fuel urged him forward. And sitting at the end of the trail was the downed chopper, bladeless now, the rear end still mostly intact, no signs of fire or of life.
He made his way down the newly created and narrowing path to the tail of the helicopter. As he moved forward, he saw the crumpled metal of the front of the chopper. It was about half as big as it should have been, thanks to an old growth stump that had put an end to its forward momentum.
The cargo door was the only possible way to get inside. It had jammed, though. He searched for something to use as a makeshift crowbar.
“Anyone in there?” he yelled as he picked up a branch and discarded it. Too flimsy. He continued the search. “Hello, can anyone hear me? Can you open the cargo door?”
He finally found a long piece of metal, probably a portion of one of the blades, maybe a piece of a skid. Using that, he leveraged it into the door crack and shoved. Eventually, the metal moved and he was able to slide the door half-open.
Boxes and crates filled the rear of the aircraft. The passenger and pilot seats had been pushed back. There was just room for him to step inside and almost stand. He shifted debris to clear his way to the pilot, where he paused a second before putting his fingers against the pilot’s throat, but it was for confirmation only. The poor guy sat half-crushed behind the controls; broken glass had slashed his face and hands. His right shoulder sported an ugly wound that looked like a gunshot. That, however, didn’t make sense.
Turning his attention to the passenger, Adam moved aside leafy branches and glass until he could check for a pulse. He detected a faint heartbeat and immediately began clearing debris, careful when he came across a two-inch pine spur lodged in the base of the man’s throat. That’s when he also noticed the guy had one limp hand threaded around the grip of a revolver. The safety was off. Adam gingerly reached for the weapon but as he did so, the guy’s eyes opened and his grip tightened.
“Take it easy,” Adam said.
The man struggled to focus as blood ran down his forehead and cheeks. He finally croaked out a single word. “You...”
“I’ll get you out of here,” Adam said, though he knew that was probably impossible. “Stay still.”
“You’re...a—a dead man,” the injured man mumbled. As he spoke, he managed to raise his arm until it bumped against the spur lodged in his throat. The branch ripped free, leaving a hole big enough around to stick a thumb through. The guy’s hand immediately fell back to his lap as blood spurted from his carotid artery. Adam tore off his own shirt to hold against the gushing wound but it was too late. He’d bled to death in those few short seconds. Adam shrugged his shirt back on as he studied the lifeless and unfamiliar face.
There wasn’t a doubt in Adam’s mind that this guy had been sent by Holton. He dug out the man’s smartphone from his jacket pocket. As it required a code, he wiped the blood off the dead man’s right pointer finger and held it against the fingerprint reader to get around the code, his heart sinking when he saw a call had been made to Arizona within the last thirty minutes. “Leave a number” was the only response when he hit Call. He turned it off, wiped off his own fingerprints and put the phone back where he found it. There was no reason to try to disarm the GPS system, not when the gadget was sitting in a downed aircraft with an emergency locator of its own. He scanned the guy’s wallet. It held what was probably a fake ID and a little cash. He replaced it. Straightening up, Adam glanced at the pilot, but there was no way to access the poor man’s pockets. The gunshot wound in the man’s arm kind of cinched his position as a hapless victim in this scenario anyway.
This had to be the work of Holton.
He dug his phone from his pocket and punched in a number.
“Yes?”
“Whip? It’s me, Adam.” He heard the warning buzz that announced the burner phone was running out of prepaid time. “Holton found me again. I’m headed out of the mountains.”
“Did the fake ID I sent you come?”
“I don’t know. I was going to check today, but not now. I’ll have to leave without it.” Adam felt terrible that he’d asked Whip, a cop, to break the law to help him get false identification, and now it was pointless.
“Damn. Are you okay?”
“Yeah. There was a crash—the hit man is dead. This is important. Holton...he’s still in prison, right?”
“As far as—”
It took a few seconds of silence for Adam to realize they’d been disconnected. He pocketed the phone and got to his feet. As he turned his back on the two dead men, a few scattered red petals beneath his feet caught his attention. The incongruity of their presence struck him. He kneeled to pick up one, pausing to smell it, its perfume at odds with the crashed aircraft and the encroaching odor of fuel.
“Is anyone else in here?” he called.
Was that a noise coming from behind the boxes?
He shifted a few out of the way and tossed them out the open door, ever mindful of the seconds ticking by. The baggage and boxes felt like they were filled with rocks.
And then he heard it again, a shifting as a body tried to find comfort, but this time it was followed by a plaintive moan.
He worked faster.
* * *
HER EYES OPENED SLOWLY. She was unsure where she was or what had happened. Her body hurt in a hundred places and for some reason, she was trapped in an avalanche of heavy boxes. Admonishing herself to think despite her throbbing head, she shifted position to ease the pressure on her legs. A groan escaped her lips and faded away.
A male voice immediately responded. “Is someone back there? How many of you are there? Can you move?”
She tried to respond but could barely hear her own voice.
“I’m coming,” the man called. “What’s your name?”
Again she opened her mouth, but nothing came out. Where was she, what had happened to her? She closed her eyes, her head drooping.
The man kept talking. “Stay with me,” he said, “I’m almost there.” Crashes followed his comments as though he was throwing stuff aside. At last he cleared her face and she saw that she was all but entombed in a small airplane. She smelled gasolin
e and it reminded her of something—something she couldn’t name, wasn’t sure about.
The man continued clearing the space as she wiped her face, smearing something warm and sticky across her brow. Blood, she discovered, as she looked at her fingers.
He kneeled down to face her. His hair was bright yellow and he needed a shave. Dark gray eyes peered at her from behind black-framed glasses. As he stared at her, his expression went from concern to shock. The next thing she knew, he’d cupped her chin and kissed her, his lips undeniably soft and gentle and yet with a stirring of something else, too. Then he sat back and stroked her cheek, smoothed her hair, kissed her forehead. “Chelsea, good heavens, what are you doing here?”
“I—”
“Oh, my God,” he said as though something obvious had just popped into his head. “They must have used you to—did they hurt...? Never mind, we’ll talk later. We have to get out of here. Can you move? Is anything broken?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I—I don’t think so...”
He unbuckled her seat straps as she mumbled. He stood and extended his hands to pull her to her feet. She was able to stand but it put her and her rescuer so close their bodies touched. Super aware of her breasts pressing against his chest, she felt uncomfortable and awkward. He seemed fine with it. “Catch your breath and your balance,” he said. “Where’s your phone?”
She shook her head.
“May I check your pockets?”
Was he making any sense? She couldn’t tell. He frisked her gently and she felt his hand hit against a small hard shape in her jeans pocket. He plucked the phone from her person, wiped it with the hem of his shirt and dropped it to the floor. “Sorry, but this has to stay here.”
She nodded but her fuzzy brain immediately went back to the way his lips had felt against hers. Why had he kissed her? Why were his hands on her now?
“You were sitting alone back here, weren’t you? Do you have a handbag or luggage?”
A handbag? She looked down at the cluttered floor, fighting a wave of nausea that swam up her throat. She didn’t know if she had one or not. Who cared?