Текст книги "Tempt Me If You Can"
Автор книги: Джанет Чапмен
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Текущая страница: 10 (всего у книги 16 страниц)
Chapter Thirteen
“O kay. Here are thechoices,” Emma said as she entered the shed. “We can stack firewood, winterize the boats, and wash the plane and my truck, or we can go check out Wayne’s coordinates.”
Mikey looked up from the generator he was servicing. “I vote for the last one.”
“Good. You go dig up the topographies for that area and find the handheld GPS. I’ll pack us a lunch.”
“We flying or driving?”
“Flying,” Emma answered over her shoulder as she left. “You need another lesson in tight water landing. You came in much too hot at Smokey Bog.”
Emma had two packs loaded and in the plane by the time Mikey arrived with his own day-trip gear. He had a roll of maps, the GPS, his shotgun, and Homer, their newest homing pigeon. Shaking her head, Emma took Homer’s cage and set it on top of the packs in the backseat of the plane so the bird could see out the window. She climbed into the passenger seat and handed Mikey his headphones as he settled in beside her.
“That’s cheating, Nem. He can watch the terrain and learn his way back.”
“But think of the thrill for him. He can tell his buddies he actually flew over a hundred miles an hour.”
“You spoil those birds.”
“No worse than I spoil you,” she shot back, pulling out the checklist and handing it to him. “Like doing the preflight inspection for you. All systems are go. Let’s take this bird into the sky.”
“If Dad finds out about this, there’ll be trouble,” he warned, checking the instruments and starting the plane.
“Then we’ll make sure he doesn’t find out. Give me the maps and get us airborne, Boy Wonder. We’ll be back before Ben calls.”
“You think he’ll call?”
Emma just snorted and opened the maps.
With the confidence of someone who knew he had a guardian angel sitting on his shoulder, Mikey taxied out to the middle of the bay. “Smile and wave to Crazy Larry, Nem,” he told her through the headsets.
“I don’t see him.”
“He’s in his picture window, looking at us through binoculars.”
Emma picked up her own field glasses and looked toward the shore. Sure enough, there was Larry, eagle-eyeing them like the nosy pain in the neck he was. She felt like shooting him an unladylike gesture, but decided not to aggravate the situation. She smiled and waved instead, and watched as his jaw went slack and he instinctively waved back.
The old coot had rained holy terror down on them when Mikey had splintered his docks. The FAA had arrived and threatened to take her license away. And they would have, if not for Michael blatantly lying that he’d taken the plane without her knowledge. Even Sheriff Ramsey had been called to the scene. But having flown with Emma and Mikey when the boy had been at the controls, and knowing her influence with Greta, Ramsey had somehow ended up losing the paperwork.
Living in a small town sure did have advantages.
“Where do you want to land?” he asked, once they were airborne and heading northwest.
Emma punched Wayne’s coordinates into the loran on the dash. “Let’s fly to the spot and look around first, then find a pond nearby,” she said, studying the map.
“What do you think we’ll find?”
“I haven’t a clue, Mikey. This could be a wild-goose chase, for all I know. It may simply be a spot Wayne needs to cruise for future cutting for the mill.”
“You said the paper looked old.”
“It did. That’s what made me curious, I guess.” She looked at him, but only saw her reflection in his mirrored glasses when he looked back at her. “You want to return and stack wood instead?”
He grinned. “No. It still beats working. And I’m up for a lesson from my favorite aunt any day of the week.”
“Your onlyaunt. And the best darn instructor you’ll ever hope to have. Why haven’t you taken Ben up for a ride yet?”
“I offered. He said he’s still recovering from his last plane ride.”
“What do you honestly think of him? Does he measure up to your expectations?”
Mikey scanned the horizon and checked their progress down below. “Actually he does—and then some. I like him. He’s intelligent and interesting and he’s got a sense of humor. But I think he’s a little … well, overwhelmed by … everything.”
“That’s one way of putting it. I don’t think he knows what to do with either of us.”
“But he is trying,” he told her with all the sincerity of a loyal son. “But you know what I find the neatest?”
“What?”
“There’s a lot more to him than he lets on. He supposedly got lost getting here, but I don’t believe it. I think he was stalling because he was nervous about meeting me. But then there’s this other side of him. It’s not something anyone can see; it’s more like a feeling I have. I don’t think he’s someone you want to cross paths with when he’s truly mad. You might think he’s a rolling stone, Nem, but I think he’s solid granite. And if there’s a fight to be fought, I’d want to be beside him, not opposite him.”
Emma had to agree. There was much more to Benjamin Sinclair than he let on. There was a hard side. Maybe even a lethal side.
There definitely was a controlled side.
She remembered the morning they had awoken in the forest, and the gun he had pulled at the threat of danger. The same gun he hadn’t drawn while four men beat him senseless, because he hadn’t wanted things to escalate to the point of no return.
That required a strength most men lacked.
The day Galen Simms had attacked her, she’d gotten a glimpse of Ben coming near the edge of violence. But even then, it had been a controlled deadliness.
“You may be right, Mikey. I would bet Medicine Creek Camps that we’ve only seen the civilized surface of Ben. And like you, I don’t ever want to be opposite him when that veneer comes off.”
“Then you had better marry the man, Nem. For both our sakes.”
“He told you!”
He grinned over at her. “I’m his greatest ally.”
“Well, Mr. Ally, we’re here,” Emma snapped, refusing to discuss the subject. “Bank left and let’s see what’s down there.”
Nothing was down there. Nothing but old-growth forest for miles and miles. They circled three times before Emma decided they’d have to put down and walk to the spot. She pointed out a marginal-sized pond and Mikey expertly circled the area, deciding how he wanted to land. Like the proficient natural bush pilot he was, he picked a spot and set the Cessna down with plenty of room to spare.
“Grab the GPS and Homer,” she said as she reached behind them for the packs. “I would say we’ve got about a mile to go.”
It turned out to be more like two, since they had to sidetrack around a deep gully. Using her handheld global positioning device, Emma was able to lock in the position and walk until the system said they were standing on the spot.
“There’s nothing here,” Mikey said. “Just trees.”
Emma frowned. He was right; there was nothing but forest for hundreds of acres in all directions.
“I know I copied the coordinates down right. I double-checked.” She laughed. “I dislike that man so much, I conjured up a mystery that doesn’t exist.”
“It still beats stacking wood.”
“Not really. At least we would’ve had something to show for our efforts.”
“Let’s spread out and widen the circle,” he suggested, setting Homer down and dropping his backpack beside the bird. “Maybe Wayne found the site of an old logging camp from the last century. Or a rusting Lombard. There’s supposed to be several of those old steam engines rotting away out here.”
“Maybe this was an old meeting spot for him and Kelly.” Emma dropped her pack beside Mikey’s.
The boy shook his head. “Naw, it’s too far out. They would have found a closer place.”
Emma stared at him. “I was kidding, Mikey. And how can you talk about your mother as if she … she … well, as if she were just another woman?”
He put his hands on his hips and stared back, looking defiant and angry and lost all at the same time. “She stopped being my mother the day she left.” His face sharp with anger and his chin held high, he continued. “For that matter, she never was much of a mother before she left. All my childhood memories are of you. Kelly was just a woman who lived with us.”
“That’s not true, Mikey. Your mother loved you the best she could.” She wrapped her arms around his waist and hugged him. “She was just so lost inside, Michael. When Dad died, and she found herself pregnant, she never fully recovered. Being weak is not a crime, Mikey. It’s human. And you have to love her no matter her shortcomings.”
She sighed when she felt his unsteady arms wrap around her. “She was advised to put you up for adoption, but she didn’t. As much as she was capable of, Kelly loved you. She just didn’t know what to do with you once you arrived.”
“You didn’t seem to have any problem dealing with me.”
She pushed away with a scowl. “Ha. I had more problems with you than I can count. I’ve spent the last fifteen years trying to keep one step ahead of you.”
Michael let his arms fall to his sides as he looked around. “Does this place give you the creeps, Nem?” he asked softly.
Emma felt a sudden chill go down her spine at his words. She rubbed her arms and looked around. “Yes,” she whispered. “Now that you mention it.”
“I feel as though we’re being watched,” he said, stepping closer.
Emma attempted to shrug off the feeling. “It’s probably just a bobcat. You know how they like to sneak around. I’ve been stalked by them several times while out hiking.”
“That woodpile’s looking pretty good, all of a sudden. How about we head back?”
Emma mentally shook herself. This was the forest they knew and loved, not the setting of a Stephen King novel. She walked over to Homer and took him out of his cage. “Not until we give this little guy a head start for home.”
Mikey pulled a message canister from his pocket. “What do we want the note to say?”
“‘The last one home is a rotten egg’?”
Mikey smiled as he wrote. “How about ‘The last one home has to cook dinner’?”
Emma wrinkled her nose. “Or bedinner? Homer can’t cook.”
Michael stuffed the message in the canister and carefully secured it to Homer. “But he could pick up a few crickets on the way.”
Emma rolled her eyes and released the bird. “Watch him, Mikey. You could take flying lessons from that little guy,” she said as they watched the bird rise into the sky. He circled once, then twice, and landed on a branch fifty yards away.
“Well, that’s a brilliant homing pigeon,” Mikey said. “He’s just sitting there, watching us.”
“He’s young. He doesn’t know he’s suppose to hurry along yet.”
Mikey snorted. “He wants to ride back in the plane. Do you suppose the flight here messed up his internal compass?”
“Maybe he’s just enjoying his freedom,” Emma suggested, raising her hand to shade her eyes as she squinted up at the tree. “Or maybe he’s enjoying the view.”
“Or maybe we willhave him for dinner,” Mikey said.
Emma handed him his pack. “Come on, Daniel Boone. Let’s look around and then get airborne ourselves. Those clouds look like another storm is headed in.”
Mikey followed her line of vision as he hefted his pack onto his back. “There’s supposed to be a cold front moving down tonight.”
“It’s early this year.”
“We’re ready for it. There’s only two boats left to be put up. And snow will make good tracking for the hunters.”
“Speaking of hunters, where’s Pitiful gone off to? I haven’t seen him all week,” Emma asked, hefting her pack onto her back. “I hope he’s okay.”
“No one in their right mind would shoot that moose, Nem. He’s no trophy with that missing antler, and no one would dare eat his meat. They’d be afraid of catching mad moose disease or something.”
Emma fished out the GPS and turned it on, then studied the screen as the satellites lined up and gave her a reading. “I don’t get it. Why would Wayne have kept these coordinates? His desk had no clutter, no scraps of paper anywhere else. Everything was organized and efficient. It doesn’t make sense.”
“Maybe this is where he buried all the bodies,” Mikey suggested, raising his hands and pretending to choke someone. “He’s probably a serial killer. He’s certainly weird enough.”
Emma shut off the GPS and slid it back in her pocket. “He is a little … different,” she conceded. “But just because you don’t like the man is no reason to brand him a psycho.”
“This coming from the woman who ransacked his room looking for nonexistent letters, and who is now trying to find out what he’s got hidden out here in the middle of nowhere.”
“Maybe Wayne’s running drugs, and he’s using this as a drop site.”
Michael slowly nodded. “That makes sense. He would have the opportunity to run drugs, since he can roam these woods without suspicion.”
“It’s a far-fetched idea,” Emma said.
“But a brilliant one, Nem.”
“Then where’s all the drug money? Wayne’s not exactly living the high life.”
“He’s socking it away. One day he’ll just disappear, only to turn up with a new life in a faraway place.”
Michael was clearly warming to the idea.
“Okay, Sherlock. Let’s work out a scenario. How do the drugs get to this spot?”
“An air drop. Which Wayne picks up and brings into town.”
Damn if that didn’t make sense. “That would mean there has to be a road nearby.”
Michael pulled out the topographical map from his pack and opened it, turning so the lowering sun would light it through the trees. “Here’s one.” He looked off to the east. “It comes in from the Golden Road, but according to the map, it’s old. It may not be passable by truck.”
“So we find it and see if its been traveled,” Emma suggested, picking up Homer’s empty cage and heading east.
Mikey folded his map, leaving the area they needed exposed as he fell into step beside her. “And if it has? What then?”
Emma picked her way through the underbrush. “We could maybe have a talk with Ramsey. Tell him about our suspicions.”
Michael snorted as he held a branch for her to pass. “He’ll laugh us out of his office. We have nothing for proof but some illegally gained coordinates marking nothing.”
Emma stopped and glared at him. “We’re going to tell Ramsey our suspicions, and then we are dropping the whole thing. You are notgoing to look for proof, understand? You are notgoing to stick your nose into anything remotely dangerous.”
“I wonder what Dad would think we should do?” he asked, knowing darn well that Ben would love to bring down a world of trouble on Wayne Poulin.
“If you tell Ben, then you’re going to have to tell him we stuck our nose in this in the first place. How do you think he’ll take thatnews?”
“He’ll lecture a bit, but then he’ll realize that maybe we can’t pass up the opportunity.”
“Michael Sands, I’m going to lock you in your room for a year,” Emma said, pushing past him through the underbrush.
She’d opened a can of worms with this little excursion, and now she didn’t know how to put the lid back on the damn thing. God help them all if Ben decided to get involved.
They found the road a quarter of a mile to the east. As the map indicated, it was an abandoned old logging road leading up a mountain that hadn’t been harvested in over forty years. The bushes had grown in, but not enough to make passing impossible. Emma and Mikey stood in the middle of the old track, looking in both directions.
“It’s passable here, but any number of old bridges or culverts could be washed out farther down,” Emma said.
Mikey started walking toward the Golden Road, looking down as he went. “There’s been traffic up here since last spring.” He moved the bushes and checked their branches. “There’s broken twigs here, but they’re weathered.”
“Any number of people like to see where these old roads lead,” Emma said, trailing behind him and studying the gravel. “That doesn’t mean it was Wayne.”
They walked on in silence, looking for any signs of recent use. “Maybe this is no longer a drop site,” Emma said after a time. “Maybe it never was.”
Mikey suddenly stopped and hunched down, touching the ground in front of him. “This track is fresh,” he said, looking around. He stood up and walked back a few steps. “And look. A truck turned here.” He grabbed a bush and fingered a broken branch. “This is new.”
Emma walked up and looked at the tracks in the road. They werefresh. She looked in both directions and then up the forested mountain. For the second time that day, a chill brushed down her spine.
“Someone was here today,” she said, continuing on until she came to a mud puddle with a tire track through it, the ground still wet from the splash of the truck passing. “Not long ago.” She turned to her nephew. “We’re going back to the plane, Mikey. I don’t like this.”
“Aw, Nem. It’s just getting interesting.”
“No, it’s getting creepy. What are the chances that two different parties ended up in this particular spot at the same time?”
“We couldn’t have been followed. We flew here.”
“But Wayne knew I had been in his desk. He might be checking to see if I discovered the coordinates and came here.”
“He knew? How?”
Emma felt her face redden. “I must have rearranged something in his desk. Or maybe he counts his stationery.”
Mikey did his own scan of the area, suddenly looking worried. “If Wayne’s been using these woods to run drugs, then he knows them well. He’d know where we’d land our plane. Maybe we should head back and make sure it hasn’t been discovered.”
“We’re going to check that plane out with a magnifying glass,” Emma said as she started up the road, searching for a game trail that turned off to the northwest. “And then we’re flying home and dropping this whole thing. It’s not worth our getting involved.”
She was talking to the trees. Mikey was still standing in the road, staring at her.
“Not worth getting involved? Nem, we can’t just do nothing. The guy could be running drugs.”
“It’s not our problem. We’ll tell Ramsey, and let him decide what to do.”
“But where’s your sense of citizenship?”
“It’s hiding behind my sense of responsibility,” she countered, walking back to him. “Your safety and my safety come first. Drug dealers are dangerous and without conscience, and we are not going to put ourselves in the middle of this.”
He simply started walking up through the forest until they came to the mountain, then turned south and skirted it.
Emma walked quietly behind him. Well, she’d done it now. Michael Sands could be one stubborn, ugly dog when he got a bone between his teeth.
She knew he would go to Ben as soon as the man got back, and tell him their suspicions and persuade him to do something about it. And she would have absolutely no control over what they decided.
Michael Sands had apparently had enough of female guidance.
Chapter Fourteen
I t took them halfan hour to reach the plane, and it felt like the longest trek Emma had ever made. Silence can be such a wearing thing, especially when the longer it continues, the wider the void becomes. Right now there was a distance growing between her and Mikey nearly as wide as Medicine Lake.
“It looks to be riding low on one side,” Mikey said as they approached the plane, speaking for the first time since they’d left the road.
Sure enough, one of the floats was sitting on the bottom of the pond, making the Cessna look like a wounded bird with its wings spread out for balance.
Dammit, someone was out here with them.
And whoever it was didn’t want them leaving by air.
“We’re going over every inch of it,” she said, remembering Ben’s tampered-with oil pan and lug nuts.
Scrambling onto the still-floating pontoon, Emma opened the engine cowling and peered inside with a small flashlight. Running her light along the wiring and hoses, it wasn’t long before she found trouble.
“He wasn’t a very imaginative saboteur,” she told her nephew as she fingered a severed hose. “He simply cut the fuel line in half.”
“Then he doesn’t know you very well. You always shut off the fuel,” Mikey answered, unlocking the door to the plane and throwing their packs inside. Then he climbed up onto the wing. Emma heard him sigh. “He snapped off the radio antenna.”
Emma walked to the back compartment of the plane and rummaged around in her toolbox. Mikey had more confidence in her preparedness than she did. She doubted she had any fuel line, or anything else she could substitute. She always kept her plane in perfect flying condition, and the fuel line was not something one expected to break.
“What’s the damage to the float?” she asked as she searched for anything resembling a hose.
“It looks like he took an ax to it just below the waterline. Any luck with the hose?”
“No, Mikey. I don’t have one.”
“Are you sure?”
She popped her head out and bent to look under the fuselage so she could frown at him. “The plane had its annual inspection just last month. Why would I need to carry around a bunch of spare parts?”
“Maybe because you have this thing about always being prepared? So what are we going to do?”
Emma looked around at the beaver flowage and the endless forest. “We walk.”
Mikey looked around also. “Right into an ambush?”
The sun chose that very moment to hide behind a cloud, adding its own warning.
“Then we fly out,” she said with more confidence than she was feeling.
“How?”
“We conjure up some Yankee ingenuity and make this lady flyable. Here,” she said, handing him the pieces of hose she had removed from the engine. “Find a way to splice this while I check for other damage.”
Mikey took the hose, they ducked into the back compartment and began to search for something useful. Emma looked at the engine again.
Ten minutes went by before she felt a tug on her shirt. “Here. This is the best I can do,” Mikey told her as he handed up the repaired fuel line.
Emma looked at it, then at her nephew. “Duct tape? What have you got stiffening it so it won’t collapse?”
“I pulled some conduit out of the tail section. It was tight, but I was able to slide the severed ends of the hose over it and tape them together.” He hesitated, giving her an uncertain look. “It should hold long enough to get home. But even if it works, we still can’t fly with that hole in the float,” he added, glancing at the sunken pontoon.
Emma smiled at him, nodding in approval and reassurance. The poor boy had been asked to do something that put both their lives on the line, and he didn’t like it. She worked the repaired hose back into place.
“We’ve restricted the flow somewhat, but if it can get us airborne, then you’ve worked a miracle, Mikey. Now let’s see about floating this plane. Grab that bicycle pump and truck tire tube from in back, would you?”
“But the float has a hole the size of a basketball, Nem. Duct tape won’t hold, and a rubber patch will never be strong enough to withstand the pressure.”
“We’re not going to patch it. We’re going to stick that tube in the float and pump it up,” she told him, smiling as his eyes widened in disbelief.
“What makes you think that will work?”
“Remember Jack Frost? The guy who was here last summer?”
He suddenly laughed. “Do I. He flew floatplanes in the Gulf of Mexico, didn’t he, servicing the oil rigs?”
“Yup. And Jack told me that most of the pilots down there always stick a deflated truck tube in each of their floats. If they get a bad leak or damage one of them, they can pump up the tube to displace enough of the water to take off and land.”
Her nephew looked more skeptical than impressed. “There’s got to be a lot of drag.”
“It’ll work.” Emma jumped down in the water, wincing at the cold. “I got us into this mess, and I’m going to get us out. By air.”
Michael hunkered down on the float above her and unscrewed one of the portals. “If anyone can do it, you can. And I’m sorry.”
She continued stuffing the giant tube through the portal. “For what?”
He took over the chore, not looking at her as he spoke. “For shutting you out this afternoon. For getting carried away by this whole idea of chasing down some drug runners. For being mad at you.” He finally looked up. “For forgetting that you love me, and that you were only worried about my welfare.”
“Heck, I remember what it’s like to be young and full of dreams and curiosity and adventure.”
“But you never got to fulfill any of your dreams, did you? You got me and Kelly to look after, a huge mortgage to pay, and a boatload of sports to babysit.”
She squeezed his leg. “I got something a whole lot better. I got you. As the song says, I thank God for unanswered prayers. I wouldn’t trade my life with you for any of my childish dreams. I love you, and I love the life we’ve had.”
“It’s not over, Nem. It’s just changing. For both of us.”
“That’s right. And if you don’t want to discover what’s under your father’s civilized veneer, we’d better get ourselves out of here and home before he calls.”
He quickly finished stuffing the tube in the float and pulled the stem up through the opening.
They took turns pumping, a long, tedious undertaking since the bicycle pump had to lift most of the weight of the plane. While Mikey pumped, Emma used the duct tape to cover the jagged edges the ax had made in the pontoon. It took nearly half an hour before they were satisfied the float was riding high enough to taxi on.
With a sigh of relief, Emma looked at her watch and then at the sky. “We’ll just make it home before dusk, thank God. I sure as heck don’t want to be landing this crippled bird in the dark. If we flip her, we’ll be fighting blindly.”
Wiping her hands on her jeans, Emma looked at her nephew, who was scanning the woods and looking more worried than a mouse at a cat show. “It will be okay, Mikey. The fuel line will hold, and so will the pontoon. Turn us around and climb in.”
He did as he was told, pushing them out into deep water, then climbing in the plane and putting on his headset. Emma turned over the prop. The Cessna sputtered alive and immediately began pulling them through the glassy water of the pond.
Emma took her time taxiing, listening to the engine and watching her gauges. She gave it some throttle and felt the plane pull harshly to the right, the pontoon on that side plowing the water. Damn, she wished this pond was bigger—she’d like to have more room to ease the weight of the plane onto the left pontoon and into the air, not force it up at full power.
But she didn’t have that option.
She turned into the slight breeze and shoved the throttle forward. The plane immediately responded, thrusting them back in their seats as it attempted to rise onto the surface of the pond.
It wasn’t a very comfortable—or graceful—journey skyward. Emma had to fight the controls all the way, praying the repaired hose would allow enough fuel through it to give them the power they needed. Water sprayed against the prop and the engine and Mikey’s window. The Cessna shuddered and shook, and finally came up on the step of the floats.
Mikey let out a whoop as they lifted into the air, at the exact same time the window beside Emma shattered into a million spider veins. She instinctively ducked and banked the plane to the right.
“The trees!” Mikey shouted.
Emma eased back to the left just as the window behind her shattered and a bullet lodged into the ceiling. She pulled back on the yoke until the stall alarm sounded, then she forced the plane into another tight bank to the right, aiming at the narrow valley at the head of the pond.
“Dammit, Nem! We won’t make it!”
She pulled back on the yoke and the big, beautiful Stationair did the impossible as it clipped the tops of the trees in its struggle to fly.
There was another sound at the rear of the plane, which Emma guessed was another bullet hitting the tail.
“Someone’s shooting at us!” Mikey hollered, turning to look at the back of the plane. He twisted around and looked up at the ceiling, then at the window beside her. “We were shot at!”
“Take the yoke. Now,” Emma ordered, lifting her right hand to her left shoulder.
He grabbed the yoke with shaking hands, his expression stark with fear.
“Keep climbing, Mikey. And head for Greenville.”
He looked over at her, and through the haze of tears nearly blocking her vision, Emma saw his eyes widen in horror.
“You’ve been shot!”
“I don’t think bad, but it burns like the devil. Take us to Greenville and set us down as close as you can to the shore.”
“Jeez, Nem. Are you bleeding bad?”
She carefully turned in her seat to open one of their packs. Her shaking hand was slick with blood as she worked the zipper and pulled out a shirt. She balled it up in her fist and put it over her left arm, gritting her teeth to stifle a groan.
“Well?” Mikey asked, trying to divide his attention between flying and looking at her wound. “Can you stop the bleeding?”
“I’m trying, Mikey. Give it a second.”
He patted her knee. “I’m sorry, Nem. I just don’t like seeing you hurt.”
“You never did.” She let go of the shirt long enough to wipe the tears from her eyes. “Remember when I fell on the dock and hit my head?”
“I remember you bled like a stuck pig. Like you’re bleeding now. Maybe you’re a hemophiliac. You could bleed to death before we get to Greenville.”
“Don’t go inventing trouble,” she said as she fashioned the shirt into a bandage, using her teeth to tighten it.
“Is … is the bullet still in your arm?”
“I don’t know.”
He groaned, as if he were in more pain than she was. “Damn, I wish we had filled the woodshed today.”
“Well, we didn’t. And we may still have to pay our dues for being curious. There’s Greenville. I’ll take the yoke. I want you to open your door and look down at the pontoon, Mikey. See if it’s still intact. We hit a few of those trees pretty hard.”
His face went completely white, and Emma watched him uncurl his hands from the yoke as she took control with her right hand. He opened the door, having to force it against the wind, and looked down. When he closed it and looked at her, his face was even whiter than before.
“The tube’s deflated and hanging half out. As soon as we land, that float’s going to drag us over.”
Emma gritted her teeth. “We have two choices. The water or the trees. Which one do you want to land us on?”
“Me!”
“There comes a time when every pilot has to make the decision to sacrifice his plane to save himself,” she told him, looking him straight in the eye. She tried moving her left arm and found it nearly impossible. “Personally, I’d choose the trees. I don’t know if I can swim out of an upside-down plane right now.”
