Becky Avella - Crash Landing

He looked away. As nice as it was to be alone with her—something he would have paid money for in high school—he had a job to do that was far more important than flirting with a pretty girl.

Her voice crackled in his headset again. She pointed out the window to his right. “There’s one of the fires there—can you see it?”

Sean spotted the orange lick of flame glowing behind the foothills that housed his ranch. Plumes of menacing black smoke billowed high above the eastern horizon. Unless the winds changed or some freak snowstorm fell in the middle of July, that fire was heading for his land. Seeing it from this perspective made it all the more real. He sighed. He should be down there getting ready for it.

“We’re here,” Deanna said. “I’m going in closer.”

Sean grabbed the binoculars at his feet and brought them to his eyes as Deanna flew low over Loomis and Callaghan Cattle Co. From this height, his home and all the outbuildings looked like tiny dollhouses.

He lifted the binoculars toward the timberline. Somewhere hidden among those trees was the $50,000 horse he’d owned for less than a week.

Sean massaged his forehead as his gut twisted into knots once again. It seemed like it was his lot in life to be searching for the lost. The disappearance of this horse was painfully similar to another unexplainable disappearance in Sean’s past, and he didn’t appreciate revisiting this level of helplessness and guilt. A weight pressed against his chest as he pictured the yellowing missing-person flyer pinned to the bulletin board in his office. The corners of the paper were beginning to curl with age, marking how long the mystery of his missing father had gone unsolved.

The irony wasn’t lost on Sean. It was that same poster that had driven him to spend his life savings to buy the stallion in the first place. He’d had good intentions—diversify to include more than just cattle, build a breeding business that could help pay for a better private investigator. But none of his good intentions mattered if that horse stayed lost.

Be anxious for nothing, he recalled from his Bible reading that morning. Easier said than done, but it was truth he needed all the same. Worry and guilt were getting him nowhere. They wouldn’t stop the approaching flames or help him find his horse.

They wouldn’t bring Dad back, either.

Deanna sat up straight, suddenly alert. “What was that?”

She craned her neck to look over her shoulder behind them. Sean followed her gaze, goose bumps covering his arms. “Did you see the horse?”

“No.” She looked back again and then flipped around to stare at Sean. “How come you have a landing strip up here?”

“We don’t,” Sean said.

“You do. I just saw it.”

Deanna eased the plane into a turn, heading back where they had come from only moments before. “I want another look.”

“I’m telling you,” Sean said. “I’ve been over every inch of this land. I would know if we had a runway on our property.”

“And I’m telling you, you’re wrong,” she argued.

Her straight, sun-bleached hair fell in front of her fine-boned shoulders as she squinted through the window. Her lips parted in concentration. Whatever it was she thought she’d seen, she was determined to find it.

But Sean wasn’t paying her to go exploring. They had one objective. Whether she approved or not, Deanna wasn’t sidetracking him.

“I’ll look into it later,” he promised her. “Nothing matters more than finding that horse.”

Deanna startled. She seemed so intent on solving this mystery it was like she’d forgotten he was still sitting there. Or was she just shocked that he’d dared to have an agenda that didn’t match her own?

“You don’t think this could be related?” she challenged.

“Maybe. But I don’t have time for chasing maybes.”

Sean winced at the harshness of his tone, but he didn’t apologize. He had to make wise decisions.

“It’s only an instinct,” she said. “But I think we need to get down there and take a look.”

Her eyes were the gray green of the sky before a thunderstorm. He’d never had the luxury of studying the flecks of yellow or the dark rims of her pupils like this. They pleaded with him to agree with her.

“Just give me the word, and I’ll take us down there.”

He blinked himself back to sanity. Landing a plane seemed tricky enough, but on a mountainside, using a runway she thought might be there? No thanks.

“Fools rush in,” he said.

“No. Fools play it safe and miss out,” she countered.

Sean crossed his arms. “Why would there be a runway up here? It doesn’t make any sense.”

Deanna nodded, “Exactly. Why? What if there are answers down there about your horse?”

She broke eye contact. “What if this has something to do with your dad?”

The question gut-punched him. The missing-person case was so cold Sheriff Johnson had stopped calling with updates years ago. After all this time, could there really be a clue? If he stopped Deanna from landing, would he get another chance to find out?

She pointed down to the ground. “There, in that draw—can you see it?”

He aimed the binoculars in the direction she indicated. “I don’t know what I’m looking for.”

“Trust me, it’s hidden but it’s there,” she said. “Not a runway, necessarily, just a strip long enough to put a plane down.”

He pointed the binoculars toward the meadow on the hillside and adjusted the focus. He saw the flattened, patchy grass. Then a quick flash of red between the trees caught his eye. At the edge of the meadow sat another airplane he’d never seen before. Someone was trespassing on his land.

Chills ran up his back. If Deanna hadn’t pointed it out, he would never have seen it as anything other than a meadow.

“Do it,” he said.

“Hold on. I won’t see these landing conditions well. I’ll have to adjust as we go in.”

Sean found the door handle for the second time and gripped it so hard he was surprised he didn’t rip it off. The buzzing motor changed pitch, and he braced himself for a rough landing.

But Deanna was a skilled pilot and performed the landing more smoothly than he’d expected. The plane taxied, decelerating, and then the propeller’s spin slowed and stopped.

Sean moved to exit the plane, but Deanna stopped him. “Wait.”

He stared down at her hand, soft against his arm. He shook his head slightly to clear his thoughts before his face revealed whatever remained of his schoolboy crush. He’d gotten over it. Really. His feelings for her in high school had been a distraction. There wasn’t room in his life for distractions of any kind now.

She reached across him to the glove box by his knees, opened the compartment and pulled out a Glock pistol.

“Whoa.” He definitely hadn’t expected that. “Is that the nine or the .45?”

“The nine. It has more rounds and it fits my hand better.”

She slid the Glock into her waistband. “Just in case.” She covered it with her shirt and said, “Who knows who might be out there. Can’t be too careful.”

What could he use to defend himself? He felt the weight of his pocket contents against his thigh. Just a cell phone and a survival knife. The cell tower had burned, so the phone was useless out here. The knife was his best hope, although he’d prefer a gun. “You wouldn’t happen to have two of those, would you?”

She patted his forearm and winked. “Don’t worry, cowboy. I’ll protect you.”

Sean snorted and then followed her out of the plane. The sharp smell of wildfire burned his nostrils, and the smoke made his eyes itch. The temperature had to be in the upper nineties, if not higher. These dry, hot conditions must be miserable for the fire crews.