Ridley Pearson - Killer Summer

As Kevin leaned lower to tell the cowboy to look out, there was a bang to the right.

Someone had entered the lodge.

“Boy? You hear me, kid?”

It was Matt, the one Kevin had hit with the fire extinguisher.

Kevin let the knife drop. It landed quietly on the rug, which was good, but well out of the cowboy’s reach, which was bad.

“Be that way!” Matt shouted from the living room.

Even if the cowboy managed to reach the knife, he was still locked in the room. Kevin began crawling quietly toward the opposite end of the long attic.

The hijackers had closed up the Learjet and camouflaged it well. Summer used her key. The Lear was dark inside, suggesting it was empty, but she stood there a moment before climbing the stairs and then shut herself inside.

She hadn’t thought through any of this. Everything for her was minute to minute, and she feared her lack of planning would backfire. Her mother would have worked it out logically step by step. Her father, on the other hand, would have tried to talk his way out. She was some hybrid of the two, a stranger in her own strange family.

The jet’s soundproofing made the drumming in her ears all the louder. This was the first chance she’d gotten to stop and think and she couldn’t think. She felt removed. She felt numb.

She headed straight for the battery switch. The batteries had to be engaged in order to use the CD, the TVs, or any of the outlets. Next, she headed for her father’s seat. She slid back the wood panel and nearly squealed with glee when she saw the red LED on the Airphone flashing. It had powered up.

“Come on!” she encouraged the red to change to green, signaling a connection to the satellite.

She counted backward from ten.

Had the antenna broken off? Had they covered it with pine boughs?

On the count of four, it changed to green.

She snatched up the receiver and dialed.

For a moment, there was nothing on the other end. Then came static and soft pops that went on far longer than she thought appropriate.

Finally, the phone purred in her ear. It was ringing.

“Hello?” her father’s voice said.

She’d meant to speak, to say something- anything -but the sound of him choked her, and she couldn’t get a word out.

“Dad…” she gasped, but far too softly.

She could see him clearly: his face, his smile. She had a mental picture of him in the hotel suite. She thoroughly regretted every ounce of grief she’d ever given him, felt so badly for making him pay for her mother’s death when he’d only tried to help her understand it. She loved him so much but never expressed it, always taunting him to fill the void, an impossibility. Her accusing tone, her reckless blaming him for her problems, the bitterness with which she dealt with him: it all washed over her in a wave of self-loathing.

“Sum…?”

Her vision blurred.

Just the sound of his voice…

“Yeah…” she choked out. “It’s me. I’m on the plane.”

A very long pause. “Oh, thank God!”

She thought he might be crying as well.

“We landed… kind of… crashed into something. There’s a river. There’s three of them…”

She rambled through a quick, disjointed explanation, laced with apology and begging for forgiveness.

“I don’t know what to do,” she finally said.

“You… Jesus… Listen, they won’t hurt you.”

“You don’t know that! They’ve got Kevin, I think… I’m pretty sure…”

“I won’t let them hurt you,” he said.

It wasn’t so much what her father said as the way he said it that gave her pause. She knew better than to interrupt. She needed him to talk, and to just keep on talking.

“I want you to… You’ve no idea where you are… none?”

“No. The woods, a big river. Kevin said it was the Middle Fork, but he doesn’t know that for sure. There’s a log cabin on top of the mountain with a huge cliff. We took off the same direction we landed the other day, so that’s toward Sun Valley, right? I don’t know, we could be anywhere. I lit a fire… a big fire. Someone should be able to see it. But it won’t last long. Can you get someone to look for it?”

“A fire! Of course I can. You lit a fire? That was good thinking, Sum.”

“What do I do, Dad? What am I supposed to do?”

Static on the line interrupted them.

“Isn’t there some kind of locator or something on the plane?” she then asked.

There was no answer. She pulled the phone away from her ear, making sure the light was still green.

“Dad?”

“I’m here. I need to talk to them, Sum. I need to start a dialogue.”

“Forget it! I am not going there. Doesn’t the GPS know where we are?”

“The GPS?” He sounded distracted. “Yes, of course. Are you on the Airphone? Is the panel lit? There’s a color map in the middle of the panel with a readout for latitude/longitude. Can you see it?”

“I don’t want to let go of the phone.”

“Put the phone down, Summer, write down the coordinates, and read them to me. It’s important.” He added that last bit in the same condescending tone he used to use to let her know how stupid she was. She resisted her immediate reaction of turning against him.

“I can’t,” she whined.

“Summer… please…”

She pulled the receiver away from her ear, but even a few inches made her feel alone. She smacked it back against her ear and stretched the wire instead. Making it to the aisle, she squinted at the illuminated instruments panel.

“You’ve got to do this for me,” he said.

“I’m trying.”

“And don’t forget the bag in the closet. There’s a GPS in there as well, a portable. And a radio, handheld, an aviation radio. Planes continually monitor the frequency. They’ll be able to hear you. Get me the coordinates and read them into that radio. Listen, go get that bag right now and then give me the coordinates over the phone.”

“I can’t!”

“You have to, Sum. You need that bag, I need the coordinates. It’s easy, you can do this. Stay in the plane, turn off the batteries to conserve power, and use the handheld to broadcast. Everything you need is in the plane: food, water, blankets. You’re there alone, right?”

“Yes. Can I lock the door? I couldn’t figure out how to lock it.”

“No, it doesn’t lock from the inside. You could probably hold the handle, which would keep the key from turning. The thing is… Now, listen to me… I need those coordinates, okay? You’ve got to do this for me.”

She looked to the front of the jet. It seemed impossibly far away.

“I want to go home,” she said. “I’m so sorry, Dad. I am so, so sorry.”

“Summer Sumner, you listen to me. You’ve done incredibly well. There is nothing to be sorry about. We’ll come get you and your friend. This is going to work out okay. But I need to speak to the men who flew the plane. I need to speak to the guy in charge, the guy with the dark hair. You’ve got to figure out a way to get him on this phone. In the jet. I can call back.”

“Forget it,” she said.

“They’ll listen to me, Sum. We’ve got to make this happen.”

“They’ve got Kevin! They’re not listening to anybody. For all I know, they killed the cowboy.”

“What cowboy?”

“Wait a second…” Her heart raced even faster, as if that were even possible.

“You didn’t say anything about any cowboy,” he said. “What cowboy?”

She tried to focus, but her thoughts were like a scratched CD: they kept jumping back, playing a riff, then leaping forward again.

“I need to speak to the guy in charge, the guy with the dark hair,” she was repeating in her head.