Ridley Pearson - Killer Summer

He lowered himself, getting his feet going in the direction of the plane, and let go. He slammed to the surface and rolled, surprised to find it was a dirt-and-gravel strip, not a paved runway. He stood up and took inventory-both elbows were scraped up, as was his right knee, but otherwise he was intact-and then ran back to find Summer. Risking use of the flashlight, he located Summer sitting up but in shock. She had a pretty bad raspberry on her right temple, and the hair on that side of her head was bloody and matted.

“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.

Walt 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.”