Rick Mofina - Free Fall

After a few miles, they took the narrow, paved road that curved to a grove of trees near a creek and stopped at the Riverbend Meadow Cemetery.

He got out, opened the storage bin of the console between the seats and, with care, removed a beautiful wooden box.

“This way.” He motioned for Kate to walk with him through the burial grounds, stopping at the headstone that read “Elizabeth Marie Cole, Beloved Wife and Mother.”

Cole got on his knees.

“These are my daughter’s ashes. I want her to be with her mother.”

Cole very tenderly emptied the box’s contents, spreading them over his wife’s grave.

“I didn’t want to get a stone for her because I feared people would come and deface it, given what she did.”

Kate understood.

Cole stared at the ashes and they began to lift as the wind tumbled across the plain.

“I’m to blame for her actions because I was not the father she needed,” he said. “I’m going to tell you our story, the real story. I’m going to tell you everything the world needs to know.”

But Cole didn’t move.

The wind strengthened, lifting the ashes from the land, carrying them upward. Cole followed them, looking up just as the straight vapor trail of a passenger jet cut across the clear blue sky.

The first thing you should know is that I have no fear of flying.

In fact, I enjoy flying and I believe it is one of the safest ways to travel. In crafting Free Fall , I looked at several aspects of the commercial airline industry and consulted a number of texts and final reports on accidents made public by investigative agencies around the world.

Still, I make no claim to being an expert or coming close to possessing any knowledge of aeronautical engineering, air traffic control or any other area of the industry. I apologize to the experts among you for the eye-rolling errors that would cause you to say “Things just don’t work that way.”

Free Fall is a work of fiction drawn in my imagination, where I exercised creative license and took liberties with technical realities, jurisdiction and the investigative process to present a drama concerning flawed human beings in an extraordinary situation.

I did benefit from the help of Ric Gillespie, a former aviation accident investigator and founder of The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery. Ric, a world-renowned expert, generously and graciously suffered my questions. For parts of the story that ring true, thanks goes to Ric. For the parts that don’t, blame me for my transgressions as a fiction writer.

I’d like to thank Amy Moore-Benson, Brittany Lavery, Michelle Meade and the incredible editorial, marketing, sales and PR teams at Harlequin and MIRA Books.

Thanks to Wendy Dudley for making this a better story.

Very special thanks to Barbara, Laura and Michael.

It is important readers know that in getting this book to you, I benefitted from the hard work and generosity of many people, too many to thank individually.

This brings me to what I hold to be the most critical part of the entire enterprise: you, the reader. This aspect has become a credo for me, one that bears repeating with each book.

Thank you very much for your time, for without you, a book remains an untold tale. Thank you for setting your life on pause and taking the journey. I deeply appreciate my audience around the world and those who’ve been with me since the beginning who keep in touch. Thank you all for your very kind words. I hope you enjoyed the ride and will check out my earlier books while watching for my next one. I welcome your feedback. Drop by at www.rickmofina.com, subscribe to my newsletter and send me a note. I love hearing from you.

Rick Mofina

Rick Mofina grew up east of Toronto, in Belleville, Ontario, Canada. He began writing fiction in grade school. At age 15, he sold his first short story to a U.S. magazine.

He became a reporter at The Toronto Star before embarking on a career in journalism that spanned three decades and several newsrooms. His freelance crime stories have appeared around the world in such publications as The New York Times, Reader's Digest, Marie Claire, The South China Morning Post magazine and The Moscow Times.

Rick is currently based in Ottawa, where he lives with his wife and their two children and works as a communications advisor.