Killer Summer (24 page)

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Authors: Ridley Pearson

BOOK: Killer Summer

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“You okay?”

She nodded.

“Anything broken?”

She tested her limbs, then shook her head.

A loud crash came from the direction of the still-rolling jet. It had hit something. A final screech of the brakes was followed by silence—total, utter silence—the kind of silence Kevin knew from his time in the wilderness. He switched off the flashlight. The sky was filled with a million stars piercing the rich blue glow, another sign of their isolation. They weren’t anywhere near the lights of civilization.

The starlight was enough to see shapes by. There was a small plane, a piece of its right wing missing, pushed off to one side of the runway about twenty yards behind where the jet had come to a stop. That explained the loud crash.

“Come on!” he said, trying to help Summer to her feet. But she just sat there like a sack of cement. “Summer!”

“I can’t do this,” she sobbed. “I give up.”

“No, no, no—no giving up.”

He pulled her to her feet, took her hand, and hurried her down the runway, all the while searching for the knife. He flicked on the flashlight, revealing sticks, a couple fist-sized rocks, and a glint of metal. It was the blade of the knife. He flicked the light off, then ran in the direction of the knife.

“Hey!” a man shouted out.

Kevin couldn’t risk using the flashlight again. He dropped to the dirt and felt around with his hands. Summer was at his side also searching.

“What are—”

“The knife,” he said.

“They’re coming!”

“Got it!” he said, adding, “We’re out of here.”

They ran for the woods.

“We’re going to be okay,” he said. “Just don’t slow down. And don’t look back.”

“Okay.”

More shouting came from behind, as a faint beam of light cast their shadows in front of them. Kevin led Summer off the dirt strip, grass whipping their ankles. They passed a shed, then jumped a small stream. An imposing hill rose up darkly in front of them.

“Stairs!” she said, tugging him to the left.

“No! That’s what they’ll think,” he answered, pulling her to the right.

The light from behind grew brighter, their pursuers gaining on them.

Kevin and Summer fled through the trees and up the hill, their footfalls quieted by pine straw. They headed right, away from the stairs, but climbing, always climbing, dodging the black tree trunks, weaving around opaque outcroppings of rock.

A voice called out from behind, followed by the pounding of their pursuers’ feet on the stairs. The faint glimmer of white teeth appeared on Kevin’s dark, sweating face. He was smiling.

W
alt couldn’t remember the last time he’d spoken to his father. There had been a brief cease-fire a few months back, but neither party had followed up with negotiation. Stagnation had given way to rot, a return to normalcy. He had once hoped that his marriage and the arrival of grandchildren would help heal things between them, had held on to the belief that family was a bond that transcended petty problems that cluttered other relationships. But hope could not compete with reality, the ideal collapsing under the glare of practicality. He’d begun to doubt they would ever be friends again. In the end, his brother’s death had taken three lives, not just one.

“What are you doing here?” he said to Fiona as he entered his office.

“You said I could use your computer.”

“Did I?”

“Are you all right?”

“No,” he answered. “I have to call my father. He has to be told.”

“I’ve got something for you.” She motioned for him to sit by her, but he remained standing while viewing the screen.

“Ears,” she said.

“Ears,” he repeated.

“As individual as fingerprints.”

“I’m aware of that.”

“You wanted proof it was Cantell.”

Walt moved closer. “Yes . . .”

“Behold the magic of digital photography.”

From a mug shot of Cantell taken from a scanned image of his OneDOJ sheet, she cropped the right ear, then enlarged it, made it transparent, and laid it over a video still from Sun Valley Aviation’s security camera. It matched Cantell’s ear exactly.

“I can do the same thing with Roger McGuiness,” she said, “although the angle is not as absolutely perfect as this.”

“So we’ve got them dead to rights,” Walt said.

“You don’t have to sound so excited,” she snapped sarcastically.

Walt snatched up the phone and barked out an order to arrest Arthur Remy “on suspicion of fraud.” He added, “Three-quarters of my deputies and every cop in the valley are up there. Find Remy and hold him for questioning.”

Hanging up, he explained himself to Fiona. “We know the bottles are fakes. We can tie Cantell to the attempted theft of the bottles and Remy, by association, to the theft of the jet and the kidnapping of two teenagers. It gives us someone to question, an actual suspect.
You
gave us that someone. Maybe we can catch a break.”

“Then I’ll save my work?” she said.

“By all means.” He glanced at the phone.

“Just take the punches, if he throws them,” she said.

“Oh, he’ll throw them all right.”

“It’s all in how you respond.”

“Yes,
dear.
”

“Jeez,” Fiona said, coming out of the chair—his chair, “you’re welcome.”

“I’m sorry,” he called out after her. Too late.

Walt sat down, let out a long breath, and reached for the phone. He started punching in the numbers he knew by heart. But he did it more slowly than usual, his index finger hovering over the final button, refusing to punch.

He then sat up straight, elbows on his desk, and pressed the button.

“Well, look what the dog drug in,” Jerry Fleming said.

“Been a while.”

“Has it? Hadn’t noticed.”

“I’ve got a situation here. Kevin may be involved, may be in way over his head. I need your contacts at Air Force.”

“Kev? What kind of situation?”

Walt talked him through the attempted theft of the wine, the explosion at the auction, the blocking of the bridge. Chuck Webb’s seeing Kevin’s car behind the lodge and the theft of the jet he saved for last. When he brought up the engine fire, his father cut him off.

“Kevin’s on board?”

“We haven’t verified that, but that’s what I believe, yes.”

“Jesus H. Christ, what kind of Mickey Mouse outfit are you running over there?”

“I’m told the Air Force may have radar that reaches up here. The FAA believes they do. Since you have friends over there, I thought—”

“You’d get me to bail you out.”

“Not exactly how I saw it.”

“I’ll make the call.”

Walt outlined the window of opportunity as he understood it, impressing upon him that they needed to make every effort to locate the Learjet.

“You’re in over your head.”

“Thankfully, your opinion doesn’t matter. By now, they’re likely well beyond my county, well out of my reach.”

“Not if that second engine was burning out. Any pilot with a beating heart would put that jet down in a matter of minutes if one engine had been lost and they were losing the second. It couldn’t have flown very far.”

“We’re on it. We’re contacting every airfield.”

“Takes a good deal of runway to land a jet.”

“We’re on it,” Walt repeated.

“The right kind of satellite might pick up a flare out. I can check on that as well.”

“Anything you can do . . . The sooner we can track that jet—”

“I’m coming over there.”

“That’s not necessary.”

“Did I ask? I said I’m coming over there. If you find Kevin, then call me. Otherwise, plan to pick me up in . . . ninety minutes. I’ll call you from the plane.”

“The company jet?”

“You could have had this, Walt. This was your choice, not mine. I’ll call from the jet and give you a number where you can reach me. See you shortly.”

Cringing, Walt hung up the phone. He had ninety minutes to save himself from certain hell.

T
he forest floor was interrupted by chokecherry and brambles, slash and deadfall. Often impassable, the changing terrain required Kevin to traverse the hill instead of climbing vertically. Summer not only stayed with him but occasionally took the lead. While the forest’s darkness made for slow going, using the flashlight would have been suicide, revealing their position in the same way the glow of a light below them told them where the chase was coming from.

Still a good distance away, there was no question that at least one of the three men had followed them into the woods.

“I don’t get it,” he whispered, huffing a bit. “Why bother with us?”

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“They obviously stole the plane, right?”

“Okay . . .”

“We were never part of that, so why follow us?”

“Because we saw them?” she suggested.

“No,” he said. “We can’t be the only ones who saw them. That doesn’t make sense. I think it’s you.”

“What about me?”

“I think they want you. The jet’s wrecked. You’re the prize. And me? I’m nothing but . . . an inconvenience. I’m disposable.”

“I think you’re wrong.”

“I hope I’m wrong,” he said, now picking up the pace.

Summer suddenly passed him and leaped onto one of the huge boulders they’d been avoiding.

“Come on,” she urged.

She led the way up and over the rock.

“Don’t scuff the ground,” she hissed. “Don’t give them anything to follow.”

She led them nearly straight up the hill.

Light played in the overhead branches, then dimmed and moved left. Summer and Kevin headed higher, though considerably slower, in total silence. The next time Kevin checked, the beam had moved well away.

“Awesome,” he said.

Summer shushed him.

The ground leveled off. The trees thinned. The moonlight shone brighter.

“Check it out!” she said.

They faced a rambling lodge cut into the rocky hill, making it look as if its log walls grew right out of the cliff. Bluish light glowed from the windows nearest them. Less light came from the far end of the lodge, where Kevin now spotted a tall, white-haired man on a path leading toward some stairs emerging from the forest, stairs that led down to the airfield. A pair of floodlights shone from the corner eaves of the lodge, casting a halogen glare across a field of wild grass.

The lodge was landscaped on three sides by a clearing. Summer stepped forward obviously wanting to call out to the man, but Kevin pulled her back.

“We have two choices here,” Kevin said, his lips to her ear, “the forest or the house.”

He pointed to the treetops. The flashlight beam had turned yet again and was once again coming up the hill from behind them.

The tall man—he looked like an old cowboy—wore blue jeans, boots, and a light-colored long-sleeved shirt. He stopped at the top of the stairs.

“Over here!” he called out loudly in the direction of the flashlight beam.

The beam froze, illuminating the tops of trees. Then it began to advance again up the hill, directly toward Kevin and Summer.

Kevin tugged on Summer’s arm, making sure he had her attention. He pointed to a pair of doors cut into the rock at the base of the lodge, either a garage or storage area, by the look of it.

He drew her close and whispered. “Follow me, fast and low, straight for those doors.”

“He’ll help us!” She meant the cowboy.

The crunching of undergrowth grew ever louder. Whoever was following them was close now.

“Over here!” the cowboy called out. He headed down the stairs.

The lawn was now empty.

“Trust me,” Kevin said to Summer.

He pulled her, and she followed. Together, they ran toward the lodge, reaching the shadows sheltering the two doors.

“Okay?” he asked, panting.

She nodded.

He felt for the door latch. It engaged, and the heavy door sagged open.

“There are stairs over here!” the cowboy called out. The flashlight beam paused briefly.

“It’s going to be dark in there,” Kevin warned.